Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising (47 page)

Chapter
42

That
Night in the Desert…

Joel woke to the cold muzzle of a
shotgun in his mouth.  He knew it was the muzzle of a shotgun by the
distinctive
sha-shunk
as someone pumped the action.  When he opened his
eyes, a voluptuous, green-eyed beauty scowled down at him over the barrel. 

God, he had horrible luck with
women.

“What did I do?” Joel asked
around the barrel of the gun.  It came out like, “Waa thid aa thoo?”

The woman leaned close, jiggling
the ring of teeth hanging from her neck.  “Why did you do it, Joel?”

Then he placed the necklace and
Joel froze.  Jeanne Ivory.  The pirate that collected debts in the form of
molars.  Oh shit. 
Horrible
luck with women.  Last time he’d seen
Jeanne, it had been stranded in an equatorial desert just west of the Tear,
watching him take off with about two hundred mil in raw Yolk that she’d
carefully laid out and prepped the night before—right before he’d given her the
night of her life.  He swallowed, deciding not to bring it up, just in case she
had forgotten.  “Uhm.  Dhoo wath?”  He knew better than to ask a pirate like Jeanne
to jog his memory.

Jeanne did not remove the gun and
continued to give him a flat green stare.  “Why’d you save those people, Joel?”

Save those people…
  Joel
frowned, wondering what the hell she could be talking about.  Last people he
remembered saving had been a starving village by ‘forgetting’ a few thousand
pounds of flour in their main square.

“Thley were uungry?”

“Not only the folks in Deaddrunk,
but the eggers in Yolk Factory 14, too.  That’s not in your nature, Joel.  Who
are you double-crossing this time?”

Joel frowned and shoved the gun
out of his face, sitting up.  “Eggers?  What egg—”  Then he felt his face go
slack as he remembered.  “I saved
eggers
.”

Jeanne took a step back, the shotgun
still aimed at his face.  “They say you were spouting some horseshit about
changing your name to Ferryman Joel.  Why would you do that, Runaway?  Or
should I just blow your lying tongue through your lizard brain and call it
good?”

Joel sighed and gave her an
irritated look.  “So I took your virginity and fibbed a little bit.  I didn’t
leave you without resources, and only disconnected the power supply to your
ship’s command console.  Easy fix.  And you
told
me it was the best damn
night of your life, so don’t give me your crap, Jeanne.” 

Jeanne’s pretty green eyes
narrowed.

He shoved himself to the side of
the rickety, rough-hewn bed and put his bare feet on the dirt floor.  He was
actually surprised he was alive.  He had dropped into Deaddrunk as a last
resort, on the off-chance that maybe they wouldn’t remember who he was long
enough to patch him up.  And it had been sheer, blind luck that the joyriding idiot
who had stolen his TAG had gone off lollygagging into the woods like a rookie,
giving Joel just enough time to load the rest of the survivors onboard and
ferry them to safety.  He barely remembered that.  Mostly, he remembered
someone yelling at him to stay conscious, slapping him when he tried to run the
ship into a mountainside.  That had been annoying.  He’d been so tired…  He had
almost done it just to make them leave him alone.

Joel groaned and pushed his palm
to the side of his head.  He guessed he had always been lucky, in a weird sort
of way.  Twice in one day, he should’ve wandered off to meet his Maker, but it
looked as if not only the surgeon patched him up, but he’d also stayed awake
long enough to land the ship, which he didn’t even remember.  Hell, somebody
had even put some work in on his hand.  He bent the fingers the Nephyr had crushed,
grimacing.  They ached, but were mostly whole, so either someone had spent some
time and money patching him up or he’d been unconscious for several weeks.  He
hated to consider the latter. 

“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 crawled 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.

Tatiana let out another babble of
terror and crawled across the room, away from him.

“Now remember.  Be a good
girl.  Kill enough coalers for me and maybe I’ll let you live after it’s over.”
 
Her tiny face had twisted into a violent smile. 
“Then again, if you touch
him again, maybe I’ll just have to re-visit my little lab-rat and make some
adjustments.  It’s got a tracking device in it.  I will know
exactly
where
you are, so don’t think you can hide from me, you retarded little monkey.”

Tatiana’s whine built into a
chest-deep moan as she crawled on her hands and knees through the doctor’s
entry and into the sterile white service hallway.  A nurse was collapsed on the
floor a few meters down the hall, a clipboard in her hand.

Seeing the body, Tatiana
whimpered and struggled to her feet.  She had to hold herself on the wall, her
knees going weak, her vision blurry.

“Now, you’ll probably be dizzy
from blood-loss for a couple days, so drink plenty of orange juice and take
your vitamins.  Oh, and there’s a soldier prepped in Hangar 3, if you can make
it that far.  Don’t worry about getting gel in the wound.  I sealed it up
nice
and good.  Reinforced it with titanium bands and screws, but then again, you
already saw all that, after I peeled away your face.  Why bring up bad
memories?”

Tatiana stumbled forward, the
whine once again building in her throat.  Two blue-coated lab technicians
stepped from around a corridor and hesitated. 
Dear Lord, what is
that
?

“Are you looking for someone?” the
closest asked gently. 

“Please help me,” Tatiana
whispered.  “Please.”

They glanced at each other. 
She’s
wearing a prisoner jumpsuit. 
“Are you here for surgery?” one of them
demanded, his tone becoming more aggressive.