Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising (34 page)

“How’s this for a miracle,” Joel
said.  “You get the Hell off my ship and I’ll pretend you didn’t just point a
gun at me and together we’ll start getting these people somewhere safe.”

Magali jerked like a dumbstruck
starlope. 

“I’ll save as many as I can,”
Joel said.  “But the moment I see a Nephyr or a Coalition ship, I’m gone, and I
won’t be coming back.”

Magali continued to stare at him.

“Either that,” Joel said, “or
stay, and I’ll lock the ship down again and take us anywhere you wanna go and
we’ll let the eggers deal with Colonel Steele and the Director on their own.”

When Magali finally spoke, it was
an icy-cold whisper.  “You were listening?”

Joel didn’t need to ask when she
was referring to.  He nodded.  “I think I got some Yolk under my tongue while I
was unconscious.  Fastest way to the bloodstream, baby.  It’ll probably wear
off any minute now, then I’ll be right back to that drooling idiot you know and
love.”

Magali looked like she was
trembling, though by the hardness in her eyes, fear was the last thing from her
mind.  Too carefully, she said, “All that time, you could’ve said something. 
You let me think…”  She shook as she looked up at him.  Softly, she whispered,
“If you’re lying to me—” she stopped and hesitated, scanning his eyes, before
she continued, “—if you take off and don’t come back, I will make what the
Nephyrs did to you look like happy hour.”

Joel believed her.  If the
console hadn’t been behind him, he would have taken a step backwards.  As it
was, he felt pinned under her stare, his chest tight where he expected a
cluster of beams to appear as she changed her mind.

Still too softly, Magali turned
back toward the cargo hold and said, “I’ll go see what I can do to get the
eggers organized.” 

Glad for the reprieve, Joel said,
“The hold’ll take forty, forty-five if they’re small.”  Magali looked over her
shoulder at him a moment, then strode off of his ship.  Joel let out the breath
he had been holding.

You might not think you’re a
killer, love,
he thought, watching her go,
But you just gave Geo a run
for his money.

Outside, Joel heard Magali shout
orders to the amassed eggers.  A moment later, a group of naked men and women
stumbled onto his ship, pushing and shoving like frightened cattle.  Flipping
on the intercom, Joel said, “Be nice, people.  You don’t act civil and you’re
gonna find out how unhappy I can make people who ride in my cargo bay.”  Then
Joel was sealing the gates, his career as a ferryman beginning in earnest.

Chapter
31

One,
Two, Three

Magali had just ushered the
fourteenth group onto the ship and was standing well away from the cliff’s
edge, watching them go, when the little boy from the formation—a shy, grinning
kid affectionately called Baby Benny by the male side of the camp—ran through
the back of the cavern toward her, weaving between anxious clusters of eggers
to reach her.

He’s panting,
Magali
thought, anxiousness filling her gut as the little boy stumbled to a halt beside
her.  “What is it?” she whispered.

“They’re coming,” Benny said, too
loudly.  “I heard someone in the caverns.  They’re
coming,
Magali.”

We’re not even half done yet,
Magali thought, fighting panic.  “Nephyrs or guards?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Benny whimpered. 
His eyes were rolling wildly at the entrance, his little body tense with
terror.

Trapped,
she thought,
feeling the empty void of the cliff behind her.  The wind howled across the
stone lip, tugging at the sweaty strands of hair against her face.  She took an
involuntary step backwards, imagining the endless fall to the rocky riverbed
thousands of feet below.

“Did they see you?” Magali asked,
her throat tight with fear.  She had instructed her eggers to remove all the
Shrieker carcasses from the other caverns and throw them over the cliff, along
with Martin and the broken mower machine.  Aside from the crushed nodules left
by the mower, there wasn’t anything to suggest they were back here.

“I don’t know,” Benny said,
glancing over his shoulder and inching toward her.  “I think maybe.”

Shit,
Magali thought,
catching the panic growing in the eggers’ eyes.  She had to do something.  She
looked down at the gun in her hand.  She remembered using a similar gun, back
when Wideman’s prophecy hadn’t come true and she’d been shooting at straw bales
and bulls-eyes, not people.  She remembered how easily she had been able to hit
the center ring, how naturally it always fell into place for her.

Just think of them as targets.
 
She got down to one knee, readying her gun. 

She heard Wideman’s high-pitched
giggle. 
Killer.
  He jabbed a crooked, arthritic finger at her, his hand
still covered with green and yellow vegetable shreds.  His eyes showing whites
all around, he cackled,
Killer.  Magali the killer.  Killer, killer, killer.

Magali hit the side of her head
with her palm, forcing the image away.  She wasn’t a killer.  She was just
doing what she had to do.  Saving people.

 “Everyone else get away from the
entrance,” she said, peering down the sights.  Seeing where she was aiming, the
eggers quickly obeyed.

“I’m a starlope hunter,” a man
whispered, sidling up behind her.  “I’m a decent shot.”

“I’m from Deaddrunk,” Magali
replied, not taking her attention off the entrance.  Her gun’s sights never
wavered.

The man’s eyes widened.  “Oh.” 
She felt him back away and whisper to one of his friends.  Then Magali’s focus
was elsewhere, back on the entrance of the cavern.

Please be human,
Magali
thought.  She was a good shot, but energy weapons could only damage Nephyrs in
the eyes or mouth—if the mouth was even open.  And Nephyrs were
fast.
 
If it were Nephyrs, she’d only have seconds before they were atop her.  She
prayed it wasn’t Nephyrs.  The three-second charge delay would cripple her with
Nephyrs.

She heard a noise in the tunnel.

A whimper built in her throat. 
It’s
just like target practice,
she told herself, fighting the urge to drop the
gun and stumble to the side to huddle with the other eggers.  She forced her
fingers tighter around the pistol and waited.

The first human guard entered the
cavern with a confused look, stumbling to a halt when faced with the vast
emptiness of the Snake beyond.  Magali recognized him as one of the guards who
had been most likely to offer his canteen to eggers who emerged from the mines
after shift.  He had offered water to Magali more than once, to her gratitude. 

He’s human,
she thought,
and for the first time truly wished he had been a Nephyr, instead.

Then the guard’s eyes found the
amassed eggers huddling against the far wall and he frowned, slowly lifting his
rifle.

Pull it,
her mind
screamed. 
Pull the trigger
now!  Magali’s chest felt like it was on
fire.  She could feel her finger on the trigger, but she couldn’t create the
pressure she needed to fire.  Her whole arm felt numb and unresponsive,
disconnected from her screaming brain.

Breaking into a smile, the guard
shouted over his shoulder at someone behind him.  He still hadn’t noticed
Magali kneeling silently to one side, gun shivering in her grip.

Killer,
Wideman giggled at
her.

The man turned to take in the
rest of the cave.  Their eyes made contact.  His eyelids tightened with
surprise.  His mouth constricted into a tiny O.  He stumbled back one step. 
His rifle swung toward her.  His finger tightened on the trigger.

Magali shot him in the head. 

Instantly, her brain began
counting, just as it had with her father’s targets. 
One, two, three.
 
The READY light flashed green.  Instinct took over again.  Magali shot his
partner, who had come jogging up to stoop beside his fallen companion. 
One,
two, three.
  She fired at the dim shapes moving in the darkness, at the
place where she approximated a chest to be.  One of them slid to the ground
with a gurgle.  Magali was already rushing forward, toward the two dead men in
the cavern entrance. 
One, two, three.
  She fired her pistol again, then
grabbed the rifle on the dead man, fired it, dropped it, and grabbed that of
his companion.  Then she was spinning away to avoid the arc of fire emanating
from the darkness.

How many are there?
she
thought, counting down in her head.  She saw movement and fired again, and she
heard a thud in the corridor as another guard collapsed.

Then silence.

For several moments, the silence
pounded at her ears like liquid hammers.  Slowly, Magali lowered her gun.  She
had fired six shots.  Had they all hit their mark? 

The starlope hunter rushed
forward and grabbed the closest guard’s rifle, then tentatively disappeared
into the corridor beyond.

“They’re all dead!” he cried. 
“Six guards.”

Instantly, Magali felt dirty. 
She had intended to wound them, had hoped to put them in a corner, guarded,
until Joel had finished ferrying the eggers to safety.  She hadn’t counted on
her instincts to go for the kill.

As she stood, staring at the
bodies, murmurs of fear arose from the other eggers.  She understood.  By
killing the guards, they had crossed a line that they could never take back.

“Anyone else here any good at
shooting?” Magali asked.

“Shooting
what?
” an old
man asked, his voice coming from directly to her left.

“Nephyrs,” Magali said, turning
to look at him.  Joel hadn’t even gotten half of them off the cliff yet, and
the Director already knew that something was wrong with the Harvest.  “Sooner
or later, they’ll send the Nephyrs.”

The old man grumbled, but stooped
to pick up a rifle.  There was something about the way he checked the gun’s
cartridge that made her think he knew how to use it.  “S’pose I couldn’t expect
to live much longer as an egger anyway.”

They found four more volunteers,
and Magali stationed them at various angles around the mouth of the cave. 
Nothing was getting through that corridor without being shot at seven ways
first.  They waited as another group of eggers tossed the guards’ dead bodies
over the cliff.

One of the eggers stood at the very
edge of the cliff as he levered the bodies one after another over the edge. 
Watching him, only inches from the endless drop, Magali shuddered at her sudden
wave of vertigo and took another involuntary step toward the back of the cave. 
She reached back for the rock behind her and tightened her fingers against it
as she watched the bodies fall soundlessly into the void.

Killer,
Magali heard, as
she watched the bodies go soundlessly over the edge.  This time, it was her own
voice speaking. 

Chapter
32

A
Tight Fit

Milar scooped a palmful of
cushioning gel out of the belly of the soldier and made a disgusted face at
it.  “I’m not getting in that stuff.”  He turned his palm over and let the goop
drip in a long, thin, slimy line down onto the body of the guard he had
incapacitated on his way into the hangar.  “No way in Hell, squid.”

“Suit yourself, knucker,” Tatiana
said.  She began to strip.

Milar’s eyes widened.  “What are
you doing?”

“Operators fly naked,” she said. 
“Less stuff to get caught up on the nodes and screw up the works.”  She grinned
at him.  “Oh, and same goes for you.  You’re going to be displacing enough
slime as it is.  Get yer pants off and get in there.”

Milar visibly shuddered.  “I
don’t think so.”

Tatiana shrugged and unzipped her
uniform.  Sliding it aside, she stepped forth.  Milar was carefully averting
his eyes, pretending to wipe his hand off on the unconscious man’s shirt.

“I’m going to need you to connect
a lot of the lines for me,” Tatiana said, climbing past him and dipping her
foot into the lukewarm goo.  “It’ll go a lot faster that way.”

“I thought you were afraid of
soldiers, squid,” Milar growled, just above her ear.

Tatiana winced.  “Don’t remind
me.  Just do what I tell you when I tell you and we’ll be ok.  Starting with
that line right there.  Hook it into the third node down my spine.”

Reluctantly, Milar picked up the
line and stepped behind her.  As she started cinching up belly nodes, she felt
his fingers press into her back, then the bone-deep click as the node mated
with the soldier.  Instantly, she felt the frame of the soldier like it was her
own skeleton.

She had him connect the other
three spine nodes, in order, verifying systems in between giving orders.

“Okay,” she said.  “That one to
the back of my head.”  She was already fitting the palm-nodes in place.  “We’re
going to have to skip a few of the waste nodes.  We don’t have time, and we
don’t plan on being in there that long, anyway.  My kidneys can handle it.”

“I don’t think I want to know
what that means,” Milar said.  He snapped the second line into place, and
Tatiana immediately felt the data from every primary sensor in the soldier. 

“Get the left leg sensors,
starting with the hookup above the ankle and going up the leg,” she said. 
“I’ll get the right leg.”

“How do I know which one is
which?” Milar demanded, motioning at the jumble of lines laid out before him.

Tatiana had already inserted the
first ankle node and was working on the one behind her knee.  “There’s a number
code on each one that matches the number scribed on the node,” she said,
impatient.  “Just connect the dots.”

Reluctantly, Milar did as she
asked, and had actually gotten two nodes seated and locked before Tatiana
finished her six and started helping him.

“Arm nodes next,” she said.  “Same
deal.  I’ll do the left because it’s easier for me.”  She started pressing the
lines in, biting down the urge to vomit when she felt the tug of electrodes
sliding into place under her skin.  She shuddered at the click as the coupling
made its lock.

“That really bothers you, doesn’t
it?” Milar commented softly.

“A little,” she admitted.  She
wouldn’t look at him, though, refusing to let him see just how
much
it
bothered her, lest he lose confidence in her plan.  Then, once she had waited
for him to finish her right arm, she said, “Okay, that’s good.  Now hook up the
temple node.”

At this, Milar balked.  “Are you
sure?  I’m not trained…”

“You want
me
to do it?!”
Tatiana demanded.

At her flat stare, Milar
swallowed.  “Uh…”

“Either I fumble around with it
and try not to jam it in there sideways or you grow some balls and do it for me,”
Tatiana said.  “Just be careful and try not to kill me.”

Milar, who had already picked up
the thickest line, flinched, then glared at her.  “Squid.”  He was utterly
gentle, however, when he took her head in one hand and began pushing the long,
thin electrode down its receptacle column, into the center of her brain. 
Tatiana remained utterly still as he finished and locked it in place.

“Welcome, Captain Tatiana
Eyre,”
her soldier said, once the seal had been made.

When Milar stepped back, he
looked pale and his hands were shaking.  “Don’t ever make me do that again.”

“No promises.”  She grabbed a
spare clip from the tray and handed it to him.  “Here.  Put that on.  It’ll
keep the goo outta your nose.”

“My
nose
?” Milar managed,
swallowing.  He grimaced down at the thing in his hand like a man gazing upon a
wriggling flatworm.

Tatiana grunted an affirmative.  Carefully,
she pushed one leg, then the other leg down into the stabilizing gel.  Then she
forced herself to sink into a fetal position inside.  She dug around in the
slime until she felt the stomach-hose.  She uncapped it and, taking a deep
breath, began feeding the slimy thing through her nostril.

“What are you
doing?
”
Milar cried. 

“My body’s metabolism is ramped
up in here,” Tatiana said.  “This provides a special chemical solution that
both boosts concentration and makes sure my body is paralyzed while I’m
flying.” 

Milar’s eyes went white all
around.  “Paralyzed?”

Tatiana rolled her eyes.  “You do
it every night when you sleep.  Same concept.  And necessary, too.  Otherwise I
might be tempted to run with my feet instead of run with my soldier.  This is
going to keep me alive.  Now any other stupid questions?  Once I’ve got it
connected, I won’t be able to talk.”

“Why not?” Milar whispered.  In
less than twenty minutes, he’d gone from a big badass colonist who knocked out
Coalition guards with a single flat-knuckled fist to looking like a bug-eyed
little kid who had found himself on the wrong playground. 

Tatiana had to laugh.  “Because
after this, I’m going to hook up the mask.”  She motioned to the black
apparatus bristling with tubes and sensors.  At Milar’s horrified look, she
said, “I’ll be fine.  I do it all the time.  Just strip down and join me when I
motion for you, ‘kay?”

Milar eyed the cockpit warily. 
“I don’t think I’m gonna fit.”

“The volume calculator put you at
a hundred and nine liters.  Volumetrically speaking, you’ll fit.”

He didn’t look convinced.

“You rather stay here?” Tatiana
demanded.

Reluctantly, Milar unbuttoned his
pants and pulled them off, then stuffed them into the storage compartment. 
“Can I keep my underwear this time, squid?”

She had to grin.  “Sure.  Now as
soon as I’ve got the tube in, crawl in after me and get your knees up on either
side of me.  It’s the only way you’ll make it in here.  Once you’re in, I want
you to grab the air hose leading off the mask and take that knife and to cut
yourself a little air-hole.  A
little
one, mind you.  You sever it and
it’s game over.”

“I don’t think this is gonna
work,” Milar muttered, leaning in to eye the roof of the inner shell.  “That
thing’s tiny.”

Tatiana was beginning to feed the
hose again, then stopped.  “Oh, and we’re leaving the EMP wand behind.  No way
in Hell is that thing coming onboard with me.”

“What about the knife?” Milar
asked.

“Throw it in the cargo
compartment, if you can.  If you can’t, we leave it.”

Tatiana fed the hose up her nose,
gagging as it slipped down through her sinuses and into her stomach.  She
wasn’t as proficient at it as her technicians, and it left tears in her eyes as
she prodded and scratched it into place. 

“You all right?” Milar asked,
leaning forward into the cockpit, looking concerned.

“No, dammit,” she muttered.  “Now
stop asking questions.”  Then Tatiana positioned the clip over her nostrils and
clamped it down, making sure she couldn’t inhale stabilization fluid through
her nose if her mask became displaced.  Then she took the operator mask from
its hook. 

The operator mask, unlike that of
freestyle pilots, had no window for her to see what lay beyond the mask.  It
wasn’t necessary.  She was supposed to be seeing with her soldier, not with her
eyes. 

Looking at the black faceplate,
Tatiana’s stomach started to churn as she remembered what was to come.

“No wonder you don’t like this,”
Milar muttered.  He was eying the mask like it was some strange toxic weapon.

Tatiana tapped the air line. 
“Cut it,” she said.

Reluctantly, Milar leaned in and grabbed
the line approximately thirty centimeters from where it entered her mask.  Then
he hesitated.  “If I cut this, and I can’t fit in with you, then you’re not
going to be able to get out of here, are you?”

“
Hurry
.” 

Muttering, Milar cut a notch into
the hose, then threw the knife into the cargo hatch and locked it shut. 

“Here goes,” Tatiana said.  “Any
other questions before I seal up?”

“Couldn’t we find a better way to
do this?”

Tatiana slid the faceplate and
its accompanying air tube in place, bit down on the air regulator in her mouth
and, making a seal along the outer edges of her face, she began touching the AI
mechanisms that tightened the mask into place.  She motioned Milar when she was
ready.

Still, Milar made no move to
enter the pilot chamber.

Tatiana slapped the stabilizing
gel near her neck in aggravation.

“All right,” Milar said, sounding
very unhappy, “Fine, squid.  Fine.”  She felt him stick his legs in first and,
placing his shins on either side of her shoulders, eased himself in with her. 
Careful
of the lines,
she thought, itching to rip the mask off and see if he was
going to tangle anything.  She felt him slide forward and down.

She heard displaced cushioning
gel begin to ooze out of the pilot chamber, dripping with wet plops on the
floor of the hangar, and suddenly Tatiana found her knees mashed up against the
colonist’s chest.  By the way she could feel something touching the side of her
mask, Milar had had to duck his head down and to the left as he finally got his
body crammed into the cockpit with her.

“I’m gonna have one hell of a
neck-ache in the morning,” he muttered, right next to her ear.  “And hell, I
can’t move my arms.  Can you pass me the air line?”

Tatiana wiggled until she had a
grip on the air hose and, tracing it backwards until she found the notch, stuck
it into his mouth.

“Thanks,” he said.  Then, around
the tube, “You better know what you’re doing.”

In reply, Tatiana gave her
soldier the command to shut the hatch.

Instantly, Milar went stiff as
the hydraulics began to whine and the light from the hangar began to cut off.

Hold on,
she prayed, as
the lid sealed and left them in darkness.  Milar’s chest was heaving against
her knees, and he was sucking more air from the line than it would provide.

“I’m beginning to have second
thoughts, squid,” Milar said.

The worst is yet to come,
Tatiana thought.  She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. 
Just calm
down and trust me.

“Hatch locked,”
her
soldier told her.  “
Pumping stabilizing gel.”

Milar’s body jerked when the
stabilizing gel began to ooze into the chamber.  “Oh, fuck this.  Let me out,
squid.  Let me out right—”  His last was lost, since the gel inched past her
ears.

It was obvious Milar was not
happy.  He made this evident by the way he squeezed her hand until she thought
something would break.  He was jerking it back and forth as best he could in
the close quarters, basically the same as,
I want out.  Right now.

By the way he was sucking down on
the hose, though, Tatiana knew he wasn’t starved for air.  He could deal with
it.