Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising (49 page)

Chapter
45

Milar’s
Experiment

Patrick watched the soldier
hurtle up the Tear, shaking the trees behind it as it broke the sound barrier. 
Behind it, four more soldiers were right on its tail, weaving in and around
boulders at speeds that perplexed the human eye.

“Got five more incoming,” Patrick
said over his shoulder.

“I see ‘em,” Milar said.  He
grabbed the radio.  “You see ‘em, guys?”

A moment later, Jeanne replied. 
“Got
‘em.  Joel’s taking us in now.”

But Patrick was frowning at the
way the soldiers were weaving around the debris of the Tear.  It was almost as
if they were
chasing
each other.  “Hold up a sec,” he said, lowering the
scope.  Sure enough, the lead soldier spun suddenly, kicked off of the wall of
the cliff, and used its sudden change in course to fire at the closest vessel trailing
it.  The second soldier exploded in a blinding white-hot ball of flame and went
careening into the Tear in pieces.  The remaining three began returning fire,
but the first was already spinning up and away, heading skyward.

“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 their 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.”