Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising (7 page)

“Yeah,” Joel said, crossing his
arms and leaning against the big metal support that ran through eight levels of
the space station.  “Everybody’s gotta eat.”  He winked at Geo’s corpulent
layers.  “Even you.”

Geo was not amused.  “You just
spent eighty grand on a new paintjob and you expect me to believe you stiffed
me so you could
eat?”

Joel grimaced.  “How’d you know
about the paintjob?”

Geo grabbed the surveillance
monitor on his desk and swung it around so Joel could see it, motioning at the
familiar black lump on the screen with a sausage-fingered hand.  “Your ship is
black.  It used to be red.”

“Yeah.  Figured the hotrod look
was too conspicuous.”

Geo’s face contorted.  “Do you
think this is
funny?
  You’re on
my
station, squid.  I own you right
now.”

Squid?  That’s a new one.
 
Joel had been baffled by some of the things Fortuners said to him during his
first few years blockade running.  Geo, though not technically a Fortuner, did
business with enough of them that he occasionally picked up an odd
colloquialism here or there.

“Have you ever
seen
a
squid?” Joel asked.  “I bet you don’t get many out here.”

Geo surprised him by remaining
utterly calm.  He released the hilt of his buck-knife and leaned back in his
chair.  Tapping his desk with meaty fingers, he said, “Squid.  A carnivorous
mollusk belonging to the same class as the octopus, cuttlefish, and nautilus. 
Of the
order Teuthoidea of the class Cephalopoda
—” 
Geo leaned forward and gave him a patronizing grin.  “Look kind of like octopi
because they’ve got tentacles protruding from their face.”

Joel was caught off guard.  He
blinked, never having thought Geo to be the kind to read anything, much less
retain it.  Glancing at the shelves behind the crime boss, he expected to see
encyclopedias and law texts.  Instead, he saw used fast food wrappers, bottled
strawberry soda, and a couple cartons of beef jerky. 

Geo was one of those paranoid
types that never let anything more sophisticated than closed-circuit cameras
into his abode, certain beyond all reason that the rest of today’s high-tech
gadgetry could be hacked.  Seeing no books and knowing Geo used no electronic
readers of any sort, Joel relaxed.  “You got an implant.”

“Figured I needed to take a step
into the thirtieth century.”

“Technically, it’s the
thirty-first, now.  Hasn’t been the thirtieth for three and a half years.” 
Joel smiled at him.  “But no one can blame you for not knowing.  You never
leave your cave.”

Geo narrowed his reddish eyes and
Joel saw his own death bouncing around in the man’s brain.  Then Geo tapped his
pasty white skull.  “Accessing dictionaries isn’t the only thing this baby’s
good for, Joel.  It’s useful for other things, too.”

“Oh yeah?” Joel said, feeling his
hairs stand on end at Geo’s sudden predatory look.  “Like what?”

“Like accessing my old business
records,” Geo said.  He settled back into his chair again so he could watch
Joel over his enormous gut.  His red eyes skewered him as a smile played across
his ghostly pale lips.  “Like figuring out you stiffed me five times in the
past, when I gave you my good faith as an honest businessman.”

Joel frowned. 
Had
it been
five?  He couldn’t remember.  He started counting on his fingers.

“You son of a bitch!” Geo
snapped, reaching for his knife.

Joel lurched forward and snagged
the weapon before Geo could grab it.  Leaping the desk, he slammed Geo back
into his chair with one hand gripping his white-blonde hair.  “Careful now,”
Joel said, cinching the blade up against Geo’s pudgy neck.  “I’d have to cut
through a dozen layers of blubber, but I think I could find an artery in there
somewhere.”  Joel glanced up at the two goons.  “Back.”  They retreated
hurriedly.

Geo’s face turned purple as he
sputtered.  “You’re a dead man, squid.”

“There you go using squid again,”
Joel said, tisking.  “Maybe I oughtta show you just how insulted I am by it.” 
He pressed his knife deeper.

“No!” Geo snapped.  “Damn it,
Joey, be reasonable.”

“My name is Joel,” he said,
grabbing Geo by the shirt and leaning close, “And I’m perfectly reasonable.”

“What do you want?” Geo asked. 
“You want your money back?  Take it.” 

“You know what I want,” Joel
said.  “Coaler cash is no good to me.  I need my product.”  Then, seeing the
flash of fear in Geo’s eyes, Joel blinked and said, “You weren’t going to give
it to me.” 

“You stiffed me, Joey.”

Joel felt a dual fear and rage
begin to creep into his chest.  Fear, that he was in this deeper than he had
wanted to go, back when he was a first-year coaler pilot with a bright new
future on Fortune, and rage, because Geo had brought him here with the
intention of killing him.  “People stiff you a couple grand all the time, Geo. 
Part of doing business.  You were just tired of old Joel and decided to shuck
him off and get some of his hard-earned cash while you were at it.” 

When Geo did not respond, Joel
yanked the crime-boss’s neck back further, anger taking a deeper hold on him. 
“Just make sure I bring four-seventy-five, isn’t that what you told me, Geo? 
Made me scurry around, collecting my debts, scraping together almost five
hundred grand, and you were just going to pocket it and give some new guy my
ship.  There never was a new Yolk source, was there?  Got me all excited about
some new Yolk trade and you were just gonna slit my throat, weren’t you?”

“I wasn’t gonna kill you, Joey. 
Maybe cut you a little bit, but not kill you.”  His jowls were shaking against
the knife, and Joel already saw blood.  “For old times.”

“That’s comforting,” Joel said. 
Grimacing, he said, “Hold still.  Much more quivering and it’ll start working
its way through that first layer of fat.”

“You are a dead man, you
sonofabitch.”  Geo’s eyes were cold pink diamonds.

“Maybe,” Joel said.  “Where’s my
product?”

“Go to Hell,” Geo snarled.

Joel tisked, then slammed his
fist into Geo’s stomach.  As Geo groaned, he said, “You have four hundred and
seventy-three of my hard-earned cash sitting on a desk in front of you. 
Where’s my product?”

“Martin’s got it,” Geo snapped,
his eyes slipping toward the bulkier of the two goons.

Joel glanced at him, examined the
enormous thug’s face, then looked back at Geo.  “Nice try.  Where?”

“Martin’s—” 

Geo gasped as Joel pressed the
knife deeper and leaned forward, until they were eye-to-eye.  “Geo, baby,
you’re going to give me my Yolk and take that two grand hit for inconveniencing
me, and you’re never going to bother me with your halitosis ever again.  If you
don’t, I am going to gut you.  Understand?”

Geo’s glare was deadly.  “It’s in
my desk.”

Joel glanced at it, then grimaced
when he saw the heavy, energy-resistant lock.  “Really.  Then you wouldn’t mind
opening it for me, would you, Geo?”

“Key’s in my vest,” Geo said.

Joel patted down Geo’s impressive
girth and found a pocket containing a small magnetic keyshaft sharing space
with a fluffy blue duckling on a silver chain.  Joel lifted it up and smirked
at Geo.  “You got a thing for duckies, Geo?” he asked, wiggling it.  If Joel
had thought the criminal couldn’t have gotten any more purple, he was wrong. 

“It was my mother’s.”

“Uh-huh.  Right.”  Joel dangled
the fluffy blue duckie in front of the crime boss for a triumphant moment, then
grabbed the keyshaft and shoved it into the cylindrical hole in the desk
drawer.

The moment that he heard the
crackling pop, Joel knew he’d made a mistake. 

But by that time, his fingers
were clenching down hard in electrical spasm, his entire body immobile.  As
Joel’s teeth ground into each other, electricity slammed through him like a
coaler cruiser, stretching his muscles past capacity in a continuous, violent
stream.  Then, with another loud popping sound, Joel was thrown backwards by
some ungodly number of volts to land on his back, staring at the ceiling.

“See, Joey-baby,” Geo said,
dabbing blood from his fleshy neck with a tissue, “I got two keys.  One of ‘em
don’t work so well.”  He lifted another silver chain from a storage compartment
set into the side of his chair and held it up.  It was identical to the first,
except that the blue duckling was now pink.  Jiggling it, Geo said, “Kinda
convenient when some two-bit swindler’s got a knife to my neck.”

“Pink duckie,” Joel whispered,
laughing weakly.  “Of course it was a pink duckie.”  He blinked up at Martin as
the three-hundred-pound strongman came to squat beside him, his square face set
in a grim smile. 

“So,” Geo said, stuffing the key
back into the compartment in the base of his chair, “Back to what I was saying
about you being a dead man.”  He leaned over and picked up the buck knife from
where Joel had dropped it.  Twisting it so that the blade flashed in the light,
he said, “What’s your preference, Joey-baby?”

“Roast pheasant, garlic mashed
potatoes, and a few tadfly pods in wine sauce.”

“Yeah.”  Geo looked at his knife
for a few more seconds.  The blade shone with a polished mirror-like sheen that
allowed Joel to see part of Geo’s face as the crime-boss examined it.  He was
smiling.

It made Joe breathe a little
easier. 
That’s it.  Just keep him happy.
  Geo was a sucker for jokes,
if a guy knew how to handle them.

Then Geo twisted and rammed the
ten-inch blade down into the meatiest part of Joel’s leg.  As Joel grunted
through his teeth, Geo said, “We’re outta pheasant, Joey-baby.”

“Smoked salmon and buttered
asparagus,” Joel gritted.  “Maybe a couple sautéed Shrieker nodules on the
side.”

“Hmm.”  Geo wrenched the knife
loose and smiled as blood began to pump from the wound.  “I’ll think about
it.”  He motioned at his second goon.  “Seal that up.  He’s bleeding on my
carpet.”

Joel lay there in mute silence as
the second thug produced a first aid kit, conveniently located under a candy
wrapper on a cluttered shelf just behind Geo’s desk.  Then, like a good little
surgeon, the man squatted beside him and started pulling out bandages and
antiseptic.

“So what should I do with you,
Joey-baby?” Geo asked, flipping the knife blade-over-hilt and catching it. 
“You’re a good smuggler.  Real good.  But you just pissed me off.”

Grimacing as the second goon
fused the wound back together with a sterile strip of nanotape, Joel said, “You
could always give me the product and let me go, minus two grand’s worth.”

Geo smiled.  Flipped the knife. 
Watched the blade sparkle as he caught it in his pale fingers.  “No, I don’t
think so.”  His red eyes slipped down to meet Joel’s gaze.  “Sautéed Shrieker
nodules, huh?  You like those?”

“They say a nodule a day will
stop brain decay.”

“Seems like you missed a few
days, didn’t you, Joey-baby?”  Geo was grinning, now, and Joel had the hopeful
feeling that the crime boss wasn’t going to dump him into orbit.  Geo set the
knife on his desk and leaned forward over his huge gut.  “Tell you what.”

Joel grimaced.  Another dangerous
blockade run against the coalers?  A direct pickup from a crooked Director
running one of the Shrieker Yolk factories?  He pressed his lips together and
waited in silence.

“Aren’t you curious what I’m
gonna do to you?” Geo asked, prodding his tender leg with a chubby finger.

“Figure I’m gonna find out,” Joel
muttered.  “And that whatever it is, I probably don’t want to know, anyway.”

“Yeah.”  Geo grinned and leaned
closer.  “You’re right.”  He nodded at the thug standing over Joel’s head.

Joel glanced up just in time to
see the flash of brass knuckles before his awareness burst into an explosion of
tiny stars.

Chapter
5

Unit
Ferris

18:32:10  Director pacing.

18:32:15  Director pacing.

18:32:20  Director pacing. 
Subject diagnosed with Egger’s Wide, Gayle Hunter, still unconscious.

18:32:25  Director pacing. 

18:32:27  Subject diagnosed with
Egger’s Wide, Gayle Hunter, twitches.  Director’s heartbeat increases by fourteen
beats per minute.

18:32:29  Director’s heartbeat
stabilizes.

18:32:30  Director pacing.

18:32:35  Director pacing.

18:32:38  Begin verbal record. 
Conversation participants: D- Director Yura Nalle, Commander, United Space
Coalition.  F- Ferris, assistant to the director, chip ID F001HG494W15LKM.

18:32:38  D: Stop watching me,
you stupid machine.

18:32:39  F: Yes, Director.

18:32:40  End Dialogue. 
Conversation participants: D- Director Yura Nalle, Commander, United Space
Coalition, universal ID NEPHYR391HAL120.  F- Ferris, assistant to the director,
chip ID F001HG494W15LKM.

18:32:40  Director out of sight. 
Assumed pacing.

18:32:45  Director out of sight. 
Assumed pacing.

18:32:50  Subject diagnosed with
Egger’s wide, Gayle Hunter, twitches.  Director’s heartbeat increases by six
and a half beats per minute.

18:32:51  Begin verbal record. 
Conversation participants: D- Director Yura Nalle, Commander, United Space
Coalition, universal ID NEPHYR391HAL120.  G- Gayle Hunter, Fortune colonist,
universal ID UNKNOWN.

18:32:51  D: Why’d you keep going
down there, Gayle?

18:32:55  (Unit note: Subject
Gayle Hunter has still not replied.)

18:32:55  Director’s heartbeat
increases by another twenty beats per minute.

18:32:56  D: Damn it.  You knew
this was coming.  We both knew it.  Merciful Aanaho, there’s no cure.  You know
that?

18:33:00  (Unit note: Subject
Gayle Hunter has still not replied.)

18:33:02  Director sighs. 
Director’s heartbeat stabilizes.

18:33:03  D: Ferris, I have a job
for you.

18:33:03  (Unit note: Ferris,
assistant to the director, chip ID F001HG494W15LKM added to conversation. 
Dialogue attributed with an F.)

18:33:05  F: Yes, Director?

18:33:08  D: That little girl
from formation today.  What was her name?

18:33:09  Camp database
accessed.  (Unit note: Recent modifications to this profile detected.  Updating
unit file.)  Subject identified as Anna Overlord Landborn.  Date of birth: THE-7TH-DAY. 
Universal ID: DONTUWISHL0S3R.  IQ: MO’THANU.  Blood type:  V-AMP.  Genetic
Sequence: UNKNOWN.  Favorite drink: STRAWBERRY SODA.

18:33:09  (Unit note: A
malfunction detected in data.  FAVORITE DRINK not part of regular entrance
interview.  Further, all standard data unknown or irregular.  File corruption
suspected.  Rest of profile truncated.)

18:33:09  F: Her name is Anna
Landborn, Director.

18:33:11  D: The same Anna
Landborn that was involved with this Joel fellow?

18:33:14  F: Yes, Director.

18:33:15  Director grunts. 
Resumes pacing.

18:33:20  Director pacing.

18:33:23  D: I want you to follow
her.

18:33:23  (Unit note: New program
initiated.  Designation: Follow Anna Landborn.)

18:33:24  Director stops pacing.

18:33:24  D: Not now, dammit. 
Listen to me, first.

18:33:27  (Unit note: Program
Follow Anna Landborn cancelled.  Resume normal programming queue.  New program
initiated.  Listen to Director Yura Nalle v553.)

18:33:28  D: Something’s been
nagging at me ever since the formation this morning.  I’ve got this weird
feeling the big sister was covering for her.  You get that feeling, Ferris?

18:33:34  F: She recited the
Standard Galactic Encyclopedia word-for-word, Director.  I found it a bit odd.

18:33:37  Director sighs.

18:33:38  D: Yeah.  All right.  I
hate to do this, but I want you to go watch her.  Collect all the data on her
you can.  If she’s what I think she is—

18:33:45  Director pacing.

18:33:50  (Unit note: Director
did not finish her final directive.  Fragment discarded from program record.)

18:33:51  D: I want all
conversations recorded and all actions other than sleep and necessary bodily
functions videotaped.

18:33:54  (Unit note: New program
recorded.  Designation: Watch Anna Landborn.  NOTE: Clarification needed.)

18:33:59  F: Am I to document for
official criminal prosecution?

18:34:02  D: No.  Possible
induction into the Nephyrs.  I think she might be a Yolk-baby.

18:34:02  (Unit note:
Clarification received: Collect information on subject’s intelligence.  NOTE:
Clarification needed.)

18:34:06  F: What is your target
Intelligence Quotient, Director?

18:34:08  Director sighs.  Begins
pacing.

18:34:10  Director pacing.

18:34:15  Director pacing.

18:34:20  (Unit note: Director
did not respond.  Retrying.)

18:34:20  F: What is your target
Intelligence Quotient, Director?

18:34:22  D: Dammit, Ferris, I’m
thinking.

18:34:25  Director pacing.

18:34:27:  D: How about
one-ninety.  Anything less and she stays with her sister. 

18:34:29  (Unit note:
Clarification received: Target Intelligence Quotient of 190 or greater.)

18:34:30  Oh, and Ferris?  Don’t
let her know what you’re doing, especially not the big sister.  We might’ve
just stumbled upon one of the freaks Fortune’s been producing.  Colonists have
been hiding ‘em good, keep saying there’s none left, but that little girl just
gave me the creeps.  Go in as an undercover.  Got it?

18:34:37  F: Yes, Director.

18:34:40  D: Good.  Report back
to me as soon as you’ve figured out how smart the little brat is.  Dismissed.

18:34:44  F: Yes, Director. 
Understood.

18:34:44  End Dialogue. 
Conversation participants: D- Director Yura Nalle, Commander, United Space
Coalition, universal ID NEPHYR391HAL120.  F- Ferris, assistant to the director,
chip ID F001HG494W15LKM.  G- Gayle Hunter, Fortune colonist, universal ID
UNKNOWN.

18:34:44  (Unit note: Program
Watch Anna Landborn Initiated.)