Bounty Hunter 1: The Bounty Hunter's Revenge (4 page)

“Okay,” I was starting to feel like a
burden than a bounty hunter. I was growing suspicious about how bad my leg
really was.

“We need to bring something with us.”

I felt something pop down at my belt and
knew that Cass had released the grappling hook. I had to remind myself not to
look down at it in case she moved the armor at the same time. I could do some
major damage to my neck.

“I think I can manage this part, if you
don’t mind.”

She hesitated for a moment and then
spoke: “Of course, Burke. Go ahead.”

She released control over my right arm
and I slowly moved it down to the hook. I gripped it in my hand and felt that
part of it had broken off in the fall. It had previously had four sharp claws
that could latch onto whatever it was thrown at. Two of them had snapped
cleanly from the base of the hook and a third felt weakened. Cass walked us
over to the corpse of the animal I shot and knelt us down. She did her best to
minimize the movement of my right leg but I still had to stifle another scream.

I stabbed the animal in the throat and
caught part of its spine with the single remaining claw. I tugged at it to make
sure it was secure and then let go. When Cass resumed out movement again, I
could feel the added weight of the body being dragged behind us. It would
provide a decent amount of food, and I had to agree with her decision to wake
me up when she did.

I had no idea exactly how far we had
landed from the thieves’s base, but it took hours for us to reach it. The sky
grew brighter with each passing minute, and Cass had been right that I was
tired enough to sleep. I made it a point to not have to rely on her to wake me
up. I may have been damaged, maybe irreparably so, but I was determined to
maintain control of whatever I could and keep my dignity. It was a long walk to
that base.

The sky was a bright, wispy blue when we
reached our destination. The fires had long been extinguished and I saw that
some of the bodies had been picked at by animals or burned in the fires. Adam
hadn’t spared any explosives and all three of the buildings were ruined.

Cass and I spent some time searching the
ruins for any clear areas. One of the two smaller buildings had fared better
than the others and had been fortunate enough not to endure a direct hit. The
nearby explosives had still damaged it enough that not all of its walls were
standing, but half of the roof was still intact. We dragged the body of the
animal into one of the far corners of the room that blocked it from the sun,
and then settled ourselves down in the opposite corner in direct sunlight.

“We need the light for power, Burke.
I’ll try to keep you comfortable but it may get a little warm in here,” Cass
explained.

I felt the faceplate rejoin itself to
the rest of the helmet and the suit locked itself in place, supporting me even
better than before. I felt like I was elevated in midair, as if I was laying
down but still upright at the same time. A faint rush of cool air filled the
inside of the suit. I heard Cass say one more thing but I was already too far
gone, fast asleep, and more worn out than I had ever been in my entire life.

* * *

A few days passed in a blur. Days, at
least, as I viewed them. I slept away dozens of hours and the sun was still in
the sky and showed no signs of nearing the horizon. Time was without meaning
for me during those days, and I moved awkwardly and slowly when Cass granted me
limited control of the armor. My right leg was kept rigid the entire time and
felt more like a crutch than a usable leg. She refused to allow me control of
that limb and, even though I couldn’t blame her, it was still frustrating.

We discovered what parts of the suit
were damaged over those first days. I had to laugh when I found that the blades
that ran down the length of the armor’s forearms were broken in a different
order than my actual arms. My left arm had a usable blade, while the right
blade in my intact arm spilled out of its sheath in shattered pieces. I
collected them and put them aside for later use. Something sharp would not be
easily found alone on an uninhabited world.

The suit’s communication systems were
broken, not that it would have mattered much on a planet as large as the one we
were stranded on. I suspected that there must have been more than one base
built here for other thieves and outcasts but they would be impossible to find
without knowing where they were in advance.

Cass told me that the visor should stay
operational despite the cracks. I almost told her that it didn’t matter if
there was no combat in the future, but I stopped myself. Despite how bleak my
situation looked I kept reminding myself to stay positive. For all I knew Adam
assumed I was dead and I could ambush him if he came to claim my body. Maybe
the thieves had a second group that shared the base.

On the worst days, when I couldn’t
convince myself that there was hope, I pushed aside all thoughts and focused
solely on survival.

We rounded up all of the bodies of the
dead thieves after a few days of resting. We rifled through their pockets and
made a small pile of everything useful. We found a little food and water, which
Cass took it upon herself to ration out to me. I conceded to that since she
could stretch it out as long as possible when used in tandem with whatever
scarce supplies the suit still had.

Each thief had a weapon and a small
stash of ammunition along with the occasional grenade. They were separated out
into a different pile. Several had had communication devices that were rendered
useless when the main base had been destroyed. Still, I knew that I could use
them for salvage along with the other odd pieces of electronics I found on
their bodies. Some had alcohol, which I had no practical use for but kept
anyway despite Cass’s objections.

I was lucky enough to find a cooking
plate on one of the men. Cass was confident that she could power it if we found
a way to connect it to the suit’s power supply. With all of the electronics
that I could potentially scavenge from I now had a way to prepare the meat that
we had dragged to the base with us.

The men had been laying in their own
filth for almost two weeks and had been gnawed at by whatever animals came out
during the night. There weren’t many pieces of clothing that weren’t soiled
from that time but I removed what I thought was useful. When I was finished I
used the grappling hook to drag each corpse away from the base. I made a mental
note to bury them when I felt strong enough to do so.

Back in our makeshift shelter I spent a
few hours working on the largest piece of the broken blade that came out of my
right arm. I scraped one end of the blade along a wall to roughen it to the
extent that I could hold it with risking any damage to the armor. I then tore
up one of the shirts I had taken from the thieves and wrapped the strips of
cloth around the dulled edge to act as a handle.

I used my new tool to carve and gut the
dead rat creature. There was not very much meat on its bones, and it was slow,
awkward work with one of my arms broken and the other holding the blade. Cass
only allowed me minimal movement of my bad arm and it was delegated to holding
the body down while I cut into it.

The most intact pieces of electronics
that I had kept were broken open and I yanked the largest pieces of wires out
of them that I could find. Cass guided me in connecting the wires with the
cooking plate and the suit’s circuits, and we managed to get a current flowing
into the device. She warned me that generating heat would be particularly
draining on the suit’s power reserves and that we could probably only do this
during the day.

The meat was cooked and Cass allowed me
to eat as much of it as I wanted, as neither of us were sure how long it would
keep before spoiling. She did remind me to eat it slowly, which was difficult
after not actively consuming food for days. I barely tasted the meat, which was
probably a blessing considering how bad it looked. I settled down to sleep with
a full stomach and slightly raised spirits. It wasn’t the worst day I had had
since being left on the planet.

Days passed until the sun was looking to
finally set. The base was fully picked clean and I had nothing to do but heal
and rest. I tried to move as much as possible and was gradually regaining my
mobility and strength. I knew that it would be months before my bones would
fully heal but I was already able to move my left arm without wanting to scream
in pain.

“Night on this planet will be just as
long as its day cycle, Burke. Almost a week of standard time,” Cass explained
when we were in the last few hours of twilight. “I won’t be able to convert any
more power without sunlight. We’ll have to conserve as much as possible but we
still need to get you up and moving so you don’t lose the progress you’ve made
healing. When we’re not doing that, you should try to sleep, or not to move.”

“I understand.”

“And Burke,” Cass added. “You may want
to pick out the best handgun and keep it loaded. I don’t know how many of those
creatures might come out looking for food.”

Night began and was initially without
event. We got up and I stretched and exercised my body three times a day—as
much as we could call it a day. It was lonely without Cass to talk to but it
was a relief to finally be out of the blistering heat. The temperature built
and fed into itself day after day without a sunset. I suspected the opposite
would happen at night and it was only when the surface cooled enough that the
animals ventured out.

In the stretches of time when Cass was
powered down and I couldn’t sleep, I found myself bitterly going over the
events that had led me here. I had trusted Adam with my life more times than I
could count, and he had trusted me. It was a rare thing, I remembered being
told, to find a bounty hunter that didn’t work alone. I found myself in a foul,
dark mood when I reflected on that knowledge, and how I finally understood why
that was the case.

On other days, I strained my memory and
mind to think of possible reasons why Adam would turn on me. Each time I would
start my thinking session hopeful that there must be something I was missing,
or someone that was making Adam do things against his will. Maybe an old rival
that we cut out on a bounty, or someone seeking revenge for a mark we killed,
had forced Adam to turn on me. Each time I ended my thoughts with a pathetic
laugh, knowing that it was unlikely and that I was being naive. It was too big
of a coincidence that it happened during the highest paying job we’d ever had.
He had turned on me for the money.

It was during the last stretch of night
that I found myself the most depressed, certain that my life could not stoop
any lower. That was when the crawlers came.

“Burke.”

I opened my eyes and saw that Cass had
sealed the faceplate and activated the visor. I tried to look passed the cracks
along the display and out at whatever had caused her to wake me. I was slumped
down in the far corner of the room facing out of the broken wall that I was
using for an entrance. Through the ruins I was able to count four of the
animals, the same as the one I had killed before.

I felt for the handgun I had kept at my
hip whenever I went to sleep. I knew better than to fire at them from this
range, especially when I wasn’t sure if they had noticed me yet. They were
probably drawn to this area due to whatever smells the bodies of the thieves
were giving off, and I cursed my damaged body for not allowing me to bury them
yet.

A screech came from the group of animals
that made my skin crawl. One of them had fallen over dead but I couldn’t see
what had caused it. Their scream was chillingly close to that of a human’s and
it unsettled me. I gripped the gun more firmly.

“Cass, something is going on out there.
Is the night vision still functional on the visor?”

“I think so, Burke. One moment.”

The screen flashed brightly, too
brightly, and I was forced to close my eyes. I could see the glow through my
eyelids as a dull red, the light becoming colored as it passed through the thin
skin. When I saw that it dimmed, I opened my eyes again to find half of the
visor displaying in the green tone of night vision. The other half, the side
with the hole in the helmet, was the standard display.

“Sorry,” Cass said. “Half of it is
broken.”

The animals looked more alien and
frightening in the night vision. Their fur was a dark green, almost black, and
their eyes shone eerily white. The three of them were crowded around the dead
one in a protective circle, with their backs to the fallen animal. I saw
something skitter quickly on the sand around them. Whatever it was, it was hard
to see even with the low-light vision active.

A burst of sand suddenly spewed out of
the surface. I saw movement amongst the spray of sand, and when it finally
cleared I saw a cluster of what looked like spiders. They were about half the
size of the rat animals they appeared to be hunting, and crawled rapidly over
the sand on more legs than I could count. Far more than any spider I had ever
seen.

Another shriek came from the group. I
found myself afraid for one of the first times in my life. I had faced down
alien infestations in my time as a soldier, fending off more waves of
outnumbering masses on missions that I wasn’t even expected to survive. As a
mercenary I had killed over a hundred marks without fear. As a bounty hunter I
had been sent to retrieve the most prized parts of the most dangerous and
exotic alien monsters known to the galaxy. And now, crippled and alone with
only half of my body still working, I was scared. I had never felt more
unprepared.