Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising (48 page)

Surgery…
  Tatiana felt her
heartbeat skip in a sudden, uncontrollable surge of panic.  Both of the
technicians groaned and crumpled forward, clutching their heads.  One of them,
the taller one, whimpered on her knees. 
Hurts, oh God it hurts so—
  The
technician folded forward and her body started to tremor on the floor.

Tatiana let out a terrified cry
and bolted down the corridor, teetering as she stumbled, trying to keep her
balance.

“Now the neat part about this
thing is that it runs on solar energy.  I could’ve made it nuclear, but that
would’ve taken away half the fun.  So every few days, you’ve gotta go outside
and let it recharge.  If you look close, there’s ten little green lights around
the edge.  Each light represents ten percent battery.  If a light turns red,
you’ve got ninety percent.  If two go red, you’ve got eighty, and so on.  If
you don’t recharge it, at ten percent charge it’ll trigger the
nuclear-
powered
motor and we’ll have scrambled operator brain, won’t we, Dobie?”

Tatiana stumbled onward, ignoring
the startled cries of doctors and technicians as she bolted past them.

That’s her.  The escaped
operator.

“Stop!”

Tatiana let out an animal wail
and bolted faster.

“Now, I could’ve just put
something simple in there, like an explosive, but that shows a distinct lack of
creativity.  Hell, a
robot
could think of something like that. 
This,
now,
this
is a thing of beauty.  A work of art.  You hear that,
cupcake?  You’re my latest work of art.”

“I said
stop
!”  Booted
feet ran up behind her and something grabbed her by the back of the jumpsuit. 
Someone strong yanked her around, and suddenly, Tatiana was looking up into the
masked face of a surgeon.

Tatiana screamed and flailed and
kicked, shoving him away from her even as his eyes went wide and his grip
weakened.  He slid to his knees, groaning.  Tatiana kicked him in the mask and
ran.

Babbling incoherently, Tatiana
ducked through another door and drew it shut behind her, gasping in the
darkness, trying to think.  She had to get away.  She had to escape.

All she could think, however, was
that she had motorized blades lodged in her brain, waiting on the press of a
button.  Whimpering, she slid back down the wall and dragged her knees back to
her chest.  “Please,” Tatiana whispered.  “God, please…”

“Oh, and don’t try to EMP it. 
Just…don’t.  I will spare you the details of exactly what will happen because
my time is precious and I’m starting to get bored, but let it suffice to say if
you do, it involves your brain on the wall.”

With a moan, Tatiana scrunched
further in on herself, her chest shuddering in a sob. 

“Now, you’ll have to be fast. 
Gotta get back to your soldier before they figure out what happened.  If you’re
too slow, they’ll just catch you and put you back on this nice table, here, and
do it all over again.  You wouldn’t want that, would you, cupcake?”

Shaking, Tatiana stared into the
darkness, rocking back and forth, trying to ignore the pounding in her head. 
God
help me,
she whimpered to herself. 
Please
…

She had only the warning of the
slow click of the surgery doorknob turning before someone opened the door and
stepped into the darkened room with her.  Her breath caught and she choked on a
scream.  Tatiana heard the door close, but the light never came on.

For long moments, there was a
deep, profound silence in which she was afraid to breathe.  Tears burned her
cheeks, and her heart tore ragged streaks through her chest.  Then, with the
calm, precise voice she had come to dread, the kid’s robot said, “I did not
fully understand what she was planning to do until after she’d already begun,
and I realize what happened to you was partially inspired by my own actions.  I
feel the need to apologize and make amends.”

From across the room, the robot
flipped the light on, and Tatiana whimpered and cringed away from him.  He lifted
a small, oval device that Tatiana had last seen in the little girl’s hand. 
“This is the only control to the device in your head.” 

Tatiana let out a wail of terror,
seeing it.

The robot then pinched it between
his fingers, crushing the circuitry, pulverizing the plastic into tiny pieces. 
He dropped the pieces on the floor between them.  “You’ll still need to keep it
charged to stay alive,” he added, his face twisting in a grimace, “but she does
not ‘own’ you.”  Then, without another word, the robot turned and disappeared into
the surgery, flipping the light off behind him.

Chapter
44

Incentive

“Really, Jeanne,” Joel said, as
his ship sped towards the Tear, “you can put the shotgun away now.  I’m finding
it hard to concentrate with a gun aimed at my spine.”

Jeanne kept the weapon slung
across her lap at him, glaring at him from the tiny, fold-in passenger seat
that she’d pulled out of the wall.  She had also buckled in.  Damn.

“I’m thinking you need the
reminder, Joel,” Jeanne said.

“C’mon, Jeanne,” Joel protested,
for the eightieth time, “I just wanted to see if she was still alive.  That’s
all.”

Jeanne gave him a long, flat
look.  “I don’t care
who
you’re trying to save,” she said.  “You do
something like that again and you’re a dead man.”

Joel believed her.  Despite
Jeanne’s wishes—and her screaming at him and shoving her gun in his face, once
she’d figured out what he was doing—Joel had taken them to the Snake looking
for Magali.  All they’d found was the tiny, twisted corpse of a child before
Jeanne had put a round through the tinselly red teddy-bear, to get his
attention. 

So he’d switched off the inertial
dampeners and done a little fancy flying.  So what?  It wasn’t like he’d tried
to
kill
her or anything.  He’d just wanted a few more minutes to look
for Magali before he had to scurry off to the Tear like a good errand-boy.  “We’re
at eighty thousand feet and you don’t know how to fly this thing.  Really,
Jeanne.  What are you gonna do?” Joel demanded.  “Shoot me?” 

She gave him that unnervingly
wicked smile she was so good at. 

Joel groaned. 
Horrible
luck with women…

“You know,” he said, adjusting
the fuel supply, “this is not really the right way to get a guy like me to
cooperate.”  He checked his gauges, then, satisfied he’d found the right
mixture, set the ship into cruise.

“Oh?” she asked, sounding only
half-interested.

“Yeah,” Joel said.  “I mean, a
guy like me, I don’t got much to fight for, right?  I got a ship, but that’s
it.  No family, no kiddos, no pets…  I got girls fawning over me, but they
don’t want anything more than one-night stands.  Maybe a weekend, if we’re both
feeling frisky.  Nobody likes a smuggler.  Not really.  They’re cheesy.  Lame.”

“Sounds about right,” Jeanne
said.

“I had lots of goals in life,”
Joel said, “before Geo got his hooks in me.  Wanted to find a girl, start a
family…  All of it kinda dissolved in the grind.  I just became another cog in
the system.  Just one of the links in the chain of black market Yolk.”

“Sounds to me,” Jeanne said,
“that you don’t have much to live for, Runaway.  Would ending your miserable
existence for you now spare you the need to commiserate?”

“
Pirates
, on the other
hand,” Joel went on, “now
they
got flair.  Flash.  Finesse.”  He glanced
behind him at her necklace and made a face.  “Well, flash.”

“Do you
want
me to kill
you, Joel?”

“Not especially,” Joel said.  He
checked a regulator, then sighed.  “I mean, imagine it.  Forty-five years old,
probably had upwards of six, seven hundred women, and I still don’t have a
kid.  And I’ve
checked
.”

“Sounds like divine mercy,”
Jeanne said.

“I mean, you had fun, right?”
Joel continued.  “Hell, sounded to me like you had a blast.”

“Fly the ship, Joel.”

“I do this thing,” Joel said, “I
want a date.”

Utter silence descended in the
back of the cockpit.  Joel adjusted throttle, then turned to look.

Jeanne was glaring at him with a
deadly scowl.  “Not in your lonely, pathetic dreams.”

“C’mon, Jeanne, it would be fun,”
Joel said.  “When was the last time someone romanced you properly?  You know,
wine and roses?  A good massage?  Dancing?  I’d wager it was a helluva long
time, considering the pretty little mementos you’ve got warning everyone off
with half a brain.”

“What does that make you?” Jeanne
growled.  “Brain
less
?  I said no date.”

“Babe,” Joel laughed, “I’ve
sampled the wares.  I know what they’re missing.”  He could
feel
her
scowling at him as he continued, “So that’s my proposition.  I win your little dogfight
for you, I get a date.”

“I’ve got a shotgun aimed at your
kidneys.  You
don’t
win the dogfight, I pull the trigger.  That is your
date.”

“
Incentive
, Jeanne,” Joel
reminded her.  “You gotta give a guy like me
incentive
.”

“Blow it out your ass, Joel.”

“Fine, dinner,” Joel compromised. 
“Someplace fancy, with a dance-floor.  An entire night with you.”

“Do you
want
to get shot? 
Oh my God, I think you want to get shot.”

“You’ll have to ditch the
necklace for the date,” Joel added thoughtfully.  “Don’t want to startle the maître
d'.  And we’ll get you in something fancy.  Red.  I get to pick.”

“You are this close, Joel.”

“A dress, I think,” Joel said. 
He glanced over his shoulder.  “You ever worn a dress, Jeanne?  You know, strut
your stuff?  You’d blow people away.”

“I’ll tell you who I’m about to
blow away, Joel.  And it isn’t the Easter Bunny.”

“Why Jeanne,” Joel said,
grinning, “I do believe you’re blushing.  You
like
that idea, don’t you?”

Jeanne’s face purpled and she
found something to inspect on the wall beside her.

“So,” Joel said.  “Dinner,
dancing, a dress.”

For several minutes, the cockpit
was silent.  “I have a condition,” Jeanne said.  It was a gruff mutter.

“Oh?” Joel said, glancing at her.

“We go in my ride,” she said. 
“And you pay.”

Joel felt himself grin.  “I think
we can manage that.  Should I schedule you for six?  Six-thirty?”

“You still gotta win the
dogfight,” she muttered.

“
Babe
,” Joel laughed,
patting the console.  “
Please
.  This is
me
we’re talking about,
here.  Runaway Joel.  The guy who spent two decades running the entire
Coalition Space Force in circles.  I’m gonna make whoever that ham-fisted idiot
was that stole my baby back in Deaddrunk look like the incompetent moron he
was.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.” 
But she set the shotgun aside.

Joel grinned, feeling a flutter
of excitement.  Jeanne had always been…interesting.  He actually hadn’t thought
he’d get a dress out of the deal.  Hell, it was a little shocking she’d given
in on the dinner and dancing.  He’d expected more of an argument, or at least a
counter-proposal involving a twelve-gauge catheter.

“We’re coming up on the Tear,”
Jeanne growled.  “Here’s your chance to earn that dress.”

Feeling quite happy that he
hadn’t lost his charm, Joel turned just in time to see the hornet’s-nest
popping up on radar.  He blinked and leaned into the screen, counting the little
black dots.  “Holy
shit
, Jeanne!” he cried, pointing.  “There’s
hundreds
of them.”

She gave him a sly little grin
and shrugged.

No wonder she had capitulated so
easily.  She didn’t intend for the two of them to make it out of this alive.

“What the
hell
, Jeanne?” Joel
cried, as a dozen Bouncers veered upwards from their patrol, headed right at
them.  “What’s going on down there?!”

“Miles and Patty’ve got Wideman,”
Jeanne said.  “Somehow, the Coalition found out about him.  They’re throwing
everything they’ve got at finding him.  We’ve been throwing all
we’ve
got at keeping them off the ground.”

Joel swept to the side, avoiding
the Bouncers and coming in a wide, sweeping turn to give himself more time to
assess the situation.  “Jeanne,” he said carefully, “that’s not a dogfight. 
That’s a
warzone
.”

“You
did
say a dress,” she
said, giving him a smug look.

Joel glared at the pirate over
his shoulder a long moment, then heaved a huge sigh and glanced back at the
screen.  He studied the scene a moment, watching the hundreds of ships in their
explosive merry-go-round, then shook his head.  “Well,” he said, taking a deep
breath, “God hates a coward.”  He nudged the joystick downward and ducked
Honor
into the fray.

“You mind running the com for me,
Jeanne?” Joel said, sweeping into the mess.  He caught a soldier from behind,
setting it ablaze as he passed.  He hit the full-screen, giving him a bug’s-eye
view of the surrounding battle.  Making a mental lock on a Bouncer in his
general trajectory, he started pushing on the throttle to catch up.  Verdant
alien jungle slid underneath them at Mach 6.  Joel hit the Bouncer going about
twice the speed of his quarry, then spun upwards and out, rocking the world in
a spin of glory that had them at a hundred thousand feet in the span of a
couple of heartbeats.  Behind him, there was nothing fast enough to keep up. 
Joel brought
Honor
to the apogee of its arc just as it was starting to
break free of gravity, then hammered the controls forward and went spinning
downward with all the grace of a stooping hawk.

He came in from above, peppering
two soldiers that were chasing a colonial scout ship, then yanked back the
stick with a foot or two to spare, grazing the jungle with his backblast.

“You got us patched in yet,
Jeanne?” Joel called over his shoulder, flipping the ship onto its side and
swinging wide, chasing after a couple of Bouncers following a colonial ship. 
He didn’t reach them before they hit their quarry, and Joel had to twist and
pull up and over the dying ship as it plummeted to the alien forest.  As soon
as he was clear, he dropped back into an arc to catch up with the Bouncers. 
The Bouncers split up, one going east, the other going up.  Joel followed the
latter, hitting enough Gs to make the dampeners sputter.  He nailed it, then
spun through the rubble as it exploded around him.

“Yee
haw
!” Joel shouted at
the console, spinning back down for another go.  “I forgot how much
fun
this was!”  When he got no response, he glanced behind him.

Clinging to the passenger seat, Jeanne
was looking pale. 

Joel frowned and tapped the com
unit.  “Patch us
in
, Jeanne,” he said.  “I’d like to hear what our good
friends are saying out there.”  He frowned at her.  “You
do
know their
bands, don’t you?”

“You almost hit the ground,”
Jeanne said.  “At Mach 6.”

“Meh,” Joel said, waving
disinterestedly.  “It would’ve been quick.”

Jeanne slid a shaking hand over
to the communications console and started setting the bands.  Almost
immediately, he heard,
“—that freakin’ TAG!”

“It’s back?!  Where the
hell
does this guy keep coming from?!”

Joel grinned.  “Music to my ears,
Jeanne.  Turn it up.  Time for a pre-dinner mood piece.”

“They’ve been at this for three
days already.  There’s no way we’re gonna be done in time for dinner.”

“Watch me,” Joel said.

She gave him a green grimace, but
spun up the volume dial.

“Louder!” Joel shouted, over the
booming of his stereo system.

“Are you
nuts?!
” Jeanne
shouted back.  But she twisted the dial.

Listening to the chaos around him
reverberating like an old friend in his lungs, Joel once more relaxed into that
trance of the sky.  “All right, you pups,” he said, grinning, “time to take you
back to flight school…”