Bounty Hunter 1: The Bounty Hunter's Revenge (3 page)

“Adam! Why!”

He said nothing. He yanked the rifle
back, hard, above his head, and the wires snapped away from the piece still
stuck in the suit. I fell forward from the force of his pull and landed rigid
as a statue onto the ground. My entire body armor was frozen and locked in
place and I was trapped there, in front of Adam with the cargo door still
behind me.

He started to walk toward me, carefully,
like a hunter skulking forward unsure if its prey was really dead. The ship
lurched as he got closer and I felt the vibration of the change of course come
to me through the floor. I suddenly felt lighter, as if I was slipping, and the
last thing I saw in the ship was the look of alarm on Adam’s face before I slid
right through the cargo door.

I was in a free fall with my body
trapped in the shell of metal. I was mostly paralyzed and could only struggle
against the armor in tiny movements. The armor was just as heavy as ever and I
was hurtling down to the surface. At first I fell with my back facing the
ground, and the air whipped up at me as I stared up at my ship becoming a more
distant object with each second.

When the ship was only a tiny speck in
the sky I saw something near it light up. Something was coming toward me. At
first I thought it was the ship itself, turned around for Adam to come back and
finish the job, but it was moving too fast. And then I realized that he was
finishing the other job: he was destroying the base.

The missiles left thick, white streaks
behind them as they roared passed me and to the ground. They caused a rush of
air that pushed me on their way and sent me into a spin. I would alternate from
seeing nothing but blue sky and then nothing but sand stretching below me as I
got closer and closer to the ground. I saw the explosion that must have been
the base before I heard it, miles away from where I was headed to land.

As I got closer to the surface
everything became a dizzying blur and I was forced to close my eyes. The air
rushed at my face and funneled around my head in the free space of the helmet.
I couldn’t even close my visor and Cass was still offline from the scrambler
that was still embedded in my stomach. My right hand was still closed around
it.

I began to twist my right hand as hard
as I could and created the barest of motions through the armor in the process.
The inertia of falling was beginning to take its effect on me and, with my eyes
closed, I had no idea how close I was to the surface. I concentrated on nothing
else but my hand, slamming it around the inside of the armor to try to loosen
the scrambler.

I opened my eyes when I finally,
somehow, popped it loose and it spiraled out away from me. The ground was
closer than I thought it would be and I began to panic. The aegis wasn’t coming
back online. I was falling so fast that it felt like the ground was rushing up
to meet me rather than I was rocketing down to crash into it.

In my final moments of consciousness I
felt chills and spasms, like another electric shock, rumble through my body. My
vision went black and I thought I felt my faceplate slide down to cover my face
before I was gone. The impact felt distant, as if I was numb to it and had
fallen in a dream
.
In that moment, for all I
knew, I died.

* * *

“Burke. Don’t move.”

I tried to move.

“Burke! Don’t! Move!”

“Adam?”

“Cass. Do you remember what happened?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“No.”

“Do you know where we are?”

“No.”

“Go back to sleep.”

I opened my eyes. Everything was dark. I
couldn’t move my arms or legs and I felt like something heavy was sitting on my
back. My chest was facing the ground, or at least it felt that way. My visor
must have been down but the suit’s power was off. It displayed nothing and I
couldn’t see out of it.

“Cass.”

Nothing.

“Cass?”

Still nothing.

I blinked a few times as if that could magically
clear the darkness in front of me and make the visor turn on. Miraculously, it
seemed to work at first. I thought I saw a faint light growing brighter each
time I squeezed my eyes open and shut. I closed my right eye and only used my
left, and I was in total darkness. I closed my left eye and only looked through
my right eye, and I could see the light. Not a miracle, then. There was a crack
in the faceplate.

The hole was small, maybe the same size
as a fingertip, but I gazed curiously out of it. It must have been dark out or
else I would have noticed it sooner. The sand looked strange bathed in what I
guessed was moonlight. It looked dark and blue and cold. I strained my memory
and tried to recall if this planet had any moons. I couldn’t remember. I tried
to move.

“Burke!”

The suit came to life around me and the
pressure on my back seemed to lessen. I still couldn’t move my limbs but I
successfully wiggled my fingers and toes. Not paralyzed then, just stuck in the
suit.

“You’re still not allowed to move. Keep
trying and I’ll power down again.”

“Sorry. How bad is it?”

The visor blinked on and off in front of
me. I could see that Cass was trying to conserve as much power as she could. I recalled
that this planet had a much longer day and night cycle than most planets. She
needed to store as much power until the night was over and she could recharge
in the sunlight.

The visor’s display was damaged, and
cracks ran over the screen like fault lines spreading chaotically from the
single hole near my right eye. Cass didn’t waste energy displaying what was
outside and instead showed me my vitals. I had broken my right leg, my left
arm, and a number of ribs. I had several fractures. I was confused how I had
survived the fall at all.

“I only had a few seconds,” Cass
explained, as if she had guessed my thoughts. “I don’t know how you pulled out
the scrambler but I came back online with only enough time to seal you in,
dampen the fall, and harden the side of the armor that I thought would hit the
ground. I didn’t have time to process the trajectory and had to guess your
front or your back. You’re lucky I guessed right.”

I laughed and pain shot through my body
like a siren. I stopped laughing.

“No moving,” she said gently. “I’m sorry
I couldn’t do better. I’ve been keeping you hydrated and nourished but we’ll
run out in a few weeks. I had to use a lot of trial and error with the suit’s
pressure to set your bones properly. I,” she stopped for a moment, as if unsure
how to go on.

“I’ll be able to see how you’re healing
in a few days. You may not be able to take the chest plate off until you can
get outside medical attention. Your leg took the worst of the fall, and I
wasn’t able to set it properly. You may never be able to use your right leg
without the armor helping you ever again. I’m sorry, Burke.”

“You did your best. I’m alive. Adam did
this, not you,” I felt like I was straining to talk now, with each extra word
my chest began to tighten. “Why?”

“No. You need to rest. You have to stay
still for a few more days and then we’ll try to move. To sleep now.”

“A few
more
days?”

“To sleep.”

“Burke. Something is here.”

I don’t know how much time had passed. A
few days, maybe. I reminded myself not to move while I opened my eyes. I
stupidly waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness before I remembered that
I was still stuck inside the suit and helmet. I closed my left eye and peered
out through the hole. I saw that the planet was still in its night cycle but it
wasn’t quite as dark. Nearing dawn, I guessed. I couldn’t see whatever Cass was
talking about.

“Listen,” she said.

I closed my eyes. There was no wind at
that moment. I tried to listen for a person or a ship. Maybe Adam had came back
to confirm his kill, I thought bitterly. Enough time had went by that he could
have received payment for the cargo and came back. But I heard nothing like a
ship. Just a faint rustling followed by a sudden grunt, like a sneeze of a
small animal.

“It’s coming closer. I wanted a few more
days to be on the safe side of your recovery, but we might not have another
chance,” Cass was rambling quickly. “I hope your sidearm isn’t damaged.”

I both heard and felt the click of Cass
opening a compartment at my right thigh. It took effort but I gradually slid my
right arm down so my hand could reach in to the slot and grip around the
handgun. I pulled it out and slowly brought my arm back up to its starting
position. The gun felt intact from what I could feel from moving it.

“It’s approaching from your left side.
You’ll have to wait until it walks around to your other side before you take a
shot. No sudden movements. You need to kill this thing for food, Burke. I don’t
have enough supplies to keep you alive forever.”

A few minutes went by with nothing but
the sound of the creature sniffing around us. Occasionally I felt a little
pressure on my back or my left arm. It must have been confused by what I was. I
must have smelled like something edible but it could only find hard metal where
it looked. I lay as still as I could.

I wanted to recoil from the animal when
it came into view. It was the size of a large dog but hairy like a rat. It had
the nose of something close to a pig’s and its eyes were hidden amongst layers
of thick, sand covered fur. It put its nose into my right shoulder and inhaled
deeply, huffing air in and out so close to my face that I could smell it. I
started holding my breath.

The animal ran its nose up to my helmet.
It must have been able to tell that my scent was coming through more strongly
through the crack in the visor. I was soon unable to see anything when its head
blocked the hole entirely, and I took that as my opportunity. I carefully
turned the gun in my hand upwards. What I guessed to be its stomach was above
my forearm and slowly rose the barrel of the gun up at it.

There was an instant before I fired that
the animal must have felt the movement and let out a noise that was half growl,
half squeal. I squeezed the trigger and, when the gun successfully went off,
fired as many shots as I could before the creature lunged away from me. I must
have gotten at least three hits in. I heard more squealing nearby for a few
moments and then nothing.

“Poor thing,” Cass said sadly.

“It was your idea,” I replied.

“Doesn’t mean I can’t feel bad about
what’s necessary.” I was surprised by how genuinely upset she sounded.

“Am I allowed to move?”

“I want to be in control at first. I’ll
use the armor like a full body cast. It will hold you upright and I can make
sure no more damage is done while moving. From what I can see you’re healing
quickly, but if you twist the wrong way or put too much pressure on your leg,
then,” she trailed off.

“I understand.”

“This will still hurt,” she explained
softly. “Now you can’t move at all. Normally the suit responds to your movement
and assists you since its too heavy for you to move on your own. If you move
the wrong way while I’m moving something, you may pull something. Or worse, you
may break another bone or undo all the healing you’ve done so far.”

“Stay limp and let you move me, got it.”

The sensation was strange. I felt like a
marionette being pulled up right by its strings. Cass was excruciatingly slow
and was careful enough that I didn’t feel much pain for the first few minutes.
However, when it came to bending my right leg I had to set my teeth firmly
together to stop myself from screaming. It didn’t hurt as bad when she moved
the lower armor into an upright position, but by then my weight was fully
supported by the inside of the suit.

Every part of my body produced a dull
ache as the armor brought my torso upright. Even though I was being supported,
I was still changing my orientation to the planet’s gravity and my chest began
to hurt. It wasn’t as bad as my leg, but I was noticing that none of my muscles
were comfortable being moved after days of inactivity. I started to feel a
little sick.

As if she could tell what was going
on—and with her scanners, that very well may have been the case—Cass dislodged
the faceplate and my visor rose up and out of my face. For the first time in
over a week I was no longer sealed in with my own breath and sweat. I’m sure at
any other time I would have found the planet’s air heavy and uncomfortable, but
at that moment it was like taking a first cool breath after being in a
stiflingly hot room for hours. It was refreshing.

“Okay. Done for now, Burke. How do you
feel?”

“I’ve been better. I’ve been worse,
too.”

“Good. We’re going to walk to the
wreckage of the base. You’re going to get tired but you can’t sleep. You need
to be conscious so you don’t accidentally move against the suit.”