Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising (30 page)

Martin froze, and his big fingers
started to reach for the gun sitting on the housing of the mower, next to the
flashlight.

Joel fired at the illegal
Coalition pistol, putting a hole through Martin’s gun, the housing, and the
mower’s engine.  Sparks spat and sizzled from the mower’s internal workings,
and the entire thing stopped humming and sputtered to a stop.

Seeing that, Martin turned red
and lunged to his feet.  He shoved a finger in the mower’s direction and spewed
an explosive series of threats and curses.  Joel could tell they were threats
and curses by the spit flying from Martin’s lips, and the animal look in his
eyes. 

Now that he thought about it,
Martin looked a lot like Geo.  Give Geo some color to him, trim off a few
hundred pounds of fat…

A son, perhaps?

Joel laughed, delighted.  He
would be able to get back at the petty old albino, after all. 

Martin quieted, his piggish
nostrils flaring.  He spouted another long string of words, this time lower,
more dangerous.

Yes, definitely a threat.

Joel took a deep breath,
wondering how he was going to handle this.  The moment he’d seen Martin, he
knew he would be down here for Harvest, and he also knew that Geo’s goon had a
reasonable way out that wouldn’t have him hiking five bags of partially-crushed
Shrieker nodules past the Nephyrs guarding the entrance.

Joel pointed to one of the
unmarked harvest sacks—the same any hunter could use to carry starlope meat
from the mountains—and then mimed throwing it over his shoulder.  Then he
pointed at Martin and repeated the gesture, waiting expectantly.

The albino’s son gave him a flat
stare that did not need to be translated.  To assist in Joel’s understanding,
however, he gave Joel a cruel smile and, while uttering another low series of
words, he drew the tip of his fat finger across his throat.

Joel shot him in the foot.

As the goon howled, Joel strode
forward and kicked him over, so he was on his face in the muck.  Then, foot in
the middle of Martin’s back, the grip of the gun secured between his teeth,
Joel used his good hand to start searching Martin’s pockets for some sort of
map.  Novices always had a map.

When he found the wadded piece of
paper, he grinned.  Just four caverns away, marked with a bright red X, was the
word SHIP.

Joel only had a brief moment to
enjoy the moment, however, before Martin’s bullish body began floundering,
meaty arms struggling to get some sort of purchase beneath him.  Then he was
spinning under Joel’s grip, throwing off Joel’s balance, and, with only one
working hand, Joel couldn’t keep him down.

Within just a few horrible
seconds, Martin had flipped completely over before Joel could once more get a
hold on the gun.  Martin smacked it out of his hand with a meaty fist and the
weapon went flying.  As Joel tried to scramble for the gun, the bigger man’s
beefy hands were wrapped around his throat, the studded gloves biting into
Joel’s neck.  Suddenly, it was all Joel could do to breathe.

Despite Joel’s efforts to pry
Martin’s hands from his throat, the edges of his vision began to go black,
until the smuggler’s sweaty, contorted brow and his piggish brown eyes were the
only things he could see.

Joel could feel himself sliding
into unconsciousness.

He could feel it, because his
legs were going out underneath him.  He slid to his knees beside the smuggler,
unable to keep his muscles taut.

A female voice came from behind
him, sounding dim, like it was a good distance away.  Martin’s hands loosened
slightly.  Joel sucked in a gasping breath, his vision still narrowed to a
tiny, black-rimmed field.

The voice sounded again, like it
was coming from the bottom of a well. 

Martin’s fingers reluctantly slid
from Joel’s neck.

Gasping, Joel flopped away from
him, crawling, sucking in breath after breath, his chest burning, his vision
still dangerously narrowed to the slime between his fingers.  Martin did not
press his advantage, and when Joel was able, he looked up to see what had
intervened.

Magali was standing near the
doorway, Joel’s gun in her hand.  She looked confused.

Behind him, Martin started
talking, his voice low and soft.  As he talked, he stood.  Then the evil sonofabitch
took a hobbling step towards her.

Joel knew the bastard would wring
her neck and screw her corpse, if Magali let him anywhere near her.  He got up,
even as Martin continued to speak in low, soothing sounds, and shoved him,
hard, motioning at Magali to back up a pace. 

She didn’t move.

Martin laughed and kept talking.

Joel put his body between them,
shoving Martin back a step.  Martin looked at him, gave him a smile that made
his insides feel sick, and continued to speak.

Lying,
Joel realized. 
Martin was lying to her.  Telling her some story, some fabrication, and he
couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

Joel glanced back at Magali.  She
was frowning, now.  His heart began to thunder in his ears.  He shook his head
emphatically, denying whatever Martin was saying, but Magali’s frown darkened. 
The barrel of the gun slowly slid from Martin, until it was hovering between
the two of them, as if she couldn’t decide which one she wanted to shoot first.

What’s he
saying? Joel
thought, panicking as Martin’s soft voice continued to fill the cavern.  Martin
gave him a self-satisfied look that left him cold, and the first traces of fury
were beginning to tighten Magali’s face.  Seeing that, Joel would have given
anything to know what he was
saying.
 

And then, as the barrel of the
gun turned to level on his chest, Joel knew.

* * *

“You
are
that Landborn
girl, ain’t ya?  The gal whose daddy disappeared a few years back?  David
Landborn?  One hell of a legend, that guy.  Everybody knew of him…him and his
two girls.”

Killer,
Wideman giggled.

“Don’t come any closer,” Magali
snapped, when the enormous man took another step toward her, blood squishing up
from the singed hole in his boot.  He had the bulk of Patrick and Milar
combined, and it scared her.  He was a mod—he had to be.  Nobody grew that big
on their own.

“Sorry, honey, sorry.”  The man
raised big hands in supplication.  “Just thought we were friends, here.”

“We aren’t friends,” she
whimpered, keeping distance between them.  “Back up.”  She was running out of
cavern to back into.

“Maybe not yet,” the big man
said, “But we could be.”  He grinned, and it looked completely genuine.  He did
not back up. 

“Did you say he was…”  Magali
swallowed, unable to wrench the word ‘tortured’ from her throat.  “What did he
do to him?”  Her gaze was focused on Joel, who had gone deathly still, looking
paler and scareder than she’d ever seen him before.

The big man snorted.  “Who,
Joel?  Nothing.”  Then his smile turned vicious.  “Well, nothing, unless you
count him letting your daddy’s name slip to the nasty Yolk runners he was
double-crossing.  Saved his own hide by trading his life for your daddy’s.  The
crime boss gave him the choice to give up his life or give up his Yolk source. 
What do you think he did?  Squealed like a rabbit.  Geo sent his guys out the
very next day to find your daddy.  Made him watch while they collapsed the mine
on your poor mother—horrible accident, don’t you think?—and then took him out
and tied him to a tree and slit his gut open for the tree-hares to eat while he
screamed his lungs bloody.”

Magali closed her eyes against
tears.  “You’re lying,” she whispered.

She heard the big man take
another step towards her.  Her eyes snapped open and she stumbled back, her
heel hitting the edge of the cavern wall.  “Get back, goddamn it!” she shouted.

The big man gave her a sad grin,
completely ignoring the gun.  “Lying?”  The man shook his head.  “Just look at
Joel’s face and tell me I’m lying.”  He gestured to the gray nature of the
smuggler’s skin.  “He would’ve said something before this if I weren’t.”

“Joel’s been muted,” Magali said,
feeling a wave of hope.  “He can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

The big man gave Joel an
unreadable look.  “He can’t?”

“No,” Magali said, “So just back
up.  I know Joel a Hell of a lot better than you do.”

The big man laughed.  “Oh, I
doubt that.  I’m a smuggler, girl.  I don’t associate with the nicest of folk,
and people like Joel, you get a couple beers in ‘em and they talk.  Stories
spread.  Go to any bar and ask.  Sad truth is probably everybody you talk to
this side of the Snake’ll know what happened to your daddy, and why.  Joel, the
honorless little weasel he is, broke the Golden Rule of Yolk smuggling.  He
gave up his source, and his source paid with his life, and the life of his
wife.”  The man laughed.  “Funny thing is, the skinny bastard named his ship
Honor,
and the guy flying it ain’t got a scrap of honor to save his soul.  He’s a
liar, a betrayer, and a cheat.  I think that’s ironic.”

Magali didn’t believe him. 
Despite his smile, there was something in the man’s eyes that reminded her of
the way Colonel Steele’s gaze had felt as it oozed down her naked body.  Or
Anna.

She shuddered when she thought of
Anna.

Still, he had known about her
father.  Even most of the people in Deaddrunk had thought her father had
suffered a mining accident.  Most of them never even suspected he was smuggling
Yolk to buy weapons for Wideman’s war.  For the big man to have known that her
father had been part of the black market Yolk trade meant he had met her
father, in some way or another.

Magali looked at Joel.  She knew
that the black market Yolk trade was a dangerous business.  Nephyrs killed
suspected smugglers without even a trial.  Her father had always done
everything he could to keep his children and his wife as far from the actual
illegal processes as possible.  He had told her again and again that to breathe
one whisper to the wrong person would bring men on both sides of the law to his
doorstep with guns in their hands. 

Was
Joel
the one her
father had been selling his Yolk to?  Could that have been what happened to
him, could that be why her mother had gone into the silver mines alone that
night?  A competitor found out about him and came to collect? 

She didn’t think Joel had the
heart to kill anybody, and if the big man had claimed he had, she would’ve
known he was lying.  Even the guards, who had tried to kill him, were still
alive and breathing when most people would’ve yanked the gun from her hand and
put a beam through their skull. 

But give someone up?  Betray him
to save himself?  When she looked, there was something in Joel’s eyes that
hadn’t been there before.  Fear…and guilt.  Softly, she said, “Joel, did you
hand over my father to the Yolk cartels?”

He emphatically shook his head
and made two cutting motions with his hand, pointing at the other man. 
Don’t
believe him.  He’s lying.
  For a moment, Magali believed him.

Then she realized that, if Joel
was innocent, he wouldn’t have had any idea what she was talking about.  But,
seeing his anguished face, she knew that he
did
know what she was
talking about.  He must have known this was coming since the first day he’d met
her in the foreman’s chambers.

“Of course he did.” 

She felt the big man move closer
again and Magali stumbled sideways, almost slipping against the wall.  “Stay back,
please!
”

The smile grew on the man’s face,
crinkling the corners of his eyes.  “Come on, now.  You ain’t going to shoot
anybody.”  He took another limping step toward her, his hands up in
supplication, a grin on his face.  He reached out with one beefy hand, palm-up.

Joel suddenly grabbed the collar
of the man’s leather jacket and yanked him off his feet, into a backwards
sprawl in the slime.

The big man lunged upward in a
snarl, the harmless grin vanished from his face as if a switch had been
flipped.  He punched Joel in the wounded leg, hard, and Joel crumpled.  As Joel
was falling, the big man got to his feet and kicked him in the face.

Joel’s head snapped back and he
went still. 
Oh my God,
Magali thought, the barrel of her gun drooping
slightly as she looked on in horror. 
He killed him.
  His face had
fallen into a cluster of broken nodules, and for a moment, the reddish gore
leaking from around the infant Shriekers made it look as if his face had been
ripped apart.  Then she noticed the shallow rise of his shoulders as his chest
expanded.  Once.  Twice.

Joel was alive, but barely.

“Now where were we?” the big man
growled.  He brightened.  “Oh yeah.”  He wiped his bloody hand on the front of
his shirt.  He gave her an apologetic grin and he held out his hand.  “My name
is Martin.”  He took another limping step toward her.

Magali tore her gaze from Joel’s
chest and once more leveled the gun on the big man.  “I told you to back up!” 
Even to her ears, it sounded like more of a plea than a command.

The big man’s brown eyes were
hard.  “A pretty thing like you wouldn’t shoot a friendly guy like me,” he
said.  He was still smiling, but it sounded as if it were a warning.  He
continued to move toward her, slowly.

“Back!” she cried, working her
way along the wall.

“There’s no need for the gun,
little girl,” Martin said.  “We both know you don’t know how to use it.”

“I know how to use it,” Magali
said, still backing along the wall. “I’m an expert marksman.  My daddy trained
me since birth.”

Martin laughed.  “Birth, huh?”

“Birth,” she whispered.  Her
knees were shaking again, and her stomach was twisting with the urge to vomit.