Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising (39 page)

But Milar had already rammed his
knee into his chest, reaching back to throw a punch.

Adrenaline was surging through
him in burning waves, now.  Patrick screamed an animal cry and rolled over onto
his brother, once more going for the throat.

“Boys,”
Tatiana said over
the intercom,
“as interesting as all that is, you might want to know we’ve
got Coalition on our ass.”

Both Patrick and Milar froze.

“They give you a lifeline?”
Patrick asked.

“Took it out,” Milar said.  “I’m
lucky the damn thing was a dud or I’d be—”  His eyes widened.  “Oh shit.”

“They put you under?” Pat cried,
pushing himself to his feet.

“I was in surgery for almost two
days, and drugged up for the next one.”

“Shit, Milar,” Patrick cursed,
scanning his brother’s body for extra lumps.  “Shit, shit.”

“Boys?”
Tatiana said. 
“You
want me to bring ‘em down or what?”
  She sounded utterly calm.

She doesn’t know the ship has
no guns.
  “This ain’t a warship!” Milar cried, heading for the stairs. 
“You can’t take down Coalition fighters.”

“Watch me.
”  And then the
ship lurched and went into a sudden dive, leaving Milar and Patrick struggling
to stay upright. 
“Might wanna strap in, though.”

“Hell no!” Milar cried, stumbling
up the stairs.  Patrick followed on his heels, ready to take up copilot. 
Instead, they were thwarted by a locked door.  Milar pounded on the hatch. 
“Damn it, coaler, let us in there!  My brother and I need to fly this thing!”

“No you don’t, knucker,”
Tatiana said. 
“Just sit down, relax, and try not to vomit.  Oh, and figure
out where they tagged you.  I’d guess the armpit or between the shoulder
blades.  If you can get Patrick to cut it out without cutting off an arm during
the maneuvers, that would be nice, too.”

Milar stared at the locked
cockpit door, then raised his arm and pounded at it again.  Tatiana ignored
him.

Milar narrowed his eyes and went
to the locking console affixed to the outside of the hatch.  He flipped open
the housing and started typing in a manual override.

Remembering the scenes Wideman
had shown him, Patrick caught Milar’s arm.  “We should let her do this.”

Milar blinked at him.  “Are you
nuts?”  Then, a bit deflated, he said, “She needs a copilot.”

“No,” Patrick said, remembering. 
“She doesn’t.”

“That’s right,”
Tatiana
said,
“So if you could please strap yourselves in before the walls of the
ship turn you both into hamburger, I would very much like to start showing
these three yokels who they’re dealing with.  Twenty seconds until I start
barrel-rolling.”
 

“This ship can’t barrel-roll,”
Milar said.

“You can gape at me in awe
later.  I promise I’ll give you all the proper opportunities.”

“Coaler,” Milar growled.

“Ten seconds, collie,”
she
replied.

“Fine,” Milar snapped.  He slid
down the stairs and settled into a crash harness.  Patrick followed.  Tatiana
waited until he had clicked the primary straps into place, then the world
started to spin.

* * *

This is it,
Tatiana
thought, watching the three Bouncer ships come in close, trying to cut her
off. 
No going back now.
  She jammed the joystick forward and to one
side, sending the ship into a spinning forward roll that should have ended in
splattered Coalition operator smeared across a four-kilometer-wide stretch of
Fortune flora.

Instead, she used her momentum to
finish the arc and, like the toy ball on the end of a timeless cup-and-ball
game, she came whipping around the other side, at the Bouncers’ backs.  At the
same time, she flipped off her main engines, going cold.

“Where the hell did it go?”
one of the Bouncers said, over the secure Coalition band.  Already knowing the
couple dozen channels the Bouncers used, it had only taken Tatiana a few
seconds to narrow it down.

“I don’t know.  Shit, did it
crash?”

The three Coalition pilots were
still trying to figure out where she had gone when she pulled out of their
backdraft and extended her landing gear.

“What the hell are you doing up
there?!” one of the brothers screamed from the belly of the ship.  Tatiana still
hadn’t been around them long enough to tell the difference between their
voices.  Flipping on the com, she said, “Did you figure out where they tagged
you yet?”

“One in the armpit, another
behind his ear,” Patrick said.  “We think he might have a couple in his chest
cavity.”

“Aanaho,” Tatiana said.  “No
wonder they weren’t too worried about you running off.  How you gonna get them
out?”

“We’re gonna EMP him,” Patrick
said.  “Pulse him in a few dozen places from head to toe and it should fry
anything he’s carrying.

“It’s above you, above you!”
 

Tatiana frowned, listening to the
Bouncers scream at each other.  Distractedly, she said, “You’re not setting off
EMP charges on my ship.”

“
Your
ship?”  This time,
she could tell it was Milar.  “Guess again, tart.”

In response, Tatiana switched
power to her main engines and dove, ripping off the closest Bouncer’s left
stabilizer with the screech of tearing metal.  She watched as a chunk of
landing gear spiraled toward the ground along with a goodly portion of the Bouncer’s
left wing. 

“I’m hit, I’m hit!”

 “You going down?”

“I gotta turn back before I
fall outta the sky.  Lost maneuverability.  Think it blew off a wing.”

“Aanaho, that thing’s got
guns?”

“What the Hell do we do?  It’s
not letting us get a lock on it!”

Tatiana took a deep breath, then
spun the vessel up and to the side, her ship’s engines roaring as she rolled
back and fought her own momentum.  She grabbed the console hard, then went cold
again as she hit the apex of her arc.  Immediately, the ship began an
upside-down freefall dive.  The smallish wings on the colonists’ ship were more
for stability than carrying weight, but with the speed Tatiana had gained from
her downward plunge, she used the wings to guide her fall into a wide arc, then
slammed on the engines just before hitting the ground, making her feel the Gs
in her brain.

“Goddamn it, you two, that’s
just a collie ship.  Ain’t got any guns on it.  Just shut the hell up and bring
it down.”

“Easy for you to say,
jackass.  He didn’t just turn your ship into Swiss cheese.”

To the Whitecliff brothers, she
said, “Hold on.  I’m about to put us in another spin.”

“Sweetie,”
Milar replied,
“You’ve
already put Patrick out of commission.  Another spin and I think I might join
him.

Tatiana glanced at the camera
feed.  Still strapped securely to the wall, Patrick’s head was lolling against
his forehead harness.  Beside him, Milar looked a funny shade of green.

“Got a lock on it!”

“Fire, damn it!”

She couldn’t help herself.  She
laughed as she pulled another spin over the top of a Bouncer, forcing his
companion to either break the lock or risk taking down his partner, as well. 
“Can’t take the heat, Milar?”

“Squid,” Milar said, sounding
weak, “As soon as you put this thing down, I’m gonna bust in there and drag you
somewhere to show you what heat is all about.”

Tatiana blushed and she forgot
about the Bouncers.  “Um.”

Milar grinned, perking up despite
his pallid complexion.  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Locked again!  Firing!”

Tatiana shut off the engines,
twisted the ship down, then didn’t haul up on the controls until she had
collided with the treetops.  All around her, the sounds of snapping trees
thudded against the hull with dull metal bangs as she plowed through the alien
canopy.  She felt the echo of an explosion somewhere behind her, as the missile
slammed into flying debris and detonated.

“Shit.  It dodged the
missiles.  Do I have a go on the LAZ?”

Crap.  Lasers.  Tatiana was
hoping it wouldn’t come to that.

“Roger, take it down.”

“Captain, I’m registering Colonial
structures within the regulated twenty-five kilometer no-fire limit.  A miss
might result in civilian casualties.”

“I don’t give a dead shit! 
They’re all rebels and pirates anyway.  Bring that junk heap down.”

Tatiana once again flipped on the
com speaker.  “Milar, I need you to release some stuff from the cargo nets. 
Everything heavy you can get your hands on.  I need to drop some ballast.”

“What happened to the
hamburger?”
Milar mumbled.  He looked well and truly miserable.  She was
actually a bit surprised he was still conscious.

“I’ll hold off on the fancy stuff
until you get back in harness,” Tatiana promised.

“That before or after you wreck
these Coalition guys’ days?” Milar asked, unbuckling himself.  “Because I’m
itching to drag you off somewhere and show you some fancy stuff of my own.”

Tatiana blushed again.  “Me
too.”  Then,
Oh my God, did you actually just say that?

Milar paused and looked up at her
through the camera.  He grinned.  “Got any requests?”

“The
ballast,
you horny
bastard!  Get the
ballast!
”

Chuckling, Milar jogged across
the cargo bay and started dragging stuff out of the nets and tossing it on the
floor.

“Hurry!” Tatiana cried, as the
Bouncers got into position behind her.  She had put on as much speed as the
ship could handle, but the Bouncers were closing.  Any minute, they would start
firing, and LAZ, once locked, wasn’t the type of weapon to miss.

“I am hurrying,”
Milar
cried, throwing more gear and tools onto the floor.

“I’ve got the target locked. 
He’s flying straight and level as a rookie now.  Looks like the guy made
himself sick.”

The other pilots laughed.

“Roger.  As soon as you can,
bring him down.”

“That’s enough!” Tatiana shouted
at Milar, eying the pile of debris on the floor of the ship.  “Get back in
harness.  Now!”

Milar, thankfully, didn’t argue. 
He struggled back across the deck and fell back into the body-shaped pad.  He
had just secured his forehead band when Tatiana veered up and shut off power,
flattening the ship against the air in front of it.  She heard the two Bouncers
boom past beneath her.  In the cargo bay, she heard Milar yell as all the loose
debris tumbled past him and hit the cargo bay door.

“Damn, missed.”

“You missed?  How the Hell
could you miss?”

Tatiana was climbing, now,
putting every ounce of her ship’s power into upward speed.  She hit forty
thousand feet, then opened the hatch and allowed all the debris to hurtle out
the back with a roar of wind.  Then she slammed the door shut, turned sharply
toward the ground, and used gravity to boost the ship’s natural speed, much
like a cart coasting down a hill.  Hitting one thousand feet, she saw the
Bouncers ahead of her, circling back.

She flew straight at the first
one.

“The asshole’s playing
chicken!”

“LAZ the bastard!”

Tatiana rolled out of the way at
the last moment, veered to the left, then retreated back the way she had come. 
She pressed her ship into speed, pushing the engines for all they would go. 
Tatiana felt even the little bots carrying extra oxygen to her brain struggle
against the Gs.   The two remaining Bouncers fell in behind her, their superior
ships and cockpits able to handle the sudden force of acceleration.  In
moments, they were zipping along the treetops at three times the speed of
sound, their velocity increasing steadily with every heartbeat. 

“Three seconds for a lock,”
one of the two remaining Bouncer captains said. 
“Two, one…”

Tatiana kept an even course,
concentrating on navigating the terrain ahead of her.

Twenty seconds later, a new voice
said,
“Well?  Did you take him down?”

Neither of the two Bouncer
captains replied.

“Bravo-Four-Four-Eight-Papa-Seven-Charlie,
did you get the lock?”

Tatiana checked her viewfinder,
then turned due east and headed deeper into colonial territory.

“Bravo-Four-Four-Eight-Papa-Seven-Charlie,
do you read?”

The controller received no
reply.  In an increasingly aggravated voice, the woman said,
“Bouncer
captains of the ships Bravo-Four-Four-Eight-Papa-Seven-Charlie and
Bravo-Four-Four-One-Adam-Zero-Victor, do you copy?”

Tatiana flipped the com off and
concentrated on staying low and off of radar.  To her passengers, she said,
“That did it.  You can come in here and stare at me in awe, now.”

Neither Milar nor Patrick
responded.  She glanced at the camera feed.  Both of their heads were lolling
against the forehead harnesses.  Tatiana grinned and let them sleep.

Two hours later, she heard
someone open the cockpit hatch. 

“Enjoy your snooze?” she asked.

“Well,” Milar said, stepping
through, “We’re not dead or entertaining Nephyrs, so I’ve got to assume you and
your buddies had a little coaler powwow and struck a deal and that’s why my
ship isn’t a steaming wreck in the jungle somewhere.”

“I want guns on this ship,”
Tatiana said.  “Forward and rear.”  Then she turned and scrunched her nose up at
him.  “You smell like vomit.”

Milar flushed.  “The only people
who have those kinds of guns are coalers, and they sure as Hell ain’t gonna
sell them to colonists.”

“Then we’ll steal them,” Tatiana
said.  “Not having guns pissed me off.”

Milar peered at her.  “My ship
can’t outrun Coalition Bouncers.”