Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising (31 page)

His eyes dropped to the gun for a
moment and he seemed to consider that.  “You’re an awful liar, kid.  Your hand
is trembling like an alchie who forgot his meds.”  He took another step.

“Colonists know all about how to
shoot,” Magali blurted.  “Gotta shoot starlopes to eat.  Especially the town
where I’m from.  Everybody knows how to shoot in that town.  Everybody.” 

His patronizing smile never left
him.  “Yeah, I hear you’re real good at shooting paper targets,” the man said,
“But shooting a man isn’t the same as shooting a target, is it, dearie?”  He
took another step toward her, and another, his hands out in a peaceful
gesture.  His smile widened.  “Besides.  The way you’re holding that gun, I’d
guess you’d never even shot a starlope before, have ya, kid?”

And he was right.

Though she didn’t respond, his
confidence grew.  “So you ain’t never killed nothin’ before, huh?  Just
cardboard and straw bales, is that it?  That ain’t no way to start your career
there, little girl.  Shooting a man?  I can tell you from experience it ain’t
fun.  Changes you forever.” 

“Please don’t,” she whimpered. 
“I hate guns.  I don’t want to shoot you.”

He tisked, the good-natured smile
still plastered on his face.  “I know you don’t.  I can read people, dearie.  I
know what they call you.  I know you ain’t a killer.”

Magali’s heart clenched.  She
squeezed her eyes shut against tears.

He continued to move closer,
slowly.  “So just put the gun down, darlin’.  Okay?  We both know you ain’t
gonna use it.  Just give me the gun and let Joel and I finish up our
disagreement, okay girlie?”

I should give him the gun,
she thought, panic a hard lump in her throat.  At least if she gave him the
gun, he wouldn’t hurt her.

“That’s right,” he said softly,
like he was talking to a wild animal.  He held out his hand, still inching
forward.  “Gimme the gun, darling.  That’s it.”

Magali felt the wall end behind
her, leaving her stuck in a rocky niche with no way out.  The big man continued
to close, murmuring soothing sounds.

He’s not going to stop,
she thought, horror racing through her veins.  More than half of her wanted to
throw the gun down at his feet and collapse into a terrified ball against the
wall.  The other half was screaming at her to pull the trigger, pull the
trigger, pull it
now.
  There were too many similarities to Anna in
Martin’s flat, dead eyes that managed, despite the smile, to carry a cold
threat within them.

Recognizing this, Magali’s terror
grew.  If he was anything like Anna, she would pay dearly for bruising his
pride.  Anna did not take slights to her pride gracefully.  Cruelty was second
nature.

And, looking into his eyes,
Magali saw that same intellect, that same utter psychopathic confidence.

“Please don’t come any closer,”
Magali whispered.  “I’ll shoot you if you come any closer.”  Instinct was
warring with dread, and it was all she could do not to drop the weapon in the
slime.  She squeezed her finger on the trigger just to the point of firing.

Seeing that, Martin paused.  The
grin faded from his face, replaced with wariness.  “Okay, I’ll stop,” he said,
holding up his big hands.  “Easy.” 

Seeing his feet had stopped
moving, Magali let out the breath she had been holding.  “Thank you.”

“I just want us to be friends,”
he said, watching her anxiously.  “We know you ain’t gonna shoot me, else you
wouldn’t look like a terrified starlope.  Just put the gun down and we’ll talk,
okay?” 

Reluctantly, she lowered the
barrel.

Martin grinned at her.  “There. 
See?  Friends.  That’s all I wanted.  Nothin’ nefarious.  You can keep the gun,
if it’ll make you feel better.  I just wanted to instill some reason, that’s
all.  You seem like a nice enough gal.  I’ve got a ship nearby and I’d be happy
to let you hitch a ride outta the Yolk camp.”

Magali’s relief was so great she
was shaking.  “You’ll help me escape?”

Martin’s response was a grin.

Her eyes fell to the smuggler. 
“What about Joel?  If we leave him here, the Nephyrs are going to kill him.”

Martin’s face twisted in a
grimace.  “Frankly, that wouldn’t hurt my feelings none.” 

“I want to take him with us,”
Magali said.  “Is there room on your ship for two?”

Martin gave her a long, analyzing
look.  “Is that a request or an order, little girl?”

Under his glare, she cringed.  “A
request.”  Then she quickly babbled, “But I
am
the one with the gun.”

He laughed, but his eyes were
cold black diamonds.  “Yeah.  I see that.  Kind of funny that you ain’t dead
yet, eh?” 

…that you ain’t dead yet?
 
Then, as Magali began to frown at that, Martin lunged.

Reflex drove Magali’s arm up, and
instinct did the rest.  Just as she’d been taught on countless paper targets,
she squeezed off four beams in a tight, smoky cluster over Martin’s heart.  One
after the other, each with a three second recharge delay.  Martin’s eyes were
wide with confusion and, as the fourth shot hit home, as his knees buckled
under him, blood pumping down the front of his shirt in scarlet waves.  An
instant later, he was face-down in the slime, motionless, the deep red of his
lifeblood making ruby puddles in the transparent Shrieker mucus.

Killer,
Wideman’s voice
whispered to her.

Horrified, Magali threw the gun
across the room, sucking in huge, gasping breaths of disbelief.  Then, as the
full implications of what she had done dawned upon her, she slid to the floor
and emptied her lungs in a sob.

Chapter
29

Escape
from Rath

It had been easier than Tatiana
had thought.  Milar had just tapped the Nephyr guarding the compound with the
wand when he reached for him, and the Nephyr had collapsed in a blubbery mass
of circuitry.

Milar had dragged the Nephyr all
the way back to his cell and made Tatiana shut the door.  “This way, squid,” he
whispered, leading them out the back, deeper into the Nephyr block.

“Where are you
going?
”
Tatiana hissed back at him.  “We should be going the other way!”

“I’ve gotten out of here before,”
Milar reminded her.  “Just keep quiet and stay with me.”

“But there’s nothing but barracks
rooms—” she started, confused.

“Shhh,” Milar said.  “I know what
I’m doing.”

He didn’t, as it turned out.

After blundering through thirty
different hallways, narrowly avoiding getting caught by Nephyrs going to and
from their barracks rooms and the chow hall, Milar finally stopped, face torn
in confusion.  “There used to be a trash terminal here.”

“Yeah,” Tatiana said, fuming. 
“I’ve been trying to
tell
you that, dweeb.”

He peered down at her, clearly
confused.  “What?”

“This section of the base got an
overhaul last year.  Somebody decided the trash depot wasn’t secure, so they
replaced it with a barracks unit.”

Milar cursed.  “That was the only
way out.  The spaceport’s so tightly locked down you couldn’t get a mouse in
there, much less a ship.  There’s nowhere else to go.”

“That’s not true,” Tatiana said.

“It
is
true,” Milar
growled.  “Anna studied this place for two weeks before she found a way out.”

“I don’t know who Anna is,”
Tatiana said, “But there’s gotta be another way.”

Milar snorted.

Then, suddenly, the base alarm
began to blaze around them, lighting up the walls with flashes of red, raising
goosebumps along Tatiana’s arms with the screeching wail.  Behind them, someone
raised a shout.  They heard footsteps running in another hall, going the other
direction.

Milar’s entire body, however, had
gone as stiff as if the Nephyrs had burst into the hall with them and charged. 
Every ounce of amusement in him was gone.  His gaze flickered back and forth,
and his breathing had become strained.  He was beginning to act like a cornered
animal.

“They’re going to catch us both,”
he whispered.

The way Milar was looking at her,
his knuckles white on the EMP wand, Tatiana realized it was time to take things
into her own hands before the bastard decided they were both safer dead.

“We can still get out of this,”
Tatiana said.

“I’ve backed us into a corner,”
Milar said.  “I should’ve listened to you.  Now we’re both going to die, if not
here, then back in the cells with the Nephyrs.”

He’s going to do it,
Tatiana thought, horrified.  If she didn’t stop him, Milar was going to EMP her
and slit her throat.

Though she didn’t have a plan,
Tatiana forced as much calm into her voice and said, “Would you stop being
stupid for just one minute, collie?  That Colonel was on the night shift.  That
is the
base
alarm, not the
section
alarm.  Those Nephyrs are
probably off to chase some smuggler or something.  Nobody knows I rescued you,
else they would’ve fried my brain by now.”

The panic in Milar’s eyes cleared
a bit.

“Now,” Tatiana said with as much
firm authority and calm derision as she could fit into her voice, “if you’re
done blubbering, maybe we could try out my plan?”

His eyes narrowed as he glanced
down at her.  “I thought you didn’t have a plan.”

“I didn’t,” Tatiana snorted. 
“But you sure as Hell gave me enough time to
form
one, while I was
spending the last twenty minutes following you around in circles.  Give me the
wand.”

“Coaler, don’t play with me,” he
growled.  “I’m going to need it.”

“To use it on me?” she demanded.

His eyes flickered away. 
He’s
scared,
Tatiana thought. 

“Come on,” she said, throwing her
hand out between them insistently.  “Give.”

She saw his fist tighten on it as
he cast a look down the corridor ahead of them.  For a moment, it looked like
he was going to use the wand on her anyway.  Then, reluctantly, Milar handed it
over.  “Good,” Tatiana said, collapsing it and closing her fist over it.  “I
just stopped you from doing something really stupid.  You can thank me later.” 
She turned on heel and started walking, having no idea what she was going to do
next.

Behind her, Milar hesitated a
moment, then she heard him jog to catch up.  “Where we going, coaler?”

“You don’t want to know.”  In
truth,
she
didn’t even know.  It was the base alarm, true, but that
didn’t mean it wasn’t for them.  The fact that base security hadn’t crispified
her brain yet could have simply been because the Nephyrs wanted her alive when
they caught her.

“You don’t know, do you?” Milar
growled.

“Of course I do.”

“Gimme back the wand, squid.”

“Screw you, crawler.”

She led him to a service corridor
and, lifting the lockdown code with a quick AI override, let them inside. 

“I’m not gonna use it on you,”
Milar said.

“Bugger off,” Tatiana said,
closing the service door, keeping the wand tightly in a fist, out of reach.

Then, with the door to the
passageway shut, she took a moment to think.  “What about the Yolk drops?”

Milar snorted.  “More security
than the Emperor’s cruise ship.”

“Prisoner intake?”

“We’d stick out like a sore
thumb.”

Trying to think of all the places
where they could get into a ship or get over the base fence, she said,
“Civilian housing?”

“And you think we’re somehow
gonna make it two miles all the way across the base so we can boost ourselves
over a razor-wire fence in some engineer’s backyard while Nephyrs and soldiers
are boiling around us like ants?”

Soldiers.

Tatiana froze.  Eying Milar, she
said, “How much do you weigh?”

“More than you,” Milar growled,
stepping menacingly toward her.  “Now gimme back that wand.”

“What’s your body displacement? 
A hundred and fifteen liters?”

Milar frowned.  “Maybe a little
less.”

“Let’s hope so,” Tatiana said. 
“I’m fifty-one liters, and you add a hundred fifteen to that and you get one-sixty-six. 
The belly of my soldier holds two hundred and twenty, max.”

Milar’s eyes went wide.  “You
can’t be serious.”

“You rather die in here, collie?”
she demanded, waving at the walls that were resounding with the shriek of the
base alarm.  “Because I can leave you here sucking your thumb, if that’s what
you want.”

“How would I breathe?” he
demanded.

“I’ll put a hole in the air-tube,
let you suck on it.”  She turned and started walking. 

The colonist didn’t follow her. 
When she looked, his face was a funny shade of white.

“Oh don’t worry about it,”
Tatiana said, “I won’t let you choke too much.”

She heard the colonist
reluctantly follow her.  “You realize,” he said, coming abreast of her as she
took the first flight of stairs, “That this sounds like a damned good way to
get us both crushed when your soldier bounces a little too hard and there’s no
goop to cushion us.”

“I’ll be careful,” she said,
cresting the steps. 

“Careful’s got nothing to do with
it,” Milar growled.  “You put even a bit too many Gs into a landing and we’ll
both be squished.”

Tatiana shrugged.  “So they
say.”  She turned down the narrow south corridor and started leading them
toward the soldier hangar.

“Squid,” Milar warned, grabbing
her by the shoulder.  “There ain’t an operator on Fortune who could do what
you’re planning without killing us both.”

Tatiana gave him a beaming
smile.  “Guess it’s a good thing I’m the best operator in the sector, then,
eh?”

Milar snorted.  “Sure you are.” 
He didn’t release her shoulder.  “I want a different plan.”

Smiling sweetly, she said,
“Chicken?”

Milar’s eyes narrowed.