by King, Sara
After a moment, Milar’s face darkened and he stood. “Fine. Coaler chickenshit. I’ll do it myself.” He got up.
“Get back on the ground!” Tatiana cried.
Milar snorted and started stalking towards her.
“Get on the ground!” Tatiana snarled, backing away. “Or I’ll shoot you in the foot and tell them everything, I swear.”
Milar hesitated. “How much are you going to tell them, squid?”
“Haven’t decided yet,” Tatiana said. She was shaking all over.
Then, reluctantly, Milar got back to his knees. He stayed that way in silence for long minutes, until they heard the sound of engines in the distance.
“You think leaving me alive for the Nephyrs is doing me some sort of favor?” he asked softly.
No, Tatiana thought, biting her lip. “Just go, all right? Get out of here.”
“They’d level the town,” Milar said, unmoving.
“I’d tell them you went the other direction.”
“They’d still level the town.”
For the longest time, she could only stare at him. “I can’t shoot you.” It came out barely more than a whisper.
He smiled. “Sure you can, sweetie. Point it at my head, pull the trigger. Not that hard. Ask Pat. I’ve done it plenty.”
“Please go,” Tatiana whispered.
Milar glanced at her. She saw something in his eyes, something that made her soul ache. For long moments, he said nothing. Then, as the distant cry of engines became an overwhelming roar overhead, she had to strain to hear his words. “We could’ve had something neat,” he said softly. “Wideman said so.” Then he reached down, pulled the knife from his belt, and stabbed himself in the chest.
Chapter 23
Harvest Time
Magali punched the aluminum siding of her empty hut and barely felt the gouges the metal screws left in her knuckles. Someone had turned in Runaway Joel. Someone with an axe to grind. Someone who didn’t want Magali to get out of the Yolk mines.
The little bitch.
Magali punched the wall again, then, when her hand broke open and bled, she kicked the sheet-metal until her toes hurt and the whole hut was rattling around her. A voice from the next building over shouted at her to keep it down.
Anna had stranded her here to die of Egger’s Wide. Purposefully. As if eight years of sisterhood meant nothing to her.
It probably doesn’t, Magali thought, disgusted.
Magali closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wall and thought of the razor wire. On the other side of it was freedom. All she had to do was get to the other side.
It was the guards that kept her from trying. The camp had seventy-six of them, each armed to the teeth with automatic laser rifles, POP grenades, pepper spray, and sonic spurs. There were always at least four of them on guard in each tower at any time. That was eight holes in her back—four from either direction—should she decide to try the wire.
The shift siren went off in a sudden, wailing moan. Knowing that it wasn’t time for the shift-change, Magali closed her eyes and prayed it was a malfunction or an emergency roll-call.
Just one blast, she thought fervently. No more.
The siren blared again. And again. Magali collapsed against the metal wall, her breath sliding out of her in despair. She wasn’t going to have the chance to climb the wire. She was going to harvest Yolk first. The Shriekers, like all the natural fauna on Fortune, were on a three-year cycle, and every three years, almost a million eggers died in the depths of the Shrieker mounds on Harvest Day. It was a different day for every camp, different for every mound, but one thing always remained the same: half the people who went down never came back up.
Five more long bursts confirmed Magali’s fears—it was the signal that the Shrieker nodules were ripe, and that every man, woman, and child who wasn’t carrying a gun would be handed a sack and locked in the mines until they could return with it full of nodules.
The Shriekers, meanwhile, would be anxiously roaming the nesting caverns tending the hatch, and anyone who got too close, or was too careless, could trigger a camp-wide Shriek.
“Outta bed!” a woman’s voice shouted as the butt of a rifle made a reverberating clang against the outer wall of Magali’s hut. “Harvest time. Everyone in line on the central strip. Move!”
It was the one day that both the male and the female side of the camp mingled. The nodules would only be ripe for twenty-two hours and the Director didn’t want to waste time giving two speeches. Magali had heard it said once that every nodule, every single nodule that was pulled out of the mounds, was worth the crummy five-year salary that the Coalition paid to those eggers that managed to survive their draft.
Reluctantly, Magali tugged her studded harvest gloves out from under her cot and took the collection sack and the lightweight prybar from against the wall, then followed the flow of the bleary-eyed eggers out into the central yard outside the Director’s compound. As soon as she was standing in the light of the overhead LED floodlamps, she froze.
Everywhere, Coalition soldiers in black fatigues stood watching them with suspicious, glittering gazes beneath the glass shield of their riot-gear.
Looking at them, Magali got a chill. Nephyrs. The Forty-Third battle squadron. All first-class graduates—the Academy’s best. Killing machines. Brought in to guard each Harvest as it became available, to safeguard the nodules from the moment they left the mines to the moment they were loaded onto the ship. Their cold eyes felt even more distant and inhuman than that of the Director.
Scratch getting shot while escaping over the wire. If she tried to leave during Harvest, Nephyrs would simply tear her apart.
Anna’s going to be just like them, Magali thought, miserable. She looked again at their cold, expressionless faces, trying to divine some idea of what was happening to her sister.
Seeing them stare coldly back, their merciless faces projecting an utter lack of compassion, Magali realized something. She’s already one of them. Just doesn’t wear the circuitry.
As soon as she got close to the central strip, Magali recognized the tall, gangly form of the outed smuggler standing near the back corner of the formation, gloves on, a digging tool in one hand, a collection sack in the other. She went to join him.
Instantly upon seeing her, the smuggler stiffened.
“You look like you pissed off a Nephyr,” Magali said, taking in his bruises as she stepped into line beside him. She glanced down, saw the shackles on his ankles. “They’re letting you in on the Harvest?”
Joel gave her a long look. His face was bruised, with a dark spot forming against his jaw. One eye was completely swollen, and his body was hunched, like his stomach hurt him. “You’ve got a lot of nerve,” he said finally.
“Should’ve taken my offer.”
Joel glared, his entire body rigid, his every breath emanating fury. Finally, he said, “The only reason I’m not putting my fist through your face,” he said, “Is because my hand hurts.” He showed her his fist, which was a swollen mass of blood and awkward angles. He dropped it suddenly, “And I couldn’t give you the pummeling you deserve left-handed.”
Magali felt her stomach turn at the brutality and she stumbled backwards a step. Because she could find nothing else to say, she managed, “That…looks painful.”
“The Director crushed it in a door after she got tired of pulling off fingernails.” Joel was glaring at her, his unwavering stare alive with accusation. He gave her a bitter grin. “Must have made your day, to hear that, eh?”
Repulsed, Magali grimaced. “No, not at—” Then she realized what he was trying to say. Taken aback, she said, “I didn’t turn you in.”
“Sure you didn’t.” Joel snorted.
Magali’s heart began to pound. “You actually think that I’d do something like that?”
He snorted. “Ah, so our conversation, you getting pissed, me getting nabbed—it was all a coincidence. That makes so much more sense now.”
&
nbsp; “I didn’t do it!”
His blue-green eyes were hard. “Your little brat of a sister would have. In a heartbeat.”
“Yeah, and I’m nothing like her.” Magali spoke it with such vehemence that she felt the pressure in her lungs. “Nothing.”
Joel frowned at her. He looked like he wanted to say more, but then the Director climbed up onto the podium at the forefront of the formation and raised her voice. “Everyone here?”
The man in Coalition gray at her side checked his tally, then said, “Everyone is present except fourteen eggers with the Wide, Director.”
“Good,” the cyborg said. To the gathered eggers, she said, “Strip.”
No one moved. Eggers glanced at each other, nervous.
“You heard me!” the Director snapped. “Last Harvest, we caught six eggers trying to smuggle nodules out in their underwear. So strip. Everything in a pile. If you thieves are going to steal Yolk, the only way you’re gonna do it is by shoving nodules up your asses—which we’ll be checking later. Take your clothes off!”
For a moment, Magali thought she had misheard the Director. She joined the other eggers in glancing back and forth, trying to discern if it was some kind of joke. When she realized the cyborg was serious, however, Magali had never been so humiliated and angry in her life. Around her, a couple of eggers had begun to reluctantly comply, but most stood around, giving each other nervous looks. Beside her, Joel had begun to remove his bright yellow prisoner suit and was glaring at the Director from under a frown.
Up on the podium, the Director scanned the reluctant crowd, then said, “Fine. My friends are going to start going down the lines. If any of you colonist fools aren’t undressed in thirty seconds, I’m going to have the Nephyrs do it, for you.”
As the black-clad Nephyrs of the Forty-Third battle squadron moved into the formation, the rest of the eggers hastily complied. Magali followed suit, throwing her clothes in a pile at her feet, then snagging up her collection sack to cover her chest and groin, her face burning.
A blue-eyed Nephyr with the arrow-gripping fist of Colonel embedded in gold in the glittering skin above his elbow stopped in front of her. He searched her face, then his eyes lazily wandered down to pause on where her breasts were bunched up under the canvas, her arm holding them in place. The Nephyr looked back up at her, his glittering lips curled in a smile. Magali shuddered, clenching the sack tighter to her chest.
“She told you to undress, collie.” There was cruel amusement in his eyes. He lifted his hand, reaching toward the canvas material.
Magali froze, seeing the intent on his glittering face. Coldness doused her soul. “My clothes are off,” she said, trying not to sound desperate.
“I need to make sure now, don’t I?” the Nephyr said, his glittering fingers hooking under the canvas covering her chest. “Take it off.” He gave it a gentle, patronizing tug. “Or I will.”
Magali knew she could lower the canvas or it would be ripped away. Reluctantly, she lowered it.
“Ah,” the blue-eyed colonel said. The Nephyr stood there, soaking in her nakedness, as Magali’s face burned with hatred and humiliation. She stared at her feet, horrified and afraid, feeling as if she had retreated into a tiny corner of her brain to escape the Nephyr’s lustful stare.
“You know,” the blue-eyed colonel said, as if they were friends at a bonfire, having a conversation over freshly-killed starlope. “Harvest gets pretty stressful. You get back out, I bet a pretty thing like you’d love to celebrate tonight, wouldn’t you?” He lifted his hand and began tracing down her shoulder with a glass-hard finger, toward her breast, leaving a wormy sickness in its path.
Magali squirmed out from under his inhuman touch, taking a step backwards, pulling her canvas back up.
The Nephyr smiled. He leaned closer, until his presence was giving her goosebumps. “Tell ya what, collie,” he said softly, “Once it’s all over, I’ll come looking for you. Save you the trouble of trying to find me.” Then he cocked his head, a little smile on his face. “Unless, of course, you don’t want me to wait.”
Horrified, she realized he was going to rape her. Right there. In front of everyone.
At the lust in his eyes, Magali knew that Anna was right. Colonists weren’t people to the Coalition. This Nephyr was going to do whatever he wanted to her in full view of the other eggers. And nobody was going to stop him.
The sick feeling welled up in her gut, until she was swallowing down bile. She squeezed her eyes shut, trembling.
“Hey asshole,” Joel said.
The Nephyr turned from her.
Joel motioned at the prisoner jumpsuit puddled around his legs. “Can’t get it off with the shackles on, dipshit.”
Magali shuddered in relief as the Nephyr colonel moved away from her and walked a circle around Joel, his gold filigreed face twisted in a sneer at the smuggler’s naked, bruised body. Joel endured the perusal, peering back with equal disdain.
As he walked, the black-clothed Nephyr said, “Nalle has something special planned for you tonight if you survive the Harvest, smuggler. Some interesting entertainment for the Forty-Third. It features you,” he cocked his head with a sick little smile, then added, “and screaming.”
“Lookin’ forward to it.” Joel spat at the Nephyr’s boots.
The blue-eyed Nephyr chuckled as he made another pass, Magali completely forgotten. Finally, he said, “I can see why she finds you so amusing.” He stopped and squatted beside Joel and, taking the chain between Joel’s legs in either hand, he pulled.
The chain snapped as if it had been made of strands of hair.
Then, standing, the Nephyr shoved Joel hard enough to throw him into the eggers behind him, knocking them all down in a group.
From the podium, the Director said, “I put those chains on him for a reason, Colonel Steele.”
The Nephyr named Steele snorted. “You’ve got a hundred and forty-five Nephyrs guarding the compound, Nalle. Your little plaything won’t get far. And if he does…” The male Nephyr grinned. “I’d enjoy the opportunity to hunt him down.” Then Nephyr Steele turned and strode further down the ranks without another word. Magali allowed herself to breathe again.
Gasping, Joel stumbled back into line. “Bitch,” he muttered, following the retreating Nephyr with his gaze. There was a deep red hand-print on his chest, already starting to bruise.
“Thanks,” Magali whispered.
Joel glanced at her, and there was apology in his eyes, and anger, as if he somehow felt responsible for every awful thing ever committed by the male sex. After a moment, he made an embarrassed grunt, then bent to check the bandage over his thigh, his wounded leg obviously bothering him. She saw that the last nanostrip patch had run out and hadn’t been replaced. Blood and greenish pus was oozing from around the depleted strip, now a bright pink instead of a neon green. Even from that distance, the wound smelled funny, like goat cheese.
That’s going to kill him if he doesn’t get another nanostrip on it, Magali thought.
“So,” Magali said, avoiding his nakedness despite the fact he made no move to hide it. “They smash your hand in a door and then they let you out for the day? How’s that work?”
Joel straightened from his wound. “Money.”
“Enough money to buy themselves a new smuggler, in case this one escapes?”
For the first time, Magali saw the beginnings of a smile on Joel’s lean face.
He gave her a considering look. Finally, he said, “See those spaceships over there?” He nodded at the six fancy Coalition transports.
Magali eyed the double-hulled beauties sitting on the other side of the razor wire. The whole town of Deaddrunk could pool their resources—money, guns, ships, land, houses—and still never be able to afford just one of those ships. They were a symbol of what Anna called the “Coaler Occupation.” Disgusted, she said, “What about them?”
Joel made a dismissive gesture with his ruined hand. “On average, a standard sack can hold two
hundred and fifty-eight Shrieker nodules. If they’re properly distilled, each nodule can produce as much as fourteen grams of Yolk. You could buy a spaceship like that with about two hundred grams of Yolk, on the free market, back in the Inner Bounds. Core planets see even less of it, so they pay a premium.”
Magali forgot to breathe. “That’s less than a sack.”
Joel snorted. “Try fifteen nodules.”
She stared at him.
“So,” Joel said, hefting his burlap collection sack and prybar over his shoulder, “Yeah, I get the day off.”
Magali’s eyes drifted back to the ships as she tried to imagine the sheer amount of wealth in the mines. She couldn’t. She knew from one of Anna’s tirades that the troop transports that the Nephyrs so casually flew around were roughly worth twenty million apiece, and the mounds had whole chambers filled with nodules, millions of them coating the floors, the hallways, the walls…and if just fifteen nodules was worth a ship… She swallowed, the Yolk drafts suddenly starting to make a lot more sense.
Forcing herself to stop trying to calculate how much money was in each individual full harvest sack, she glanced back at Joel and took in his cuts and bruises—brutal testimony that he didn’t have long to live. “You coming back out at the end of the day?” she asked softly.
Joel gave her a long look. “What do you think?” Then he said nothing more, because the Nephyrs had finished stripping those too shy to do it themselves and the cyborg had taken center stage at the front of the gathering once more.
“All right, listen up,” the Director said, cutting through the quiet sobbing of those forcibly removed from their clothes. She brushed a tadfly off of her glittering face and said, “Most of you have never done a Harvest before, so here’s the drill. The Shriekers don’t like seeing their precious little babies stolen out from under them, so don’t let them see you do it. If they do see it, get your friends and run like Hell, because they’ll probably start up a Shriek. Aside from that, we’re looking for the bright red nodules. The red ones. The black ones are either dead or duds. Questions so far?”