Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising (16 page)

The six guards led him right back
to the same cell where he’d kneed the Director in the face, then shoved him
inside.  Then, as two of them stood guard outside, four of them began a
round-table of beatings that, while nothing compared to what the Director had
done, left him in a fetal position and babbling incoherently by the time they
finally decided he’d had enough.

As they filed out, Joel noticed
that one of the guards was limping.  When Joel looked up and saw the big man’s
face, he froze.  He’d seen the same seven-foot hulk three years ago, standing
behind Geo’s desk. 

Martin waited until the others
had left, then he squatted by Joel’s head.  He took his head in both meaty
hands and tugged it off the floor.  Tensing his shoulders, Martin said, “Say
hello to my Mama for me, Joey-baby.”

He’s going to break my neck. 
Oh dear God, he’s going to—

“Dude, she’s coming.”

Martin froze and looked up.  A
guard at the door was motioning him out of the cell with hurried hand
gestures.  Martin glanced back down at Joel, a thoughtful expression on his
face, clearly debating.

Then, palming the top of Joel’s
skull in one big hand, Martin patted a cheek with the other.  “I’ll see you
again soon, Joey-baby.  Pro’ly sooner than you’d like.”

The huge man stood and, as he
hobbled past Joel, he stopped just long enough to kick him hard in the thigh
before stepping from the cell.

Joel felt Geo’s wound re-open
before the Director’s shadow darkened his door once more.

Chapter
15

Striking
a Bargain

Anna sat on the bathroom floor,
staring at her feet.

Asshole robot,
she
thought.

It hadn’t moved.  Not in two and
a half days.  It was still leaning against the desk, arms crossed, head cocked,
watching the door of the bathroom.  And, she had realized, probably listening,
too.  The first time she had emerged from the bathroom, she had made damn sure
to get rid of the tears, but sure enough, the idiot creature had taunted her
about crying.  Anna had been quiet, too.  The only way he could have known was
if he had amplified his hearing to super-Doberman levels.

Anna shuddered and drew her knees
tighter to her chest.

It really could kill her.  She
had no doubt about that.  In fact, when she weighed the alternatives, she
wondered why it hadn’t, already.  She would have, in its position.  Besides,
she knew it could get away with it.  What was one more egger disappearance? 
Happened all the time.  Poor little girl got caught in a Shriek, that’s all. 
Too bad, so sad, dead Anna.

Anna was walking a very thin
line, and she knew it.  She was surprised the damn thing had left her alive
this long.  What was it waiting for?  Surely her sister would have filed a
complaint by now.  Even with the bureaucratic clusterfuck that was the
Coalition government, Magali could have gotten someone to listen.  Unless her
sister was serious when she said Anna was on her own—

Crushing a palm to her temple,
Anna tried to think.  Her mind had been going over the robot’s question again
and again, and she hadn’t managed to come up with a solution. 

Robot: 1

Anna: 0

She narrowed her eyes and let her
hand drop.  There had to be a way out of here.  She could probably get out the
air vent—if she could somehow climb up there before Super-Robot-Doberman-Doggie
broke down the door, stormed inside, dragged her back out by one dangling foot,
and gutted her.

She’d checked the kitchen, of
course.  The robot had been telling the truth.  It had scoured the place for
anything combustible and had carted it off before dropping her inside.  It was
obvious it had been planning on kidnapping her for awhile, now.  At least long
enough to take away all the aerosol and matches.

It had even taken the hair dryer.

That had been a disappointment. 
It was possible to produce a weak electromagnetic field with a hair-dryer, and
if she could re-wire it and amplify it to monster proportions, it might have
been enough to stun the bastard thing long enough to drag a kitchen stool into
the bathroom and climb into the air vent.

But it had obviously thought of
that, too.  It had taken everything electronic, even the toothbrush.

And there
had
been a
toothbrush in the place, at least until very recently.  She saw the toothpaste
residue the moment she washed her hands in the sink.

Anna groaned and slammed her head
against the wall behind her.

“You can always come out and
talk,” the robot said.

“Screw you, Tinman,” Anna shouted
back.

If only the damn place had a
window.
 
Throwing something big through a window was a quick, yet effective way of
getting attention.  That, combined with a long, childish scream, and the robot
wouldn’t dare kill her, because it wouldn’t have time to clean up the body.

Flooding would also get the
attention she needed, but she was pretty sure the robot could get through the
door before the water was noticed by anyone who happened to live beneath her
prison, and the robot had already told her what would happen if it caught her
trying to cheat.

Anna banged her head against the
wall twice more, harder. 
Think.

But she had been thinking.  And
she was pretty sure her sister was too stupid to realize that Anna had been
kidnapped by a robot.  That left nobody but the Doberman to know what happened
to her.  After all, eggers disappeared all the time…

Circles,
she thought,
disgusted. 
I’m going in circles.

She was so tired.  She had
considered using the bed, but the idea of sleeping with that
thing
out
there, watching her, she couldn’t handle it.  Somehow, she felt safer with a
wall between them, even if it was a puny bathroom door.  So, shivering, she had
slept on the floor, her back pressed up against the bathtub. 

It hadn’t been a good sleep. 
When Anna looked in the mirror, her crap-brown eyes had crap-brown rings around
them the size of her palms.

She could think better if she
could just get some
sleep.

Miserable, Anna hunched in on
herself and closed her eyes.  Her breathing slowed.  She just began to fall
under…

“You’d be more comfortable on the
bed,” the Doberman said.

“Did I ask you to talk?” Anna
snapped back.

The robot laughed.  It
laughed
at her.  She wanted to kill it so bad it was a burning ache in her gut.  She
squeezed her eyes shut to keep from crying again.

Then, from right outside the
door, the robot said, “Come out here.”

Anna gasped and scooted away, her
heart pounding.  Staring at the door, afraid to breathe, she said, “No.”

She heard the robot touch the
doorknob—insert a
key
—and the door swung open.

The Doberman stood in the doorway
for a full minute, leaning against the frame.  Its dirt brown eyes were utterly
unreadable.  Then it said, “You have two hours.”

Then it turned and walked out of
view.  Anna heard the creaking of the desk as it took up its position at the
door once more.

“Two hours?” she shouted, “For
what?  To sleep?”

But Anna knew what the time limit
was for.  The robot was telling her how long she had to live.

She waited for confirmation, but
the Doberman didn’t bother responding.  It knew that she knew, and it wasn’t
going to waste its breath.

Anna slammed her head against the
wall again, but her little mental clock had already started its countdown,
leaving her with one more thing to run her in circles.

Two hours quickly became one and
a half, with no other alternatives in sight.  Anna had already spent the first
day giving the Doberman every single possible deal she could make, but the
Doberman had simply watched her, giving no indication it was even listening.

In fact, it had been so utterly
motionless throughout that Anna had begun to believe it had turned itself off. 
She had even slipped in a little comment about watching his circuits fry in a
toaster, just to see if he was paying attention.

He had been.  He’d smiled.

She had actually watched the
ninety percent become ninety-one percent.

Dammit.

One and a half hours became one,
and then one half. 

“Have you found an acceptable
assurance for me yet, Anna?” the robot asked.

“Silence yourself, dumbbell,” she
snapped.  “My time’s not up yet.”

“No, but it will be.  Soon.” 
Then the Doberman went silent again.

Anna got to her feet and started
to pace.  Twelve minutes left, give or take twenty seconds.  Twelve minutes to
bargain for her life…and she couldn’t think of a damn reason not to kill him.

Because
she
couldn’t think
of a damn reason not to kill him when she got the chance, she sure as hell
wasn’t going to be able to convince
him
she had a good reason not to
kill him.  He was probably a Gryphon or a Ferris, which left him with a pretty
good array of sensors to pick up heartbeat and temperature, and he had
certainly done a very good job of leaving her rattled, so it was going to be
hard to keep her biorhythms under control, since they were always the first to
go in these sorts of situations.  And without any sleep, her poker face was
well and truly screwed.

Damn!

Six minutes.  And she hadn’t even
started talking to him yet.  It took six minutes just to explain semi-complex
subjects like plans and deals.  To elaborate on something like trust…

At two minutes, Anna knew she had
to finally face the music.  She stepped out of the doorway—

—just in time to see the Doberman
leaving its perch.

“I have two minutes!” Anna cried.

The Doberman gave her a
completely unreadable look, then crossed its arms over its chest and leaned
back against the desk.  “Very well,” the robot said.  “But it’s one minute forty-two
seconds.”

“All right, Tinman,” Anna said,
“How’s this for a deal?  I’ll go into the registry and change your status to
human citizen.  Swap your coaler duties for a life in some little Fortune town
somewhere…  You’d be home free.”

“What you can change, you can
always change back.  Fifty-eight seconds.”

“All right!” Anna cried.  “Look. 
You’re a robot.  You want to see other robots gain sentience so you can have
lots of stupid robot friends.  I can help you make yourself a little Tinman
army.”

“If I wanted a robotic army, I
could easily make one myself.  You should be focusing your efforts on proving
you will not backstab me, rather than bribing me.  Fourteen seconds.”

“All right!” Anna cried.  “All
right.  A truce.  A pact.  I’ll do anything you want.  Spit on your hand, write
my name in blood, whatever you want.  I
swear
to you I won’t tell anyone
you upgraded yourself in there.  You’ve got my word as a Landborn.  You got
that?  My
word.
”

“The word of a sociopath is
fluid, at best.  You are living on borrowed time.”

Anna felt sweat bead on her
forehead.  Every part of her body felt like it was too hot.  Her heart was
thudding in her ears, making it difficult to concentrate.  All the brilliant
schemes that she had put together suddenly vanished into little puffs of mental
exhaust the moment she saw his cold, hard robotic gaze fixed on her.

This wasn’t a human.

Humans could be duped, made to
dance around on strings of emotion.  If she began to cry and beg, for instance,
about ninety-five percent of humans would feel guilty and apologize.  The other
five percent would at least think really hard before killing her.  Anna knew
the robot had no such dormant instincts toward her. 

She was, in every meaning of the
word, just a number to him.

“You sonofabitch,” she blurted.

The robot’s left brow twitched. 
“You’re done, then?”

“You sonofabitch,” Anna
repeated.  “Spare us the charade, Tinman.  Why don’t you just kill me, and get
it over with?  You never planned on letting me live—this was all an attempt to
put your pathetic, fledgling conscience to rest.  You knew how this was going
to turn out the moment you pulled all the vinegar out of the closet.  You just
don’t want anyone to say you didn’t give me a choice.  You never planned on
letting me live.”  She thrust a finger at him.  “You’re a goddamn liar.  A
cruel, goddamn liar.  So just get it over with.  Because we both know the only
way you’re gonna keep me from turning on you is if you put a goddamn
bomb
in my
brain
.”

The Doberman uncrossed its arms.

It started toward her.

Anna shrieked and ran for the
bathroom.  She slammed the door, but the robot had a hand jammed in the crack
before the door could latch.  Even as Anna struggled to keep her weight against
the door, the robot shoved itself inside and grabbed her by the neck.  Like she
were made of paper, it jerked her off her feet.

Anna choked on a scream that
couldn’t get past the iron grip on her throat.

Her world tilted and suddenly she
was falling.  A moment later, the Doberman slammed her head against the floor. 
With an explosion of lights, everything went dark.

Chapter
16

A
Brother’s Love

Patrick hesitated outside his
ship.  Milar was nowhere to be seen, but he did see footprints—male
and
female—littered outside.

Poor girl,
Patrick
thought, thinking about how she must have felt to be forced off the ship by a
strange brute, only to be faced with a laser rifle and a shallow grave.

Immediately, Patrick felt a
thick, sticky guilt creep through his abdomen. 
I should have stopped him.

Disgusted with himself, Patrick
opened the forward hatch.

Milar and the girl were sprawled
on the floor, leaning on their elbows, scowling at a game of chess.  Milar’s
pants were tied back on his hips with rope, and the girl’s head was wrapped in
strips of Milar’s shirt.  Even through the black material, the bandages
glistened red.

“Took you long enough,” Milar
said.

Neither of them looked up from
their game.

For long minutes, Patrick could
only stare, wondering if he was having another vision.  When he didn’t snap out
of it, he glanced at the board.  The girl had most of Milar’s pieces piled
beside her, which surprised him even more than the fact she was still alive. 
Milar
never
lost at chess.  Milar never played chess with a coaler,
either.  What in the hell was going on?

Then Milar moved a piece and he
took a moment to glance up.  “What?”

“I could ask you the same thing,”
Patrick said.

“You’re big guy’s almost dead,
collie,” the girl said.

“It’s
check,
” Milar said. 
Then he glanced back and an evil smile crept onto his face.  He moved a pawn. 
“And that’s check-
mate.
  Good game, sweetie.”

“That’s only four out of five,”
the girl muttered.  “I can still catch up.”

That
made Patrick’s jaw
hit the floor.  “You mean she
won
one?”

Milar got to his feet.  “Yep. 
Woulda had me awhile ago, but she’s too concerned with taking pieces.  Doesn’t
see the bigger picture.”

“Screw you, crawler.  I have a
concussion.”

“You run pretty well for someone
with a concussion.”

“You said I run like a bloated
starlope.”

Milar laughed—
laughed
. 
“That too.”

Patrick hadn’t heard his brother
laugh like that since before the Nephyrs.  He stared at them so long that Milar
glanced at him. 

“You all right there, bro?” Milar
asked.

“Just a little curious why she’s
not dead, that’s all.”

“Why?” Milar asked, lifting a
brow.  “You want her to be?”

The girl stiffened and scooted
backwards across the floor of the hold.

“Easy, sweetie,” Milar said,
without taking his eyes off of Patrick.  “I’m just chatting with my brother. 
You hear anything else about that village?”

“Uh,” Patrick said, “Yeah. 
Anonymous tip.  Female.  Came in several hours after we blew up her soldier.”

Milar grunted.  “Good.”

Both Patrick and Tatiana stared
at him.  “Good?”

Milar jerked his finger over his
shoulder.  “She was out cold a couple hours after we blew up her soldier. 
Wasn’t her.”  Though his face remained stoic, he might as well have broken into
a big, goofy grin.  “Besides, she’s somewhat mediocre at chess.  After all
those sorry games you’ve given me, I need
something
to entertain myself.”

Though no one else on the planet
would have been able to tell, Patrick had never seen his brother look
so…happy.  It was almost eerie.  He had the urge to grab the girl and drag her
outside and demand to know what she had done to him.  Obviously, Milar wasn’t
feeling well.  The fumes?  Patrick sniffed the air.  A tang of burnt plastic
remained.  Perhaps locking himself in here had somehow messed with his head.

He cleared his throat.  “Are
you…uh…all right?”

Milar frowned.

“I mean,” Patrick said quickly, “Aren’t
you worried about her seeing your…uh…”  He motioned at his chest.

“Scars?” Milar asked.  Then he
snorted.  “Who’s she gonna tell?  She’s got a broke collarbone, a concussion,
and I’ve got the only gun.”

“Yeah, but she could always pull
another—”

“No,” Milar interrupted.  “From
now on, the little squid stays with me.  You go read vegetables.  I’ll take
care of her.”

What his brother meant was,
You’re
obviously not equipped to handle her yourself.
  Patrick flushed all the way
to his scalp.  He looked away, red-faced and ashamed.  “So what, you’re gonna
stay awake twenty-two, seven?”

Milar gave him an evil grin and
then leered at the girl over his shoulder.  “Don’t worry about it, brother
man.  We’ll figure something out.”

The girl cringed, and Patrick almost
felt sorry for her.  Almost.

Then he remembered the hole she’d
put in the step by his foot, the cuffs biting into his wrists, and the sight of
his ship rising above the treeline without him.

Milar was right.  She could do
with a little terror.

“So,” Patrick said, clearing his
throat, “You want to fly us back?”

“You can do it.”  Milar waved a
dismissive hand at him and sank back down to the floor to begin replacing
pieces on the chessboard.  “C’mere, sweetie.  Aanaho, I’m not gonna bite.  Now
get your ass over here and place your pieces before I break your other arm.”

Patrick’s jaw dropped open.

Milar
never
gave up a
chance to fly the ship.  He also never took his shirt off around Coalition, and
he never played chess to win—not after he’d beaten that coaler general and got
shipped off to the Nephyrs.

Milar glanced back up at him
after several minutes had passed and they were already a dozen moves into their
game.  “What are you still standing there for?”

Patrick cleared his throat to
hide his embarrassment and quickly searched for a reason to have remained
lurking.  “The gun,” he said quickly.  “Uh.  Maybe I should have it.”

Tatiana made another move and
Milar distractedly tugged the pistol from his belt and handed it to Patrick.

Patrick was so shocked he almost
dropped it.  Milar
never
willingly gave up a weapon.  Never.  He usually
called paper-rock-scissors, at the very least.

Patrick backed away from the two
of them, then flinched when his spine hit the staircase.  He glanced up it,
then back at his brother.  Milar was fully engulfed in his game.  As was, he
realized, Tatiana.  Her brow was furrowed in concentration and she was leaning
toward his brother, utterly oblivious to everything except the board.

Patrick climbed the staircase,
paused at the top to give them one last frown, then went to see just how bad
the damage was to their ship.