Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising (41 page)

She thought about that for all of
approximately two seconds, then continued unbuttoning him anyway.  She was done
waiting.  She’d just hope whatever he had wasn’t communicable.

And then, as her fingers reached
down into his pants to push the flaps aside, she heard him gasp.  It wasn’t a
gasp of pleasure…  It was a gasp of surprise.

…surprise?

He was biting his lip, watching
her hands, looking unsure.

Tatiana lifted her eyes back to
his face, it suddenly dawning on her.  “No way.” 

That jerked his attention back to
her.  “No way what?”

“You’re a virgin, aren’t you?”

Milar reddened like his face had
been dipped in acid.  “No.”

“You
are!
” she cried,
gleeful.  She smacked him playfully on the chest.  “After all that crap about
girls telling you you’re heavy…  You’re a
virgin.
”

He swore softly, averting his
eyes as he turned his head to the side, his body trembling under her with what
had to be fear and anticipation.  “Is it that obvious?”

She gave him an evil grin and
kissed his navel.  “Yes,” she said.  Then, when his head came around and their
eyes locked, she gave him an impish smile. “But that doesn’t bother me a bit. 
I happen to like virgins.”

His eyes widened.  “You do?”

“Taste like chicken.”  She
nibbled his stomach, then gently began to ease his pants down.

He raised a big hand to stroke
her temple.  “Coaler,” he whispered, “I’m all yours.”

Those four words settled in
Tatiana’s chest and set it afire.  Before she could stop herself, Tatiana had
crawled back over him and they were kissing again.  Their bodies began to move
in rhythm, melting into each other, responding to the other’s pulse.  His
fingers found the heavy metal port over her heart and began slowly tracing the
sensitive edge, making her gasp. 

Immediately, Milar froze. 

“It’s okay,” she whispered
against his cheek.

Gingerly, he again started
tracing the outer edges with his thumb.  It was so intimate, something she had
never let another human being do.  It left her shivering above him, eyes closed
as she felt his fingers move.

“Coaler,” Milar whispered.

“Mmm?”  She stroked the muscles of
his shoulders, down his chest.

“Why am I the only one
undressed?”

Then she squealed as Milar tossed
her over onto her back and tugged the rest of her jumpsuit off.  Then he was
kissing her from above, gently lowering his weight, pinning her once more to
the mattress.  Tatiana moaned, pressing her body to his impatiently.

The intercom of the ship suddenly
made them both jolt. 
“Milar, if you’re on the ship, you asshole, get up
here and tell me what the hell happened.”

“
Shit
!” Milar cried,
dodging for his pants like a teenager caught necking in his mother’s basement. 
Tatiana had to laugh.

Milar, holding his clothes to his
groin, blushed a deep scarlet.  “He’ll come looking for us,” he blurted.

Still giggling, Tatiana gestured
at the door.  “I’ll catch up with you later.”

Milar threw on his pants and
bolted from the room.

Taking a peek at the clock,
Tatiana flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.  She took a deep
breath, then let it out in a sigh.  It had been the best thirty minutes of her
life.  She still felt the electricity pulsing where he had touched her, leaving
tingles of warmth in its wake.

Next time,
Tatiana
thought,
I don’t care if the ship’s about to explode.  He’s finishing what
he started.

Chapter
37

Hijacked

The man tapped the base of Joel’s
brainstem with the cold barrel of his rifle.  “What do you think you’re doing?”

Prickling, Joel gestured at the
ground through the viewfinder.  “I’m putting you down with the others so I can
go back for those kids.”  Scattered amongst the trees, he could see huddled
groups of eggers he had dropped off from earlier runs, watching them hover.

“Bullshit,” the man—Corey, he had
called himself—said.  He pressed the icy metal barrel against Joel’s shorn
scalp once more.  “You’re taking us to Silver City.”

Joel tensed in his shoulder
harness, thinking of Magali.  “That’s almost three hours from here.”

“The smuggler can add,” Corey
laughed.  “Good for you.”  The two rifle-bearing women who had taken up
positions leaning against the wall of the cockpit behind him snickered.

“Listen,” Joel said, thinking of
Magali, “This is a fast ship.  You have no idea how fast.  I can get you to a
nearby town, someplace like South Fork or Thirtymile, in under ten minutes. 
When they go looking, the Nephyrs are gonna check places like Sand Hills and
Bridgetown.  I’ll put you down an extra four hundred miles out from that. 
You’d be safe there.”

“Yeah, to Hell with that,” Corey
said.  “South Fork and Thirtymile have three hundred people, tops.  A couple
dozen guys with guns show up…word’ll spread.  Silver City’s on the other side
of the planet, and big enough to get lost in.  You’re taking us there.”

Magali’s not gonna survive
that long,
Joel thought.  “What about them?” he asked, gesturing to the
eggers on the ground.  “Nephyrs are gonna find them if we don’t get them some
help.”

Corey laughed.  “Good.  It’ll
give the Nephyrs a distraction.”

A distraction.  Joel remembered
saying similar things, in his youth. 
He would make a great smuggler,
Joel thought, disgusted.

Joel stared at the console in
front of him.  Magali was still back there, and the Coalition was closing in. 
If he took them all the way to Silver City, none of the eggers of Yolk Factory
14 would be there when he got back.  They would be back in the camp, to be
lined up, condemned, and murdered as traitors to the Coalition.

“I’m the pilot,” Joel said, “And
I’m taking you to South Fork.”  He reached for the console.

The egger behind him grabbed him
by his chin and hauled upward, until Joel’s neck felt like it was about to
break.  The man’s rifle was suddenly pressed against his cheek.  “We ain’t
givin’ you that option, Runaway,” the wan-faced egger said softly.  “You take
us where we wanna go or your brains are gonna start bubbling.”

Joel focused on the cold metal
barrel digging into his cheek, then he looked back up at grinning man behind
it.  Softly, he said, “
Honor
is one of the fastest, most customized
atmo-jumping ships ever brought this far into the Outer Bounds.”

The man jammed the rifle deeper
into his cheekbone.  “So?”

“So,” Joel said, “It’s a standard
450-TAG fitted with enough boosters and frame support to hit Mach 5 in ten
seconds.  There’s maybe three people on the whole planet who can fly it, and
one of them is sitting in this chair.  You kill me and you’re gonna have a hell
of a time going
anywhere,
much less out of Nephyr search-range.” 

The idiot grinned at him.  “Guess
we’ll see, won’t we?”

Joel narrowed his eyes.  “Guess
we will.”

The man released him.  Gesturing
with his rifle, he said, “Get us to Silver City without any more lip and maybe
we won’t sell this fancy scrap heap to the highest bidder when we get there.”

Joel leaned forward in his
restraints, pressed unnaturally toward the console by the gun that was once
again jammed against his brainstem.  When he didn’t move, the egger behind him
said, “Now, Runaway.”

“Silver City, huh?” Joel said. 
Silver City was a good choice.  The Coalition would never look there.  It was
where Joel would go, if he were looking to disappear. 

Which he was, wasn’t he?  He’d
done everything he said he would do.  He’d spent hours ferrying eggers away
from that place.  He had to think about himself, now.

…Didn’t he?

“You gonna get this thing movin’
or I need to jump-start your brain?” The gun tapped him again. 
Tap.  Tap.

“I’m thinking,” Joel muttered.

“Ain’t much to think about,” the
egger said.  “You take us where we want to go and you get to live.”

Joel looked at the controls and
saw Magali’s face, agonized and tear-stricken, huddled against the wall of a
cave, her hands still shaking from using the gun that had saved his life.  He
saw her spill her life’s story, confident he couldn’t understand a word.

Then he saw the Nephyrs get
her.   Joel squeezed his eyes shut, forcing that image from his mind. 

Tap, tap, tap.

The barrel of the gun brought him
back to the present.

You are a smuggler,
Joel
thought. 
A smuggler can’t care about the sheep.

Joel put both hands on the
accelerator. 
Honor
started picking up speed, and the eggers on the
ground quickly passed out of visible range. 

Then,
Magali isn’t a sheep.

And, right then, Joel knew he had
to save her.  He started gaining altitude, putting more distance between
themselves and the abandoned eggers on the ground.  He casually switched off
the inertial dampeners.

“Now, ain’t that better? 
Everybody wins.”  Behind him, the man had relaxed, lowering the gun from Joel’s
head.  “See?  We might even let you keep your—”

The man’s words were cut off when
Joel jammed the forward power as far forward as it would go.  The ship’s
engines screamed joyously, and suddenly Joel was being slammed into the back of
his chair with all the weight of a thousand-pound man.  The eggers fell to the
back, howling in surprise. 

“Drop your weapons,” Joel snapped
over his shoulder.  “Right now.”

“Stop it!” Corey cried.  “Now,
smuggler!”  Joel heard the sizzling crackle of an energy beam hitting the wall
near the floor.  Joel’s heart skipped and a spike of adrenaline sizzled in
painful arcs through his chest as he imagined what had been damaged.

“Drop it!” Joel screamed.

“Now!” the man screamed.  The gun
fired again.  A bolt tore through along the floor beside Joel’s foot.  Joel
flinched.  He could think of at least twelve places in the cockpit where an
energy beam, if triggered in the right spot, could kill them all.  His hands
tightened on the controls.

Joel hadn’t wanted to do it this
way, but the moron wasn’t giving him a choice. 

Before the man could fire off
another shot, Joel threw the ship into a downward plunge, making his gut roil
as his body started to float, then abruptly pulled an arc, hitting positive Gs,
crushing the eggers back to the floor under their own weight, then started to
spin.  Behind him, he heard people scream as they tumbled against the walls
like bingo balls inside a mixing basket.

Sorry,
he thought,
straining to keep conscious through the added weight of his body against the
chair.  He hadn’t flown in three years, so he wasn’t sure how much he could
take anymore.  For the average untrained, unaugmented pilot, it was seven to
eight Gs.  Joel was praying he could handle more than that.

Ideally, Joel would have put his
passengers to sleep, but he wasn’t sure he could withstand what they could
not.  Joel had the training, but his ships had always been advanced enough to
compensate for at least some of the added pressure, giving him no real
advantage over the eggers.  Even twenty years ago, when he had been flying for
the Coalition, his body had been cushioned in the most advanced inertial-dampening
fields available.

Which meant he was in for a hell
of a ride.

Joel cut his spin, then
immediately pulled up and shot skyward, nose vertical, then threw the ship into
a second, more violent spin.  In the back, men were screaming, now.  He winced,
knowing they were breaking bones, knowing he didn’t have time to do it gently
if he wanted to help Magali and the other eggers.

The first thing I need to do
once I get Magali,
Joel thought, as he pulled them out of the upward climb
at the dark, purplish edge of the stratosphere, flipped the ship in an arc, and
dove straight down, superheated atmospheric plasma blotting out his view of the
ground through his viewfinder. 
Is get someone to take out my lifeline.

Joel’s ship had built-in signal
scramblers, in case his merchandise ever got fitted with a government tracking
device.  That meant, as long as he stayed within twenty feet of his ship and
his ship stayed powered, the Coalition wouldn’t be able to pin his location to
anything closer than a two-thousand-kilometer-wide radius. 

Which, if what Magali had said
was true and there were dead Nephyrs at the base of that cliff, was probably
the only reason he wasn’t a drooling vegetable.

 Even in the ship, the moment he
went back into range of the camp computer, he was taking a big risk.  He had
been out of the loop for three years…  Who knew what kinds of new tracking
technology the Coalition had developed in those years?  And who knew whether or
not Martin had kept his own technology up-to-date.  So much in the smuggling
world depended on up-to-date tech…

Joel dragged the ship through the
nadir of its latest arc at about a quarter its normal atmospheric power,
knowing that full power without inertial dampeners would kill them all.  As it
was, he was feeling dangerously light-headed, with all the blood of his body
rushing to his brain.  Much more pressure and one of those teeny blood-vessels
would develop an embolism—which Joel knew from experience was all-too-often the
death for a good smuggler, much more common than the firing squad.

Then he was through the nadir and
building upward speed, the G’s once again tugging the blood from his brain,
leaving his vision feeling narrow and his head light.

Just hold on, Joey-baby,
he thought, clamping down his chest and abdomen as hard as it could go,
emptying his lungs in a scream as he tried to keep the blood where it
belonged. 
Just hold on…

He brought the ship out of the
arc and leveled it out.  Behind him, he the ship echoed with every beat of his
heart.  He tentatively glanced over his shoulder.

The three eggers in the cockpit
with him were lying in various, bloody angles of disarray. 

Joel brought the ship to the
ground and got out of his harness.  He was advancing on the eggers, reaching
for the closest discarded weapon, when Corey opened his eyes.

There was a moment where their
eyes met, then Joel realized Corey had the gun aimed at his chest.

“Fucking…smuggler.”

The man pulled the trigger.

A sudden burning in the right
side of his chest made Joel blink.  A microsecond later, the burning went
numb.  Then the flesh around it began to heat and heat, until it was an
unbearable searing agony and he could feel the sickening feeling of his own
flesh bubbling in his chest.  He looked down, saw the air escaping from his
lung, hissing between the charred flesh between his ribs, felt the awful
pressure in his ribcage as the fleshy bag collapsed.

On the floor, the egger was
chuckling, picking himself off the floor.  “Thought you got us didn’t you,
smuggler?  Thought you—”

Joel kicked him in the nuts. 
Then he kicked him again and again, until he stayed down.  He was gasping, now,
his body struggling for air.  The edges of his vision were waffling between red
and black.

Picking up the egger’s gun, he
collapsed with his back propped up against the console, struggling just to stay
conscious.  He watched the eggers sleep, his mind drifting at the edge of the
warm envelope of the void.

Aanaho, Joel,
he thought,
What
did you get yourself into?

When the first eggers woke, Joel
had to strain to produce enough air to talk and stay conscious at the same
time.  “Grab your friends,” he said, making sure they saw his gun, “And get off
my ship.”

The eggers eyed him warily, like
a housecat that had suddenly gone feral.

“
Now,
” Joel said.

They obeyed.  Joel watched them,
dragging men and guns off the deck, into the swamp beyond.  Joel let them take
the guns.  He couldn’t have found the breath to stop them, anyway.  It was all
he could do just to keep his eyes open.

I need help,
Joel
thought. 
Aanaho, I need a doctor.

But where could he go?  The
doctors who weren’t under Geo’s thumb were gonna be earning their paycheck from
Coalition coffers.

Then he had a more disturbing
thought: 
I can’t outfly Coalition like this.
  His fingers, ears, even
his bones were tingling.  Every breath left a sucking sound in his chest, as
blood began to fill the cavity.  His mind, already feverish from the festering
leg-wound, began to drift in and out of consciousness.

Shit,
Joel thought. 
Shit,
shit.

Nanostrip wasn’t going to be
enough.  Not for this.  He needed a surgeon, and fast.  One that wouldn’t rat
him out to Geo or hand him over to the Coalition.

As the last eggers were dragging
the last of their friends off his deck, Joel climbed into the pilot’s seat and
locked the doors behind him.  He latched himself into place, then leaned
against the restraints, panting, feeling dizzy.

Deaddrunk,
he thought. 
Landborn’s
place.