Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising

by King, Sara

  “What the hell?” Patrick said. “You see that, Miles?”

  Milar was frowning at the soldiers as they danced around each other. Joel swept in from the side, and suddenly the jungle on the opposite bank of the Tear was alive with explosive rounds. The third soldier veered off, then careened into the jungle and embedded itself into the cliff.

  The lead soldier ducked, swept through the jungle following the same path its brother had just carved with its body, and, as the other two ships were trying to comprehend that, wove out of the canopy, around, and put a grouping of holes through a third soldier’s engines. It sputtered and dropped out of the sky, though the operator slowed its forward momentum with enough leg hydraulics to keep it from plowing into the cliff.

  Patrick turned just in time to see a huge, stupid grin on his brother’s face. “It’s her.”

  “Her, her?” Patrick demanded, looking back. It was hard to keep track of the soldiers, with the speed with which they were moving. “How the hell did she get a soldier?”

  But Milar was on the radio again. “Tell him to hold off, Jeanne. I think that’s Captain Eyre.”

  “Bullshit,” Jeanne retorted, “I saw them take her away in handcuf—”

  Above them, the fourth soldier went up in a blinding gout of flame. It swept downward in a billowing pillar of debris and smoke, rocking the Tear as it hit the ground and exploded. The survivor immediately spun into the mess above them, hitting a Bouncer cockpit with its balled-up fist as it went by. Then Patrick lost it in the sun, and he wasn’t sure which it was again until another soldier exploded. And another. Between the soldier and the TAG, within minutes, the sky was clear above them.

  “Milar?” the croak across the radio sounded barely alive. “Give me your coordinates.”

  Patrick frowned. “That didn’t sound like—”

  But Milar was already babbling their location into the radio. “Come on, sweetie. We’re right he—”

  The soldier dropped out of the sky and hit the ground with enough force to toss them both onto their backs.

  “Milar, what the hell is wrong with you?!” Patrick screamed, getting back to his feet. “If any of them heard that—”

  Then the belly of the soldier was opening and an operator rolled out onto its steaming hull, covered in transparent gel. Ripping the mask off of her face and sucking in deep, sobbing breaths as she yanked the nodes loose, the operator slipped off of the soldier and into the grasses. She immediately started to vomit into the brush.

  Behind him, Wideman started screaming, “Saw, saaaww!” and began flailing and kicking at the blankets they had wrapped around him.

  “Calm down, Paps!” Patrick cried, rushing to grab Wideman and stop him from thrashing his head into the propane campstove where they were boiling water. As Patrick ran to tackle the little old man, however, a sudden, painful buzz in his head almost threw him to his knees. “Shit, Shrieker!” he cried, glancing around them, looking for the tell-tale neon flesh of an alien blob. All he saw, however, was the naked, dripping body of an operator, head down, retching into the brush. He frowned. Had they made camp on a Shrieker mound? Had the operator’s impact triggered a Shriek? “Shrieker, Miles,” he repeated, as the pain increased. “We need to get the hell outta here. Now.”

  “Milar,” Captain Eyre whimpered, between heaves.

  Milar, completely oblivious to Patrick or their father, got to his feet and ran to the operator, sliding the last bit on his knees. “Tat, sweetie, are you okay?” Beside Patrick, Wideman had devolved into full-throated screams. “Boooones! Saw booooones!”

  “Shut up, Joe!” Patrick hissed, his heart hammering as he tried to figure out where the buzz was coming from. He slapped a hand over Wideman’s bearded face and started searching for trails of Shrieker slime.

  Still facing the ground, the operator started babbling mindless sobs about little girls and robots and surgery. As if a switch had flipped, the agony in Patrick’s head increased tenfold. He groaned and backed instinctively away, dragging Wideman with him, cradling his temple.

  Then the woman looked up at him and Patrick saw the circular metal bulb protruding from her forehead, the blinking little green lights ringing the side. The pain began to become a numbing roar in his head, and it was all he could do to stay upright. In his arms, Wideman started screaming himself hoarse.

  It’s her, Patrick thought, stunned. Oh shit, it’s her.

  On the ground, the girl was crawling forward, whimpering, clutching at the air between her and his brother, a weird whine forming in her throat.

  “Milar,” Patrick called, “you need to get away from her. Right now.” He kept backing away, dragging his father, until the buzz lessened in his head.

  Patrick watched his brother freeze a moment, seeing the strange new circular node in the woman’s head. His whole body went stiff, and Patrick saw him grimace. For a moment, Patrick thought his brother would do the smart thing and back away.

  “Please help me,” the operator whimpered, curling in on herself. “Please don’t leave me. Please.”

  It was as if his brother melted. One moment, Milar was stiffly getting back to his feet, the next he was reaching for her, softly murmuring, “Nobody’s gonna leave you, sweetie. Nobody.” Patrick had never seen his brother act as gently as he did when he reached down and plucked the slime-covered operator from the sticky alien grasses and pulled her into his arms.

  The operator responded by shuddering and clenching her fists in his shirt as she started to sob. The wave of relief that followed knocked Patrick to his knees. …relief? What the hell? He glanced down at Wideman, who had passed out, drooling on his shirt. He dragged his father several more feet, further easing the nagging static in his head.

  Hunched over the operator, Milar glanced at Patrick, then began stroking the woman’s sticky scalp. “It’s okay, love. Tell me what happened.”

  “Little girl. Robot. Table,” she sobbed into Milar’s chest. “Strapped down, couldn’t move. Blades in braaaiin.”

  Even at this distance, Patrick felt the nasty buzz increasing again in his head, and, holding the girl, Milar grimaced in obvious pain. “Calm down sweetie. Calm down. You’re safe, now. Nobody’s gonna mess with you again, got it? Pat and I got your back, and we’re both carrying really big guns.”

  Patrick felt her relief as the operator shuddered and buried her face in his brother’s chest. She cried for several minutes, babbling her gratitude, until she suddenly just stopped, and the mental fuzz went silent. Patrick breathed a sigh of relief, figuring she’d somehow killed herself.

  “She fell asleep,” Milar said, over his shoulder, careful to move only his head as to not jostle his charge. “Poor little thing’s had a really rough day. Any idea what the hell that was all about, Pat?”

  Patrick was still fighting the headache from being too close to her. “They put something in her head, obviously. We need to get rid of her, Miles.”

  The sudden snarl on his brother’s face was enough to make Patrick back up a pace. “You shut your goddamn mouth and help me figure out what’s wrong with her, Patty, or I swear to God you’re taking the next flight to Hell.”

  “She feels like a Shrieker, Miles! Look what she did to Dad! It could be a bomb, for all we know. Why would they operate on her and then let her go unless it was to kill us, Miles?”

  Milar gave him an utterly dark look. “Then it’s a bomb and we’re all dead. I told her I wouldn’t leave her. Get me a blanket.”

  You stupid bastard, Patrick thought, in shock. It was obvious, to him, that whatever this was, it was some sort of trap. His prodigy brother, being twice as smart as him, should have seen it as well. Yet he continued to brush the girl’s bald head and coo to her in gentle baby-talk. For a long moment, Patrick stood there watching in disbelief.

  Milar turned to glare at him again and made an impatient gesture towards their gear. Realizing Milar was serious, he almost left his idiot brother to his own grave. Then, reluctantly, Patrick went to the
ir supplies and pulled a blanket from the pack. Instead of walking the last ten steps into the area of emanation, however, he tossed the blanket at his brother’s lap.

  “Chickenshit,” Milar muttered, but he grabbed the blanket and tugged it around the operator’s unconscious form. She whimpered in her sleep and Milar cast him another glare. “It’s all right, sweetie. Nobody can hurt you anymore.”

  On the radio, Jeanne said, “You boys okay down there? We saw that operator drop onto your position… You need backup?”

  Patrick made a wide circle to the radio and said, “Yeah, Jeanne, we’re fine. I think. It’s Captain Eyre. She finally got that node we kept seeing.”

  There was a long silence before Jeanne said, “They let her go?”

  “Uh,” Patrick said. “Maybe? Not quite sure on the details yet, Jeanne.”

  “Why would they let her go, Patrick? Good behavior?”

  “Jeanne,” Patrick said uncomfortably, “I’m not sure—”

  “What’s it do?” she interrupted. “How do you know it’s not a bomb?”

  Patrick gave the tiny woman huddled in his brother’s arms a long look. “We don’t,” he said. “But I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”

  “I’m coming down there,” Jeanne said. “Tell your idiot brother that I’ll deal with this.”

  “And you tell her,” Milar said, much too softly, “If I see Jeanne within a mile of here before I ask for her presence, I’m going to put a bolt through her brain and start a necklace of my own.” He had lowered his chin to the operator’s bald head, and his eyes were like cold, hard topaz as he scowled at Patrick.

  “Uh,” Patrick said, “You need to stay in the air, Jeanne.”

  “Why’s that?” the pirate demanded. “His precious little cyborg needs to disappear, and if he’s too much of a chickenshit to do it, I’ll pull the trigger for him. What are friends for?”

  “He says he’s gonna kill you if he sees you,” Patrick said, meeting his brother’s psychotic stare, “and I believe him.”

  There was a long silence. Then, “Joel says he’s tired of flying and he wants to go have dinner. I’m leaving you two to your own graves. Might wanna cover up that soldier, before they come looking for it.”

  Patrick swallowed, watching his brother, feeling the after-effects of the operator’s panic still throbbing like a hot fuzz in his head. Still resting his chin on the operator’s head, Milar closed his eyes and started to hum a lullaby that their mother had sung to them before she died.

  Patrick realized, in that moment, that Milar wasn’t going to listen to reason. Nothing that he, Jeanne, or anyone else was going to say was going to keep Miles from pulling the gun off his hip and pulling the trigger if anyone tried to separate him from the time-bomb in his arms. Patrick had known that the Nephyrs had changed his brother, but this was the first time he wondered if they’d actually driven him over the edge. “Hey Jeanne?”

  “What, you retarded dumbass prick?”

  “I think it might be best for everyone if Milar and Captain Eyre stayed away from civilization for a few days. Until…they…get some things figured out.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Patrick took a deep breath, then let it out between his teeth, fighting the instinct to argue with his brother’s lunacy. “Come get me and Dad. We’ll be out on the ridge. Milar’s got this under control.” To his brother, he demanded, “Don’t you, Miles?”

  Without even opening his eyes, his brother made a rude gesture off in the direction of the ridge.

  “We’ll be there in two minutes. Run.”

  * * *

  The high buzz of a circular saw shrieked in her ears as it descended for her brow… Tatiana screamed and opened her eyes, panting.

  Jeez that hurts. Wonder if she’s gonna give me the Wide. “Easy,” a big voice rumbled against the top of her head. “I’m here. Calm down before you turn me into a vegetable, sweetie.”

  Milar. Tatiana shuddered and clenched the colonist’s big leather jacket in white-knuckled fists. For a long moment, she just huddled there, listening to him breathe, taking strength in having him around her. Then, cautiously, he moved above her, pulling away gently. Dropping his head to meet hers, he touched her chin with a big, callused finger and lifted it. “You okay?” he asked, his honey-brown eyes flickering to the thing in her forehead.

  Tatiana whimpered and looked away.

  Milar’s face darkened. I’ll kill them all, I swear to God. “Who did that to you? Nephyrs?”

  Tatiana shook her head, feeling tears stinging her eyes. “Little girl,” she whispered.

  “A little…girl.” Milar seemed confused. She must’ve been drugged. “You sure?”

  She nodded.

  Delicately, he offered, “You sure you weren’t drugged, princess?”

  “Robot. Anna.”

  Anna. Every muscle in Milar’s body went stiff around her, like rigid steel. “Brown eyes? Short black hair?”

  Just thinking about the little girl’s face made Tatiana’s next breath come out in a long, terrified whimper.

  He cursed. “Don’t worry, sweetie. Whatever it is, we’ll get it out.”

  “No!” Tatiana screamed, lunging away from him and scrabbling backwards across the alien plant-life.

  Immediately, Milar groaned and put a hand to his temple. Wideman was full of shit. She’s gonna kill me. Wincing, he said, “Okay! Calm down. Please calm down. We’ll leave it. Okay? We’ll leave it.”

  But Tatiana was shaking all over, dragging her knees back to her chest. “What’s happening to me?” she whimpered.

  Milar met her gaze under the hand on his temple and she saw him scared for the first time since she’d met him. “I don’t know. But we’re gonna find out, okay?”

  “You know Anna?” Tatiana whimpered. “What is she? A robot? She told me to stay away from you.”

  Milar’s face darkened to a thunderhead. “She did?” That little bitch. I’ll kill her.

  Tatiana nodded through tears. “She said you were hers. Told me not to touch you or she’d make it worse. Turn on the blades in my brain.” She felt herself start to hyperventilate again, remembering.

  His eyes flickered to the thing jutting from her forehead. “That’s got blades—” he winced and held his head again. “Okay, sweetie, no offense, but let’s talk about something nice again. Butterflies and rainbows and nonsensical bullshit, okay?”

  Remembering the doctors and Nephyrs and security personnel that had collapsed around her, Tatiana squeezed her eyes shut and nodded.

  Milar inched closer to her and, almost timidly, pulled her back into his warm embrace. “Okay,” he said against her skull, “what do you want to talk about? Something happy, right?”

  Her forehead started throbbing where his throat touched it, and Tatiana once again saw the little girl standing over her, lecturing her on the stunted brains of lab rats as she cut at her forehead with a scalpel.

  “How about movies, you watch movies?”

  Tatiana shook her head and once again felt the whine building in her chest.

  She’s gonna fry me like a toaster. For a long moment, Milar said nothing. Then, “The first time I saw you, I was three. We had kids. Nice house. Land. Good life. Happy. No war.”

  Tatiana swallowed, dragged from the memories of surgery out of sheer curiosity.

  “When I was five, I saw the two of us playing chess on the floor of a ship. I remember feeling bad because you were bleeding and I hadn’t offered you any bandages, so I gave you my shirt. Didn’t even realize where I’d seen that one before until my shirt was halfway off and you were staring at my dragons.”

  Tatiana continued to listen, the sound of his voice forcing off the whine of the bone-saw.

  “Saw your escape before, too, except I remembered it as I was tucking your cast under the blanket. Gave me the holy willies when I did, let me tell you. Thought I’d keep you from rabbiting by leaving you naked and reading a book on the sofa beside you. Much
to my surprise, you did it anyway. Tart.”

  Tatiana felt herself give a weak smile into the cotton folds of his shirt. “Ogre.”

  She felt Milar’s arms tighten around her. Oh thank God. Thank God, thank God… His big body started to shudder. After a few minutes, she heard him sniffle.

  “Don’t you know that snot and open wounds don’t mix?” Tatiana whispered, after a moment.

  He sniffed and lifted an arm to wipe his face. “Nasty stuff, snot.”

  “All germy and gross,” Tatiana agreed.

  “Really gross.”

  “So Wideman’s been having people draw me for a long time, then?”

  She’s gonna find out sooner or later. Grow a spine, you coward. “My dad didn’t carve you until I was twelve.”

  Tatiana frowned.

  “Everybody says I’m crazy and they think Patty’s the only one,” Milar whispered, his hot breath against her skull, “but I’ve been dreaming about you a really long time, Tat. The things I saw…” He kissed the top of her head. “Worth waiting for, you know?”

  He’s telling me he’s…psychic?

  “Runs in the family, I think,” Milar said. “First Dad, then me and Pat. I didn’t get the whole shebang, though. Just dreams.”

  Tatiana was so stunned she couldn’t speak.

  She’s gonna freak out. She’s gonna freak out and kill us both. “Now before you—”

  “I’m not going to freak out,” Tatiana said, leaning back to look up at him. “Did you just say you dreamed about me?”

  Milar licked his lips as he met her stare. “Uh.” Then, quickly, he babbled, “I don’t know who they came from, or why, but I know we’re supposed to have kids together.”

  For a long moment, Tatiana could only stare at him. After waiting for him to recant his words—which he didn’t—she finally croaked, “That’s the worst come-on line I’ve ever heard.”

  Milar laughed, his amber eyes nervous. “Uh…yeah. Sorry.” She doesn’t believe me. He looked away.

  “I believe you,” Tatiana said.

  Milar jerked his head back with a frown. “You do?”