Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising (42 page)

Chapter
38

Playing
TAG

“
Patrick, on the
Liberty,
you copy?  Base just called me.  They just had an unidentified ship land at the
port,”
Tatiana heard the woman on the radio say. 
“Something snazzy. 
Not responding to hails.”

Tatiana flipped open the com. 
“Pat and Miles are sleeping.  Who are you and what’s the problem?”

The radio was dead silent for a
good minute and a half.  Then,
“You’re that cyborg bitch, ain’t ya?”

Tatiana frowned, recognizing the
voice from somewhere.  “Jeanne?”

“I ever see you again, coaler,
and I’m gonna add your teeth to my necklace.”

Tatiana remembered the ring of
molars the woman had worn around her neck.  She had thought it looked silly. 
“That’s nice,” she said.  “But like I said, Pat and Miles are sleeping.  You
want to talk to them, you gonna have to convince me it’s important.”

“You let me talk to them, bitch,
or I’m going to strip you down for parts.  My composter could use an overhaul.”

“My coordinates are 39.04771
south, 68.99057 west.  Bring it on.”  Tatiana flipped the com off and went back
to her romance novel. 

In her idle inspection of the
ship earlier that morning, Tatiana had found the brick of brain-candy under the
greasy footspace where someone had left it as an impact-buffer between the
radar unit and its oversized housing, and had been boredly skimming through the
grime-stained pages ever since.  The plot totally wasn’t doing it for her.  The
man, a beefy deep-space captain who had rescued the feisty-yet-fragile maiden
from a horrid life of entertaining pirates, was a dweeb.  He kept writing poems
and buying her roses at every port. 
Roses
?!?! 

Not only that, but Tatiana was
already three quarters of the way through the book and no sex scene.  What the Hell?

Bored, Tatiana began to skim. 
She found the sex and slowed.  The setup was picture-perfect.  Candlelight. 
Champagne.  Oils.  More poems.  The damaged heroine tentatively opening up,
allowing the diligent captain into her heart, finally professing her own
undying love as they listened to classical music on the ship’s audio system…

No sex.

She could not believe it.  She
stared at the final page for a full minute.  After all that, she totally could
not believe it.

Tatiana gave a disgusted scream,
ripped the book in half, and hurled it across the room.  “I wasted
two hours
on you!” she shouted.  “Two hours!  Damned piece of shit.”

From the door, Milar chuckled. 
“That’s why I was using it to cushion my radar unit.”

“Find another,” Tatiana growled. 
“I’m using that one to wipe my ass.”  Then she jerked.  “You read
romance
novels?”

Milar froze with a hunted look. 
“No.”

“And what the Hell is up with
your buddy over there?” Tatiana demanded, jerking her thumb at the com system. 
“She threatened to add my teeth to her necklace.”

Milar frowned.  “Jeanne called
you?”

“Yeah, Jeanne.  Her.  She’s a bitch.”

“She’s a
dangerous
bitch,”
Milar said, slipping past her to sit in the copilot seat.  Reaching for the com,
he said, “When did she call?”

Tatiana yawned.  “I don’t know. 
Half an hour ago?  Twenty minutes?”

Milar had no sooner flipped the
com open than a sleek, gleaming warship dropped into the weeds ahead of them. 
A moment later, the hatch opened and a woman stormed out, a gun in one fist.

“Oh shit,” Milar said.  He gave
Tatiana a worried look.  “You gave her our coordinates?”

“Yeah,” she said.  “Why, wasn’t I
supposed to?”

Milar winced and headed for the
door.  “Not yet,” he said.  “Every soul in Deaddrunk still wants to see you
strung up by your nodes.”

“That’s impossible,” Tatiana
snorted.

Milar gave her a long look that
told her it was, indeed, possible.  She swallowed.  “Oh.”

“Just stay here while I go talk
to her,” Milar said.  “She lost sixty thousand creds’ worth of goods when the
coalers swept the place after they picked you up outside Deaddrunk.  I imagine
she’s still a little sore about it.”

Tatiana swallowed hard.  “Are you
gonna bring your gun?”

“Jeanne won’t shoot anybody,”
Milar said.  Then, he looked at her and amended, “Well.  She wouldn’t shoot me
or Pat.”  He gestured at the pilot’s seat.  “Just stay here.  Wake Pat up for
me, if you can.  I may need some backup.”  Then he turned and left.

Instead of using the intercom to
wake Patrick, Tatiana yawned and activated the audio/visual receptors on the
personnel hatch immediately outside the ship.  Then she snagged her half-eaten
bowl of popcorn off the airspeed indicator and kicked her legs up over the
engine monitor, leaning back in the captain’s chair to watch the 2-D scene
unfold.  Milar was leaning against the open hatch, casually blocking the
entrance to the ship with his big body.  Jeanne was standing a pace down the
boarding ramp, her face contorted in obvious fury.

“…of my way, Miles.  She’s
gonna get what’s coming to her.”

“She got me out of Rath in the
belly of her soldier,”
Milar said. 
“I owe her a big one.”

Grinning, Tatiana threw a handful
of popcorn into her mouth and chewed.  “That’s right, collie,” she told Milar
through the console.  “A few more hours in your room and we’ll call it even.”

“She called the coalers in on
us,”
Jeanne snarled. 
“And now the whole goddamn town is being watched
by Nephyrs.”

“Not her fault,”
Milar
said. 
“She was scared.”

Tatiana’s grin caught. 
Scared?

“
Scared?
” Jeanne
demanded. 
“You’re letting her get away with it because she was
scared?
”

“It ain’t her fault,”
Milar continued. 
“Poor girl was in fight or flight.  So she flew.  Happens
to the best of us.”

Tatiana pulled her legs from the
console and sat up.  “Fight or flight?” she demanded of the console.  “What
kind of horseshit is that?  I called them with your gun to my head.”  She
scoffed.  “Fight or flight.  Pffft.”

“That cyborg runt almost got
you killed, Miles.  Or are you too goddamn infatuated you can’t see the
landmine you’re stepping on?”

“I’ll show you a landmine, lady,”
Tatiana said, around more popcorn.  “I’ll stuff it in your ear, how about
that?”

“What do you want, Jeanne?”
Milar asked.

The woman narrowed her eyes.  For
a long moment, it looked like she would simply turn and walk away.  Then,
softly, Jeanne said,
“I know you ain’t got the best com, so I’m guessing you
ain’t been getting the message.  Runaway Joel just showed up in Deaddrunk. 
Shot through the chest.  Unconscious.  Drivin’ that pretty black ship of his.”

Milar eased himself off the edge
of the door. 
“The TAG?”

“Yeah,”
Jeanne said. 
“And
the Coalition’s gonna get their hands on it, if we don’t go in there and take
it before the Nephyrs come sniffing down from the mountains.”

“Shit,”
Milar said. 
“Where’s
he been all this time?”

“No idea,”
Jeanne said,
“Though
he’s got a lifeline, from what they tell me.  Didn’t realize it until they
pulled the fucker off his ship, though.”

Milar’s eyes widened. 
“The
town’s been tagged.”

“Yeah, and after the stunt
your little friend pulled, I’m thinking this time they’re not gonna let us off
with just a contraband sweep.”

“It’s gonna be another Cold
Knife.”
  Milar cursed again.

Tatiana wiped grease off her
fingers and flipped on her microphone.  “Who’s Runaway Joel?  And what’s a cold
knife?”

Jeanne’s head jerked toward the
intercom, then her eyes narrowed at Milar. 
“Can she fly a TAG?  Because
Joel sure as Hell ain’t going nowhere fast.”

Milar grimaced. 
“No, I don’t
think—”

“Fly a
TAG
?” Tatiana
snorted.  “Please.  What, you
can’t
?”

Jeanne looked directly into the
camera with a cold, flat green stare, giving Tatiana goosebumps.  Then she
shoved past Milar and into the ship.  Tatiana heard her footsteps thunder on
the grating at a run.

Floundering, Tatiana dropped her
popcorn bowl and scrambled to hit the button to seal the cockpit.  After a
polite beep, the doors hissed shut with a comforting metal click.  Tatiana
breathed a sigh of relief and dropped her face to the console. 
That was too
close.

Someone kicked the swivel lock on
the pilot’s chair and spun her around.  Tatiana screamed.

Jeanne leaned over her chair, her
toothy necklace dangling in Tatiana’s face as she put her cold emerald eyes
only centimeters from Tatiana’s.  Swallowing, Tatiana shrank into the
cushioning as far as she could go.

For a long moment, the woman’s
eerie green gaze only searched hers.  Then she said, “Whose side are you on?”

Outside, Milar was pounding on
the door and shouting.  Tatiana was so terrified she didn’t hear the words. 
All she could see was the promise of death in the woman’s face.

“Yours,” she whispered.

For the longest time, the pirate
just watched her in silence.

“And you can fly a TAG?” Jeanne
finally said.

Tatiana swallowed hard and
nodded.

“How about a custom 450 with
boosters and fully manual control?”

She nodded again, afraid to
speak.

“That’s not standard training for
an operator.”  The woman’s voice was utterly flat, emotionless.  Deadly.

“I was bored,” Tatiana squeaked.

The pirate continued to stare at
her.  Finally, she reached up and grabbed a chink between the molars of her
necklace, holding the gruesome thing out so Tatiana could see it.  “You know
what this represents, girl?”

Tatiana swallowed at the empty
hole.  The teeth around it were big, nasty things, with black lines of plaque
in the crevices.  It was downright Stone-Age.  “You’re getting in touch with
your hunter-gatherer side?”

The pirate was utterly still,
utterly calm.  She said absolutely nothing, just stared, and Tatiana watched
her own death tumble around in the woman’s head.  She cringed into the leather,
suddenly wishing she had taken those Personal Confidence courses the base had
offered in its continuing education programs.

Then, thinking about it, she
realized that the better course would have been another Operator Behavioral
Reconditioning Course, OBRC, lovingly referred to as the How Not To Be A
Smartass course.  Most operators had to take it at least once in their tours,
since all of them got cocky at some point or another.  Tatiana had taken it
seven times, already, and had been queued for her eighth when she was
kidnapped.

…Or was it the ninth?

“This,” the woman said, dropping
the necklace back so it dangled between them, the empty chink clearly visible,
“is the place I reserved for you the day you handed Milar to the Nephyrs.  Got
rid of a tooth from one of Geo’s goons so I could fit you in.”

Oh shit.
  Looking at the
gap, Tatiana swallowed.

“You cross the line one more
time, coaler,” the pirate said, “you do
anything
to piss me off, and
you’re going right here.”  She tapped the gap in the necklace again. 
“Understand?”

Tatiana gave a weak grin and
nodded.  Rule One of the OBRC—Smile And Nod.

Behind them, the door opened and
Milar rushed inside.  “Hey, now,” he said, when he saw the pirate leaning over
her.  He slowed and held out a wary hand.  “Jeanne, just calm down.”

“I’m taking the girl to
Deaddrunk,” Jeanne said, straightening until she towered over Tatiana.  “She’s
gonna get that TAG the hell outta there before those Nephyrs get curious.  Then
she’s gonna distract them while we evacuate the town.”

“She can stay here with me,”
Milar said.  “I’ll take her.”

“
Liberty’s
a brick with
wings,” Jeanne said, grabbing Tatiana by the shirt.  “I can get the girl there
in half the time with
Belle
.”

“It’s Captain Tatiana Eyre,”
Tatiana said.  “Not ‘girl.’”  Then she winced.  Rule Two of the OBRC—Keep Your
Mouth Shut Unless You’re Eating.

“I’m taking the girl with me,”
Jeanne said.  “You got a problem with that, Miles, you can take it up with my
gun.”  She hauled Tatiana out of the chair by her jumpsuit.

Seeing Milar wasn’t going to take
it up with her gun, Tatiana swallowed, hard.  “Maybe I can’t fly a TAG, after
all.  My memory’s a bit fuzzy.”  In fact, now that she thought about it, she couldn’t
decide if she had been trained on a TAG or a GAT.  What the hell
was
a
TAG, anyway?  She kept thinking something yellow with foilers, but she was
pretty sure that was just the MMORPG she had played in her barracks room.

Without looking at Tatiana,
Jeanne grabbed her necklace by the missing tooth and showed it to Tatiana.  To
Milar, she said, “She’s coming with me.  Wake up your brother and fly this
thing back to Deaddrunk.  We’re gonna need every ship for the evacuation.”  As
if the matter was settled, the pirate dropped the necklace back to her chest. 
“Let’s go, coaler.”  She turned and strode from the room, leaving Milar and
Tatiana looking at each other.

“I think she wants to kill me,”
Tatiana whispered.

Milar looked slightly pale.  “You
should do what she says.”

They glanced at the door
together.

“
Now,
coaler!” Jeanne
snapped, from the steps to the lower deck.  “Every second we waste, that’s a
second we won’t have to get you situated on that TAG before the Nephyrs decide
to get curious.”

“What’s a TAG?” Tatiana whispered
to Milar.