Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising (35 page)

Chapter
33

Magali’s
Choice

The first thing Joel said when
Magali came aboard his ship was, “There was a Coalition ship snooping around a
few miles up the Snake.  This is gonna be my last haul.”

He had brought Magali aboard and
locked the doors behind them to talk.  Now, alone with her, he waited for the
response he expected.

Okay, Joel, get me out of
here.

Instead, like a true Landborn,
she said, “There’s still three hundred and seventy-one people out there.”  Her
hair was clumped with sweat and she oozed an aura of stress and frayed nerves. 
She kept twitching to look over his shoulder at the viewfinder, which showed
the empty cavern entrance.  “We need to get them to safety.”

“Three hundred and seventy-one?”
Joel asked, amused.  “You’ve been counting, huh?”

“Yes,” she said, with no hint of
humor.  “You need to keep going.”  Her words held the taste of a threat. 

She reminds me of her father.
 
Joel gave her a bitter snort.  “What are you gonna do, Magali?  Force me to fly
with a gun to my head?  You think that’ll improve my concentration somehow?  They
pinpoint where I’m coming and going—which I’m pretty sure they’re trying to do
right now—and every single person we’ve ferried out of here will be lined up
and shot.  It’s time to cut our losses and go, before they figure out they’ve
been had.”

Magali swallowed, hard.

“So,” Joel said, leaning back
into Martin’s huge leather chair.  It had actually kind of grown on him,
especially the lumbar support.  His old chair had been as flat-backed as a
board.  “What do you say, Magali?  You launched this little project.  You wanna
come with me or you wanna go down with your ship?”

“You can’t leave,” Magali
babbled, the determination that had reminded him of David Landborn falling
away, leaving in its place a scared little girl.  “The Nephyrs will find us. 
Please.”

Joel laughed.  “So?  The eggers
got a bit unruly.  Happens all the times in the Yolk mines.  They
expect
things like this to happen.  All part of the game.  You can’t keep people in
those kinds of conditions and expect things to be just gumdrops and lollipops. 
Besides, you ain’t killed anybody they care about, and they still got plenty of
time to grab a few nodules outta there before end of Harvest, so they’ll just
whack everyone we leave behind on the ass and send them back into the mines. 
Hell, maybe those Nephyrs will even go in and start picking nodules themselves,
to save face.  Couldn’t admit to their overseers they let a couple thousand
eggers slip out from under their noses, could they?”  He grinned, imagining the
glittering circus clowns on their hands and knees in the slime, plucking
nodules.  The image delighted him.

Magali had flinched and grown
increasingly pale as he talked.  “What’s wrong?” Joel asked, his smile fading.

“I killed fifteen of them,”
Magali said.

Joel went utterly still. 
“Fifteen of who?”

His world collapsed when she
said, “Guards.” 

Oh Aanaho, Joel.  What the
Hell have you gotten yourself into?
  His gaze fell to the gun in her hand,
then out at the entrance to the cavern, expecting Nephyrs to boil out of the
darkness at any moment.  “Please tell me you’re joking,” he said.

Swallowing hard, the Landborn
girl said, “They sent guards in to check on us.  I killed them.  Then I killed
the Nephyrs that came to check on the guards.”

She killed
Nephyrs?  Joel
could barely think.  Was she joking?  No one killed Nephyrs.  “How long ago?”

“An hour for the Nephyrs.  Almost
two for the guards.”

More than a dozen trips ago.  “And
you let me keep
shuttling
and didn’t
tell
me?” Joel screamed.

“I’m sorry,” Magali cried.  “I
didn’t think you’d keep flying.”

“You’re
damn right
I
wouldn’t have kept flying!”  For the first time in his life, Joel wanted to hit
a woman.  He even balled his fist, rage coursing through him so hotly that his
jaw ached.  Instead, he whispered, “What did you do with the bodies?”

“Over the cliff,” Magali said,
staring at her feet.  “I thought we could get all of us out of here before they
sent in a second batch.”

Joel closed his eyes and took
several deep breaths.  “Mag, all Coalition troops are fitted with these nifty
little things called lifelines.  All they’ve gotta do is get the camp computer
to review their last movement patterns and they’re gonna have a map right to
your hideout.”

Her face went wan.  “I’m sorry,”
she whispered.  And she looked sorry, too.  Joel didn’t know whether to laugh
or cry.  He was looking at a dead woman.

“Listen, Mag,” Joel said, “Nobody
kills Nephyrs.  That’s like kicking a hornet’s nest.  Shit, no wonder I was
getting pinged out there.  A computer registers a four-thousand-foot drop on a
lifeline and it’s gonna know something’s up.  Shit.  I’m getting out of here. 
Right now.  Before the camp computer can fry my line.  You can either come or
stay, but either way, you’re as good as dead.  Everyone in that cave is as good
as dead.”

Magali glanced at the groups of
eggers huddled against the walls through the viewscreen.  He watched the guilt
work its way through her, the misery.  “Dead?” she said.

“They’ll kill everyone in that
cave, then they’ll hunt down everyone who was involved.  They’ll sic the entire
Coalition Army on you, if they have to.  Nobody kills Nephyrs and gets away
with it.”

She took a deep breath and held
it, tears glistening on her cheeks as she looked out at the eggers she had
killed.  Softly, she said, “Take the kids.”

“What about you, Mag?”

“Just the kids,” Magali said. 
“I’m going to stay here.”

She’s insane,
Joel
thought. 
Just like her father.

But he didn’t have time to dwell
on it.  “Fine,” he said, powering up the ship again.  “Get the kids in here. 
Just don’t tell anyone it’s the last trip or you’ll have a riot on your hands.”

If she heard or understood him,
she made no sign.  She simply turned and left.

Joel felt sorry for her.  He knew
that, whatever the Director and her glittering friends had planned to do to him
for his lifetime of thwarting the law, it was going to look pale in comparison
to what they did to Magali for slaying their brothers.

Poor girl,
he thought, as
the first passengers began filtering into his cargo hold.  He hoped she had the
good sense to shoot herself before the Nephyrs found her.

* * *

“He’s just taking the kids this
trip,” Magali said, trying to avoid the eggers’ gazes, feeling her shame right
down to her very core.  “Everyone else can wait for the next trip.”  She gave
Benny a gentle shove toward the ship’s ramp.

“Now wait a minute,” the starlope
hunter said, hefting the rifle he had taken from one of the guards.  “You’re
telling me that, all of a sudden, the smuggler just wants to take the kids?  Why?”

Magali felt her face heat.  She’d
never been good at lying.  That was Anna’s forte, not hers.  “He just does.”

“‘He just does.’”  The starlope
hunter glared at her, then at the ship, where Benny and the other kids were
climbing up the ramp.  “Bullshit.”

Other men and women had started
to gather around him, watching her with curious expressions.  Several carried
rifles or knives from the fallen Coalition forces they’d killed.

Think, Magali,
she
thought, panicking. 
Think!
  What would Anna say?  She didn’t know. 
Some lie, no doubt.  But as she stood there, watching the man’s expression grow
darker, no lie would come to her lips. 

“He ain’t coming back, is he?”
the starlope hunter asked, after she’d been silent for too long.

Magali felt the lump of dread in
her gut tightening into something worse.  “Please,” she whispered, before she
could stop herself.

“Oh fuck this,” the starlope
hunter snarled.  He turned and wrenched Benny off the ramp.  Holding the
terrified child out between them by a shoulder, the starlope hunter shook the
boy and said “Who you think the Nephyrs are gonna kill when they get here,
little Deaddrunk hotshot?  The
kids
?  Or the guys and gals who shot
their pals?”  He gestured to the men and women holding the guns they had stolen
from the guards.

Magali’s face reddened and she
couldn’t speak.

The starlope hunter shoved Ben at
her.  To the cavern, he said, “I’m getting the fuck outta here, and I’d suggest
everyone who touched a gun today does the same.  When they figure out what we
did, those Nephyrs are gonna—”

The man’s words broke off before
Magali realized she had her gun aimed at his head.

“Just the kids,” Magali said.

She heard the sound of rifles
jingling against their slings around her.  Absolute silence filled the cavern.

The starlope hunter broke into a
bitter smile.  “There’s over a dozen rifles trained on you right now,” he
said.  “I don’t care how good a shot you are.  You shoot me, little Deaddrunk
slut, and you’re gonna have twenty holes in your head before you can scream.”

To Magali’s horror, she realized
it was true.  The other men and women that had helped her kill the Nephyrs were
now standing around her, their weapons aimed at her face.

The starlope hunter’s voice was
lifting in a sneer.  “You were just gonna let us all die here, weren’t you?” 

No,
Magali thought, her
heart skipping as she glanced at the other eggers.  He was going to scare
them.  “Please don’t do this,” she whispered.  “Keep your voice down.”

The starlope hunter laughed. 
“Keep my
voice
down?  You were gonna leave us for the Nephyrs, and you
want me to keep my
voice
down?”  He gestured grandly to the three
hundred and seventy other eggers left in the cavern.  “Why?  So nobody panics? 
So they all wait for their slaughter like brain-dead cattle?”

“No,” Magali whispered.

“Yeah, well, to Hell with that,”
the starlope hunter said.  “I’m getting on that ship, and those kids can just
fend for themselves.”  And, at that, he climbed aboard the ship.  Inside, he
heard yelling, and the kids that had already boarded came running down the ramp
in terror.  A moment later, Magali heard the starlope hunter get into an
argument with Joel.  She heard the starlope hunter yell back.  Something heavy
slammed against a wall.  Then nothing.

The ship continued to wait for
passengers.

The starlope hunter stuck his
head out the open hatch.  “
Now,
people!  We ain’t waiting much longer.”

Magali stumbled backwards as
panic ensued.  Where before, she had managed to instill order with logical
weight calculations and calm commands, now the cavern became an echoing clamor
of screaming voices and pushing bodies, all begging to be taken to safety.  The
ones with the guns got in first, then the strongest shoved their way in after
them.  Before the hull was completely full, one of the men inside pounded on
the gate release and the hatch started to drift shut.  Those stuck outside
began to scream and plead with those inside.  One woman even thrust her hand in
the lock to stop the gate from shutting.  A moment later, she withdrew a
stump.  Her thrashing body was crushed underfoot as hundreds of eggers lunged
away from the ship as its engines began to increase exhaust.

Magali looked away, dread for
what she had done weighing on her shoulders, suffocating her soul in despair. 
She swallowed and felt the burning sting of bile.

The ship retracted its legs and
desperate pleas became broken sobs as the eggers realized they were going to be
left behind.  A moment later, the glossy obsidian ship darted through the
cavern entrance and was gone.

Beside her, an old man said,
“What a selfish prick.”

Magali looked up at him, shame
collecting deep in her core.

But the old man was watching the
ship disappear along the ragged edge of the Snake, not Magali.  “I mean, sure,
sucks to be us, but you were trying to do the right thing and he screwed it all
to hell.  His mother obviously potty-trained the dumbshit too early.”

Magali realized it was the old
man who had picked up a rifle and grumbled about killing Nephyrs.  Lars.  He
had dressed himself in a dead guard’s outfit.  He still carried his rifle, and
he lifted it to his shoulder to watch the ship disappear through the scope.

“Prick,” Lars said again,
lowering the gun.  For the first time, he turned to look at Magali.  “You’re
David’s kid, right?  The deadeye shot?”

Magali’s shame increased a
thousandfold.  She looked away.

“Thought so.  Not many people I
know can put a Nephyr down like that.”  He gave her a sideways look.  “Sure,
never met you before, but I heard of you.  The resistance was real proud of
David’s kid.”

“That’s Anna,” Magali whispered,
lowering her eyes. 
Anna wouldn’t have done something this stupid.

“Oh?” the man raised a unruly
white brow.  “Then David raised
two
kids that could kill a starlope at
two thousand yards with an antique projectile?”

Anna had never made an accurate
shot with anything, let alone a projectile weapon.  Her child’s body just
wasn’t ready to hold an adult-sized gun.  Magali looked up.

The old man read her reaction
accurately.  He grinned and slapped her on the back.  Then he said the most
earth-shattering words Magali had ever known. 

“Looks like Wideman was right. 
You
are
a killer.  A damn good one, at that.”

Magali swallowed, hard. 
Somewhere, in the background, she heard Wideman laughing.

“You know, though,” the old man
said, leaning distractedly on his gun, “We aren’t gonna survive this.”