by King, Sara
His face contorted in a sneer. “We’ll see about—”
She shot him. Then she backed through the door and glanced behind her at the Yolk draftees. “That all of them?” she demanded. “Twenty?”
Several hundred startled faces just stared at her from the dusty road, the only sounds that of the tinkling chain linking them together. Further down the streets, a few hundred more city-goers had gathered to stare. Frustrated, Magali turned to the hotel supervisor. “How many Nephyrs registered to spend the night?” she demanded.
It took the manager a long, startled minute to answer. “Aside from yours?” His voice sounded like a rough whisper. “Twenty.”
“Okay,” Magali said, lowering her gun for the first time since she’d started shooting. “Which one was the leader?”
“He went in the bar,” one of the closer colonists offered, after a moment.
Stuffing the guns into her belt, Magali crossed the road again and re-entered the bar. Jersey was still standing inside the door, looking at the four dead Nephyrs. Magali knelt beside the leader and began searching his pockets. Finding the keys she was looking for, she got back to her feet.
A warm, glass-hard hand caught her wrist and held it.
Magali froze, reality suddenly slamming back into place. She knew, without even trying, Jersey could rip the limb from her body if he so desired. Slowly, she looked up into Jersey’s face. He was still staring down at the four dead Nephyrs.
“Was that all of them?” he asked softly. “Should be twenty.”
Her body trembling with the sudden, cold terror of being gripped by those stony hands, Magali nodded.
He continued to hold her by the wrist, anchoring her in place with all the authority of a five-hundred-pound statue. “What you just did,” he whispered, “is impossible.”
She swallowed uncomfortably, but didn’t try to struggle against his grip. She knew better than that.
Very slowly, Jersey lifted his head to look into her eyes. “You’re the one they call Killer, aren’t you?”
Magali grimaced and looked away.
He lifted a warm, stone-hard finger to her chin and forced it inexorably back to face him. “Aren’t you?”
Magali felt tears stinging her eyes. “I have to go free those people.”
“Not even a robot could’ve made those shots,” he whispered. “Nobody could have.”
“I know,” Magali whispered. “Anna told me enough times. Made fun of me. Teased me that I really was a robot that they’d dressed up and made to think it was human. Please let go of my arm.”
“You shouldn’t have enough strength in your whole body to kick a Nephyr like that,” he said softly. He was looking down at her in awe.
“Please let go of me,” Magali whimpered. Being this close to a Nephyr, her wrist locked in his vicelike grip, it was all she could do not to raise the gun again and pull the trigger until the gun overheated.
Jersey seemed to blink and catch himself, and dropped her hand with a suddenness of someone who had touched a burning stove. “Sorry,” he muttered. “God…sorry.” He held up his hands in peace.
Magali took a quick step back, then, when it was obvious he wasn’t going to reach for her again, she turned to go. She was most of the way outside when she paused at the door, feeling his eyes burning into her back. “I’m not a robot,” she said, giving him an unhappy smile over her shoulder. “Believe me. I already checked.” Then she turned and went outside to free the eggers from their shackles.
Absolute silence reigned as she stepped back outside into the dusty sunlight. The road outside glittered with the bodies of Nephyrs, their corpses already buzzing with the fat black bodies of tadflies. People were staring at her as she stepped over the black-clad bodies, the keys in her hands.
They’re staring at me, Magali thought, utterly uncomfortable as she started working her way down the ranks, unlocking the shackles with the key from the dead Nephyr. No one moved or said a word. They just stared.
When she was three-quarters of the way through the prisoner lines, a gray-haired woman peered back at her as she worked the key in the shackle, her weather-lined face holding that same wide-eyed awe she’d seen in Jersey’s face. “You’re Magali Landborn, aren’t you?” the woman said, much too loudly. “The one they call ‘Killer.’”
Magali hesitated, flinching in on herself. Her voice wavering, she said, “You must have me confused with someone else.”
“The one who could shoot a bulls-eye at a mile, with iron sights.”
Very slowly, Magali released the woman’s shackles and handed her the keys. “I’ve gotta get going. You can release the rest of them.” She turned to leave, suddenly needing to get away from the silence, the stares… She crossed the road, feeling every eye following her every movement, and pulled open the door of the bar, glancing into the darkness inside.
“Jersey!” she called into the interior, hating the way her voice cracked. “Let’s go.”
A moment later—much too long for Magali—the Nephyr stepped out into the sun beside her and shut the door gently behind him, his body covered with weapons from those she had slain. She felt the tension in the air stiffen, felt the colonists flinch away from him.
“Come on,” she said, grabbing him by the hard, glittering hand. “Let’s go. Now.”
But Jersey was staring at the dead Nephyrs, looking in shock. “Magali, you just killed twenty Nephyrs in less than a minute,” he said softly.
“She turned a Nephyr,” someone gasped, nearby.
“It is Magali Landborn!” someone in the crowd shouted. “The Killer is here!”
“She beat them at the Tear, too!” someone shouted. “She killed two dozen operators with her rifle, hanging out the door of a cargo ship!”
“And Deaddrunk, too!” someone else shrieked. “And Yolk Factory 14!”
“Landborn!” someone else screamed. “Landborn! Landborn!”
More mouths started to take up the chant, and Magali cringed backwards, intending to back into the bar to escape the stares.
Jersey’s hand once more found her wrist and held her there. “They need this,” he whispered. “Stay.”
“Land-Born, Land-Born, LAND-BORN, LAND-BORN!” The very walls of the buildings around her began to shake, and the air in her lungs started to vibrate in her chest. More people were coming out of buildings and joining the gathering in the street, and as the sound reached an ear-splitting crescendo, it seemed the whole city started to chant her name around her.
“Please let go of my hand,” Magali whimpered, trying to back behind Jersey to hide from the people screaming her name. But they had surrounded her, filling the streets, packed dozens deep. There was nowhere to hide as they chanted at her with wide, awestruck eyes and mindless smiles.
“Jersey,” she whimpered. “Please.”
The Nephyr, who had been scanning the faces in stunned amazement, turned to look down at her, a look of shock on his face. “I think you just did it.”
“Did what?” Magali whispered. All around her, men were picking up the dead Nephyrs, dragging them off, taking their weapons, sifting through their vehicles and belongings. She saw a glittering foot raised above the crowd, then a leg, as someone hoisted a dead Nephyr up a flagpole to hang upside-down, naked and limp.
“Oh my God,” Jersey whispered, as the roar around them became so loud she could no longer hear herself think. “Mag…you just started the Revolution.”
Outer
Bounds
II
Fortune’s
Folly
EXCERPT:
“Greetings, fellow ex-Nephyr draftees!”
Now that the shooting was over, utter silence hung in the air as Anna paced briskly in front of the group of kids, hands clasped behind her back. Doberman stood off to the side, cannons still protruding from his forearms, watching the scene indifferently.
“As you’ve probably noticed,” Anna continued, “you are not skinless ice-cubes hurtling towards
the Inner Bounds, and your former escorts are now dismantled pieces of space-junk. Some of you are probably wondering why.”
She saw the flicker of curiosity across their faces, but none of them asked. Good.
Anna smiled at them. “Glad you asked. For the duration of this meeting, I’m your new Evil Overlord, and this is my pet robot, Dobie. We’ve come to the decision that sending our best and brightest off to the Nephyr Academy is counter-productive for the future of Fortune, so we commandeered your shuttle. If you please me, some of you will get offered a job. If you don’t…” Anna shrugged. “You’ll go home and forget this ever happened.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Make babies, spread the genetic, that sort of thing.”
“Evil Overlord,” one of the older boys, probably twelve or thirteen, scoffed. “Riiiight. What are you, like six?”
Anna stopped and gave him an irritated stare. “Dobie, how old am I?”
“You are nine, Overlord,” Doberman said obediently. They had agreed not to use her real name at the outset of their mission, and Anna loved the ring it had coming in the form of a robot’s matter-of-fact reply.
“But I thought that government robots couldn’t be hacked,” the kid said, blinking up at Dobie.
Anna sighed, deeply. “They can’t. Dobie, send that kid back home to his mommy. He’s obviously outta his league.” With a swiftness that delighted her, Doberman stepped forward, grabbed the kid, who screamed and struggled, shocked him senseless, then administered a forgetfulness serum mixed with a bit of long-term knockout drug, and dragged him off to a corner, where the kid slumped against the wall and started to drool. One down. Twenty-five to go. Anna scanned the remainder. “Any other stupid questions?”
Most of the kids started to babble and step backwards in obvious terror, but there were a handful that stood their ground. A fat little pumpkin of a girl and a twiggy boy with long ice-blonde hair tied at the nape of his neck, for instance, just watched her as placidly as if they were all sitting around at a tea party.
“All right,” Anna said, clapping her hands together. “Dobie is going to start asking you each a series of questions with increasingly more difficult answers to determine just how useful you are to us. If you fail more than six questions or if your overall score displeases me, you join that idiot over there and forget this conversation ever took place.” She gestured to the drooling kid, then motioned to the closest kid. “It’s all pretty basic stuff. Go ahead, Dobie.”
The first kid peed himself and started stuttering so badly he couldn’t answer Dobie’s questions, and he got added to the corner. Two girls passed, though barely. Then a third girl failed. “Aren’t you going to tell me what I got wrong?” the girl sobbed, when Anna shook her head a seventh time and gestured for Dobie.
Anna laughed. “This is a test, not a learning experience, dipshit. Dobie, get rid of her.” The fourth girl likewise failed. “He said cubed, not squared, Aanaho Ineriho!” Anna cried. She yawned and sat down with her r-player in disgust, only half-listening to the rest.
Most missed seven of Dobie’s questions, or couldn’t list all of the timed examples required of them, or were too frazzled to do the mental math. Those were all added to the pile. Pumpkin-girl, however, only missed two.
“Keep her!” Anna called over the sound of her heavy metal, not even looking up from her r-player. Even a tubblet could be useful, if she didn’t have to run from anything.
The whole room went silent, however, when the robot reached the twiggy blond and, instead of answering Dobie’s first question, he gave Anna a really long look and said, “You’re shorter than I thought you’d be.”
Anna frowned and glanced up from her device. When she saw Dobie waiting for her response, she snorted dismissively. “That counts as a failed question.” She cranked up the volume and waved Dobie on.
Dobie asked another, this one a chemistry question.
The blond smiled. “I always thought strawberry soda reacted unfavorably to hydrochloric acid.”
Anna froze. Very slowly, she lowered her volume, then scowled at the kid. “Another fail,” she told Dobie, glaring at the kid. “Ask him something else.” To the blond, she said, “You better answer his questions. You only get four more fails, and he’s got some doozies.”
The blonde just gave her a placid grin.
This time, Dobie gave the kid a logic problem.
“Funny way to die, killing yourself on a nugget of silver,” the boy replied.
Anna set her r-player down and got up to scowl at the kid. “Three more fails.”
He just grinned at her.
Dobie asked about botany.
“A vegetable that carves on veggies. Some would call that a horrible waste of food.”
Anna fisted her hands and walked up to peer at him, eye-to-eye. “Two more fails.”
Doberman hesitated, watching the two of them. “He doesn’t seem to be responding to my questions, Overlord. At his current rate, I would not expect him to pass. Would you like me to administer the serum?”
“Overlord, huh?” the kid said. “I would’ve gone with something like Maximus or Daimyo or Khan or Fuhrer. Or, hell, just Boss. Overlord is kinda corny.”
“Continue, Dobie,” Anna growled, without taking her eyes off the kid’s smug face.
Doberman shrugged and offered him a pattern recognition problem.
“Hmm, let’s see,” the kid said, still grinning at her. “Little Anna Never Diddles Batteries Or Rusty Nails.”
Anna scowled. Getting close enough that their faces almost touched, she said, “One more fail.”
Doberman asked about dermatology.
“Always wondered what it’d be like to stitch someone’s skin back on,” the kid replied. “Hiding the scars must be difficult.”
Leaning in close, Anna said, “You’re all out.”
The kid grinned. “Oops.”
Anna narrowed her eyes. “Keep going, Dobie.”
Doberman asked, “Add all the integers one through one hundred.”
“Five thousand fifty,” the blond replied, in less than a second, without taking his eyes from Anna.
“Give him something harder,” Anna growled. “That was just trivia.”
Doberman said, “A Shrieker, a starlope, and a goat shared a stable and two feed bags. Their feeding conditions were thus: One: If the Shrieker ate oats, then the starlope ate what the goat ate. Two: If the starlope ate oats, then the Shrieker ate what the goat did not eat. Three: If the goat ate hay, then the Shrieker ate what the starlope ate. Which of the animals always ate from the same feed bag, and which bag was it?”
Without missing a beat, the blonde said easily, “Aside from the fact that hay is not stored in a bag and starlopes have a chemical intolerance to the gluten in the seeds of some terragen grasses that will kill them within thirteen hours of ingestion, it would be the Shrieker always eating hay.” His grin widened. “That all ya got?”
“Harder!” Anna snapped. She barely noticed Doberman glance between the two of them out of the corner of her eye. He was toying with her. She was so angry she was seeing red.
The kid then proceeded to answer every following question correctly, taking only a fraction of a second to form his response, sometimes even answering before Dobie finished his question. Anna watched him the whole time, face-to-face, watching the smooth workings of his mind as he stared back at her, unflinching.
“So,” the boy said, when Dobie finished. He still had that idiotic grin plastered over his face, and he hadn’t backed down from Anna’s stare. Looking her up and down, appearing as if he were thoroughly enjoying himself, he said, “Did I pass, Boss?”
“Judging by his responses, Overlord, I would put his score at—” Doberman began.
“I know what he scored,” Anna interrupted. “Dobie, how did this kid get in here?”
“The ship computer has no records on him, Overlord.”
“What the hell is his name?”
“I’m not aware of that information, O
verlord. His facial structure has no matches above eighty-five percent.”
The kid continued to grin at her. “You like sweets, Anna?”
“What the hell is your name?” Anna demanded, a fraction of an inch from his face.
“How about candycorn?”
Anna felt a cold sweat rush over her and her heart stuttered a bit.
The blond kid’s grin widened. “Thought so.” He cocked his head at her. “How about we go kick these bastards off our planet, eh?”
Regaining some of her composure, Anna growled, “BriarRabbit.”
He inclined his head minutely.
Immediately, the pumpkin waddled over and said, “You’re BriarRabbit? And you’re CandyCorn?”
Anna glanced at the pumpkin. “Who the hell are you?”
“SexGoddess,” the fatso said.
Anna scoffed, looking her up and down. “Sure you are.” She had thought SexGoddess had been compensating for something.
The fatso gave her a flat fatso stare. “And the two questions I missed were four million, six hundred and thirty thousand and forty-two-point-eight-nine-five and the black pony.” She glanced at the blond. “Forgive me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you the two instigating the rebellion?”
Anna snorted derisively. “Rebellion? How could kids be instigating a rebellion?”
“I want in,” the pumpkin said. “Nephyrs killed my mom and sisters six nights ago when they came to get me. I’ve got a brother in the mountains who also had in-utero Yolk and I know how to contact Everywhere666 and BabyDoomsday. I think we could get MadMorga and FlameOn easy enough.”
Anna felt a slow, predatory smile cross her lips as she looked at the tubblet with new respect. “Oh, this is gonna be fun.”
AFTERWORD
This book was self-published. Since the age of 3, I’ve thrown everything I’ve had into being a successful writer. I wrote my first book at 12, I was represented by a world-famous literary agent when I was 24, went to one of the Top Three writing workshops in the English-speaking world when I was 25, and then ditched it all to go independent when I was 28. Now, at 29, I’m finally living my lifelong dream.