Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising

by King, Sara

  “Too…weak…” Milar moaned near her ear, his upper body crushing her into the earth. “Damn…hard to…see…”

  “No!” she screamed. “I’ll die under here!”

  “Were they,” Milar gasped, “Right?” Then he went silent and still above her, the added limpness forcing the last bit of air out of her lungs.

  Were they…right? Tatiana stopped struggling and narrowed her eyes. “You’re faking.”

  After a moment, a whisper against her ear said, “What makes you think that, squid?”

  “Let me up,” she snapped.

  “I don’t know…you kidnapped me and tried to blow off my fingers. Maybe I like it here.”

  “I,” Tatiana gritted, “am so gonna kill you.”

  “Apologize,” Milar said.

  “No!”

  “Are you ticklish?” Milar said. He moved one of his hands to her ribs.

  Tatiana shrieked and started to struggle.

  “Careful,” Milar said, easily stroking his fingers down her ribs as she panicked and clawed underneath him. “You’re going to bump some nodes out of place. Just apologize, sweetie. Say, ‘Milar, I’m sorry I locked you in a bubble of goo and wouldn’t open the hatch when you wanted out. I’m sorry I stomped on your nuts and made you think I was going to spurt arterial blood all over if you twitched too hard even though the damn line was strangling you and the air tube wasn’t giving you enough air. Milar, I’m sorry I made you strip down to your boxers and forced you to spend two hours with your head crammed down against your chest and get goo down your asscrack. Milar, I’m sorry I never listen to instructions and that I probably would’ve gotten myself killed if my lifeline hadn’t been a dud. Oh, and Milar, I’m sorry I just tried to blow off your hand.’”

  “Stop,” she gasped. “I’m sorry!”

  “Only if you answer me one question first,” he said, still stroking her ribs.

  “Anything,” Tatiana screamed.

  “Which dragon,” he said. “Red or black?”

  “I like them both!” she shrieked.

  “Really,” he said, and she could tell he was grinning. “Why?”

  “They’re pretty,” she wailed.

  “You got a thing for dragons, coaler?” He was still tickling her.

  “Yes,” she managed, gasping. “I do, I do.”

  Milar flipped her over, grinning as his golden brown eyes scanned hers. Softly, he said, “What about the guy wearing them?”

  Tatiana’s breath caught in her chest. For a long time, all she could hear was the sound of her heart pounding against her eardrums. Then she nodded.

  “Better speak up,” he warned, reaching for her ribs again.

  She narrowed her eyes. “I think you’re the biggest knucker I’ve ever—”

  Milar closed the distance between them with a kiss. Instantly, Tatiana froze, feeling every objection flee in a rush of surprise. After a moment, she began to melt under him, and her hands reached up to bury themselves in his hair of their own accord.

  When Milar finally broke the kiss, they were both breathless. “Thank you for rescuing me, Princess,” Milar said. He leaned forward and touched his lips to her forehead. “I appreciate it.”

  Tatiana bit her lip and said, “Even if you got goo in your asscrack?”

  Milar grimaced and pushed himself into a seated position, straddling her. He eyed her a minute, his golden-brown eyes alive with amusement. Finally, he chuckled and shook his head. “Don’t remind me.” Standing, he offered a hand and helped pull her to her feet. “Come on. I hear Patrick coming.”

  Chapter 35

  Cliffhanger

  Magali sat in the cavern, shivering as the wind tugged the heat from her bruised and naked skin. Behind her, the tunnel was sealed with piles of energy-fused rock. She hadn’t moved for over a day. The Nephyrs had used her body, as promised. Instead of leaving the pistol for her to finish herself off when they were done, however, Colonel Steele had dropped it over the edge.

  “Oops,” he had said, watching it fall. Then he’d smiled. “Oh well. Anyone willing to kill a child to save herself doesn’t deserve an easy death.” He’d walked back to the cave entrance, then paused. “Oh, and that cute little pact we made don’t mean jack shit to me. The moment those eggers finish cleaning up after Harvest, they’re all going to be executed as traitors to the Coalition.” And then he’d left her there. Bruised, battered, and bleeding.

  Throughout it all, Magali hadn’t cried. After what she had done, she didn’t deserve to cry.

  But now, trapped, thinking of the hundreds of lives that were going to be lost because of her actions, she cried.

  You’re not trapped, Wideman said. He had talked her through the hours with the Nephyrs, distracted her during the worst moments with songs and little lullabies that her mother had used to sing to her as a child.

  Magali looked back at the stones blocking the exit, fused together with superheated energy charges, then back at the cliff. She supposed he was right. She could jump.

  She even got to her feet before her instinctual terror of falling rammed her knees back into the stone beneath her.

  Coward, she told herself.

  You’re not trapped, Wideman said again. Then he giggled. Killer.

  “Shut up!” Magali screamed, grabbing at her head. “Shut up, you asshole!”

  Then, realizing she was screaming at a figment of her imagination, Magali got up and strode to the edge of the cliff before her mind could register what she was doing. As soon as it did, her feet froze on the stone and it was all she could do not to fall into a crouch, gripping the red-orange rock beneath her in terror.

  Staring at the wind-whipped cliff, remembering Benny’s hands clutching at air as he fell, she said, “I’m a monster and I deserve to die.” And she knew, deep down, that they were the truest words she had ever spoken. Still, she couldn’t make herself take those last two steps.

  Looking over the edge, trying to work up the courage to jump, she could see Benny’s body far below. It was a tiny pale dot against a red-orange background. She had given Benny one of the guards’ shirts to wear, but the Nephyrs had stripped him of it the same time they removed the Coalition bodies from the base of the cliff.

  Now Ben’s body was a lone, naked dot upon the rocks below.

  They didn’t even bother to bury him, Magali thought, anguished. Sooner or later, the Fortune fauna would find the boy’s thin body and tear it apart. They’d had the chance to take him back with the dead guards, give him a decent burial, but they’d left him for the animals. Like he wasn’t even human.

  And Magali couldn’t do anything about it. She was responsible, yet she couldn’t do anything about it. She could either die of dehydration or jump, and neither of those ends would allow her to pile rocks over the body in a funeral cairn.

  He was just a kid. He didn’t do anything to you. You could have at least buried him.

  Though she hadn’t cried the entire day she spent with the Nephyrs, Magali felt tears once more heat her cheeks as she stared helplessly down at the body.

  Wideman was right. In that moment, given the chance, she would kill every man, woman, and cyborg wearing Coalition colors. She would shoot them until she ran out of charges, and then would go after them with a knife. If only she had a gun. She could kill them with a gun.

  Then go get it, Wideman told her.

  Magali froze, staring down at the twisting green band that was the bottom of the Snake. It was so far away it looked like she was gazing down upon a child’s model canyon. Slowly, her eyes moved to the rock-face beneath her.

  It wasn’t particularly flat. There were jagged cracks, wind-eaten hollows, even places where she could walk on narrow, slanting ledges.

  Immediately, she squeezed her eyes shut, her heart thundering in her ears. That’s a four thousand foot drop. No one climbs down a four-thousand-foot drop and lives. It’s suicide.

  Then everything seemed to fall into focus.

  Then I fall, sh
e thought. So what? I am dead anyway.

  She sat there, feeling the wind tug at her skin, trying to think.

  It’s four thousand feet, her mind kept babbling at her. The gun wouldn’t survive a four thousand foot drop. Its lenses and chambers would shatter.

  On a fancy gun, yes. But the same irritating three-second delay that had kept Magali from putting holes in every single Nephyr who had stepped through the tunnels two days before belonged to the same safeguarding system that kept the gun cushioned from every hazard that could befall it in the dirt and grime of normal combat. The designers of the A1550-Y had been more interested in utility and durability than maximum firepower. It had been the backup weapon for standard infantry troops for over a hundred years.

  The grunts’ve spent a century trying to break this thing, her father would always say when he brought it out. Anything you can imagine, those guys have done it. Best they ever do is break the sights off. He then showed her the welded line on his gun where the sights had been snapped off long ago, then welded back into place. This one got run over by a tank.

  As Magali stared down at the bottom of the Snake, she thought, Yeah, but did they drop it from four thousand feet? She considered climbing all the way down, her body straining and trembling, only to find the gun a shattered husk.

  Don’t you want to kill them? Wideman’s voice asked her.

  Feeling that ocean of acidic rage eating at her stomach, Magali’s fingers tightened into fists. She took the last two steps and had put her hands on the lip of stone. She sought out a crevice, then put her leg over the edge. The howling wind grabbed her and tugged. Her instinctual terror struck, then, trying to unfurl in her gut and spread outward into her limbs.

  Fuck off, she told it. And started to climb.

  Chapter 36

  Tatiana Flies Cargo

  Patrick grimaced at the cyborg standing beside his brother. “You can’t be serious, Miles.”

  Milar gave him a look that could have detonated concrete. “Serious about what, Patty?”

  Patrick blushed, knowing that now would be a good time to change the subject, but he couldn’t help himself. He jabbed a finger at the cyborg. “She put you back in Nephyr hands. Our face is plastered on every single government wanted list there is because of her. She got the whole town of Deaddrunk strip-searched. They confiscated Veera’s ship because of her.”

  “She’s done with all that,” Milar said. He winked—winked—at the cyborg. “Ain’t ya, squid?”

  “What can the little runt do that you or I can’t?” Patrick demanded.

  “Have babies, for one,” the cyborg said.

  Patrick narrowed his eyes at her. She peered back, completely unaffected. With a growl, Patrick said, “Really? I didn’t think the Coalition wanted baby cyborgs running around.”

  “I signed the waiver,” the cyborg said, her blue-violet eyes challenging. “Took a few drugs. It’s all there. Baby.”

  “Maybe,” Patrick said, “But how does a jumbled hunk of metal drop a kid without hurting itself?”

  Milar stepped between them. “She’s coming, Patty. Stop being a dickhead.”

  “We never hurt her!” Patrick snapped. “We fixed her broken bones, and didn’t murder her twenty different times when we should have. And she turned you over to the Nephyrs and sang to the Coalition investigators like you were Satan himself. They put the interviews on the news feed, Milar. She said you raped her.”

  Milar lifted a brow. “So?”

  Patrick sputtered. “She lied.”

  “I told her to lie,” Milar said. “She did exactly what she needed to do.”

  Patrick frowned. “You told her to say that you’d made her eat her own feces?”

  Milar looked a bit shocked, then turned to the cyborg. “You said that?”

  She blushed scarlet. “Maybe.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Milar said.

  “You told me to make it bad,” Tatiana said.

  Milar continued to stare at her.

  “We can’t go back to Deaddrunk,” Patrick said. “They’ve had a group of Nephyrs in the hills, watching that place ever since they discovered the antique guns Landborn cached in the mines. Thank God they didn’t find the energy weapons.”

  Milar winced. “What about Dad?”

  Patrick froze, his eyes flickering back to Tatiana. She was watching them much too closely.

  “Oh, come off it,” Milar said. “Sooner or later, she’s gonna know Wideman’s our Pop, if she hasn’t already guessed.” He glanced over at her and raised a questioning eyebrow.

  The cyborg flushed and nodded.

  “Just great!” Patrick cried. “Anything else you want to tell the coalers while you’re at it, Milar? You know she’ll just go right back and start singing the moment we take our eyes off her.”

  “Not gonna happen,” Milar said.

  “Why?” Patrick demanded. “Because you rescued her?”

  “I rescued him,” the cyborg corrected. She jabbed the tip of her finger into his brother’s chest. “He was running around like a headless chicken.”

  “Yeah,” Milar said. He grinned at her. Something passed between them, and the girl blushed.

  Patrick was still staring. She rescued him? How could a four-foot-nine cyborg rescue his brother? With her particular brand of cyborg, the metal actually hindered the muscles’ normal movement, so she was a weak four-foot-nine cyborg. Not only that, but why? Why would she bother? She had been home free…

  Patrick scowled at the cyborg. “How do you know it wasn’t a setup, Miles? They could have let you escape together so she could infiltrate the rebel cause.”

  “She made her choice,” Milar said. “Just like Wideman said she would.”

  Of course he would pull the Wideman card. Patrick felt his mouth tighten. “Fine.” He glared at the cyborg. “Goddamn it. Fine.” He stuck out his hand. “Patrick.”

  The cyborg gave it a puzzled look.

  “Since we never got a chance to introduce ourselves properly,” he growled. “My name is Patrick Whitecliff. The oaf you just dragged out of the Nephyr compound is my brother, Milar Whitecliff. He’s the one with the dragons.”

  She looked up at him and blushed. Then, gingerly, like she expected him to rip her arm off, she reached forward and put her hand in his. “Tatiana Eyre,” she said. He felt the metal node digging into his palm as her small, smooth fingers tightened on his. Her hand was sticky, just as it had been the day they’d caught her outside her soldier.

  “Call me Pat,” Patrick said.

  Milar snorted. “Call him Patty. Everyone else does.”

  “And I hate it,” Patrick growled, squeezing the woman’s hand in warning. “Call me Pat.”

  “I had a sister named Patty.” She grinned up at him evilly, her odd, purplish eyes dancing.

  Patrick had to smile, despite himself. “So how’d she save you, Miles?”

  “Flew me out in the belly of her goddamn soldier,” Milar said, shaking his head. “Disgusting stuff dried already. I think my ass cheeks are going to be stuck together for the next ten years.”

  “It comes off in the shower,” Tatiana said quickly. “Just soap it up good.”

  His brother gave the cyborg an evil look. “Maybe you could help me with that later.”

  She turned red as a beet. “Um.”

  Watching the exchange, Patrick’s mouth fell open. His brother was…flirting?

  “Oh, shut your trap, Pat,” Milar said, giving him a meaningful look. “It ain’t like I never had a naked girl in the shower before. The cyborg and me came to an understanding, that’s all.”

  Patrick frowned, then glanced from Milar to Tatiana. Suddenly, it struck him. He doesn’t want her to know he’s a virgin.

  Patrick threw back his head and laughed.

  This time, it was Milar who turned red as a beet.

  Cackling, Patrick cried, “You just don’t want her to know you’re—”

  Milar stepped forward and punched him in
the shoulder, hard. Patrick doubled over, unable to stop laughing.

  “He’s what?” the cyborg asked. She frowned up at Milar. “You’re what?” Patrick could see what she was thinking. …diseased?

  That made him laugh harder, until he was choking and gasping.

  Milar shoved him over. “You say one more word, Patty,” Milar growled, squatting over him, “And next time people see you, they won’t be able to tell you’re my brother.”

  “Sorry,” Patrick choked from the ground. “Sorry.” Then, seeing the baffled look the girl was giving his brother, he started cackling again.

  “Screw you,” Milar growled, stepping around him and stomping up the ramp of the ship.

  The cyborg stayed behind, eying Patrick like he was a strange new type of Shrieker. “He’s what?” she asked, once Milar’s heavy footsteps had disappeared inside the ship.

  “He’s gonna be paying me a lot of money,” Patrick said. “Starting today.”

  She frowned down at him. “He owes you money?”

  “He will,” Patrick said. “If he wants me to keep my mouth shut.”

  “Fuck you!” Milar shouted from inside the ship. Then Patrick heard the sounds of feet charging up the metal stairs.

  “Then he’s…” Tatiana lowered her voice to a whisper. “…married?”

  Married. Oh, that was just too perfect. Patrick threw back his head again and roared.

  A few feet away, the ship’s engines began to warm up. The cyborg gave the ship a nervous look, then glanced back at Patrick.

  “Better…go,” Patrick said, gasping, gesturing toward the ship. “I’ll be there in a minute.” He rolled onto his belly, chuckling into the dirt.

  Tatiana gave him one last, wary look, then jogged to the boarding ramp and disappeared inside. Somehow, Patrick found the strength to climb aboard the ship before Milar took off. He collapsed onto the deck, still laughing. Tatiana and Milar had retreated to the cockpit, leaving him alone to get his glee under control.

  He was getting to his feet to climb up to the cockpit when Milar flipped on the intercom and said, “Patrick, you need to see this.”