Read [02] Elite: Nemorensis for Free Online Page B

didn’t seem quite the right time for comparative analysis. Somehow it never did, when Teesa was around.)
    The hat man reached the threshold. Cast a manic hand towards the slidelock.
    And slammed to a halt with an undignified squeak.
    On the wall beside him, three federal inches from the side of his face, a perfect dandelion of soot and metal cooled with a glassy crackle and a puff of smoke. The man stared at it, trembling. And then twisted, along with Myq and every autolens in the room, towards Teesa.
    Where did she get a fucking gun …?
    She slipped it back into a pocket, a half-glimpsed laser gadget in pink and vomit-green, and smiled innocently.
    ‘Let’s try to keep toilet breaks until the end, shall we? We have a lot to get through.’
    The man shuffled back to the pack, avoiding every eye. Once again whistling his sad little tune.
    ‘We’re here today,’ Tee said, ignoring him, ‘to tell your viewers, listeners and readers about an exciting money-spending opportunity. Myq?’
    Heads turned towards him. He gaped once or twice, still floundering in the electric atmosphere of A World Where Tee Has A Fucking Gun, and then surrendered to the spell. Went with the flow.
    Same old, same old
.
    ‘It’s remarkably simple,’ he said. ‘On screen behind me now you’ll notice a code number. That’s an account held at the First Bank of Intangia: a clever little concern nominally registered on the Independent world Bohmshohm but in fact lacking for branches, headquarters or … well, any premises at all. Which is to say: not somewhere the Federation can go and get antsy.
    ‘So what we’d really like is for you, you at home, hi, nice to meet you, for you to send a bunch of money to that account. Which we’ll then basically use to carry on doing what we’re doing now. That is: blowing up ships belonging to the unbelievably wealthy corporate arsebags whose influence affects every last part of your lives.’ He smiled. ‘Cos it’s expensive, that sort of thing.’
    Renting signal-proof conference rooms, for instance.
    Not having the criminal connections required to sell stolen stock wherever we go, for instance.
    Constantly multiplying, upgrading and reloading the ferocious armaments of a once-luxurious tour ship, for instance.
    Buying blackmarket pink-and-green laserguns without fucking telling me, for fucking instance.
    ‘In exchange for this act of generosity, we’ll make sure we send all the tasty footage from said acts of Blowing Corporate Stuff Up onwards to the very same journalists from whom you just heard this appeal. How about that?’
    The reporters nodded dreamily. Most of them, those not actively necking each other, were still staring at Teesa and not really listening. The cameras, happily, seemed to know what to do.
    As did the prick in the hat.
    ‘So that’s what this is all about, is it?’ he said. Sweaty-faced, red-eyed, still flinging glances at the door. ‘You’re anti-corporate. This is a … what, a political thing?’
    Myq lost a couple of candyfloss seconds trying to decide if he pitied or envied the man his exemption from Tee’s spell, and only tuned back in when she stiffened beside him with an angry tut. He knew without waiting how it would go if he let her handle the Official Response, because it was the very same argument they’d had that morning.
    Look
, she’d snarled, unbuckling his clothes.
I don’t give a damn about the corps
a
nd nor do you. We should just be honest about it. We want to … to break stuff. Right? To laugh and screw and scorch a trail. What’s so bad about that? You think there has to be a meaning? There doesn’t! You think we need a, what? A message? A bloody moral? We don’t, Myq! All we need’s to be alive and to smash and to run and run and never slow down, and I bet … I
bet
you, darling … I bet that’s something everyone else wants too
.
    This morning? He hadn’t believed her. Didn’t buy it. But then this morning she’d shortly thereafter