[03] Elite: Docking is Difficult Read Online Free

promote his new self-help manual,
The Only Thing Stopping You Is You, And Those Thargoid Bastards.
    Ganymede first rose to prominence with his hard-to-categorise, semi-autobiographical novels – a unique blend of high adventure, flow-charts, graphic sex and motivational life-tips.
How I Fought Off The Swamp Mandrills Of Turlough Twelve And Simultaneously Learned To Choose Myself, Six Effective Social Media Habits That Helped Me Explode The Imperial Ambassador,
and
Assault On Arcturus: Preparing My CV
were among his many early hits. He later diversified into both television and games, with equal success.
Mission: Thargoid Kill-Punch
has sold over half a billion copies and is estimated to have inspired at least that same number of tedious opinion columns.
    Cliff’s prose style was variously described by critics as ‘magnetic, but with the same polarity as eyeballs, and therefore incredibly difficult to read’, ‘challenging’, and ‘leaving you with a sensation akin to trying to breathe meringue’. His acting – he played ‘Clive Ganymede’, a thinly fictionalised version of himself for sixty seasons of the hit show Galloping Ganymede! – came in for even harsher criticism. ‘Though the role of “Clive” might not be considered a stretch for Commander Ganymede,’ wrote the Alioth Nova, ‘he still seems to deliver his lines as though discovering language for the very first time.’ But despite these brickbats from the press, Ganymede was never less than wildly popular with the general public, consistently voted number one in the
Middlebrow Chat! Magazine ManBooker
awards.
    The investigation into his murder is ongoing.
    It was exactly the kind of exciting and mysterious case that Phoebe had gone through six years of police academy to work on. Dogged detective work required. A high pressure, high-profile assignment carried out under the glare of the media spotlight. But Phoebe didn’t work in homicide. Phoebe worked in the customs and excise unit of a police force who had jurisdiction over a solar system that contained a level of illicit trading activity so close to
nil
as to be Statistically Irrelevant, according to the latest crime census.
    She scratched her stomach, and thought about poor life decisions.
    She wondered if she should wash the synthi-noodle stain out of her top.
    She wondered how much synthi-noodle she must have eaten to stain a Teflon-weave, StayClean police shirt in the first place.
    She wondered what the chances had been of this new stain combining with the old stain to create what now looked like an angry face.
    She wondered if she had maybe let her personal hygiene standards slip a little.
    She wondered if there was a record for the amount of synthi-noodle consumed in a single afternoon.
    ‘What a bowl of cocks,’ she said out loud, to nobody.
    Lunch had officially ended five minutes ago. She should be back on her beat, carrying out the random cargo spot-checks that made up the bulk of her dreary, pointless days. But she knew in advance how that would go: she’d either patrol the docking bays on foot or pootle about near-space in the Police Viper for a few hours, and if she was lucky some dreary, pointless methane shipment might head out in her general direction. She’d stop it, go aboard, there’d be a bit of forcibly sunny small talk. They’d probably make a dreary, pointless remark about her cybernetic leg. She’d do a semi-comprehensive check depending on how lazy she was feeling and find exactly zero contraband. Maybe a few smuggled episodes of
Laser, Baby & C.H.O.M.P.S.
or
Neil’s Nine
if they happened to be heading past Placet B. None of it would be worth the energy or effort, and she’d have another stack of admin to hide somewhere. ‘Most Likely To Do A Thorough And Conscientious Job’ it had said under her yearbook picture. Perhaps
,
thought Phoebe,
she should spend the afternoon looking at videos of sloths falling asleep in zero gravity.
    The
blip
of a call coming in