Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising

by King, Sara

  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.

&nb
sp; “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.

  “Yeah,” Joel said, crossing his arms and leaning against the big metal support that ran through eight levels of the space station. “Everybody’s gotta eat.” He winked at Geo’s corpulent layers. “Even you.”

  Geo was not amused. “You just spent eighty grand on a new paintjob and you expect me to believe you stiffed me so you could eat?”

  Joel grimaced. “How’d you know about the paintjob?”

  Geo grabbed the surveillance monitor on his desk and swung it around so Joel could see it, motioning at the familiar black lump on the screen with a sausage-fingered hand. “Your ship is black. It used to be red.”

  “Yeah. Figured the hotrod look was too conspicuous.”

  Geo’s face contorted. “Do you think this is funny? You’re on my station, squid. I own you right now.”

  Squid? That’s a new one. Joel had been baffled by some of the things Fortuners said to him during his first few years blockade running. Geo, though not technically a Fortuner, did business with enough of them that he occasionally picked up an odd colloquialism here or there.

  “Have you ever seen a squid?” Joel asked. “I bet you don’t get many out here.”

  Geo surprised him by remaining utterly calm. He released the hilt of his buck-knife and leaned back in his chair. Tapping his desk with meaty fingers, he said, “Squid. A carnivorous mollusk belonging to the same class as the octopus, cuttlefish, and nautilus. Of the order Teuthoidea of the class Cephalopoda—” Geo leaned forward and gave him a patronizing grin. “Look kind of like octopi because they’ve got tentacles protruding from their face.”

  Joel was caught off guard. He blinked, never having thought Geo to be the kind to read anything, much less retain it. Glancing at the shelves behind the crime boss, he expected to see encyclopedias and law texts. Instead, he saw used fast food wrappers, bottled strawberry soda, and a couple cartons of beef jerky.

  Geo was one of those paranoid types that never let anything more sophisticated than closed-circuit cameras into his abode, certain beyond all reason that the rest of today’s high-tech gadgetry could be hacked. Seeing no books and knowing Geo used no electronic readers of any sort, Joel relaxed. “You got an implant.”

  “Figured I needed to take a step into the thirtieth century.”

  “Technically, it’s the thirty-first, now. Hasn’t been the thirtieth for three and a half years.” Joel smiled at him. “But no one can blame you for not knowing. You never leave your cave.”

  Geo narrowed his reddish eyes and Joel saw his own death bouncing around in the man’s brain. Then Geo tapped his pasty white skull. “Accessing dictionaries isn’t the only thing this baby’s good for, Joel. It’s useful for other things, too.”

  “Oh yeah?” Joel said, feeling his hairs stand on end at Geo’s sudden predatory look. “Like what?”

  “Like accessing my old business records,” Geo said. He settled back into his chair again so he could watch Joel over his enormous gut. His red eyes skewered him as a smile played across his ghostly pale lips. “Like figuring out you stiffed me five times in the past, when I gave you my good faith as an honest businessman.”

  Joel frowned. Had it been five? He couldn’t remember. He started counting on his fingers.

  “You son of a bitch!” Geo snapped, reaching for his knife.

  Joel lurched forward and snagged the weapon before Geo could grab it. Leaping the desk, he slammed Geo back into his chair with one hand gripping his white-blonde hair. “Careful now,” Joel said, cinching the blade up against Geo’s pudgy neck. “I’d have to cut through a dozen layers of blubber, but I think I could find an artery in there somewhere.” Joel glanced up at the two goons. “Back.” They retreated hurriedly.

  Geo’s face turned purple as he sputtered. “You’re a dead man, squid.”

  “There you go using squid again,” Joel said, tisking. “Maybe I oughtta show you just how insulted I am by it.” He pressed his knife deeper.

  “No!” Geo snapped. “Damn it, Joey, be reasonable.”

  “My name is Joel,” he said, grabbing Geo by the shirt and leaning close, “And I’m perfectly reasonable.”

  “What do you want?” Geo asked. “You want your money back? Take it.”

  “You know what I want,” Joel said. “Coaler cash is no good to me. I need my product.” Then, seeing the flash of fear in Geo’s eyes, Joel blinked and said, “You weren’t going to give it to me.”

  “You stiffed me, Joey.”

  Joel felt a dual fear and rage begin to creep into his chest. Fear, that he was in this deeper than he had wanted to go, back when he was a first-year coaler pilot with a bright new future on Fortune, and rage, because Geo had brought him here with the intention of killing him. “People stiff you a couple grand all the time, Geo. Part of doing business. You were just tired of old Joel and decided to shuck him off and get some of his hard-earned cash while you were at it.”

  When Geo did not respond, Joel yanked the crime-boss’s neck back further, anger taking a deeper hold on him. “Just make sure I bring four-seventy-five, isn’t that what you told me, Geo? Made me scurry around, collecting my debts, scraping together almost five hundred grand, and you were just going to pocket it and give some new guy my ship. There never was a new Yolk source, was there? Got me all excited about some new Yolk trade and you were just gonna slit my throat, weren’t you?”

  “I wasn’t gonna kill you, Joey. Maybe cut you a little bit, but not kill you.” His jowls were shaking against the knife, and Joel already saw blood. “For old times.”

  “That’s comforting,” Joel said. Grimacing, he said, “Hold still. Much more quivering and it’ll start working its way through that first layer of fat.”

  “You are a dead man, you sonofabitch.” Geo’s eyes were cold pink diamonds.

  “Maybe,” Joel said. “Where’s my product?”

  “Go to Hell,” Geo snarled.

  Joel tisked, then slammed his fist into Geo’s stomach. As Geo groaned, he said, “You have four hundred and seventy-three of my hard-earned cash sitting on a desk in front of you. Where’s my product?”

  “Martin’s got it,” Geo snapped, his eyes slipping toward the bulkier of the two goons.

  Joel glanced at him, examined the enormous thug’s face, then looked back at Geo. “Nice try. Where?”

  “Martin’s—”

  Geo gasped as Joel pressed the knife deeper and leaned forward, until they were eye-to-eye. “Geo, baby, you’re going to give me my Yolk and take that two grand hit for inconveniencing me, and you’re never going to bother me with your halitosis ever again. If you don’t, I am going to gut you. Understand?”

  Geo’s glare was deadly. “It’s in my desk.”

  Joel glanced at it, then grimaced when he saw the heavy, energy-resistant lock. “Really. Then you wouldn’t mind opening it for me, woul
d you, Geo?”

  “Key’s in my vest,” Geo said.

  Joel patted down Geo’s impressive girth and found a pocket containing a small magnetic keyshaft sharing space with a fluffy blue duckling on a silver chain. Joel lifted it up and smirked at Geo. “You got a thing for duckies, Geo?” he asked, wiggling it. If Joel had thought the criminal couldn’t have gotten any more purple, he was wrong.

  “It was my mother’s.”

  “Uh-huh. Right.” Joel dangled the fluffy blue duckie in front of the crime boss for a triumphant moment, then grabbed the keyshaft and shoved it into the cylindrical hole in the desk drawer.

  The moment that he heard the crackling pop, Joel knew he’d made a mistake.

  But by that time, his fingers were clenching down hard in electrical spasm, his entire body immobile. As Joel’s teeth ground into each other, electricity slammed through him like a coaler cruiser, stretching his muscles past capacity in a continuous, violent stream. Then, with another loud popping sound, Joel was thrown backwards by some ungodly number of volts to land on his back, staring at the ceiling.

  “See, Joey-baby,” Geo said, dabbing blood from his fleshy neck with a tissue, “I got two keys. One of ‘em don’t work so well.” He lifted another silver chain from a storage compartment set into the side of his chair and held it up. It was identical to the first, except that the blue duckling was now pink. Jiggling it, Geo said, “Kinda convenient when some two-bit swindler’s got a knife to my neck.”

  “Pink duckie,” Joel whispered, laughing weakly. “Of course it was a pink duckie.” He blinked up at Martin as the three-hundred-pound strongman came to squat beside him, his square face set in a grim smile.

  “So,” Geo said, stuffing the key back into the compartment in the base of his chair, “Back to what I was saying about you being a dead man.” He leaned over and picked up the buck knife from where Joel had dropped it. Twisting it so that the blade flashed in the light, he said, “What’s your preference, Joey-baby?”

  “Roast pheasant, garlic mashed potatoes, and a few tadfly pods in wine sauce.”