Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising

by King, Sara

  Magali’s hazel eyes never left his. They both knew she couldn’t fly it. There probably wasn’t a single egger in the camp that could fly a ship, let alone his ship. She needed him, and they both knew it. He saw that anguish in her face, knew that she recognized that fact, and hated him for it. Joel watched her over the barrel of the gun, waiting.

  Magali cursed and lowered the weapon. “The only reason you’re not dead right now,” she said softly, “is because you can’t understand a damn word I say, so I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you didn’t realize I was coming back.”

  Joel nodded.

  “Joel, I need you to fly these people out of here.” Magali pointed to the eggers gathering in the cave, then to the cargo hold of the ship, then out past the mouth of the cavern, beyond the Snake. “I convinced them to stop the Harvest. We’re gonna show the Director she can’t push us around anymore. We’re making a stand.”

  She has got to be insane, Joel thought.

  Magali made a frustrated sound. “Nephyrs—” she jerked a thumb at his ruined hand, “—are going to kill—” she drew her thumb across her neck, “—us.” She pointed to him, then to her. “If we don’t fly—” she made little wings with her fingers, “Away.” She fluttered them toward the door.

  In that, Joel wholeheartedly agreed. He nodded.

  Magali made a frustrated sound. “You can’t listen, you can’t speak, you can’t read…” She glanced at the eggers in the cavern. “Merciful Aanaho,” she whispered. “We need a miracle.”

  “How’s this for a miracle,” Joel said. “You get the Hell off my ship and I’ll pretend you didn’t just point a gun at me and together we’ll start getting these people somewhere safe.”

  Magali jerked like a dumbstruck starlope.

  “I’ll save as many as I can,” Joel said. “But the moment I see a Nephyr or a Coalition ship, I’m gone, and I won’t be coming back.”

  Magali continued to stare at him.

  “Either that,” Joel said, “or stay, and I’ll lock the ship down again and take us anywhere you wanna go and we’ll let the eggers deal with Colonel Steele and the Director on their own.”

  When Magali finally spoke, it was an icy-cold whisper. “You were listening?”

  Joel didn’t need to ask when she was referring to. He nodded. “I think I got some Yolk under my tongue while I was unconscious. Fastest way to the bloodstream, baby. It’ll probably wear off any minute now, then I’ll be right back to that drooling idiot you know and love.”

  Magali looked like she was trembling, though by the hardness in her eyes, fear was the last thing from her mind. Too carefully, she said, “All that time, you could’ve said something. You let me think…” She shook as she looked up at him. Softly, she whispered, “If you’re lying to me—” she stopped and hesitated, scanning his eyes, before she continued, “—if you take off and don’t come back, I will make what the Nephyrs did to you look like happy hour.”

  Joel believed her. If the console hadn’t been behind him, he would have taken a step backwards. As it was, he felt pinned under her stare, his chest tight where he expected a cluster of beams to appear as she changed her mind.

  Still too softly, Magali turned back toward the cargo hold and said, “I’ll go see what I can do to get the eggers organized.”

  Glad for the reprieve, Joel said, “The hold’ll take forty, forty-five if they’re small.” Magali looked over her shoulder at him a moment, then strode off of his ship. Joel let out the breath he had been holding.

  You might not think you’re a killer, love, he thought, watching her go, But you just gave Geo a run for his money.

  Outside, Joel heard Magali shout orders to the amassed eggers. A moment later, a group of naked men and women stumbled onto his ship, pushing and shoving like frightened cattle. Flipping on the intercom, Joel said, “Be nice, people. You don’t act civil and you’re gonna find out how unhappy I can make people who ride in my cargo bay.” Then Joel was sealing the gates, his career as a ferryman beginning in earnest.

  Chapter 31

  One, Two, Three

  Magali had just ushered the fourteenth group onto the ship and was standing well away from the cliff’s edge, watching them go, when the little boy from the formation—a shy, grinning kid affectionately called Baby Benny by the male side of the camp—ran through the back of the cavern toward her, weaving between anxious clusters of eggers to reach her.

  He’s panting, Magali thought, anxiousness filling her gut as the little boy stumbled to a halt beside her. “What is it?” she whispered.

  “They’re coming,” Benny said, too loudly. “I heard someone in the caverns. They’re coming, Magali.”

  We’re not even half done yet, Magali thought, fighting panic. “Nephyrs or guards?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Benny whimpered. His eyes were rolling wildly at the entrance, his little body tense with terror.

  Trapped, she thought, feeling the empty void of the cliff behind her. The wind howled across the stone lip, tugging at the sweaty strands of hair against her face. She took an involuntary step backwards, imagining the endless fall to the rocky riverbed thousands of feet below.

  “Did they see you?” Magali asked, her throat tight with fear. She had instructed her eggers to remove all the Shrieker carcasses from the other caverns and throw them over the cliff, along with Martin and the broken mower machine. Aside from the crushed nodules left by the mower, there wasn’t anything to suggest they were back here.

  “I don’t know,” Benny said, glancing over his shoulder and inching toward her. “I think maybe.”

  Shit, Magali thought, catching the panic growing in the eggers’ eyes. She had to do something. She looked down at the gun in her hand. She remembered using a similar gun, back when Wideman’s prophecy hadn’t come true and she’d been shooting at straw bales and bulls-eyes, not people. She remembered how easily she had been able to hit the center ring, how naturally it always fell into place for her.

  Just think of them as targets. She got down to one knee, readying her gun.

  She heard Wideman’s high-pitched giggle. Killer. He jabbed a crooked, arthritic finger at her, his hand still covered with green and yellow vegetable shreds. His eyes showing whites all around, he cackled, Killer. Magali the killer. Killer, killer, killer.

  Magali hit the side of her head with her palm, forcing the image away. She wasn’t a killer. She was just doing what she had to do. Saving people.

  “Everyone else get away from the entrance,” she said, peering down the sights. Seeing where she was aiming, the eggers quickly obeyed.

  “I’m a starlope hunter,” a man whispered, sidling up behind her. “I’m a decent shot.”

  “I’m from Deaddrunk,” Magali replied, not taking her attention off the entrance. Her gun’s sights never wavered.

  The man’s eyes widened. “Oh.” She felt him back away and whisper to one of his friends. Then Magali’s focus was elsewhere, back on the entrance of the cavern.

  Please be human, Magali thought. She was a good shot, but energy weapons could only damage Nephyrs in the eyes or mouth—if the mouth was even open. And Nephyrs were fast. If it were Nephyrs, she’d only have seconds before they were atop her. She prayed it wasn’t Nephyrs. The three-second charge delay would cripple her with Nephyrs.

  She heard a noise in the tunnel.

  A whimper built in her throat. It’s just like target practice, she told herself, fighting the urge to drop the gun and stumble to the side to huddle with the other eggers. She forced her fingers tighter around the pistol and waited.

  The first human guard entered the cavern with a confused look, stumbling to a halt when faced with the vast emptiness of the Snake beyond. Magali recognized him as one of the guards who had been most likely to offer his canteen to eggers who emerged from the mines after shift. He had offered water to Magali more than once, to her gratitude.

  He’s human, she thought, and for the first ti
me truly wished he had been a Nephyr, instead.

  Then the guard’s eyes found the amassed eggers huddling against the far wall and he frowned, slowly lifting his rifle.

  Pull it, her mind screamed. Pull the trigger now! Magali’s chest felt like it was on fire. She could feel her finger on the trigger, but she couldn’t create the pressure she needed to fire. Her whole arm felt numb and unresponsive, disconnected from her screaming brain.

  Breaking into a smile, the guard shouted over his shoulder at someone behind him. He still hadn’t noticed Magali kneeling silently to one side, gun shivering in her grip.

  Killer, Wideman giggled at her.

  The man turned to take in the rest of the cave. Their eyes made contact. His eyelids tightened with surprise. His mouth constricted into a tiny O. He stumbled back one step. His rifle swung toward her. His finger tightened on the trigger.

  Magali shot him in the head.

  Instantly, her brain began counting, just as it had with her father’s targets. One, two, three. The READY light flashed green. Instinct took over again. Magali shot his partner, who had come jogging up to stoop beside his fallen companion. One, two, three. She fired at the dim shapes moving in the darkness, at the place where she approximated a chest to be. One of them slid to the ground with a gurgle. Magali was already rushing forward, toward the two dead men in the cavern entrance. One, two, three. She fired her pistol again, then grabbed the rifle on the dead man, fired it, dropped it, and grabbed that of his companion. Then she was spinning away to avoid the arc of fire emanating from the darkness.

  How many are there? she thought, counting down in her head. She saw movement and fired again, and she heard a thud in the corridor as another guard collapsed.

  Then silence.

  For several moments, the silence pounded at her ears like liquid hammers. Slowly, Magali lowered her gun. She had fired six shots. Had they all hit their mark?

  The starlope hunter rushed forward and grabbed the closest guard’s rifle, then tentatively disappeared into the corridor beyond.

  “They’re all dead!” he cried. “Six guards.”

  Instantly, Magali felt dirty. She had intended to wound them, had hoped to put them in a corner, guarded, until Joel had finished ferrying the eggers to safety. She hadn’t counted on her instincts to go for the kill.

  As she stood, staring at the bodies, murmurs of fear arose from the other eggers. She understood. By killing the guards, they had crossed a line that they could never take back.

  “Anyone else here any good at shooting?” Magali asked.

  “Shooting what?” an old man asked, his voice coming from directly to her left.

  “Nephyrs,” Magali said, turning to look at him. Joel hadn’t even gotten half of them off the cliff yet, and the Director already knew that something was wrong with the Harvest. “Sooner or later, they’ll send the Nephyrs.”

  The old man grumbled, but stooped to pick up a rifle. There was something about the way he checked the gun’s cartridge that made her think he knew how to use it. “S’pose I couldn’t expect to live much longer as an egger anyway.”

  They found four more volunteers, and Magali stationed them at various angles around the mouth of the cave. Nothing was getting through that corridor without being shot at seven ways first. They waited as another group of eggers tossed the guards’ dead bodies over the cliff.

  One of the eggers stood at the very edge of the cliff as he levered the bodies one after another over the edge. Watching him, only inches from the endless drop, Magali shuddered at her sudden wave of vertigo and took another involuntary step toward the back of the cave. She reached back for the rock behind her and tightened her fingers against it as she watched the bodies fall soundlessly into the void.

  Killer, Magali heard, as she watched the bodies go soundlessly over the edge. This time, it was her own voice speaking.

  Chapter 32

  A Tight Fit

  Milar scooped a palmful of cushioning gel out of the belly of the soldier and made a disgusted face at it. “I’m not getting in that stuff.” He turned his palm over and let the goop drip in a long, thin, slimy line down onto the body of the guard he had incapacitated on his way into the hangar. “No way in Hell, squid.”

  “Suit yourself, knucker,” Tatiana said. She began to strip.

  Milar’s eyes widened. “What are you doing?”

  “Operators fly naked,” she said. “Less stuff to get caught up on the nodes and screw up the works.” She grinned at him. “Oh, and same goes for you. You’re going to be displacing enough slime as it is. Get yer pants off and get in there.”

  Milar visibly shuddered. “I don’t think so.”

  Tatiana shrugged and unzipped her uniform. Sliding it aside, she stepped forth. Milar was carefully averting his eyes, pretending to wipe his hand off on the unconscious man’s shirt.

  “I’m going to need you to connect a lot of the lines for me,” Tatiana said, climbing past him and dipping her foot into the lukewarm goo. “It’ll go a lot faster that way.”

  “I thought you were afraid of soldiers, squid,” Milar growled, just above her ear.

  Tatiana winced. “Don’t remind me. Just do what I tell you when I tell you and we’ll be ok. Starting with that line right there. Hook it into the third node down my spine.”

  Reluctantly, Milar picked up the line and stepped behind her. As she started cinching up belly nodes, she felt his fingers press into her back, then the bone-deep click as the node mated with the soldier. Instantly, she felt the frame of the soldier like it was her own skeleton.

  She had him connect the other three spine nodes, in order, verifying systems in between giving orders.

  “Okay,” she said. “That one to the back of my head.” She was already fitting the palm-nodes in place. “We’re going to have to skip a few of the waste nodes. We don’t have time, and we don’t plan on being in there that long, anyway. My kidneys can handle it.”

  “I don’t think I want to know what that means,” Milar said. He snapped the second line into place, and Tatiana immediately felt the data from every primary sensor in the soldier.

  “Get the left leg sensors, starting with the hookup above the ankle and going up the leg,” she said. “I’ll get the right leg.”

  “How do I know which one is which?” Milar demanded, motioning at the jumble of lines laid out before him.

  Tatiana had already inserted the first ankle node and was working on the one behind her knee. “There’s a number code on each one that matches the number scribed on the node,” she said, impatient. “Just connect the dots.”

  Reluctantly, Milar did as she asked, and had actually gotten two nodes seated and locked before Tatiana finished her six and started helping him.

  “Arm nodes next,” she said. “Same deal. I’ll do the left because it’s easier for me.” She started pressing the lines in, biting down the urge to vomit when she felt the tug of electrodes sliding into place under her skin. She shuddered at the click as the coupling made its lock.

  “That really bothers you, doesn’t it?” Milar commented softly.

  “A little,” she admitted. She wouldn’t look at him, though, refusing to let him see just how much it bothered her, lest he lose confidence in her plan. Then, once she had waited for him to finish her right arm, she said, “Okay, that’s good. Now hook up the temple node.”

  At this, Milar balked. “Are you sure? I’m not trained…”

  “You want me to do it?!” Tatiana demanded.

  At her flat stare, Milar swallowed. “Uh…”

  “Either I fumble around with it and try not to jam it in there sideways or you grow some balls and do it for me,” Tatiana said. “Just be careful and try not to kill me.”

  Milar, who had already picked up the thickest line, flinched, then glared at her. “Squid.” He was utterly gentle, however, when he took her head in one hand and began pushing the long, thin electrode down its receptacle column, into the center of her brain. Tatia
na remained utterly still as he finished and locked it in place.

  “Welcome, Captain Tatiana Eyre,” her soldier said, once the seal had been made.

  When Milar stepped back, he looked pale and his hands were shaking. “Don’t ever make me do that again.”

  “No promises.” She grabbed a spare clip from the tray and handed it to him. “Here. Put that on. It’ll keep the goo outta your nose.”

  “My nose?” Milar managed, swallowing. He grimaced down at the thing in his hand like a man gazing upon a wriggling flatworm.

  Tatiana grunted an affirmative. Carefully, she pushed one leg, then the other leg down into the stabilizing gel. Then she forced herself to sink into a fetal position inside. She dug around in the slime until she felt the stomach-hose. She uncapped it and, taking a deep breath, began feeding the slimy thing through her nostril.

  “What are you doing?” Milar cried.

  “My body’s metabolism is ramped up in here,” Tatiana said. “This provides a special chemical solution that both boosts concentration and makes sure my body is paralyzed while I’m flying.”

  Milar’s eyes went white all around. “Paralyzed?”

  Tatiana rolled her eyes. “You do it every night when you sleep. Same concept. And necessary, too. Otherwise I might be tempted to run with my feet instead of run with my soldier. This is going to keep me alive. Now any other stupid questions? Once I’ve got it connected, I won’t be able to talk.”

  “Why not?” Milar whispered. In less than twenty minutes, he’d gone from a big badass colonist who knocked out Coalition guards with a single flat-knuckled fist to looking like a bug-eyed little kid who had found himself on the wrong playground.

  Tatiana had to laugh. “Because after this, I’m going to hook up the mask.” She motioned to the black apparatus bristling with tubes and sensors. At Milar’s horrified look, she said, “I’ll be fine. I do it all the time. Just strip down and join me when I motion for you, ‘kay?”