by King, Sara
“You’d live longer by not bringing up ancient history, Joel.”
Rubbing his head, Joel peered up at Jeanne and said, “Why? I’m sure you’ve had tons of other guys since me that made that ‘best night of your life’ pale in comparison.”
Her flat scowl was all he needed.
“Oh.” Joel laughed. “Okay. So I guess I’m just that good.”
Jeanne’s face remained utterly impassive behind the half-yard tubes of black steel.
“Geo had me pinned between a rock and a hard place,” he sighed. “I needed that money, Jeanne. He was gonna take a finger.” He held up his left hand and wiggled them for her. The shotgun shifted from his face to his hand. Seeing that, Joel quickly made a fist and dropped his hand back to the bed, clearing his throat nervously. “Uh. How long have I been under? And where’s my ship?”
“How about you answer my questions first, considerin’ I’m the one with the gun, and I’m going to blow your head off if I don’t like what you’ve got ta say, just like I should have done back when you were plugging my ears with bullshit.”
Joel snorted. “Please. You do that, you’ll miss out on all these pretty teeth.” He smiled for her, showing dimples. “No cavities, baby.”
He saw Jeanne’s trigger-finger twitch and his heart skipped. He swallowed, hard. “Uh, Magali Landborn wouldn’t let me leave without them.” It wasn’t exactly true, but it was probably an answer that Jeanne would believe.
“You want me to believe that, Joel?”
He grimaced, peering down the dark double barrels of the gun. “Uh…yes?”
Jeanne rushed him and made a commendable attempt to shove the gun up his left nostril. “Magali wasn’t with the eggers, Joel,” she snarled. “And she sure as hell didn’t arrive with you in Deaddrunk, and she wasn’t in the pile of corpses the Nephyrs threw out in the bogs after they finished with the three hundred you left behind. Where is she?”
“Uh,” Joel said, his head tilted back by the pressure of the gun, “I got hijacked. I had to leave her on the cliff. They probably killed her and left her in the mines.” It wasn’t going to be what Jeanne wanted to hear, but it was a fact of life, and Magali had known the chances.
“Or maybe she shot you, eh, Joel?” Jeanne snarled down the gun. “That how you got that nice hole in your chest?”
“Jeanne,” Joel said carefully, “I’m sure your killer instincts are in overdrive, looking at these beautiful chompers, but if you want to ever see Magali Landborn alive again, this is really important. How long have I been under?”
For a long time, the pirate simply studied him, and he watched the gears churn in her mind as she considered killing him anyway. Then she lowered the gun and said, “Four days since you crawled back to the controls and shuttled the Deaddrunk survivors to safety.”
Joel felt his heart start to hammer. “Shit.” A lot could happen in four days, and if they’d killed three hundred eggers…
Jeanne was watching him with the acuity of a cat. “The Nephyrs got her, didn’t they?”
Joel grimaced. Magali Landborn was a sort of legend to those who followed the babblings of the weird little ‘oracle.’ “Like I said, we had a hitch in the plans. A bunch of assholes with guns decided to hijack my ship when I was working on one of the last runs. I left her halfway up a cliff.”
“Any way she climbed down?
“No,” Joel said, shaking his head. “No way.”
Jeanne gave him a long look, then said, “Miles and Patrick went down in the Tear four days ago. Nephyrs went in looking for them and vanished and the Coalition sent a few Pods and a dozen ground teams. Whole place is like a beehive. I need you to fly me in after them.”
Rubbing the kinks out of his nose, Joel hesitated at the last. “You’ve got a funny way of asking for my help.”
The pirate gave him a cool smile. “Who says I’m asking?”
“They’ve got Nephyrs on the ground and you think we should go waltz in and check it out?’ Joel demanded. “Are you nuts?” The Tear gave him the creeps. Sure, there were plenty of Shrieker mounds in it, if you knew where to look, but entire colonies had disappeared on its metal-rich banks. Followed by the investigation teams that went looking for them. Followed by the military teams that went in after them. There was a good reason why it was a no-fly zone, and Joel would rather leave it that way.
“You misunderstand,” Jeanne said, giving him a cruel smile. “You’re taking me to the Tear, Joel.” Leaning forward, still grinning, she said, “And you’re going to shoot down as many of the bastards as you can. We’ve never had so many in one place before.”
Joel’s lips formed a little round O. “Uh. I don’t shoot people, Jeanne. I kinda left that behind when I left the service. This ship didn’t even have guns on it until that rat-bastard Geo stole it from me.”
Jeanne’s smile was sinister as she plucked at his shirt. “Tell ya what. You’re going to take a hint from that fancy ship and you’re going to start doing something honorable with your damn life, or I’m going to take you out back, shoot you in the head, and bury you in a bog like those three hundred eggers you abandoned before I go give your ship to someone who can use it properly.”
Joel laughed. “What, no necklace for me?”
“You don’t deserve the necklace.” Her emerald eyes were flat. “You deserve a bullet.”
Seeing the sincerity on her face, Joel cleared his throat. “What about the Whitecliff boys? We snap off a bunch of wings and drop a bunch of ground-pounders in their lap, they’re gonna be a might bit irritated with us, don’tcha think?”
“It’ll give Milar more to shoot at,” Jeanne said.
“Oh.” Joel cleared his throat. “What if I want to go check on Magali, instead?”
“Magali can take care of herself.”
Joel narrowed his eyes at the pirate. “I think we’ll check on Magali, then go do whatever the hell it is you want me to do.”
Jeanne smiled at him. “You know what the difference between a pirate and a smuggler is, Joel?”
Joel immediately winced. He did, indeed, know the difference, and much of it had to do with the massive gun she carried in her hands and her willingness to use it. “One of them likes to pretend she’s the tooth fairy?”
“One of them kills people.” Jeanne patted the gun. “So,” she said. “Last chance, Joel. You gonna die Ferryman Joel or you gonna go out in a ball of flame as Fireman Joel?”
Joel laughed. “Lady,” he said, standing. Then he caught himself, looking Jeanne up and down, eyes catching on the leather clothing, the hunting knife, the shotgun, and the string of molars. “Well…woman, at least…” He cleared his throat, returning his eyes to her face. “If I take us into the air to do battle with Honor, I’ll be landing again in time for dinner and a hot bath. No ball of fire for me, babe.”
Jeanne gave him a grin that unsettled him. “We’ll see.”
Chapter 43
Science is Fun
Tatiana groaned and opened her eyes. Immediately, she found she could move her arms and legs, and she screamed and threw herself off of the operating table, yanking IV lines free of her body and tumbling to the floor in a metallic clatter of nodes and operating instruments.
…taking too long. We should go in there.
A knock thundered on the double-doors, making the deadbolts rattle. Stumbling, Tatiana noticed that the door to the surgeon’s prep-room was open. In a panic, she dragged herself across the cold, antiseptic-smelling tiles, trailing an IV bag. The shackles, along with a good portion of her forehead, were haphazardly cast into a pile near the door. Seeing the circular chunk of skull—and the floppy piece of eyebrow muscle and skin that the girl had cut away, Tatiana’s stomach heaved and she retched a thin stream of bile onto the floor.
They shouldn’t be taking this long. She stopped screaming an hour ago.
The double-door pounded again. “Hey, guys! You in there? What the hell, man? What’s taking so long?”
Tatiana cra
wled across the cold tiles, her fingers trembling as they scrabbled for purchase against the indentations in the grout. Whimpering, she yanked the IV loose and pulled herself into the darkened prep-room and, her arm shaking, pushed the door shut behind her.
The prep-room was about twenty feet wide, with two armless chairs, a sink, several cubbies, and, above the sink, a mirror. Tatiana let out a moan and dropped away from the sheet of glass, clutching at the floor. She had seen it all. The girl had adjusted the operating screen and made her watch.
Tatiana retched again, then just huddled under the sink, shivering. A few feet away, she saw another door, a single one leading to the doctors’ entrance. Tatiana just stared at it, unable to make her arms and legs move.
“See that, Captain? That’s your frontal lobe. Now we’re just going to slide the scalpel in right there and make a small incision…”
Tatiana moaned and curled in on herself, shuddering.
Something is wrong. I should break down the door.
“Hey, man, last chance! What the hell is going on in there?”
Tatiana started to whine. It sounded odd, coming from her throat, but she could no more stop it than she could stop breathing.
“See that? Those twisted little gray lumps are generally accepted to be the driving force behind your memory, your motor function, and your ability to problem-solve. They’re also your emotional control center, your language center, and the seat of your individual personality. If I were to carve out a little chunk here, for instance, you’d no longer be a cocky, know-it all pilot. If you could still talk afterwards, you’d probably have trouble finding joy in, for instance, sex with smart, muscular men you don’t deserve. Science is fun, isn’t it?”
In the other room, the double-door exploded from its hinges.
Oh fuck. We are so screwed.
“She got away! The bitch got away! Alert the base! Four men down and we’ve got a fugitive in the medical wing! Female operator, hundred and fifty centimeters, blue eyes.” I am so gonna kill someone. Tatiana heard thunderous footsteps hurtle to the center of the room, then something heavy and metal went careening across the room, to crash into the far wall. She huddled further into herself, muffling the whine against her forearm.
“There are some people, however, who believe the frontal lobe is also the slowly-evolving center for crude psychic activity in humans. That’s why you’re my guinea-pig today. I’m going to see if we can stimulate your primitive little brain into producing its own form of Yolk. Wouldn’t that be neat?”
How the hell did she get these off? I had the only key… She heard chains jingle, then drop back to the floor. Then she heard leather creak as someone squatted. What the hell is that? Somebody’s forehead? That little shit is so gonna die. The heavy footsteps thundered the rest of the way across the operating room and the operating room door slammed inward on its hinges, hitting the sink above her hard enough to crack the basin. Tatiana shuddered and pulled her knees closer to her body.
The Nephyr stepped through the prep room door and slammed it behind him, making the wall rattle against Tatiana’s back. Looking up at his tall, glittering form, Tatiana felt her heart shoot streaks of acid into her arms and legs.
The Nephyr hesitated, reaching up and touching his skull. Damn, my head hurts. Need another migraine pill from the doc. Then he took three strides forward, yanked the far door off its hinges, and threw it aside as he disappeared into the corridor beyond. So dead…
“Not that I expect you to understand this, my wide-eyed little lab-rat, but basically, the native fauna of Fortune—that’s the animals, for those of us who are too stupid to know what that means—exhibit innate psychic development that far surpasses anything in the human body. Thus, because you have such pitiful material to work with, I’m going to be inserting a device into your brain that will affect the cells during mitosis. What that means, my little lab rat, is that it will randomly stimulate your pathetic little brain cells to replicate, and when they do, it will begin to make small changes to your DNA during each division. And, just so your head doesn’t explode, I programmed in something special, just for you. One half of each dividing cell will basically receive a self-destruct mechanism after final division and will be absorbed back into the brain. You better be grateful—it took me an extra ten minutes. I just hope I got the frequency right, otherwise they’ll die too fast, and you’ll become a vegetable.”
Tatiana couldn’t stop shaking. Her forehead was an aching, pounding throb, but she couldn’t bring herself to touch it. She turned slightly and vomited again, though nothing came out.
In the other room, she heard more footsteps, softer, this time.
Dumbass is gonna get what’s coming to him. This is his baby, he said. Let him do his job, he said. Director is gonna string him up by his pretty, glittering balls.
A woman stepped through the door that the first Nephyr had cracked off of its hinges, then switched on the light and shut the door behind her. She slowed when she saw the second door utterly pulverized and laying to one side. She sighed, deeply, then lifted her glittering face to the cubbies. Doctors must’ve been in on it. No one was scheduled for this room…
The Nephyr walked over to the cubbies and started rifling through the scrubs and clean white shoes contained therein. Huddled on the floor behind her, Tatiana heard herself start to whine again.
Damn, my head. Must be my period again. Hell. Just what I need.
Tatiana shivered on the floor, watching the woman lift her hand to her head and bend forward, groaning.
“Now here’s the really cool part—the longer it’s in there, the more alien you’ll become. Fun, huh? Oh, and I took a hint from Dobie. Try to take it out and you die. Disconnect it and you die. Disable it and you die. Hell, you should be very careful with it, because if it gets tapped just a bit too hard, you die. But then, you should be used to that, right? Nothing new for an operator with a temple-receptor. Just think of it as another node, sweetie. But, in case you’re not convinced, let me show you something…”
Tatiana whimpered, remembering the little blades that the girl had shown her, protruding from the end of the device. They had extended and started whipping back and forth the moment the girl pushed a tiny pink button on a keychain-sized transmitter. The girl smiled at her over the churning blades.
“Basically, my little pet, do anything except be a good lab-rat for me, and this thing is going to scramble that inadequate little brain of yours with these nice little blades right here. See them? Look kind of like a food processor, right? You fiddle with this thing and it’ll eat its way through your brain in a matter of oh, a second. Isn’t that right, Dobie? Now hold really still while I slip it in there…”
The Nephyr frowned and lifted her head, turning.
“Now I want you to remember something, when this is all over. I own you, now. See this little pink button? I push it, I get to watch you die. Doesn’t matter where you are, or how much interference it’s got—you piss me off, you die. Now. I know you’re listening, ‘cause you’re bleeding like hell. So here’s your first command from your new owner. You stay the hell away from Milar. Keep your hands off him, got it? He’s mine.”
The Nephyr’s dark brown eyes found Tatiana huddled under the sink and she frowned. “What the—” What the hell is that in her head?
Tatiana’s throat started to burn as her scream came out as another high-pitched whine.
The Nephyr winced, then stumbled slightly, her hands clutching her skull. “Shit,” she mumbled. Raising her voice, she called, “Guys! I found her! She’s in here on the floor under the sin—”
Tatiana’s cried out in animal terror and started sliding sideways along the wall, panting.
The Nephyr grunted and felt to one knee. “What the hell?” she muttered. “My head.”
Four more Nephyrs piled into the room, and immediately, their glittering faces turned to find Tatiana whimpering against the wall. One of them sneered and started towards her. “Looks like the
docs had a bit of fun with her,” he laughed, bending down to reach for her. Man, this is going to be so much fun.
“P-Please,” Tatiana whimpered. She cringed away from him, the whine coming in quick pants, now.
The Nephyr woman on her knees frowned. It’s her. It’s the little shit doing it. “Don’t touch her!” the woman shouted, reaching for something on her belt.
Ignoring his comrade, the Nephyr man wrapped his glass-hard fingers around her throat and smiled at her. “Why? I’m just gonna have a little fun of my own.” Tatiana felt something flip inside of her, like an explosion of terror, shoved outward. Instantly, the Nephyr’s eyes went wide and he crumpled. The others, too, dropped. The woman on the floor, who was further away, had just enough time to pull her gun from its holster before she, too, slumped forward, the pistol still clutched in a fist.
Seeing the bodies, feeling the man’s rock-hard fingers slide slowly from her throat and down her chest as his body slumped to the floor in front of her, Tatiana felt another burst of terror slide out of her, bigger this time, along with a puddle of urine. Out in the adjoining room, she heard other bodies drop.
Cringing, Tatiana tugged her knees back to her chest and stayed there, staring at the corpses. None of them moved. The woman’s crotch grew wet with urine. The room started to stink of feces.
Several minutes passed before one of the Gryphons stepped into the room, his footsteps absolutely silent as his big, dark body entered the blindingly-lit space. He was carrying a gun out and ready. He surveyed the corpses, then looked down at Tatiana. Tatiana glanced up at him and cringed, her blood thundering like bile in her ears.
“Detainee Eyre, you are hereby placed under arrest for the deaths of nine Nephyrs, pending further investigation.” The robot started towards her, and Tatiana let out another low moan and tried blindly to slip back down the wall, away from him. The Gryphon’s movements started to grow jerky as he approached, then came to a complete standstill beside her, half-crouched, frozen in place like a wax statue.