Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising (54 page)

“Come on,” she said, grabbing him
by the hard, glittering hand.  “Let’s go.  Now.”

But Jersey was staring at the
dead Nephyrs, looking in shock.  “Magali, you just killed twenty Nephyrs in
less than a minute,” he said softly.

“She turned a
Nephyr
,”
someone gasped, nearby.

“It
is
Magali Landborn!”
someone in the crowd shouted.  “The Killer is here!” 

“She beat them at the Tear, too!”
someone shouted.  “She killed two dozen operators with her rifle, hanging out
the door of a cargo ship!”

“And Deaddrunk, too!” someone
else shrieked.  “And Yolk Factory 14!”

“
Landborn!
” someone else
screamed.  “
Landborn!  Landborn!
”

More mouths started to take up
the chant, and Magali cringed backwards, intending to back into the bar to
escape the stares.

Jersey’s hand once more found her
wrist and held her there.  “They need this,” he whispered.  “Stay.”

“
Land-Born, Land-Born,
LAND-BORN, LAND-BORN!
”  The very walls of the buildings around her began to
shake, and the air in her lungs started to vibrate in her chest.  More people
were coming out of buildings and joining the gathering in the street, and as
the sound reached an ear-splitting crescendo, it seemed the whole city started
to chant her name around her.

“Please let go of my hand,” Magali
whimpered, trying to back behind Jersey to hide from the people screaming her
name.  But they had surrounded her, filling the streets, packed dozens deep. 
There was nowhere to hide as they chanted at her with wide, awestruck eyes and
mindless smiles.

“Jersey,” she whimpered. 
“Please.”

The Nephyr, who had been scanning
the faces in stunned amazement, turned to look down at her, a look of shock on
his face.  “I think you just did it.”

“Did what?” Magali whispered. 
All around her, men were picking up the dead Nephyrs, dragging them off, taking
their weapons, sifting through their vehicles and belongings.  She saw a
glittering foot raised above the crowd, then a leg, as someone hoisted a dead
Nephyr up a flagpole to hang upside-down, naked and limp.

“Oh my God,” Jersey whispered, as
the roar around them became so loud she could no longer hear herself think.  “Mag…you
just started the Revolution.”

Outer

Bounds

II

Fortune’s

Folly

EXCERPT:

“Greetings, fellow ex-Nephyr
draftees!”

Now that the shooting was over,
utter silence hung in the air as Anna paced briskly in front of the group of
kids, hands clasped behind her back.  Doberman stood off to the side, cannons
still protruding from his forearms, watching the scene indifferently.

“As you’ve probably noticed,”
Anna continued, “you are
not
skinless ice-cubes hurtling towards the
Inner Bounds, and your former escorts are now dismantled pieces of space-junk. 
Some of you are probably wondering why.”

She saw the flicker of curiosity
across their faces, but none of them asked.  Good.

Anna smiled at them.  “Glad you
asked.  For the duration of this meeting, I’m your new Evil Overlord, and this
is my pet robot, Dobie.  We’ve come to the decision that sending our best and
brightest off to the Nephyr Academy is counter-productive for the future of
Fortune, so we commandeered your shuttle.  If you please me,
some
of you
will get offered a job.  If you don’t…”  Anna shrugged.  “You’ll go home and
forget this ever happened.”  She waved a dismissive hand.  “Make babies, spread
the genetic, that sort of thing.”

“Evil Overlord,” one of the older
boys, probably twelve or thirteen, scoffed.  “Riiiight.  What are you, like
six
?”

Anna stopped and gave him an irritated
stare.  “Dobie, how old am I?”

“You are nine, Overlord,”
Doberman said obediently.  They had agreed not to use her real name at the
outset of their mission, and Anna loved the ring it had coming in the form of a
robot’s matter-of-fact reply.

“But I thought that government
robots couldn’t be hacked,” the kid said, blinking up at Dobie.

Anna sighed, deeply.  “They
can’t.  Dobie, send that kid back home to his mommy.  He’s obviously outta his
league.”  With a swiftness that delighted her, Doberman stepped forward,
grabbed the kid, who screamed and struggled, shocked him senseless, then
administered a forgetfulness serum mixed with a bit of long-term knockout drug,
and dragged him off to a corner, where the kid slumped against the wall and
started to drool.  One down.  Twenty-five to go.  Anna scanned the remainder. 
“Any other stupid questions?”

Most of the kids started to
babble and step backwards in obvious terror, but there were a handful that
stood their ground.  A fat little pumpkin of a girl and a twiggy boy with long
ice-blonde hair tied at the nape of his neck, for instance, just watched her as
placidly as if they were all sitting around at a tea party.

“All right,” Anna said, clapping
her hands together.  “Dobie is going to start asking you each a series of
questions with increasingly more difficult answers to determine just how useful
you are to us.  If you fail more than six questions or if your overall score
displeases me, you join that idiot over there and forget this conversation ever
took place.”  She gestured to the drooling kid, then motioned to the closest
kid.  “It’s all pretty basic stuff.  Go ahead, Dobie.”

The first kid peed himself and
started stuttering so badly he couldn’t answer Dobie’s questions, and he got
added to the corner.  Two girls passed, though barely.  Then a third girl
failed.  “Aren’t you going to tell me what I got wrong?” the girl sobbed, when
Anna shook her head a seventh time and gestured for Dobie.

Anna laughed.  “This is a
test
,
not a
learning experience
, dipshit.  Dobie, get rid of her.”  The fourth
girl likewise failed.  “He said
cubed
, not
squared
, Aanaho
Ineriho
!”
Anna cried.  She yawned and sat down with her r-player in disgust, only
half-listening to the rest.

Most missed seven of Dobie’s
questions, or couldn’t list all of the timed examples required of them, or were
too frazzled to do the mental math.  Those were all added to the pile. 
Pumpkin-girl, however, only missed two.

“Keep her!” Anna called over the
sound of her heavy metal, not even looking up from her r-player.  Even a
tubblet could be useful, if she didn’t have to run from anything.

The whole room went silent,
however, when the robot reached the twiggy blond and, instead of answering Dobie’s
first question, he gave Anna a really long look and said, “You’re shorter than
I thought you’d be.”

Anna frowned and glanced up from
her device.  When she saw Dobie waiting for her response, she snorted
dismissively.  “That counts as a failed question.”  She cranked up the volume
and waved Dobie on.

Dobie asked another, this one a
chemistry question.

The blond smiled.  “I always
thought strawberry soda reacted unfavorably to hydrochloric acid.”

Anna froze.  Very slowly, she
lowered her volume, then scowled at the kid.  “Another fail,” she told Dobie,
glaring at the kid.  “Ask him something else.”  To the blond, she said, “You
better answer his questions.  You only get four more fails, and he’s got some
doozies
.”

The blonde just gave her a placid
grin.

This time, Dobie gave the kid a
logic problem.

“Funny way to die, killing
yourself on a nugget of silver,” the boy replied.

Anna set her r-player down and
got up to scowl at the kid.  “Three more fails.”

He just grinned at her.

Dobie asked about botany.

“A vegetable that carves on
veggies.  Some would call that a horrible waste of food.”

Anna fisted her hands and walked
up to peer at him, eye-to-eye.  “Two more fails.”

Doberman hesitated, watching the
two of them.  “He doesn’t seem to be responding to my questions, Overlord.  At
his current rate, I would not expect him to pass.  Would you like me to
administer the serum?”

“Overlord, huh?” the kid said. 
“I would’ve gone with something like Maximus or Daimyo or Khan or Fuhrer.  Or,
hell, just Boss.  Overlord is kinda corny.”

“
Continue
, Dobie,” Anna
growled, without taking her eyes off the kid’s smug face.

Doberman shrugged and offered him
a pattern recognition problem.

“Hmm, let’s see,” the kid said,
still grinning at her.  “Little Anna Never Diddles Batteries Or Rusty Nails.”

Anna scowled.  Getting close
enough that their faces almost touched, she said, “One more fail.”

Doberman asked about dermatology.

“Always wondered what it’d be
like to stitch someone’s skin back on,” the kid replied.  “Hiding the scars
must be difficult.”

Leaning in close, Anna said,
“You’re all out.”

The kid grinned.  “Oops.” 

Anna narrowed her eyes.  “Keep
going, Dobie.”

Doberman asked, “Add all the
integers one through one hundred.”

“Five thousand fifty,” the blond
replied, in less than a second, without taking his eyes from Anna. 

“Give him something harder,” Anna
growled.  “That was just trivia.”

Doberman said, “A Shrieker, a
starlope, and a goat shared a stable and two feed bags. Their feeding
conditions were thus:  One:  If the Shrieker ate oats, then the starlope ate
what the goat ate.  Two:  If the starlope ate oats, then the Shrieker ate what
the goat did not eat.  Three:  If the goat ate hay, then the Shrieker ate what
the starlope ate.  Which of the animals always ate from the same feed bag, and
which bag was it?”

Without missing a beat, the
blonde said easily, “Aside from the fact that hay is not stored in a bag and
starlopes have a chemical intolerance to the gluten in the seeds of some
terragen grasses that will kill them within thirteen hours of ingestion, it
would be the Shrieker always eating hay.”  His grin widened.  “That all ya
got?”

“
Harder
!” Anna snapped. 
She barely noticed Doberman glance between the two of them out of the corner of
her eye.  He was
toying
with her.  She was so angry she was seeing red.

The kid then proceeded to answer
every following question correctly, taking only a fraction of a second to form
his response, sometimes even answering before Dobie finished his question. 
Anna watched him the whole time, face-to-face, watching the smooth workings of
his mind as he stared back at her, unflinching.

“So,” the boy said, when Dobie
finished.  He still had that idiotic grin plastered over his face, and he
hadn’t backed down from Anna’s stare.  Looking her up and down, appearing as if
he were thoroughly enjoying himself, he said, “Did I pass, Boss?”

“Judging by his responses,
Overlord, I would put his score at—” Doberman began. 

“I know what he scored,” Anna
interrupted.  “Dobie, how did this kid get in here?”

“The ship computer has no records
on him, Overlord.”

“What the hell is his name?”

“I’m not aware of that
information, Overlord.  His facial structure has no matches above eighty-five
percent.”

The kid continued to grin at
her.  “You like sweets, Anna?”

“What the hell is your name?”
Anna demanded, a fraction of an inch from his face.

“How about candycorn?”

Anna felt a cold sweat rush over
her and her heart stuttered a bit. 

The blond kid’s grin widened. 
“Thought so.”  He cocked his head at her.  “How about we go kick these bastards
off our planet, eh?”

Regaining some of her composure,
Anna growled, “BriarRabbit.”

He inclined his head minutely. 

Immediately, the pumpkin waddled
over and said, “
You’re
BriarRabbit?  And
you’re
CandyCorn?”

Anna glanced at the pumpkin. 
“Who the hell are you?”

“SexGoddess,” the fatso said. 

Anna scoffed, looking her up and
down.  “Sure you are.”  She had
thought
SexGoddess had been compensating
for something.

The fatso gave her a flat fatso
stare.  “And the two questions I missed were four million, six hundred and
thirty thousand and forty-two-point-eight-nine-five and the black pony.”  She
glanced at the blond.  “Forgive me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you the two
instigating the rebellion?”

Anna snorted derisively. 
“Rebellion?  How could
kids
be instigating a rebellion?”

“I want in,” the pumpkin said. 
“Nephyrs killed my mom and sisters six nights ago when they came to get me. 
I’ve got a brother in the mountains who also had in-utero Yolk and I know how
to contact Everywhere666 and BabyDoomsday.  I think we could get MadMorga and
FlameOn easy enough.”

Anna felt a slow, predatory smile
cross her lips as she looked at the tubblet with new respect.  “Oh, this is
gonna be fun.”

AFTERWORD

This book was self-published. 
Since the age of 3, I’ve thrown everything I’ve had into being a successful
writer.  I wrote my first book at 12, I was represented by a world-famous
literary agent when I was 24, went to one of the Top Three writing workshops in
the English-speaking world when I was 25, and then ditched it all to go
independent when I was 28.  Now, at 29, I’m finally living my lifelong dream.

If you’d like to keep up-to-date
on my next projects (including the next books in the
Outer Bounds
series), I’m super-approachable and only bite a little.  Friend me on Facebook
at
http://www.facebook.com/kingfiction
,
check out my website at
http://www.kingfiction.com
,
or sign up for my mailing-list at
[email protected]
.

Currently, I’m working on my 17
^th
novel, and I am walking that tightrope between publishing old material and
producing new.  If you liked
Outer Bounds
and are itching to read more
character-driven fiction, you might enjoy some of my other series.  At present,
I have the
Guardians of the First Realm
,
Millennium Potion
, and
Terms
of Mercy
series in the Kindle Store, though plans are in motion to publish
my
Form and Function
and
After Earth
series by the end of the
year.

-Sara King

July 3, 2012