Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising (43 page)

Milar’s eyes widened and he paled
further.

“Don’t make me come back there
and get you, runt!” Jeanne shouted.

“Your teeth are dirty,” Tatiana
shouted back.  To Milar, she said, “What’s it look like?  Big, little?”

“Just go,” Milar said, wincing,
“Before she
does
kill you.”

“I don’t
want
to go,”
Tatiana snapped.  “What’s a TAG?  Is it yellow?”

Milar just looked at her as if
she were some strange space barnacle that had affixed itself to his ship.

“With foilers?” she suggested.

“Look, squid,” Milar said, his
face clearing, “Stop screwing around.  This is the real thing.  Cold Knife is
the name of a town the Nephyrs slaughtered looking for you, after we blew up
your soldier.  Runaway was running from something.  They hunt him back to
Deaddrunk and they’ll murder everyone there.”

“Then come with me,” Tatiana
said.  “I don’t like her.”

“I’m sure the feeling is mutual,
sweetie,” Milar said.  “But of Pat and I, I’m the one best equipped to fly this
baby out of a firefight.”

“No,” Tatiana said, “
I’m
the best one to fly this out of a firefight.  What the hell does a TAG have to
do with anything?”

“You wanted a ship with guns,”
Milar reminded her.  “A TAG’s got guns.”

“But it’s not even your
ship!
”
Tatiana cried.  “You want me to steal a
ship?
”

“It’s not stealing it if the
owner can’t use it no more,” Milar said.

“Then that Runaway Joel guy is
dead?” Tatiana demanded.

Milar’s face darkened.  “No, but
he will be.  We’ll be leaving his ass in Deaddrunk for the coalers.”

Tatiana frowned.  “That’s not
nice.

Milar gave her a flat look. 
“It’s what he deserves.”

* * *

Tatiana sat in a passenger
seat—not the copilot seat, despite her protestations—and picked at her nails as
the pirate flew them back to the town of the crazy egger.

“So,” Tatiana said, “How’s my
little egghead friend?”

Jeanne ignored her.  In fact, for
the last twenty minutes, the pirate hadn’t said anything to her other than,
“Get back in the seat or I’ll start cutting off fingers.”

“This Runaway Joel a friend of
yours?” Tatiana asked.

“Was,” Jeanne said.  “Not
anymore.”

“Oh yeah?” Tatiana probed,
curious how a frigid icicle like Jeanne could have a friend.  “What broke you
up?”

“Differences,” Jeanne said.

“Like what?  He stole your
toothpaste?”  Then she slapped her forehead.  “No, it was the
fingers
,
wasn’t it?”

She actually saw a muscle in the
woman’s jaw twitch.  “He betrayed a friend of mine.”

“So?”

Jeanne looked over her shoulder. 
“So, that friend is dead now, and I’ve got three more teeth on my necklace.”

“Oh yeah?” Tatiana asked, looking
at the string of molars.  “What happened to the owners?”

“I hunted them down, scalped
them, took their scalps back to the thugs’ employer, dropped them on the desk
in front of the fat fuck, and then blew the shit out of his living room on the
way out.”

Tatiana peered at the woman,
trying to determine whether or not she was lying.  Like any good fashion model,
she had
curves
.  Finally, she said, “You’re like, what, one-eighty?  One
eighty-two?  Seventy-three, seventy-four kilos?”

Jeanne gave her a blank frown.

Tatiana realized that the
backward colonist knucker probably didn’t have the first clue about what a kilo
or a meter was.  She cursed the barbaric nature of the colonies and started
doing the mental math.  “So, like, five-eleven?  A hundred-sixty pounds? 
Hundred-
seventy
?”

Jeanne said nothing.

“How does someone like you scalp
someone?”

Jeanne’s green eyes found her
again.  “How does someone like you look in the mirror without wanting to blow
your metal brains out?”

Tatiana flushed and fell into a
brooding silence.  Rule Eight of the OBRC—Sticks and Stones Can Break Your
Bones, But Commanding Officers Can Ground You.  Unfortunately, Tatiana had
always failed this part of the brain-scan.  Under her breath, Tatiana muttered,
“You forget to chew your mastodon this morning?  ‘Cause you’re acting awfully
backed up.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing.  I’m sure flint chips
take excellent scalps.”

Jeanne gave her a long look of
utter bafflement, then returned to the controls.

“Neanderthal,” Tatiana muttered.

“I heard that,” Jeanne said.

“Must be those keen hunter
senses,” Tatiana said.

Jeanne looked over her shoulder…

…and grinned.  Tatiana’s mouth
dropped open.

“You know,” Jeanne said,
returning her gaze to the viewfinder, “I was rooting for you.”

“What?”

“Back when you took
Liberty
and left us all staring at your exhaust vortexes.  I was hopin’ you’d talk your
way out of Milar gutting you.  Half the prophecies say he gutted you.”  She
gave Tatiana another measuring look.  “Wideman gave us more prophecies on you
than everyone else combined.  Why is that?”

“Uh,” Tatiana said, flushing,
“He’s got a thing for cyborgs?”

“You gonna be the Face of the
Revolution, there, girl?”

“Wasn’t particularly planning on
it,” Tatiana said.

Jeanne held her gaze a moment, then
returned to the viewfinder.  “We’re coming up on Deaddrunk.  I’m gonna drop you
beside the TAG and see if I can find those Nephyrs.  As soon as you get
airborne, I’m gonna need you to slow down the coalers while everyone
evacuates.  If they’ve at all got their shit together, they’re gonna be coming
from Yolk Factory 9, about a hundred and forty miles southwest of Deaddrunk. 
It’s got its own Pods assigned to it.”

“How many?” Tatiana asked,
suddenly distracted by the crystal butterfly hanging from above the ship’s
viewfinder.  It seemed oddly out of place, like the Abominable Snowman had
suddenly decided to wear a gigantic yellow smiley face hat while it ripped the
heads off of high-altitude enthusiasts.

“You hear me?” Jeanne demanded.

Tatiana jerked her eyes away from
the butterfly.  “Eh?”

“However many show up, take care
of them,” Jeanne said.  “You can do that, right?  If you can’t, and you need
help, let me know.  We can’t afford to have any of those bastards get through
to Deaddrunk.”

Tatiana peered at Jeanne, her
mind’s eye unable to rid herself of the crystal butterfly.  “Deaddrunk?”  A
butterfly just seemed so unbelievable.  Maybe Jeanne had a girly little lover
who happened to like crystals.  Yeah, that was it.  She was a lesbian.  Made
total sense, now that she thought about it.

Vaguely, Tatiana heard the ship
slow, felt the metallic thud of the landing gear fall into place. 

She looked at Jeanne. 
Could
she be a lesbian?  Butch was in, sure, but would any woman really want to share
bed space with Homo Erectus? 
All she’s missing is the spear,
Tatiana
thought, her eyes once again falling on the ridiculous necklace.  Now that she
was looking, she was pretty sure a few of them were
bloody.
  Ew.

A moment later, the ship was
sitting on the tarmac, and Tatiana realized she had just spaced the last half
of Jeanne’s instructions.

Jeanne apparently realized this,
too, because her fists whitened on the stick.  “Girl,” she said.

“Captain Tatiana Eyre,” Tatiana
said.

“Girl,” Jeanne said again.  “You—

“Captain,” Tatiana said.

“—get in—”

“Tatiana.”

“—that ship—”

“Eyre.”

“—fire it up—”

“To you.”

“—and blow up—”

“Collie.”

“—anything that moves.”  Jeanne
twisted around in the captain’s chair.  Her face was a thunderhead, daring
Tatiana to interrupt her again.  Silence fell between them, pounding and tense.

“Except you,” Tatiana said.

The pirate narrowed her eyes. 
“Obviously.”

“One condition,” Tatiana said.

“What, girl?” she asked in a
frustrated growl.

Tatiana jerked her thumb at the
butterfly.  “Whose crystal is that?”

Jeanne’s green eyes never left
her face.  “Mine.”

“It’s pretty.”

“I took it off a dead woman,”
Jeanne said, “After I carved out her double-agent tongue.”  Still deadly calm,
the pirate said, “When I’m bored, I like to look at it and remind myself what
it was like to hear her scream.”

Tatiana scrunched up her nose. 
“You’re worse than Milar.”

“You have no idea,” Jeanne said
softly.  “Are you going to get off my ship now?”

Tatiana grimaced and glanced out
the viewfinder at the ship she was supposed to fly.  Unfortunately, it didn’t
look all that familiar.  She only had the vaguest tingling of memory, but she
wasn’t about to tell Jeanne that, not when she’d been threatening her with a
necklace.  “Yeah, sure.”  She stood up and moved toward the exit.

“And girl?”

Tatiana grimaced and glanced over
her shoulder.

“Fuck it up…”  Jeanne touched the
notch in the necklace again.  “…and you’ll be right here.”

Tatiana realized that this was an
ideal time to utilize the Nine Rules of the OBRC.  She took a deep breath,
hesitated, then said, “Is that before or after you read your mammoth entrails
to determine which day is most portentous to bathe this month?”

“After,” Jeanne said.  Then she
smiled.

It was the single scariest thing
Tatiana had ever experienced in her life.  She ducked out of the cockpit and
ran
for the exit.

She was panting in the pilot’s
seat of the TAG, powering it up, before she realized that she had, indeed, seen
the inside of this ship before.

Not
a
TAG. 
This
TAG.

Remembering
where,
Tatiana
suddenly didn’t feel very good.

“Girl, you gonna take off or
what?”
Jeanne demanded over the com.

Tatiana stared at the windshield,
remembering watching the ground rush up to meet her through it.  Slowly, she
got out of her chair.  Every hair on her body was standing on end, and her
pulse was zinging through her fingers, making them tingle.

“Girl, what the hell are you
doing?”
Jeanne snapped. 
“Those Nephyrs are gonna be here any minute.”

“Stop calling me girl!” Tatiana
shrieked, trying to think.  The last time she had seen this console, it had
been melting under intense heat.  Along with it, her skin had crackled open
like a suckling pig.  “This is a bad idea,” she finally said.  “I’m coming back
to your ship.”

“What are you talking about?”
Jeanne demanded. 
“No you’re not.”

“I’m getting off this ship,”
Tatiana said.  “I’m not flying this thing.”

“You can’t be serious.”
 
It was Milar, this time. 
“Squid, we need you to fly that thing.”

“I’m serious,” Tatiana said,
remembering her own blood spilling across the ship’s aluminum floor.  She
remembered ruby puddles build around her as the fires spread, working their way
toward her lifeless fingers and face.  She watched her eyes close, watched
herself die.  The déjà vu was so thick that she could almost feel her own ghost
tracing its icy fingers down her neck.  “Serious as a goddamn heart-attack.”

For the longest time, Jeanne said
nothing.  Then, softly,
“The next time I see you, you’re dead.”

“Yeah, whatever!” Tatiana
screamed into the microphone.  “You want to fly it, you get in here and do it. 
Count me
out.
”  Then she slammed the switch down and unlocked the outer
hatch, leaving the ship still running. 

She was halfway down the ramp
when she saw the Nephyr.

He was walking across the tarmac,
a gun slung across his chest, a curious look on his face as he examined the
ship.

As soon as their eyes met, they
both froze.

Oh shit,
Tatiana thought. 
Several more seconds passed, her heart thundering in her chest.  A little frown
built on the Nephyr’s glittering face and he took a step toward her.  Tatiana
spun, ran up the ramp, and slapped the door lock.  Then she ran to the cockpit
and sat down in the chair.

She almost powered it up. 
Almost.

It’s gonna be this ship,
she thought, looking at the familiar console, the same outrageously huge
leather chair. 
This is the one that kills me.

She heard the Nephyr hit the
ship’s outer lock, hard.  It wasn’t enough to get him inside—brute strength
would never be enough to crack this particular nut—but the muffled thud made
Tatiana jump.

I’m trapped in my own coffin,
she thought, verging on hysteria.

Outside, she heard the whipping
roar of Bouncers as they slowed overhead.  Along with them came the sonic booms
of soldiers, then the sound of the ground thundering as they dropped beside her
on the tarmac.  While the Nephyr couldn’t force his way in, they could, and
gladly.

“Calling all colonist ships
within a seventy-five kilometer radius of the civilian town of Deaddrunk.  This
is the Coalition Air Force.  Power down your engines and exit your ships or you
will be fired upon.”

Tatiana closed her eyes,
remembering the fires, the horrible pain, her own charred flesh.  Above her,
she heard a ship blown apart.  She heard the percussive sounds of the soldiers
firing back.  Reluctantly, she put her hands to the joystick that she had
watched break her ribs.

She took a deep breath,
hesitating there. 
No guts no glory.

Then she jerked back on the nose
and rammed forward the accelerator, praying she could make it over the treeline
before the Bouncers realized she wasn’t going to hold still.  She expected a
normal, gentle, computer-regulated liftoff.  Instead, she shot off the tarmac
at a thirty degree angle, creating a sonic boom before she was over the
treeline, sending a hurricane of broken asphalt into the group of Nephyrs and
soldiers gathered on landing pad behind her.