by King, Sara
Joel nodded with commiseration.
Magali’s dark look returned. “Anna was like Dad. She wanted to start a war. Was gonna see me fulfill Wideman’s prophecy whether I wanted to or not. Did you know my father never let me ride in a ship while he was alive? He never let me learn to fly on my own. He paid for Patrick and Milar and Jeanne to go through flight school but he made me stay at home and learn hand-to-hand combat like a good little soldier, instead. The first time I ever rode on a ship was when Patrick and I snuck out of town. Daddy was so angry… Grounded me for four months.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and Joel watched, uncomfortable, as she reached up and swiped them away with her arm. “The bastard,” she whimpered. “I wanted to be a pilot so badly. I wanted to go to the stars. I wanted to get away from here. I think that’s why he wouldn’t let me learn to fly. He knew I wouldn’t stay. He knew I’d join up and ferry Yolk back and forth for the Coalition, if it would get me off Fortune.”
Get me off Fortune… Suddenly, Joel’s brain snapped into focus. He drew his hand from the Shrieker slime, and still clutched in his palm was Martin’s scrap of engine manual with his hasty map drawn upon it. From the corner of his eye, he watched Magali sit up to look at the map.
“Where did you get that?” she asked. “The dead guy?”
Joel gave her a bovine look, blinking with great effort. It was much too interesting to let her know he understood every word. He would have to consider that very hard in the future, when it came time to tell her the truth. Why waste a possible lifetime of fun? Oh, he was sure he would give up the act sooner or later, but, considering the interesting things he had already learned, it would be a lot later than sooner. He moved his tongue around the inside of his mouth, still grimacing at the metallic buzz of residual Yolk.
Then he jerked. Could it be the Yolk? Considering the way his throat was burning, he was pretty sure he’d swallowed some of it.
“Is that a map?” She straightened further. She looked interested, yet at the same time tired. Like she was asking if he had an extra beer.
Joel nodded again, bemused with the idea that the unrefined Yolk, rather than Martin’s kick, could be responsible for jogging his memories loose. Then he winced, realizing his mistake.
Magali had gone quiet, watching him. Joel didn’t like the look she was giving him. “You’ve been nodding a lot. You’d nod if I asked you if you were the smuggler doing business with Dad before he disappeared, wouldn’t you, Joel?”
For the first time, Joel realized that the gun dangled limply from one hand was beginning to tighten in her grip. The look she was giving him was much too dark.
Okay, Joey-baby, fun time’s over. He opened his mouth to blurt out the truth.
Magali interrupted him with a sigh. “Of course he didn’t betray Dad. That bastard was lying to me. Smooth-talking me just like Anna. Hell, he was probably the one who betrayed Dad. How else would he have known? Joel probably just got scared because he knew the guy would just love to wring my neck.” She got to her feet, steadying herself in Martin’s oversized boots. “You were trying to save me, weren’t you, Joel?”
Joel nodded.
Magali sighed, deeply. “She fried your ability to read, too, didn’t she?”
Joel nodded.
In baby-talk, complete with elaborate gestures that meant nothing to him, Magali said, “What you don’t understand, Joel, is that that little piece of paper in your hand is a map, and that map is gonna lead us to Martin’s ship. Can you fly a ship, Joel?” She made little bird wings with her hands.
Can I fly a ship. The snort of disdain was too much to hold back. He started coughing, holding his fist over his mouth to hide his amusement. Then Joel had an unnerving thought: Even the refined Yolk wore off. A few days to a week, depending on the person, and it was gone. Joel’s gaze fell to the ruined nodules, then migrated to the sacks of Yolk Martin had harvested. That should keep him awhile…
Magali marched over to him and grabbed him by the jaw, making his entire face flare up in a jolt of fire that traced through his skull and down his spine. “A ship, goddamn it!” she snapped. “Can you fly a ship?” She made like she was piloting a joystick with one hand.
Joel jerked his head away, rubbing his jaw. What got up her undies? he thought, glaring.
“Merciful Aanaho,” Magali whispered, slumping back to the wall and pressing the back of the hand holding the gun against her head. “What are you thinking, Mag? He’s was dumb as a board even when he could understand you. Danced to Anna’s tune like a pitiful goddamn puppet.”
Puppet? Joel narrowed his eyes, but waited.
“Get up,” Magali finally said, standing. “We’re gonna go find that ship and you’re gonna fly me outta here.”
Joel waited for her to gesture for him to rise before he stood. Though it was against his instincts, he let her snatch the scrap of paper from his grip. He studied her as she peered at the smudged lines and tried to make sense of it, trying not to allow his resentment to show. So I’m a puppet, eh? After everything he had done for her, after everything he’d been through, she thought he was just a stupid puppet.
“Follow,” Magali eventually ordered, making a ‘come’ gesture.
Joel felt the resentment all the way down to his toes. It took a force of willpower to keep up the act and follow her through the cavern.
A puppet, he thought again as he bored holes into her back. Does that mean they knew what they were getting me into? All that time, they knew they were sending me to get outed as Runaway?
These tunnels, like all un-altered Shrieker tunnels, were narrow and low. Magali, being tall for a girl, had to hunch over in order to move forward. Joel, being taller than most men, really had to scrunch down not to scrape his head and back against the ceiling. After a few more minutes half-squatting, half-crawling in the maze of Shrieker tunnels, he began to frown at the odd howl he heard ahead. The Shrieker mucus, he realized, was beginning to thin under his bare feet. It had disappeared entirely when the tunnel suddenly opened up and sunlight hit him in a startling blast. Joel stood up and stared at the massive cavern that loomed before him.
Beyond the cave, the wind whipped by with such force that it howled against the rock.
Martin’s point of entrance was a huge cave set into the sheer, four-thousand-foot cliff overlooking the acidic green waters of the Snake. Martin’s ship—his ship, Joel realized, his heart giving an extra thud—was sitting like a gigantic ebony raven overlooking the titanic crevasse. He’d never seen anything so beautiful in his life. He walked up and touched a polished black leg, enraptured by its very presence. Within its titanium core, he could feel his own freedom pounding at his essence. He felt a stupid grin slide onto his face.
For the first time in three years, Joel felt the stirrings of his old self again. He felt like Runaway Joel.
“It’s beautiful,” Magali whispered.
Joel nodded, breathless.
“That’s our way out of here, isn’t it?”
Sure is, tootz, Joel thought, activating the ramp. Mine, anyway. Whether you go along all depends on whether or not you happen to be in the cockpit with me in the next twenty seconds. He started to climb the ramp before it had fully extended.
Then, from the entrance to the cave, Magali said, “Okay. Stay here. I’m going to go get the others.”
That broke his reverie. Joel frowned and turned, tearing his eyes from his ship. “What?”
But Magali was already gone, the outline of her back disappearing down the tiny Shrieker tunnel.
For a moment, Joel didn’t understand. Others? What others? Then his mind clicked back into gear. Of course she would go get the Shrieker nodules. Smart girl. Would make a good smuggler. Here Joel was all caught up with getting out of there, not thinking about anything but his own freedom, but she was already one step ahead…and thinking about their credit accounts when they got out. Grinning like a fool, Joel jumped down from the ramp and went to help her.
His grin beg
an to fade when he realized that the cavern with Martin’s sacks of Shrieker nodules was empty. Goosebumps began to form as he watched the Shrieker slime drip back into place where running feet had sped through it, headed toward the main entrance to the mines.
He reconsidered what ‘the others’ could mean, and as he did, his jaw fell open.
Oh Hell no, Joel thought, taking an automatic step backwards. He was not spending the next ten hours ferrying three thousand naked eggers back and forth in a hull designed to hold no more than forty-five at a time. He grabbed a sack of nodules with his good hand and dragged it back to the ship. He tucked the sack carefully in a corner and hid it with a few crates of mechanical tools. He wasn’t greedy. One sack was enough, especially when he knew that if he went back for more, he would end up ferrying a few thousand helpless eggers out of the Shrieker mounds because he was a self-acknowledged softie and if he had to look into their big, frightened eyes to tell them ‘no,’ it would be all over.
“Sorry, guys,” he muttered. “That’s a suicide run and I’m itching to get the Hell outta Rath.” He slapped CLOSE, then jogged past the storage bins and toward the helm, unhappily noting the mess Martin had made of the place in his absence. He actually came to a halt as he passed through the kitchen, stopping to stare at the big heart mug that now rested beside the coffee pot…right next to a big stuffed bear and a can of lollipops.
Apparently, Joel wasn’t the only one who had been a softie.
That, Joel thought, staring at the bear’s bright red, tinselly fur, Is weird. He wondered for a moment if Martin could have a girl hidden somewhere onboard.
Or maybe he was just secure enough in his three hundred and fifty pounds of masculinity that a glittery stuffed bear and a can of lollipops would be taken in stride.
Of course, Joel thought, still staring, if anyone mentioned it, he could just wring their neck and bury them in the peat bogs.
It reminded Joel of Geo’s annoying eating habits. Like father like son? He once again thought to the big man he’d left face-down in the slime. Geo is gonna be so pissed off when I tell him, Joel thought, delighted.
From a distance, of course. A very long, very untraceable distance. A hologram would work well. Too bad he hadn’t gotten any footage of the corpse. That would’ve been the icing on the cake. Killing the brute, taking the Yolk, stealing back his ship… Life couldn’t get any better than this.
He ducked through the kitchen and into the hallway that led to the bridge.
Inside the cockpit, Joel slumped into the captain’s chair, expecting to find the comforting dimples his bony cheeks had left in the leather, and instead finding that Geo’s thug had torn out his old antique pre-Coalition chair and replaced it with a shiny new chrome-plated Evil Warlord model, complete with lazy-man handpads, lumbar massage, and RoboDrink beverage service. Joel’s disgust was so thick that, for a moment, he forgot about his soon-to-be ferryman status.
Hell no, Hell no, he thought, as he remembered. He ignored the lazy-man handpads Martin had installed and shifted the chair forward to the main console, his fingers running automatically over the startup procedures. As he worked, he estimated how long it would take Magali to go back, convince the eggers she had a way out, and return. Seconds began to tick off in Joel’s head like a Doomsday countdown. Joel knew he was too much of a softie. Always had been. It was one of his most expensive flaws, one that had cost him several thousand pounds of flour when a starving village kid happened to tug on his arm at just the right moment, and almost a hundred grand in antibiotics when a plague-stricken woman offered him a free cookie when he was fueling up at her station.
Joel knew that the moment he saw those three thousand wan, frightened eggers’ faces, he would spend the rest of his life ferrying the poor fools to safety.
It would be the rest of his life because, gee, eventually the Nephyrs were going to start wondering why no one was emerging with their harvests and gee, a glossy black ship makes an awfully pretty target for a military-grade ship cannon.
He had to get out of there. He was Runaway Joel, not Ferryman Joel.
Joel warmed up the engines and was getting ready to increase thrust when a thought hit him like a Coalition freighter.
I never wanted to be Runaway Joel.
He’d been tricked into it by Geo, back when the two of them were still friends in the service, when Joel was a starry-eyed, fancy-flying academy grad who hadn’t broken a law in his life and Geo was a thin young squadron commander whose pink eyes were only then seeing their first glints of criminal intent. Geo had spent years convincing him. He had cajoled and bullied and eventually blackmailed. Now, over twenty years later, it had gone on so long that his smuggling had become a habit, something that Joel had taken for granted right along with Geo’s sadistic evil streak.
As a kid, a hotshot sixteen-year-old who had already passed his flight certs, Joel had always envisioned himself as an admiral or a Justice. Someone proud, honored, respected. If Joel had had his way, he would still be flying for the Coalition and carrying a respectful rack of medals and commendations for diligent service and outstanding flying.
It was the outstanding flying that had gotten him into trouble. Joel’s superiors had seen his skills and decided he would make a good flyboy for the Controlled Substances unit—Geo’s unit. And Geo, seeing those same skills, had come to a much different conclusion.
With promises, nudges, and threats, Geo had slowly pulled Joel from the charmed life of a Coalition ace into the shady underground of the space station Junkyard. The change had been so slow that Joel hadn’t even realized it had happened until he saw his first Wanted poster with his name on it. The shock had been so intense that Joel had set his ship to drift and he had floated in space for a week, alternating between crying in self-pity and mourning his vanished ideals.
I never wanted to be Runaway Joel, he thought again.
Then, a small voice added, So here’s your chance to change.
He was still sitting there, staring dumbly at the console, when Magali led the first eggers through the back of the cavern. He watched from the ship’s cameras as she jogged across the cave and disappeared under the belly of his ship with the eggers in tow. He saw her move for the ramp release. Saw her attempt to open the door and have the ship rebuff her. His thumb hovered over the outer seals release switch. His heart pounded. His head hurt.
He wanted to change. He wanted his old life back. His honor. More than anything, he wanted to go straight.
“Joel!” he heard Magali shout. “Open the goddamn door, Joel!” He saw her pound on the sealed door. He heard her yell in frustration, then move back, draw her gun, and fire at the ship in disgust. Joel squeezed his eyes shut.
He was home free, and yet instead of taking off, he was hunkered inside his ship, seriously contemplating heroically dying to help a few hundred eggers get lost in the woods. For what? he thought. For honor? He snorted disdainfully at the thought. Whatever honor he ever had was thoroughly obliterated by two decades of doing Geo’s bidding in order to eat.
Besides, helping a few thousand eggers escape a Harvest wasn’t exactly going to get him an Emperor’s Commendation. It was going to get him shot out of the sky, and once the Nephyrs dragged him out of the flaming wreckage, he’d die in the same way he was going to die before—alone and unknown, derived and sneered at, his name something to be laughed at rather than something to be remembered.
It’s the Yolk talking, he thought, listening to the electric crackle of the gun’s energy as the shots bounced off his ship. You’re always going to be Runaway Joel. That’s all you are now. Just get out of here.
The ship continued with its power-up procedure. Outside, he heard the grating sound of the legs being retracted.
“Joel!” Magali shouted, banging upon the ship’s outer shell once more. “Joel, please!” Then he watched as the ship’s exhaust blew her aside, to huddle in the corner with the rest of the terrified, wan-faced—
He could help them. Of
anyone this side of the Outer Bounds, Joel could help these people. He had the skills. He had the ship. He knew the Nephyrs were going to kill any stragglers, any who didn’t meet their quotas. He knew those quotas, at least for the Forty-Third battle squadron, were going to change depending on how pretty the girls were when they came out, or how much they decided they wanted to see someone scream.
Joel had heard horror stories of the Forty-Third. Colonel Steele had gathered a hundred and forty-four of the most despicable, most disgusting Nephyrs that could be found this side of the Outer Bounds. ‘The best and brightest,’ they were called. They were sent to do all sorts of missions—reconnaissance, detective work, peacekeeping—but their specialty was Harvest. His unit was one of the only ones that requested to guard the Harvest. Most Nephyrs didn’t enjoy herding terrified eggers. The Forty-Third delighted in it.
He had heard the stories. He knew eggers went missing with the Forty-Third.
He could help them. He knew he could. He knew there wasn’t a Coalition fighter pilot in the Sector who could catch him if he were behind the controls of Honor.
Honor. After stealing it from a government shipyard, he had named his ship Honor, as if some unconscious part of him had recognized what he had given up when he fell in with Geo. Joel squeezed his eyes shut. Without looking at his console, he reversed the takeoff measures. Once the ship had touched back down, he gently flipped the outer seals switch with his thumb. He heard the ramp slide down. He heard a woman storm aboard, felt the barrel of the gun touch the back of his head.
“You had to think about it, didn’t you?” Magali said. “You weaselly piece of shit.” He knew by the soft, quiet tone of her voice that she was very close to pulling the trigger.
Hands out where she could see them, Joel carefully got up from the console and straightened until he was towering over the Landborn woman. This close, he easily could have reached out and grabbed the gun, but he stayed well back, having no misconceptions of taking the gun from her and surviving afterward. The tight cluster of holes over Martin’s heart had been proof enough of that. He just waited, afraid to move, afraid to speak for fear of saying the wrong thing, watching the indecision in her face, hoping she would give him the benefit of the doubt.