Bounty Hunter 1: The Bounty Hunter's Revenge (2 page)

I rushed out the back and down the ramp
that the door had made. One of the thieves got an early lucky shot that bounced
harmlessly off my left shoulder. The impact caused my left hand to bounce off
my rifle and I had to raise the weapon with only my right hand. I heard Adam
laughing through a transmission over the fact that I had gotten hit already.

Through the targeting portion of my
visor that Cass maintained I lined up the scope’s cross hairs and fired a three
round burst. I didn’t have to wait and see if the shots landed—I knew I had
killed one of them—and moved the weapon to the next target. I turned left and
brought the rifle to the target in that direction and met it with my recovered
left hand at the same time. I steadied the gun and fired again, going for a
head shot this time since I had both hands available to keep the sights steady.
I saw the beginnings of a red mist appear around the man I hit and faced back
into the heart of the base.

The final target was hiding behind a
wall about twenty meters in front of me.

“I’m going around to make sure they
don’t try anything funny with the cargo. You okay up here?” Adam said.

“Of course,” I replied, and then cut off
my channel to him so only Cass could hear me. “I need a hook here, and hold my
gun for me.”

I held my rifle close to my right hip
until I felt it stick to the armor where Cass had temporarily magnetized it. My
hands were free to grab the grappling hook that was ejected out of the belt
portion of the armor. I launched it across the base and it caught onto the top
of the wall that my target was huddling behind. Cass didn’t have to wait for a
signal and started to ravel the hook’s line back into the belt, hurtling the
two of us forward to the wall much faster than anyone could have ran.

At the moment that I made contact with
the wall I surged forward, placed my right foot onto the top of it and vaulted
over. The hook smoothly snapped back into the armor and the compartment was
sealed as if it had never been open at all. Before I landed I twisted both of
my forearms quickly, triggering the blades that ran along the arm sections of
the aegis. They sprang out of my forearms and emerged toward and extended
passed my elbows.

I heard the man scream out in surprise
when he realized that I had already cleared the distance between us. When I
landed behind him, I brought the blades down and behind me, hard, piercing
right through his torso. I gave my forearms another twist, both to rupture the
man’s insides and kill him as mercifully quick as possible, while also causing
the blades to retract back into the armor.

“Four more, Burke,” Cass announced.

More red circles, one to match each
assailant, appeared in my field of view. Two more shots hit me and ricocheted
harmlessly off my chest like grains of sand blowing against a wall. I pulled up
my rifle to my head out of habit. Even though I still used the display in my
visor instead of manually looking down the scope, I still felt more comfortable
when the rifle was pressed into my shoulder.

I turned to face the target on my right
and he ran. I calmly trailed the scope in front of him, predicting his path,
and shot once to stagger him, and twice more to put him down. When I turned
back to the others I found only two red circles indicating targets. One of them
had slipped away.

The one closest to my left was still
firing at me, and I saw a blaze of yellow and orange fire spewing out of his
rifle as I lined up my sights on him. The light made it hard to see exactly
what I was firing at, so I lined up the cross hairs on the bursts of light,
brought it up slightly and fired. Something must have caught his arm or chest
because he staggered backwards, finger still on the trigger, shooting his gun
awkwardly up into the air. That cleared my view and I took two more shots, one
at his chest and another into his head.

The third had made it closer to me than
the others and I still couldn’t see the fourth man. I made a note that he must
have ran back inside while I popped the final few bullets remaining in my
magazine into the third target. He had still been using the hollow point rounds
that couldn’t penetrate my armor and had only made it easier to shoot him by
coming closer. I let the empty magazine fall out of the rifle and that was when
Cass screamed into my ears.

“Last target from behind!” A new window
of view widened in my visor, showing me what the camera in the back of my
helmet saw. He was only a few steps away and was carrying something with both
hands that he looked like he planned to strap onto my back.

“He’s got a scrambler pack, Burke.
Quickly!” Cass yelled. She was in danger when one of those was involved, too.

The man didn’t know I could see him from
behind and was still trying to sneak up on me. When he was closer I ducked down
suddenly and he leaped at me, trying to pin the electrical explosive on me
before I got out of range. It was capable of frying my entire system and
leaving the armor as a heavy prison for me to be stuck in, instead of a
powerful weapon. Every device has its weaknesses.

I predicted that he expected me to roll
away, and I was right when I surprised him by spinning back toward him with a blade
extending out of my right arm. The man panicked and brought up the scrambler to
block my attack. The blade pierced into the package and lodged itself into it.
The thing began to spark and let out a high pitched whine. It was damaged but
not enough to deactivate it. Pain shot up through the blade and into my arm but
Cass was already assuring me that it wouldn’t do any permanent damage to me or
her. I ignored it and went for another attack.

The thief had already pulled out another
weapon: a handgun this time, and wasted no time in bringing it to my temple and
firing right at my head. The sound of it clanging off the reinforced metal hurt
my ears more than the force of it hurt the rest of me. The man looked horrified
that several close ranged shots had left no visible mark on me. I spun on my
heels and brought the blade back down on him again, the tip piercing into his
neck and coming cleanly out of the left side of his torso above his hip.

I grabbed the scrambler pack with my
left hand and threw it down onto his corpse. The thing continued to spark and
jolt, sending tremors through the dead body.

“Burke, there are seven more inside.
Should be the last of them. I think they’re guarding the room with the cargo in
it. I could use your help in here,” Adam’s voice came through in my helmet.

“I’m on my way.”

I reloaded my rifle on my way into main
building. Cass was displaying a marker for Adam’s location and I could see her
estimating a mapped layout of the inside of the base to help me find him. She
adjusted the visor’s tint as I entered the building and I could see as clearly
inside as I could out. I immediately saw stairs that headed downwards in the
direction of Adam and Cass adjusted her outline to accommodate the basement
level as we descended.

I heard gunfire before I saw Adam and I
rushed through the hallways toward the sound. I found him pinned down behind a
corner of the far side of an entrance into what looked to be the largest room
on the level. I poked my head around the corner and saw seven red circles light
up immediately. I yanked my head back just before a volley of bullets ripped
through where my head had just been and slammed into the wall behind me.

“Be careful!” Adam hissed at me, so loud
that I heard him both through the transmission and through our helmets nearby.
“Seems like these assholes made the new guys attack us first while they stayed
behind and hoarded all the armor piercing rounds. Fucking cowards.”

He twisted around to show me the two
holes in his armor. One was at the shoulder and another on his upper arm. As if
he knew what my immediate question was going to be, he shook his head and
answered: “they only hit the armor and went through. A bit of system damage but
nothing on me. I’m fucking pissed. These things are expensive to repair.”

I nodded at him. Instead of extending my
head around the corner, I held the rifle with both hands and propped it upright
in front of me. I slowly extended so it gradually poked out around the corner.
The rifle was mostly black, and blended in with the dark interior of the base. The
thieves didn’t notice what I was doing and I lined up my first shot with the
visor’s view with slow movements.

I only needed one shot for the first
target. I lined up a second as fast as I could, considering how awkward it was
to move a rifle the way I was holding it. After I killed a second man they all
ducked down behind the crates they were using for cover. A few tense seconds
went by while I frantically searched the entire view for any sign of movement.
I was about to give up and move into the room properly when I saw something be
thrown out from behind cover.

“Grenade!” Cass shouted at me.

I knew how she liked to deal with
grenades and immediately dropped my rifle. I held out my right hand toward the explosive
after it landed between Adam and myself. Cass magnetized the armor at the palm
of my hand and the grenade snapped into my fingers. I closed my hand around it
at the same time that she cut off the magnetization and hurled it smoothly back
into the room in one motion. I saw two of the thieves pop their heads up in the
instant before the explosion.

I rushed with Adam into the room and was
ready to clean up whatever the grenade didn’t do. The blast had killed three of
them and blinded the final two. If the contract hadn’t specified that all the
thieves had to be eliminated I would have argued with Adam about taking them
back as prisoners. Part of me was still the sentimental soldier. I knew what
the bounty required, however, and I took care of my half of the remaining two.

When the smoke had cleared I saw that
Adam was already following the cargo’s tracker toward the far end of the room.
I trailed behind him, not fully relaxed just yet in case they had greater numbers
than had been estimated by the client. Looking around the room I saw that they
had quite the treasure trove of what I assumed were stolen goods. Crates were
stacked up to the ceiling and looked to contain a wide variety of things
judging from their varying shapes and sizes.

“Adam, we might want to look at what else
they have here,” I called out to him.

“What? Oh, yeah. Uh, no, actually, we
need to get this back as soon as we can. We’ll come back for the rest.”

“What? It’ll only take a few hours. We
should do it right now.”

He didn’t answer. I walked up closer to
him and saw that he was crouched over one of the larger containers stuffed into
the furthest corner of the room. Cass connected the tracker display that Adam
was using into my visor and I saw that he had found the tracking beacon. That
container was what we needed to get back with us.

“We’ll come back, Burke. Help me carry
this back to the ship.”

We worked our way carefully with the
cargo out of the base. We kept our faceplates sealed and stopped often to look
ahead, just to make sure everything was clear. It was slow going but we had no
idea what was in the container and didn’t want to risk damaging it. Failing to
retrieve something would be a problem, but inadvertently destroying what we
were sent to fetch would be a much bigger problem. We’d be responsible for
replacing whatever it was. At the high payoff for returning it, we didn’t want
to take any chances.

We made it onto the ship without
incident and securely fastened the container on the far wall away from the
cargo doors. I unsealed my faceplate and saw Adam do the same. He looked
worried. I was puzzled and unsure about what was going through his head.

“We should go back for the rest of the
stuff now,” I repeated the suggestion.

“No,” he stated.

“You told the client we’d destroy the
base, remember? We can’t come back for it later.”

“He won’t know the difference. We’ll
just come back.”

“He’s paying us a lot of money, Adam. I
don’t think we should risk it.”

“Exactly, so we should leave immediately
and get his property back to him,” Adam countered.

“What? You’re not making any sense.”

He waved a hand at me dismissively and
walked up into the ship. I was confused and annoyed, but what would happen next
never crossed my mind.

The ship shuddered as it began to lift
off from the surface. The cargo door was still wide open and hung loosely out
of the ship after it began to gain altitude. My hand was only a few centimeters
from the door’s control panel when I heard Adam come back into the room. I
heard something odd as he did so, like the sound of a electric spark, that made
me freeze before I could hit the button. Cass was roaring something out at me
but I couldn’t hear her.

I turned around and saw that Adam had a
scrambler rifle pointed at my chest. I turned instinctively away from it before
he fired but I wasn’t fast enough. The front part of the rifle launched forward
trailing two thick wires behind it and connected with my armor, with two sharp
prongs piercing into the metal above my stomach.

“Burke! Watch—,” Cass’s voice was cut
off as a surge of power overloaded the suit’s systems. I managed to get my
right hand around the rifle’s prong before the suit became unbearably heavy and
seized up around me.