Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising Read Online Free Page A

zipped up the suit,
tucked the collar down, then built a fire and ate a packet of rehydrated stew. 
Even after it became obvious to her that she was not going to be able to get
back into the machine, she could not bring herself to trigger the beacon.  She
knew that when she did, they were going to rip away her nodes, sew her up, and
send her back to fly freight in the Core. 
    Once she was finished eating, she
set the beacon on a log across from her and stared at it. 
    The moment she triggered the
device, a Coalition retrieval team would come, find a fully-functioning
soldier, a perfectly healthy operator, and know she had freaked out again.  If
they were feeling generous and decided to let her stay in her soldier, the
number of years left on her enlistment would be put on pause as they worked the
kinks out of her brain, just like last time.
    But if she didn’t trigger it— especially if she didn’t trigger it—they would track her down by the lifeline chip lodged
in her spine. 
    Hell, she realized, they might
not even bother tracking her down.  They might just save themselves the effort,
bring up her chip ID on the base computer, and fry her brainstem…letting her
rot in whatever ridiculous makeshift shelter she had cobbled together from
sticky alien plant stems under some rain-soaked leaf-cluster.
    Unwillingly, she started crying
again.
    “Damn,” a voice said.  “I never
would’ve believed Milar if I wasn’t seeing it myself.”
    Tatiana gasped and spun.
    A big man in dirty brown leather
stood at the edge of the firelight behind her.  He had curly auburn hair, a
heavy spattering of freckles, and dimples.  He was smiling. 
    He was also holding a Laserat
pistol aimed at her chest.
    “Cold night out,” he commented.
    Tatiana froze, her eyes on the
gun.  “I’m Coalition,” she blurted.
    He laughed and motioned with the
barrel of the gun at the cracked soldier.  “Obviously.”  The hulking, stinking
brute sniffed and wiped a dirty hand across his nose, leaving a trail of
bacteria-ridden slime across his arm.  He snorted, proceeded to noisily hack up
a gob of phlegm, and expertly spat it into the slimy alien weeds before
clearing his throat and swallowing.
    Tatiana realized she had her face
scrunched up in disgust. 
    “Got a cold,” the stranger said,
by way of explanation.  His expression lacked any sort of apology.  “Coalition
confiscated colonist vita-stores last year.  We’ve been deficient in selenium,
zinc, and potassium ever since.”
    Realizing that not even her overactive imagination could drum up a mucousy, selenium-deficient, gun-toting,
knuckle-dragging ape, Tatiana started to get a very bad feeling. 
    Still, she reminded herself,
Fortune had the Yolk trade.  The Coalition had so many personnel stationed on
the planet that it would take a lobotomized nutjob to start a scuffle with
government troops.  Tentatively, eyes still fixed on the pistol, she said,
“Then what do you think you’re doing?”
    “Rebellin,” he said.  He
grinned.  “Step away from the soldier, please.”
    Tatiana glanced back at the
egglike vault.
    “Don’t,” the man warned.  His
Coalition New Common was clumsy, like it had been learned from a textbook.
    Tatiana hesitated.  It took long
minutes to fully calibrate a soldier upon reentry.  Even if she made it inside
before he hit her, they could certainly pry her out again before she’d
activated systems.  She glanced at the beacon.
    “It’d take them an hour to get
here.”  He started to swagger toward the fire.  “Besides, I just wanna look.”
    “Are you trying to start a war? ”
Tatiana demanded.
    “Wouldn’t mind it,” he said.  The
colonist walked over to the soldier and tapped on the ultra-light armor
plating. 
    “Get away from my soldier,”
Tatiana blurted, every pore on her body suddenly constricting at the idea of
the Coalition finding out she’d let a colonist this close to the weapon.
    “Calm down, pumpkin,” he