Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising (33 page)

For the first time in three
years, Joel felt the stirrings of his old self again.  He felt like Runaway
Joel.

“It’s beautiful,” Magali
whispered.

Joel nodded, breathless.

“That’s our way out of here,
isn’t it?”

Sure is, tootz,
Joel
thought, activating the ramp. 
Mine, anyway.  Whether you go along all
depends on whether or not you happen to be in the cockpit with me in the next
twenty seconds.
  He started to climb the ramp before it had fully extended.

Then, from the entrance to the
cave, Magali said, “Okay.  Stay here.  I’m going to go get the others.”

That broke his reverie.  Joel
frowned and turned, tearing his eyes from his ship.  “What?”

But Magali was already gone, the
outline of her back disappearing down the tiny Shrieker tunnel.

For a moment, Joel didn’t
understand. 
Others?  What others?
  Then his mind clicked back into
gear.  Of course she would go get the Shrieker nodules.  Smart girl.  Would
make a good smuggler.  Here Joel was all caught up with getting out of there,
not thinking about anything but his own freedom, but she was already one step
ahead…and thinking about their credit accounts when they got out.  Grinning
like a fool, Joel jumped down from the ramp and went to help her.

His grin began to fade when he
realized that the cavern with Martin’s sacks of Shrieker nodules was empty. 
Goosebumps began to form as he watched the Shrieker slime drip back into place
where running feet had sped through it, headed toward the main entrance to the
mines.

He reconsidered what ‘the others’
could mean, and as he did, his jaw fell open.

Oh Hell no,
Joel thought,
taking an automatic step backwards.  He was
not
spending the next ten
hours ferrying three thousand naked eggers back and forth in a hull designed to
hold no more than forty-five at a time.  He grabbed a sack of nodules with his
good hand and dragged it back to the ship.  He tucked the sack carefully in a
corner and hid it with a few crates of mechanical tools.  He wasn’t greedy. 
One sack was enough, especially when he knew that if he went back for more, he
would end up ferrying a few thousand helpless eggers out of the Shrieker mounds
because he was a self-acknowledged softie and if he had to look into their big,
frightened eyes to tell them ‘no,’ it would be all over. 

“Sorry, guys,” he muttered. 
“That’s a suicide run and I’m itching to get the Hell outta Rath.”  He slapped
CLOSE, then jogged past the storage bins and toward the helm, unhappily noting
the mess Martin had made of the place in his absence.  He actually came to a
halt as he passed through the kitchen, stopping to stare at the big heart mug
that now rested beside the coffee pot…right next to a big stuffed bear and a
can of lollipops.

Apparently, Joel wasn’t the only
one who had been a softie.

That,
Joel thought,
staring at the bear’s bright red, tinselly fur,
Is weird.
  He wondered
for a moment if Martin could have a girl hidden somewhere onboard.

Or maybe he was just secure
enough in his three hundred and fifty pounds of masculinity that a glittery
stuffed bear and a can of lollipops would be taken in stride. 

Of course,
Joel thought,
still staring,
if anyone mentioned it, he could just wring their neck and
bury them in the peat bogs.

It reminded Joel of Geo’s
annoying eating habits.  Like father like son?  He once again thought to the
big man he’d left face-down in the slime. 
Geo is gonna be so pissed off
when I tell him,
Joel thought, delighted. 

From a distance, of course.  A
very long, very untraceable distance.  A hologram would work well.  Too bad he
hadn’t gotten any footage of the corpse.  That would’ve been the icing on the
cake.  Killing the brute, taking the Yolk, stealing back his ship…  Life
couldn’t get any better than this.

He ducked through the kitchen and
into the hallway that led to the bridge.

Inside the cockpit, Joel slumped
into the captain’s chair, expecting to find the comforting dimples his bony
cheeks had left in the leather, and instead finding that Geo’s thug had torn
out his old antique pre-Coalition chair and replaced it with a shiny new
chrome-plated Evil Warlord model, complete with lazy-man handpads, lumbar
massage, and RoboDrink beverage service.  Joel’s disgust was so thick that, for
a moment, he forgot about his soon-to-be ferryman status.

Hell no, Hell no,
he
thought, as he remembered.  He ignored the lazy-man handpads Martin had
installed and shifted the chair forward to the main console, his fingers
running automatically over the startup procedures.  As he worked, he estimated
how long it would take Magali to go back, convince the eggers she had a way
out, and return.  Seconds began to tick off in Joel’s head like a Doomsday
countdown.  Joel knew he was too much of a softie.  Always had been.  It was
one of his most expensive flaws, one that had cost him several thousand pounds
of flour when a starving village kid happened to tug on his arm at just the
right moment, and almost a hundred grand in antibiotics when a plague-stricken
woman offered him a free cookie when he was fueling up at her station.

Joel knew that the moment he saw
those three thousand wan, frightened eggers’ faces, he would spend the rest of
his life ferrying the poor fools to safety. 

It would be the rest of his life
because, gee, eventually the Nephyrs were going to start wondering why no one
was emerging with their harvests and gee, a glossy black ship makes an awfully
pretty target for a military-grade ship cannon.

He
had
to get out of
there.  He was Runaway Joel, not Ferryman Joel.

Joel warmed up the engines and
was getting ready to increase thrust when a thought hit him like a Coalition
freighter.

I never wanted to be Runaway
Joel.

He’d been tricked into it by Geo,
back when the two of them were still friends in the service, when Joel was a
starry-eyed, fancy-flying academy grad who hadn’t broken a law in his life and
Geo was a thin young squadron commander whose pink eyes were only then seeing
their first glints of criminal intent.  Geo had spent years convincing him.  He
had cajoled and bullied and eventually blackmailed.  Now, over twenty years
later, it had gone on so long that his smuggling had become a habit, something
that Joel had taken for granted right along with Geo’s sadistic evil streak.

As a kid, a hotshot
sixteen-year-old who had already passed his flight certs, Joel had always
envisioned himself as an admiral or a Justice.  Someone proud, honored,
respected.  If Joel had had his way, he would still be flying for the Coalition
and carrying a respectful rack of medals and commendations for diligent service
and outstanding flying.

It was the outstanding flying
that had gotten him into trouble.  Joel’s superiors had seen his skills and
decided he would make a good flyboy for the Controlled Substances unit—Geo’s
unit.  And Geo, seeing those same skills, had come to a much different
conclusion.

With promises, nudges, and
threats, Geo had slowly pulled Joel from the charmed life of a Coalition ace
into the shady underground of the space station Junkyard.  The change had been
so slow that Joel hadn’t even realized it had happened until he saw his first
Wanted poster with his name on it.  The shock had been so intense that Joel had
set his ship to drift and he had floated in space for a week, alternating
between crying in self-pity and mourning his vanished ideals.

I never wanted to be Runaway
Joel,
he thought again.

Then, a small voice added,
So
here’s your chance to change.

He was still sitting there,
staring dumbly at the console, when Magali led the first eggers through the
back of the cavern.  He watched from the ship’s cameras as she jogged across
the cave and disappeared under the belly of his ship with the eggers in tow. 
He saw her move for the ramp release.  Saw her attempt to open the door and
have the ship rebuff her.  His thumb hovered over the outer seals release
switch.  His heart pounded.  His head hurt. 

He wanted to change.  He wanted
his old life back.  His honor.  More than anything, he wanted to go straight.

“Joel!” he heard Magali shout. 
“Open the goddamn door, Joel!”  He saw her pound on the sealed door.  He heard
her yell in frustration, then move back, draw her gun, and fire at the ship in
disgust.  Joel squeezed his eyes shut.

He was home free, and yet instead
of taking off, he was hunkered inside his ship, seriously contemplating
heroically dying to help a few hundred eggers get lost in the woods. 
For
what?
he thought. 
For honor?
  He snorted disdainfully at the
thought.  Whatever honor he ever had was thoroughly obliterated by two decades
of doing Geo’s bidding in order to eat.

Besides, helping a few thousand
eggers escape a Harvest wasn’t exactly going to get him an Emperor’s
Commendation.  It was going to get him shot out of the sky, and once the Nephyrs
dragged him out of the flaming wreckage, he’d die in the same way he was going
to die before—alone and unknown, derived and sneered at, his name something to
be laughed at rather than something to be remembered.

It’s the Yolk talking,
he
thought, listening to the electric crackle of the gun’s energy as the shots
bounced off his ship. 
You’re always going to be Runaway Joel.  That’s all
you are now.  Just get out of here.

The ship continued with its
power-up procedure.  Outside, he heard the grating sound of the legs being
retracted.

“Joel!” Magali shouted, banging
upon the ship’s outer shell once more.  “Joel, please!”  Then he watched as the
ship’s exhaust blew her aside, to huddle in the corner with the rest of the
terrified, wan-faced—

He could help them.  Of anyone this
side of the Outer Bounds, Joel could help these people.  He had the skills.  He
had the ship.  He knew the Nephyrs were going to kill any stragglers, any who
didn’t meet their quotas.  He knew those quotas, at least for the Forty-Third
battle squadron, were going to change depending on how pretty the girls were
when they came out, or how much they decided they wanted to see someone scream.

Joel had heard horror stories of
the Forty-Third.  Colonel Steele had gathered a hundred and forty-four of the
most despicable, most disgusting Nephyrs that could be found this side of the
Outer Bounds.  ‘The best and brightest,’ they were called.  They were sent to
do all sorts of missions—reconnaissance, detective work, peacekeeping—but their
specialty was Harvest.  His unit was one of the only ones that
requested
to guard the Harvest.  Most Nephyrs didn’t enjoy herding terrified eggers.  The
Forty-Third delighted in it. 

He had heard the stories.  He
knew eggers went missing with the Forty-Third.

He could help them.  He knew he
could.  He knew there wasn’t a Coalition fighter pilot in the Sector who could
catch him if he were behind the controls of
Honor
.

Honor.  After stealing it from a
government shipyard, he had named his ship
Honor,
as if some unconscious
part of him had recognized what he had given up when he fell in with Geo.  Joel
squeezed his eyes shut.  Without looking at his console, he reversed the
takeoff measures.  Once the ship had touched back down, he gently flipped the
outer seals switch with his thumb.  He heard the ramp slide down.  He heard a
woman storm aboard, felt the barrel of the gun touch the back of his head.

“You had to think about it,
didn’t you?” Magali said.  “You weaselly piece of shit.”  He knew by the soft,
quiet tone of her voice that she was very close to pulling the trigger.

Hands out where she could see
them, Joel carefully got up from the console and straightened until he was
towering over the Landborn woman.  This close, he easily could have reached out
and grabbed the gun, but he stayed well back, having no misconceptions of
taking the gun from her and surviving afterward.  The tight cluster of holes
over Martin’s heart had been proof enough of that.  He just waited, afraid to
move, afraid to speak for fear of saying the wrong thing, watching the
indecision in her face, hoping she would give him the benefit of the doubt.

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.”