Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising (2 page)

Anna hit her in the arm.  “Don’t
call me a banana.”

“Or…what?  You’ll make it look like
I insulted the Camp Director to her face?”

“You make it sound like she’s
better than us,” Anna growled.  “We’re not prisoners.  They just act like we
are.  This is
our
planet, Magali.  We should kick ‘em out and take the
Void Ring for ourselves, before those bastards get reinforcements back from the
Core and lock this place down like a penitentiary.”

Magali quickly glanced around to
see if anyone with a gun had heard.  Seeing no one, she grabbed her sister by
the scruff of the neck and pulled her close.  Leaning down, she growled, “You
can insult the Director all you want, make me look like an idiot, make me cover
your ass for all your stupid stunts, call me a robot ‘til your lips are blue, but
don’t you dare say stuff like that.  That’s treason, Anna.  I don’t care
how
old you are.  That’ll get you handed over to the Nephyrs.”

“You think I didn’t check to see
if someone was listening?” Anna demanded, her rust-brown eyes indignant.

“
Did
you?” Magali snapped.

Anna grunted and picked at lint.

“Anna!”

“I’m just a kid,” Anna said. 
“What could they do?”

“
Kill
you, for one,”
Magali said.  “They like to peel off
skin
, Anna.”

“Then let them,” Anna said. 
“It’d be the last straw.  We’d start a rebellion and throw them off this planet
once and for all.”

“
We
wouldn’t do anything,”
Magali said, shaking her little sister.  “
You
would be dead.”

Anna shrugged.  “I’d hang around
until I saw you knock ‘em around a bit.”

If there was one thing that
disturbed Magali about her sister—aside from the cruel phases where every word
that came out of Anna’s mouth was a bone-deep insult—it was her apparent utter
disregard for her own safety.  Death, to Anna, seemed like just an
inconvenience.

Magali released her sister,
glaring.  Saying nothing, she turned and went into the aluminum barn that
served as their food hall and stood in one of the three lines.  They took their
breakfast trays from the sour-faced server at the end of the line and, sitting
down, Magali said, “I don’t like it when you talk like that.”

“I don’t like it when you talk at
all,” Anna said.  “So we’re even.”

“Great.”  Magali stared down at
her eggs.  She took several breaths, focusing on the air in her lungs.  Then
she looked up at Anna and said, “Someday you’re gonna say one too many nasty
things and I’m going to step back and really examine just why I care about
you.”

“Because you have to,” Anna said,
putting a gob of eggs into her mouth.

Magali stared at her sister.  “
Have
to?”  She slammed down her fork.  “Anna, there’s no
have to
about it. 
Plenty of people hate their siblings.”

Anna gave a bored sigh.  “Not
people who got their parents killed and now are trying to make up for it by
being nice to the only blood relative that survived their stupidity.”

For a long time, Magali was so
shocked she could not speak.  Then, slowly, she got to her feet.

Anna continued to shovel eggs
into her mouth, completely unconcerned.  It probably didn’t even register to
her that she had said something to hurt Magali’s feelings—it never did.  With
Anna, insults and compliments were one and the same.

Magali knew she should let it
slide, like she had let every other jab slide over the years.  After all, Anna
couldn’t help herself.  She absolutely, categorically, could not help herself.

And yet, this time she’d gone too
far.

Magali got up turned away from
the table, leaving her eggs where they sat.

“Where you going?” Anna asked.

“Away,” Magali said.  “I don’t
feel hungry anymore.”

Anna glanced at the tray,
genuinely confused.  “You didn’t eat anything.”

She doesn’t get it,
Magali
thought, squeezing her fingers into fists. 
She really doesn’t get it.

Taking a deep breath, Magali
forced herself to sit back down and pick up her fork.  Jabbing it into her
eggs, she said, “What I don’t get, Banana, is how you can manipulate people
like the Director like it’s easy, but you are completely clueless about other
stuff.”

“Like what?” Anna asked, around
her eggs.

“Like what you just said to me
now.  It hurt a lot.”

Anna shrugged.

Seeing it, Magali narrowed her
eyes, but she kept prodding at her food.  “Do you do it on purpose?  Be mean on
purpose?”

“I do everything on purpose.”

Magali slammed her fork down
again, this time hard enough to make the table shudder.  Every face in the
cafeteria turned toward them when Magali shouted, “Did you accuse me of
murdering
our family
on purpose, Anna?”

“You did murder them,” Anna
said.  “So what?”

Magali leaned close.  “
You’re
the robot, Anna.  You’ve got a heart of goddamn stone.”

“That’s technically a golem.”

Magali opened her mouth to
scream, then stopped.  A slow smile spread over her face.

“What?” Anna asked, looking
nervous, now.

“I just figured it out,” Magali
said.

“Figured what out?” her sister
asked suspiciously.

“Why I don’t kill you in your
sleep,” Magali said sweetly.  “I understand now.”

“Really?  Why?”

Magali reached across to poke her
sister in the chest.  “Anyone who can survive living with
you
without
going mad or killing something is
destined
to go to heaven when it’s all
said and done.”

“And the Easter Bunny is real,
too.”

“You bet your ass it is,” Magali
said.  She picked up her fork again and began shoving food into her mouth.  “Better
be, after what you put me through.” 

Anna watched her for some time
before she said, “I really made you mad, didn’t I?”

“Yep,” Magali said, brusquely
stabbing at more eggs.

“Why?” Anna asked.

“Why.”  Magali contemplated
trying to explain, then shrugged.  “Forget it.  Talking to you about emotions
is like talking to a hamster about nuclear weapons.”

“No it’s not,” Anna said, looking
disgruntled.  “I understand them.  Just look at what happened with the Camp
Director.”

“You see their effects, but you
don’t know what it feels like.  It’s all like pulling strings to you.  You can
use
them, twist them around to make people do stuff, but you don’t understand
them.” Magali shoved her plate away and glared at her sister.  “There’s a big
diff.”

“If it’s all like pulling
strings, why do I make you mad?” Anna asked.

“You got me there,” Magali said. 
“It’s like you’re trying to drive away your very last friend in the world.” 
Magali leaned forward.  “And for an eight-year-old, that’s saying a lot.  Kids
your age don’t make grown men cry.”

Immediately, Anna’s face broke
out into a smile.  “No, but it was fun.”  Then, seeing Magali’s glare, her
little sister cleared her throat.  “I mean, that dumbass Parker should’ve
learned how to stop stuttering when he was forty-five.  And that cranky old
Darian Hold was mean to everybody anyway—I was just giving him a taste of his
own medicine.”

Magali glared.  “I was talking
about my boyfriend.”

“Oh.”  Anna immediately took on a
bored look and waved a dismissive hand.  “He had it coming.”

Magali stared at her sister, the
thought of reaching across and grabbing her by the neck and pounding her
strawberry blond head into the table so vivid that her fingers twitched.  She
tapped them against the wood to keep from placing them around her sister’s
throat.  Finally, she said, “We’d been dating four
years.
  He never even
wrote me after that.”

“Eh.”  Anna shrugged.  “You’re
too good for him, anyway.”

Magali lifted a brow.  “So you
chase off my boyfriend so you can have me to yourself when you tear apart my
ego?”

“Ego is just a construct of the
mind, anyway,” Anna said.  “I’m helping you to transcend.”

Magali narrowed her eyes and
lifted her fingers.  “You’re this close to a beating.”

“Probably the only thing you’d be
good at—beating up a nine-year-old.”

“You’re eight.”

“Nine.”

“You’re
seven
Standard,”
Magali countered.  “So just cut the crap, all right?”

“We’re fifth-generation
Fortuners.  The next time I hear you use Standard, I’m going to crush your
tender feelings again.  Once BriarRabbit and I kick the soldiers out, there
will only be Colonial anyway.”

“
Damn
it, Anna!” Magali
cried, glancing around the cafeteria.  They had two minutes left to their meal,
and soldiers were already stepping in amongst the tables, getting ready to
force them out for their first shift.  Seeing no one that had overheard, she
grabbed her sister’s hand and yanked her close.  “BriarRabbit?  What the Hell,
Anna!  That sounds like a damn video game ID!  You think you’re playing a
game
?”

“It’s called a hacker’s handle,
and yes, this is a game.”  Anna grinned.  “A
fun
one.  Like poker, but
I’ve got all the cards.”

Magali narrowed her eyes, not
sure Anna was screwing with her or being serious.  “Okay, listen up.  I don’t
care how smart you are.  You mention anything about this phantom underground
uprising within hearing of those Coalition women and one of them is going to
lock you up and throw away the key.”

“It’s not phantom,” Anna said loudly. 
She spread her arms wide to include the whole cafeteria and all of its
tired-eyed, haggard-faced eggers.  “It’s all around us.  One of these days, the
Coalition is going to get what’s coming to—”

Magali slapped her sister.

Anna touched her cheek and
blinked back tears.

Jabbing a trembling finger at her
younger sibling, Magali said, “Shut up.  You don’t get it—Merciful Aanaho, I
don’t understand why you don’t get it.  They will
kill
you, Anna. 
They’ll
kill
you deader than dinosaurs and then I’ll be left all
alone.”  She swiped tears from her eyes.  “So just shut up.  All right?  I
don’t want to see you die, too.  You’re all I’ve got.”

Anna narrowed her eyes at her. 
“Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you killed Mom.”

Magali leapt to her feet, and for
a second, both of them thought she would hit Anna again.  As Anna flinched
back, however, Magali swung around and stalked from the room, pushing her way
through startled eggers and soldiers alike.

Behind her, Anna laughed.

Chapter
2

The
Rebel Brothers

Stop.  Let me out for air.  I
can’t stand this anymore.
  Giving up on her search for two rebel brothers
that had recently been charged with blowing up a munitions depot, Tatiana gave
her soldier the signal to halt.

It hesitated.  “We’re still in
colonial territory, Captain.  It is very much advised that you—”

I don’t give a damn!
Tatiana snapped. 
Let me out.  Now.

The soldier sat down and
unfolded, allowing fresh air to enter its belly cavity.

Tatiana gasped and choked on the
tubes, knowing she was hyperventilating, yet unable to force the machines to
produce more air.

It’s happening again,
she
thought, panicking.  She had to get out of her soldier before it beamed her
heart rate back to base and she got hangared for another Psych eval.

Damn it,
she thought,
gagging as she drew the food tube from her stomach and the intravenous lines
from her arms.  Tears welled in her eyes as she endured the nauseating pull of
electrodes from deep under her skin, but she knew ten more seconds in her
soldier and she was going to lose her mind. 

Like last time.

Damn it, damn it.

She disconnected the wastes lines
and then pulled herself out of the sticky, mucousy substance that cradled her,
protecting against sudden blows and jarring explosions.  Then, her naked body
pricking with goosebumps and dripping slime, she crawled out of the vault,
stumbled off the heap of warm metal, and fell to her knees in the alien
underbrush. 

She vomited.

Hands splayed on the alien dirt,
head hanging down amongst the sticky green stems, she panted until she saw
stars.

This can’t be happening.  Not
again.

Trembling, Tatiana glanced back
over her shoulder.  Her soldier sat lifeless, a hulk of weapons and hydraulics,
waiting for its operator.  Her.  A host of precautions—thumbprint, retinal
scans, genetic tests, voice comparisons—made it impossible for anyone else in
the universe to operate the weapon.

And with good reason—Tatiana was
the best at what she did.

…when she could bring herself to
do it.

Now, looking back at the
egg-shaped chamber that awaited her, all Tatiana felt was an overwhelming
dread.  She crawled away from the thing, brought her knees up under her chin,
and cried. 

Twenty minutes later, Tatiana had
stopped crying, but she hadn’t done much else.  The buoyancy gel had dried on
her naked skin in a tight, painful crust.  Her fingers were stiff, her lashes
and brows gummy, her short-cropped hair a spiky mass of dehydrated bouyagel. 
The dry alien air had already whisked away most of the substance’s moisture,
leaving her body covered in hard goosebumps around the cold metal nodes. 

Tatiana shivered and tried to
cover the biggest nodes with her hands, hating the creepy feel of cold air
penetrating her insides.  Huddling in on herself, listening to the brisk alien
breeze stir the terragen grasses that were currently at war with the less
savory, sap-soaked native species, she could almost believe she was in a very
bad dream.  She looked up at the big, slick alien trees around her, trying not
to feel as tiny and vulnerable as she felt.  The odd clicks and cooing of
native wildlife echoed from the gnarled red canopy, and Tatiana was reminded
again that, as valuable Coalition property, she hadn’t stepped outside sealed
Coalition structures in over eleven years, zoomtime.  Letting an operator
‘commune with nature’ was too dangerous.  Never mind that there were whispers
of an underground revolution stirring on Fortune—with her body pocked with
metal hookups, a single bug down the wrong node could kill her.

Swallowing, Tatiana quickly checked
the ground around her to make sure she wasn’t sitting on an alien anthill.  She
would have given anything for some node-caps, but she’d left those back at the
station and the crash-kit didn’t include any.  After all, the soldiers’ vaults
were impenetrable, and operators weren’t supposed to leave their vaults until
they were safely docked at a military facility.  It said so right in the
contract. 
“…Further, operators of Special Operations
Large-Demolitions-Integrated Elite Reconnaissance Systems will disembark only
at an approved Coalition hangar, or, alternatively, when their remains are
removed from their SOLDIERS by recovery personnel.
” 

Jumping at a particularly loud
alien rumble in the shrubbery to her right, Tatiana desperately tried to
remember Major Wilcon’s presentation on alien fauna at orientation.  As an
operator on a colony like Fortune, Tatiana had been so sure that she would
never set foot outside the sanitized hallways of the military barracks that she
hadn’t paid attention as the good Major had droned on about his precious Three
P’s—poisons, predators, and psychic shock.  After all,
operators
didn’t
need to know that stuff.  The only way she could wind up skinny outside her
soldier was if she exited the vault of her own volition.

…again.

I am so dead.
  Tatiana’s
misery ratcheted up another notch and she bit her lip as she stared at the open
vault of her machine.  The buoyancy gel had started to dry, leaving a
semi-opaque crust coating the internal workings of the operator’s egg.

Tatiana knew they weren’t going
to overlook this.  Not this time.  Only ten thousand soldiers had been made,
each one worth a planet or two on the black market, and the line to get inside
one of them was longer than a flight back to the Inner Bounds.  She was replaceable. 
Not even a Third Commendation on Muchos Rios and a stat sheet to make an
admiral cry were going to change that. 

Tatiana huddled in on herself,
trying to imagine a life without her soldier.  Though most would-be operators
would have gladly taken the eleven years as one of the Coalition’s best and
gracefully bowed out once the stress became too much, Tatiana knew she’d end up
being one of the wackos who ended up strangling her would-be successor with her
bathrobe, once they forced her to step down. 

She tried to imagine running
cargo as a commercial pilot, or flying security for trade vessels, but after
being solidly at the very top, in the most coveted Spec-Ops spot in the
Coalition fleet, she knew going back to stick would drive her even more crazy
than being locked in a dark, sticky chamber, unable to suck enough stale air
into ragged lungs…

Tatiana shuddered and tightened
her grip on her legs as she peered over her knees.  She knew she couldn’t stay
there forever, staring at her soldier like a dipshit, but the thought of
climbing back into the vault and reattaching the lines, tubes, and nodes left
her feeling sick. 

Just the idea of closing the lid,
locking herself back into darkness, left her in despair.

When she finally couldn’t take
the cold any longer, Tatiana crawled up to her soldier’s cargo pod and pulled
out the survival pack with clothes, food, water-filters, fire-making
supplies—and an emergency beacon.  She lifted a crisply-folded navy blue
jumpsuit from the bottom and, after much debate, shook it out and stuck her
sticky legs into it.  When she returned, the Coalition would know she had
exited her soldier, but, with nightfall approaching and the strange animal
sounds getting louder, she was willing to cross that bridge when she came to
it.

Tatiana zipped up the suit,
tucked the collar down, then built a fire and ate a packet of rehydrated stew. 
Even after it became obvious to her that she was not going to be able to get
back into the machine, she could not bring herself to trigger the beacon.  She
knew that when she did, they were going to rip away her nodes, sew her up, and
send her back to fly freight in the Core. 

Once she was finished eating, she
set the beacon on a log across from her and stared at it. 

The moment she triggered the
device, a Coalition retrieval team would come, find a fully-functioning
soldier, a perfectly healthy operator, and know she had freaked out again.  If
they were feeling generous and decided to let her stay in her soldier, the
number of years left on her enlistment would be put on pause as they worked the
kinks out of her brain, just like last time.

But if she didn’t trigger it—
especially
if she didn’t trigger it—they would track her down by the lifeline chip lodged
in her spine. 

Hell, she realized, they might
not even bother tracking her down.  They might just save themselves the effort,
bring up her chip ID on the base computer, and fry her brainstem…letting her
rot in whatever ridiculous makeshift shelter she had cobbled together from
sticky alien plant stems under some rain-soaked leaf-cluster.

Unwillingly, she started crying
again.

“Damn,” a voice said.  “I never
would’ve believed Milar if I wasn’t seeing it myself.”

Tatiana gasped and spun.

A big man in dirty brown leather
stood at the edge of the firelight behind her.  He had curly auburn hair, a
heavy spattering of freckles, and dimples.  He was smiling. 

He was also holding a Laserat
pistol aimed at her chest.

“Cold night out,” he commented.

Tatiana froze, her eyes on the
gun.  “I’m Coalition,” she blurted.

He laughed and motioned with the
barrel of the gun at the cracked soldier.  “Obviously.”  The hulking, stinking
brute sniffed and wiped a dirty hand across his nose, leaving a trail of
bacteria-ridden slime across his arm.  He snorted, proceeded to noisily hack up
a gob of phlegm, and expertly spat it into the slimy alien weeds before
clearing his throat and swallowing.

Tatiana realized she had her face
scrunched up in disgust. 

“Got a cold,” the stranger said,
by way of explanation.  His expression lacked any sort of apology.  “Coalition
confiscated colonist vita-stores last year.  We’ve been deficient in selenium,
zinc, and potassium ever since.”

Realizing that not even
her
overactive imagination could drum up a mucousy, selenium-deficient, gun-toting,
knuckle-dragging ape, Tatiana started to get a very bad feeling. 

Still, she reminded herself,
Fortune had the Yolk trade.  The Coalition had so many personnel stationed on
the planet that it would take a lobotomized nutjob to start a scuffle with
government troops.  Tentatively, eyes still fixed on the pistol, she said,
“Then what do you think you’re doing?”

“Rebellin,” he said.  He
grinned.  “Step away from the soldier, please.”

Tatiana glanced back at the
egglike vault.

“Don’t,” the man warned.  His
Coalition New Common was clumsy, like it had been learned from a textbook.

Tatiana hesitated.  It took long
minutes to fully calibrate a soldier upon reentry.  Even if she made it inside
before he hit her, they could certainly pry her out again before she’d
activated systems.  She glanced at the beacon.

“It’d take them an hour to get
here.”  He started to swagger toward the fire.  “Besides, I just wanna look.”

“Are you trying to start a
war?
”
Tatiana demanded.

“Wouldn’t mind it,” he said.  The
colonist walked over to the soldier and tapped on the ultra-light armor
plating. 

“Get away from my soldier,”
Tatiana blurted, every pore on her body suddenly constricting at the idea of
the Coalition finding out she’d let a colonist this close to the weapon.

“Calm down, pumpkin,” he said,
flashing her a charming grin.  “I just want a quick peek.”  Then, ignoring her
complaints, he climbed up the side and poked his head into the captain’s
chamber.  The big, dirty colonist whistled.  “Borden’s Balls, woman.  This
looks all sorts of uncomfortable.”  He dipped a grease-stained finger in the bouyagel
and held it up so she could see it oozing down his hand.  He scrunched his face
and wiped it on his pantleg. 

I’m dead,
Tatiana
thought.  The inner workings of the soldiers were highly classified, and
letting a colonist inspect the inside would easily be considered treason. 
Scratch unkinking her brain.  The Coalition would
kill
her. 

Tatiana ran to the base of her
soldier and slapped her hand against the sheeting near the stranger’s foot. 
Trying to keep the desperation out of her voice, she said, “Ha-ha, really
funny.  Colonist pulls one over on Coalition operator.  Show us who’s boss.  I
get it.  Now please get down.  I don’t know what sort of macho games you’re playing,
but the Coalition finds out you saw the inside, they’ll kill us both,” she
said.

“Only if you tell,” he laughed,
holstering his pistol.  The stranger jumped down beside her, smiling. 
“Besides, you’re just an operator.  Not the—”  His eyes met her face and he
froze. 

This close, it felt he had
roughly the same mass as a Coalition carrier, though he didn’t seem to be
carrying any added fat.  He was just…tall.

Realizing
how
tall,
Tatiana quickly backed up.  Then, growing uncomfortable under his prolonged
stare, she said, “Uh…reconsidering?”

He said nothing.  Just stared.

“Tell you what,” Tatiana said
quickly, “You forget you saw me camped out like this and I’ll forget we had
this conversation.  Deal?”

The man cleared his throat. 
Looked to the side.  Then his eyes fixed on her again and kept staring.

Tatiana began to scowl.  With
shorn hair and electrode nexuses jutting out all over her body, she knew she
was ugly, but this was just plain rude.  “Listen, knucker, nobody’s stupid
enough to start a war with the Coalition, so just go the hell away and let me
go fire up my bird.”

His voice cracked when he spoke. 
“Actually, I think you’re going to have to come with me.”

Tatiana stared at him.  He didn’t
retract his statement.  She waited.  Then, at his prolonged silence and his
goofy, almost apologetic look, she threw back her head and laughed.  After
several moments, she snapped her head back down and jabbed a finger at him. 
“Not even a dumbass retard colonist prick like you would do something that
stupid.”