Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising (6 page)

The Shrieker’s eyes shifted to
Gayle.  Its neon-yellow tail began to grow more agitated with her approach,
frothing the transparent slime into a mass of tiny bubbles.  Magali froze,
knowing that Gayle was going to get herself killed.  With the Shrieker’s
attention on her, however, she and Anna might still get out alive. 

And then again, she had no way of
knowing how far this particular Shriek was going to carry.  If the whole mound
took it up…

“Magali, let’s
go,
” Anna
cried.

“Anna, get out of here.”

Anna hesitated a moment, then
Magali heard her sister get up and flee.

Once she was gone, Magali took a
breath and held it, biting her lip. 
Squid ain’t heroes,
she thought,
remembering her father’s favorite saying.  Then, setting her jaw, she lunged
forward and grabbed Gayle by the hair, tugging her backwards and down.  As
Gayle slipped and floundered in the slime, Magali grabbed her by a fistful of
shirt and began tugging her away from the Shrieker. 

Gayle bit her arm, hard.  As
Magali automatically yanked her arm away and inspected the damage, Gayle shoved
her.

Gayle was surprisingly strong. 
And graceful.  Too graceful.  In an instant, Gayle twisted herself away and
backwards through the slime, slipping out of Magali’s hands to come to a
sliding stop with Magali between herself and the Shrieker.

If Magali had had doubts that
Gayle was military-trained, the stance that the woman fell into cleared all
doubt an instant later.  It was a highly-effective martial art that Magali
recognized from her father’s long daily practice-sessions. 
Dragon Fist
. 
An aggressive and deadly modern compilation of a dozen different ancient
martial arts styles that was taught exclusively to the Coalition special
forces.

…or to a few dozen Fortune
colonists, care of one of their own.

What the Hell?
Magali
thought, eying the slim, elderly woman with a new wariness.

She had only enough time to take
a nervous step backwards before Gayle lunged at her.  Magali had the option of
dodging—leaving Gayle to slide into the Shrieker behind her—or deflecting the
blow and using the woman’s own momentum to bring her to the ground. 

The long, miserable hours in
which Magali’s revolution-obsessed father had forced her to train for war with
his starry-eyed pack of freedom-fixated idealists—only a handful of which were
still alive—had nonetheless sunk in.  Though Magali hadn’t had to use a single
move to defend herself in over four years, the ingrained training came back as
instinctively as it always had.  She caught the woman’s fist, shoved it aside,
brought her knee into the woman’s stomach, followed that with knocking her
off-balance by trapping her legs, and used the leverage to throw her to the
ground.

From the slime of the cavern
floor, Gayle stared up at her with as much surprise as Magali had felt, only a
moment ago, realizing this elderly woman had somehow studied Dragon Fist. 

But, instead of naming Magali a
rebel and demanding to take her to the Camp Director as Magali had feared,
Gayle simply sat up, blinked at Magali, blinked at the Shrieker, and started
crawling towards the creature on her hands and knees, cooing platitudes.

She’s got the Wide,
Magali
thought again, desperate, now.  The mental fuzz in her head was getting louder,
the Shrieker still agitated from being touched and the commotion that had
ensued. 

Seeing no other choice, Magali
once again grabbed the older woman by the hair and yanked her backwards, away
from the Shrieker, but this time kept a firm hold on her head and didn’t let
the woman get a grip on any of her body-parts.  She started dragging her
backwards as Gayle kicked and flailed, forced to hold Magali’s wrist with both
fists to avoid losing her scalp. 

Mercilessly, knowing that it was
the only way she was going to keep the both of them alive, Magali kept a grip
on the woman and kept moving.  Her studded egger’s boots slid uncomfortably
with the combined slippery nature of the tunnels and Gayle’s struggles, but she
got them to the mouth of the chamber before Gayle managed to grab hold of the
wall and halt her progress.

“Let go of me!” Gayle screamed. 
In its corner, the Shrieker’s fleshy body flinched in a spasm.

Magali dropped to her knees and
slapped a slimy hand over Gayle’s mouth.  With her other hand, she punched the
woman in the temple as hard as she could.

Gayle’s eyes went even wider and
took on a dazed look.  Magali punched her again three more times, just to be
sure.  Then, getting shakily to her feet, she grabbed Gayle’s shirt and dragged
the unresisting woman from the room.  The Shrieker watched her go, its tail
still thrashing the mucus.

Magali struggled for almost an
hour to drag the woman through the low tunnels of the Shrieker mound and back
to the big metal door that she had left open in her panic.  Anna was struggling
in the doorway, the tall, lanky foreman squatting in front of her and holding
her squirming body in place with both hands. 

“Dude.  Kid.  They’re not gonna
Shriek,” Joel was telling her.  “You can’t come in here.  Get back in there
with the other eggers.”  Joel let go of Anna and stood when he caught sight of
Magali and her burden.  He blinked.  “What happened?”

Magali dropped Gayle at his
feet.  “She’s got the Wide,” she panted, wiping slime from her face with her
forearm.  The action brushed the bite-wound and she grimaced at it, realizing
she had probably spread as much blood across her face as slime.  “I hit her a
couple times to stop her yelling.”

Wordlessly, Joel handed her a
rag.  After she’d spent a few moments cleaning crimson from her face, he said
softly, “That’s Gayle Hunter.  You
sure
she’s got the Wide?”  The way he
said it, Magali was accusing God himself of mental illness.

Magali let the rag fall away from
her face, glaring.  “She was trying to pet a Shrieker.  Named the damned thing
David
. 
Yeah, I’m sure.”

Joel’s eyes were fixed on the
unconscious woman with anxiety.  “Gayle’s the chief foreman.  It’s not gonna go
over very well with the Director.”

“She was going to start up a
Shriek!” Magali cried.  “Anna, tell him.”

 “Look, I believe you,” Joel
said, giving Anna a strange glance before returning his gaze to Magali.  “No
need to get the kid involved.  I’m just saying that this gal played poker with
the Director every Thursday night.  Renewed her contract willingly when her
five years was up.  That sort, if you know what I mean.  It’s gonna look bad
you beat the crap out of her on your first day.  You’ll probably wind up in the
stocks by midnight.”

“Then tell them
you
did
it,” Anna interrupted.

Joel grimaced down at the girl. 
“Not sure that’ll fly.”

“Magali just saved your life,”
Anna said.  “You make it fly.”

Joel cocked his head in the same
manner as the Director earlier that morning, the hawk-in-the-henhouse type look
that Magali had come to know so well.  Instead of arguing, though, he only
said, “Okay.”  He glanced down at Gayle.  “I’ll have to come up with a good
reason for being in the women’s side, though.”

“You were having sex with my
sister,” Anna said.

Joel blinked at her.

“Don’t worry,” Anna said. 
“They’ll just slap your wrist.  Everybody does it.” 

“Anna!”

Anna rolled her eyes.  “Not has
sex with you.  Goes to the opposite side to have sex.  Nobody has sex with
you.  You’re as sexually appealing as a plague rat.”

Even as Magali’s jaw was falling
open and her face was reddening under Joel’s amused look, Anna continued. 
“Besides, if
he
says she’s got the Wide, they’ll have to test her.  If
you
say she’s got it, they’ll just let it slide, her being friends with the
Director and all.  Then they’d throw her back in with the eggers and she’ll
just start a Shriek somewhere else.”

“How old are you?” Joel asked.

“Nine,” Anna said.

“Huh.”  He glanced at Magali. 
“Your sister’s a smart kid.  Only problem is—”

“You’re a wanted criminal those
government boobs don’t realize they’ve got trapped right under their noses?”
Anna asked.

He blinked down at Anna again,
looking startled.  “Yeah.”

Anna shrugged.  “They’re gonna
figure it out sooner or later.  At least this way, you’ll do something nice for
somebody before your whole pathetic, wasted life falls out with your entrails
when they draw and quarter you like you deserve.  Besides, you
don’t
do
it and they’re gonna find out a
lot
sooner than later.”

“Anna!” Magali snapped.

Joel chuckled.  “Your sister’s a
brat.”

“Ignore her,” Magali said.  “I’ll
take care of Gayle.  A couple days in the stocks isn’t gonna hurt me.”

“Nah,” Joel said, “I’ll get away
with it.  I always do.”  He bent down, grabbed Gayle by the shirt, and threw her
over his shoulder.  Then he winked at Anna.  “Nice meeting you.”

“Whatever,” Anna said.   She
folded her arms and looked away with a bored expression.  “You’re just trying
to make me like you so I don’t report your ass.”

Grinning, Joel leaned down into
Anna’s face and said, “Then maybe you should be doing the same thing.”

“Huh?” Anna asked.

“Because I wonder what those
soldiers would think if I told them they’ve got such a smart little runt on
their hands.  Yolk-baby, if I’m not mistaken?”  He grinned at the sudden
flicker of recognition in Anna’s face.  “They take kids like you for the Nephyrs.”

“I could fake it,” Anna said,
looking thoroughly unconcerned.  Magali knew her sister’s posture too well,
however.  Anna was scared.

Apparently, Joel saw it, too,
because his face melted.  He straightened and ruffled Anna’s hair.  “See you
two later.”  He departed, Gayle’s unconscious body draped over his shoulder.

Anna gawked after him.

Magali stared at her sister.  She
hadn’t seen Anna get that look in ages, since before their mother had died. 
She found herself smiling, despite the fact that Joel had just threatened to
turn Anna in. 

Anna saw her look and gave Magali
a bitter sneer.  “I suppose you think that was funny?”

“It was refreshing,” Magali replied,
shrugging.  “Not many people pull one over on you.”  She grinned wider.  “He
even called you ‘runt.’”

The shift whistle interrupted
Anna’s retort, which was a relief to Magali.  Considering the malicious look in
her sister’s eyes, it would have hurt.  A lot. 

She turned and left before Anna
could repeat herself.

Chapter
4

A
Smuggler’s Story

Joel felt like an idiot.

He’d spent the last three years
avoiding the soldiers and the Camp Director like a Shriek, taking up foreman
only to have access to the breakroom to escape the constant mental buzz of the
Shriekers when it started to overwhelm him.

Now here he was, sitting across
from the Camp Director, handcuffed to a metal desk.  Her gold-filigreed face
was contorted in fury.  She tapped the desk with a finger that sounded like it
was made of solid lead—
Thunk
. 
Thunk
. 
Thunk
—glaring at
him.  She hadn’t spoken for almost ten minutes.  Joel’s spine began to itch and
he twisted his wrists in the shackles uncomfortably.

“So I take it the last fifty
lashes didn’t do ya, eh, Joel?” she said finally.

He winced.  He’d been hoping she
hadn’t recognized him.

“So let me get this straight.” 
The Director shifted in her seat, pure rage tightly controlled under a cold
façade.  “Instead of organizing escape attempts, you have switched to pummeling
senior foremen.”

“I had to keep her quiet—” he
repeated, for the hundredth time that day.

She slammed a leaden fist down
onto the table to cut him off, crushing a divot into the sheet metal.  “
Don’t
tell me you did it to keep her quiet,” the Director snarled.  “You’re one-ninety-five
and you pounded the shit out of her.”

“I’m one-ninety-five what?” Joel
asked, intentionally misunderstanding the Standard in meters.  “
Pounds
? 
No way.  I only weigh a hundred fifty-five.  Regular scarecrow.  Who told you
that?”  It went over much better, he had long ago learned in his first
smuggling runs, if, when masquerading as a colonist, a ‘colonist’ did not
understand the metric weights and measures of the Coalition.

The Director gave him a long,
irritated look, then said, “You’re six-foot-four and you pounded the shit out
of her.  A little extreme, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’m a real lightweight,” Joel
said, putting as much charm into his grin as he could manage.  His eyes drifted
to the Nephyr’s fist where it had sunk about a half inch into the desk’s
surface and he tried not to think about what it would have done to his face. 
Desperately doing his best to hide his ancient Inner Bounds accent, he
continued, “Not enough meat on my bones to give her more than a love-tap.”  He
flexed a scrawny bicep.  “See?”

The Director’s scowl deepened. 
“A
love
tap?  You gave her a concussion, you prick.”

This wasn’t going as he had
planned.  Just walk in, dump the broad, walk out, maybe grab a doughnut in the
lobby on his way back to the mounds…  But no, the Director had seen him walk
in, and all time had seemed to stop when she ordered him to put Gayle down and
step away from the body.  Like he was a criminal or something.

Well, he was a criminal, but not
that
type of criminal.  It was a little insulting.

But it got a hell of a lot
scarier when she had ordered that blasted AI that never left her side to arrest
him and throw him in an interrogation room.  Joel had kicked the thing in its
fleshy face, but the machine had simply told him to calm down, that resisting
was futile, all that garbage.

Now, faced with the Director in
all her glittering Nephyr fury, it was all Joel could do to keep the panic off
his face.  The way she was acting, Gayle had been more than just a friend.  A
lover, maybe?  And now the Director had laid the blame squarely upon his
shoulders.  Joel got the nagging suspicion that the vicious little doll-faced
creep had set him up.

“I had to do something.  She was
going to start another Shriek,” he offered meekly.

“By pounding her in the face?  And
she weighs what?  One-twenty?  One-
ten?
  What the hell were you
thinking?”

“She was being too loud,” Joel
muttered.

“Oh really?  Where are your
witnesses?” the Camp Director demanded.  Her green eyes burned like hot
emeralds.

“Magali and Anna Landborn,” Joel
said, for the fourth time.  It had been the robot—now hovering over the
Director’s left shoulder—who had provided their last names.  Upon first hearing
them, Joel had felt like he’d been punched.  Their father, Nelson Landborn, had
been Joel’s Yolk contact on Fortune, in the days when he had tried to bypass
the middleman and get it straight from the colonists.  Geo had gotten wind of
it and the next time Joel had come through his depot, he had left naked, bloody,
and barely able to drag himself onto his ship and lock the door. 

Somewhere in those three days of
beatings, he had let Nelson Landborn’s name slip.  The guy had been carted off
of Fortune that very night and never seen again.  Joel hoped to God that the little
Anna kid hadn’t known that when she convinced him to stroll into the lion’s
den, but he was starting to get concerned that she had.

The Camp Director’s eyes
narrowed.  “I heard you earlier.  You want to claim your lover and her little
sister as your only witnesses.  You expect me to believe you?”

Joel slumped forward, dropping
his forehead to the table.  “Yes,” he said to the scratched and worn metal. 
“That’s exactly what I want.”

The Camp Director’s creaking
chair made him look up.  She was leaning forward, her eyes narrowed.  “Your
story isn’t making sense, Joel.  You were in the B-Block?  That’s ten minutes
into the female side.  What were you doing in there?  Seems like you could’ve
found a more convenient place to screw your girlfriend than right smack in the
middle of Shrieker territory, especially since she just made foreman.  There’s
something you’re not telling me, and we’re not leaving this room until you
spill your guts.”

Remembering what Anna had said
about being drawn and quartered, Joel felt an uncomfortable uneasiness.  Time
for Plan B.

“I want my lawyer.”

The Camp Director frowned. 
“What?”

“Under the United Space Coalition
penal code, you can’t hold me here without access to legal representation.  I
haven’t done anything wrong and I want my goddamn lawyer.”  He jangled his
handcuffs loudly against the metal bars holding them in place and gave her a
smug grin.  “Now, please.”

The Director glared at him.  Over
her shoulder, she said, “Ferris, are you trained in legal affairs?”

“Yes, Director,” the robot said
immediately.  He had a pleasant male voice, deep and calm.

“Good,” the Director said.  She
waved a dismissive hand at Joel.  “Read this two-bit egger scum his rights.”

“Screw that,” Joel said,
interrupting the robot.  “I want a human.”

“You’ll get what I goddamn give
you!” the Director snapped, slamming her glinting hand, open-palm, down upon
the table with a reverberation that sounded as if a thousand pounds of metal
had hit it from a fifty-foot drop.  Joel grew cold looking at the individual
dents her fingers left when she pulled them away.  “Now read him his rights!”
the Director snapped at her AI.

Somehow, Joel found the courage
to say, “I want a human.”

For a long time, the Director
simply stared at him.  Then she glanced over her shoulder at the AI.  “Ferris? 
What the hell is taking you so long?  Read him his rights.”

“Sorry, Director.  Unless the
planet is in an active state of rebellion, a human representative must be made
available upon request.  I am no longer within my jurisdiction.”

“Goddamn it.”  The Director
continued to glare at Joel for long minutes before she said, “Fine, pisswad. 
We’ll do this the hard way.  Ferris, did you just see him hit me?”

The AI blinked.  “No, Director. 
I didn’t see—”

The Director lunged forward and
slammed her forehead into Joel’s face.  He reeled backwards, but because he was
still attached to the table, it went with him.  He landed flat on his back,
with the heavy metal desk overturned and squeezing down on his chest.  Above
him, the Director stood and leaned on it.  Suddenly Joel had to struggle to
breathe.

“So,” the Director said, “You
think you can hit a United Space Coalition officer, do you?”

“No,” Joel gasped. 
Bitch.
 
“I never hit—”

“Gayle Hunter was a United Space
Coalition undercover agent,” the Director snapped, leaning down further on the
table, so that it felt like his ribs were going to snap and it was an agony
just to breathe.  “She was here investigating the illegal smuggling of Yolk off
of Fortune, and she had been very close to nabbing the guy responsible.”

“The guy?” Joel whispered. 
Oh
shit.  Oh shit.  Oh shit.

“Yeah,” the Director said,
smiling, now.  “She said he was tall.  And had a permanent leg wound.”

As she spoke, she ground a booted
foot into Joel’s bandages, making him bite down a scream.

“So,” the Director said, still
digging her boot into his thigh, “If Gayle never wakes up, I’ll just have to
assume she meant you.”

“She’ll wake up,” Joel
whispered.  “And she’s got the Wide.  I swear to God.”

But a tiny doubt nagged at him. 
Did
she have the Wide?  What if it was some elaborate ploy to get a USC agent off
of the trail of a smuggling ring?  Geo was known for pulling stunts like this. 
What if the girl and her sister were actually smuggling Yolk out and they
didn’t like the fact that Gayle was getting too close?

What if they’d set him up?

Not for the first time, Joel
cursed himself for a fool.  They’d just seemed so…innocent.  Well, the big
sister, anyway.  The little one had been a brat.  A creepy little brat.  It had
taken all his willpower not to say something unpleasant.

What if both of them had merely
showed him a façade?  Or they were just playing a role?  What if they needed a
fall guy, and good ol’ Joel Triton just jumped at the opportunity?

The Director’s voice interrupted
his thoughts.  “Ferris, stop recording and turn around.”

“As you wish, Director.”  The AI
did as it was told.

Joel felt ice dribble down his
spine.  Even as he tried to scramble away in a panic, the director rounded the
table and her iron-like fist clamped onto the front of his collar.  Lifting him
half-off the floor, the Nephyr woman said into his face, “She’d better wake
up.  And she’d better have the Wide.  Anything else and you’re a dead man.  I
saw the wars.  I’ve made corrections that lasted months.  You’re lying and you
will die in so much pain you’ll wish you’d been hit by a Shrieker.  You
understand me?”

Joel swallowed.  Faced with the
Director’s suddenly hard green eyes and alien filigreed face, all he could say
was, “Okay.”

The Director smiled.  “Glad we
understand each other.”  She released his collar and reached for his wrist. 
“But that doesn’t change the fact you hit me.  And your profile says you beat
the shit out of another egger, after the last time I whipped you senseless. 
Broke her nose and sent her to the infirmary for a week.  When I look at what
you did to Gayle, I see a pattern.” 

Oh no,
Joel thought, as
the Director began unlocking his restraints.  He’d whacked Wendy a good one
because she asked him to—the strain of the Shriekers was getting to her and she
needed a few days off.  They thought a broken nose would do the trick, and it
had.  She’d gotten a week of bedrest and had come back chipper as a new lamb. 
“Listen, lady…”

“You like to beat up on women,
Joel?” she said, freeing him.  “Maybe you like to pretend they’re me?”  The
Director stood up and wrenched the table off of him as if it were made of
paper.

Seeing the cruel look on her
face, Joel sprinted for the door.

The Director caught him by his
shirt and wrenched him back, throwing him sideways to stumble into the tangle
of table and chairs.  As she dug her rock-hard fingers into his hair and ripped
him back to his feet, Joel had a sick knowing ooze through him that his last moments
as a smuggler on the Fortune Orbital, three years ago, were about to be put to
shame…

* * *

“…Seventy.  Seventy-one. 
Seventy-two.  Seventy-three.”  Geo paused, looking up from the currency in
front of him, lifting an eyebrow.  “Seventy…three.”

Joel winced.

Geo’s pink eyes surveyed his face,
violence brewing under his maggot-pale face.  “What—you thought I wouldn’t
count it, Joey-baby?”

“You still owed me thirty from
the last time you ripped me off,” Joel said, glancing at the two goons that had
moved closer from the shabby walls.  “Consider what you owe me down to
twenty-eight.”  He
hadn’t
thought Geo would count it.  They’d been
working together for over two decades and Joel had only stiffed him twice in
that time.  Geo, on the other hand, made it a habit to cheat him on a daily
basis—he only got angry if it was
his
accounts that ended up short.

“What I owe you.”  Geo leaned
back in his chair.  The corpulent albino’s eyes were glittering like a rabid
animal’s.  “Four hundred seventy-three thousand is not four hundred
seventy-five, Joey-baby.  You’re making me reconsider our working relationship
mighty quickly.”  His hand drifted toward the huge buck-knife he kept on the
table in front of him.  “The day a two-bit smuggler starts making demands…maybe
I owe you a little extra this time.”

“Two years ago I lost half my
cargo when a coaler patrol blasted a hole in my hull while I was running that
blockade for you,” Joel countered.  “Kept your buyers from losing faith.  Kept
you in
business.
  And what did I get out of the deal?  Lost over thirty
thousand in product and had to buy a new hatch.  You never paid me for any of
it.  I gotta eat, man.”

“Gotta eat?” Geo leaned forward,
the horrible scar bisecting his pocked nose reminding Joel that the man liked
to play with knives…and often did, when he caught a business partner swindling
him.  That’s why Joel had been so careful those first couple times.  After
twenty years, though, he would have thought that even a suspicious, backbiting
bastard like Geo would have developed some sort of rudimentary beginnings of
trust.