Bounty Hunter 1: The Bounty Hunter's Revenge (8 page)

This man wasn’t Adam, but he was the
closest thing to it at that moment.

“Burke. No.”

I exhaled as I turned into the swing. My
bad leg may have restricted my movements after I had first fallen but I had
adapted over the years. I kept it rigid and used it as a point to turn my body
around, putting my weight into the turn and focusing the momentum onto my right
arm and the blade. I kept my eyes locked on the target: the man’s neck, fast
enough to silence him but not hard enough to sever the head.

The blood came out of his neck like
vomit, hot and heavy, and spilled down over his chest. He barely had time to
realize what had happened before it was over. I grabbed him with my left,
armored hand and threw him into the corner of the room behind me. His body
landed on the floor and slid into the wall with a dull thud, and I didn’t have
to look to know that he would die of the blood loss in a few moments.

“That was risky,” Cass said.

“I was angry.”

“That’s what I mean. You can’t be angry.
The pilot will leave.”

She was right. I looked down at the
floor and saw the blood in the entrance way. In the dark it was hard to see,
but not so hidden that someone wouldn’t notice it before they got close enough
for me to strike. I had to intercept the other man before he saw it.

I stepped forward over the blood with my
left leg, knowing that I’d have to bend down far enough to carry my right leg
over. The weight of my armor caused audible footsteps as I made my way down the
hall, but the other man was out of sight and must have been searching the water
room. Any footsteps he heard he would have attributed to his partner, or
whoever the man I just killed had been.

When I reached the stairway I hid myself
from the view of the hallway against the wall. The planet was at the beginning
of its day cycle and light streamed down the stairs, casting my shadow on the
floor. They hadn’t even waited for nightfall before coming down here. They were
either cocky as Adam and I had been, or amateurs. Judging by the civilian
clothes the first man had been wearing, I assumed the latter.

I crept slowly up the stairs. I didn’t
want to leave the base without taking care of the other man but I also wanted
to see the ship, and use the size of it to gauge how many I could potentially
be up against. I leaned myself slowly to the floor and took the last set of
stairs on my belly, all the while keeping most of my attention on what I could
hear from the base below me. A few seconds were all I needed, and I had no
intention of being snuck up on.

At the top of the stairs I poked my head
out for just a moment. I knew that was all that Cass needed to capture what was
out there. I saw a brief flash of the landscape around the ruined buildings and
was quickly on my way back down again. No one shouted, or called an alarm, but
that didn’t mean no one was out there. They may have simply not seen me.

Cass displayed what she had seen in a
small window on the still cracked display of the visor. Over the years I hadn’t
managed to fix it. I was back down at the bottom of the stairs when she began
speaking to me. The second man must have walked deeper into the base to check
the empty, partly collapsed hallways. He would only need a few minutes to
search all of them.

“It’s a small ship. A very small ship,”
Cass explained as she pulled up another window of the ship’s schematics. “A
common transport. Mass produced in the last decade. It’s mostly just an engine
with a few rooms tacked. A supply room, cockpit, and not even separate quarters
for the captain. I’d say a crew of six, at the maximum. Two at a minimum. You
might have already taken out half of them.”

“That would be nice, but let’s not count
on it just yet,” I replied.

“Ah, that’s more like the Burke I know.”

I felt more confident about taking down
the remaining man in the base, but I knew better than to charge at him. If
there was anyone remaining on the ship, I couldn’t risk him communicating back
and causing them to leave. I had to take him by surprise.

After another minute passed without
hearing any footsteps, I slid out from the wall and into the hallway. I walked
down toward the water room as calmly as I could. My heart rate was beginning to
pick up again and it suddenly felt good to hold the blade in my hand. I
tightened my grip when I reached the first corner and stopped to listen.

“Nothing so far. The new guy won’t keep
his mouth shut. Might want to toss him out when we get off this shitty planet.
Did the others find anything yet?”

I was certain that there had only been
two men that had came down into the base. He must have been talking over a
radio of some sort. There were others, then, and one of them must have been on
the ship.

There was a brief period of silence
during which he must have been getting an answer. Suddenly, he began laughing.
“Right. That’d be good. We could see the look on his face.”

More silence. Then, “yeah, power it
down. We’ll be here longer than I thought. From what I was told this dead guy
could be miles from here. Just wanted to try here first in case we got lucky.
Like we ever do. Message me if the others find anything.”

I heard the man begin to move back
toward me. His footsteps were getting louder with each step. I tensed and then
relaxed the muscles in my right hand around the weapon in preparation for when
he got close enough.

“New guy!” the man yelled down the hall.
“Fuck, what was his name,” he said, much quieter to himself. “Fuck it, why do I
care? New guy! Come here.”

He must have stopped. I could no longer
hear his footsteps and I knew I had to act. He would get suspicious if he
didn’t get an answer, and he would expect one of his underlings to come running
if he called.

“Gun, Cass,” I said, no louder than a
breath.

“But?”

“Gun.”

As soon as I felt the compartment on my
hip snap open I spun around the wall. I had the blade behind my back and
brought it over my shoulder in a forward arc. I released it from my hand and
sent it flying ahead of me, spinning through the air toward the man. I brought
my armored arm up from my hip in the same moment, sliding the gun smoothly in
my hand to aim it at the man’s head. I was ready to shoot if he reacted fast
enough to yell out or fire at me.

The blade impaled the man squarely
through his chest. It was sharp enough and had carried enough force that it
went cleanly through his back with a splutter of blood. He looked surprised, as
if he had been so sure he wasn’t going to die today, and fell to his knees with
the same look on his face.

I must have missed his heart, because he
was still alive and moving and remained upright with his knees on the floor.
His hands were shaking when he brought the handgun up from his belt and pointed
it at me. I could see that he barely had the strength to lift up the weapon,
but I stood very still. He had no chance of penetrating my armor with such a
small weapon even if he did land the shot, but the sound of the gun was all
that was needed to doom me.

My face tensed up into a wince when I
saw his trembling fingers clutch the handle of the gun. His cheeks puffed out
before blood poured out of his mouth. His lungs were filling with blood and he
knew he was dying. His hands kept shaking.

He slumped forward against the blade and
the gun leaped out of his shaking hands. It spilled forward, and the moment
that it fell seemed to last for an eternity. I knew it was rare for a gun to
fire after hitting the ground. I had seen it happen dozens of times before
without a bullet being discharged. My eyes were still transfixed on it as it
sailed to the floor. The man had just said that he never got lucky.

The gun landed hard on the top-most part
of the handle and a bullet sprang out and up into the ceiling.

I knew I didn’t have time to wait. I
began to run, as fast as I could with the limp in my leg, back to the stairs. I
raced up them and held the gun ready, with the blast of the man’s gun still
bouncing around as an echo in my ears.

“How far is the ship from the top?” I
yelled as I raced up the stairs.

“Thirty meters. Go straight out and to
the left when you see it.”

Cass tinted the visor automatically when
I got outside. I never stopped to check to see if the others were in range to
fire at me. I couldn’t spare the time. I was mostly armored and had to risk it.
I bolted for the ship and it felt like I didn’t breathe until I had my feet on
the metal of the ship’s rear doorway.

I tossed my gun high into the air and
caught it in my right hand. I put my armored hand onto the control panel on the
inner doorway of the ship so Cass could interface with it. I turned into the
ship as I held my hand there, holding the gun out and shifting my eyes rapidly from
each of the two entrances at the far end of the ship’s bay.

“Done, Burke.”

The ship’s door began to rise behind me
and I didn’t move until I heard it close up and lock into the ship’s hull. I
shifted on my feet and led forward with my left arm as a shield. I wanted to
change which hand held the gun for more protection but I couldn’t risk firing
with my left hand. I was a better shot with my right hand and couldn’t risk
hitting something vital in the ship. I was so close to finally leaving that I
refused to take any chances.

Something was moving in the other end of
the ship. I took a few more steps forward before the man appeared in the
rightmost entrance way. He had what looked like a shotgun in his hands and he
wasted no time in pointing it at me. I tucked my right arm tightly into my back
and brought my left hand to cover my face.

A succession of quick blasts forced me
to a standstill. Whatever he was firing wasn’t enough to pierce my armor, but
it was hard enough to knock me over if I didn’t brace against it. The hole in
my visor hadn’t felt so large and vulnerable since the night the crawlers
attacked.

I heard the click of the shotgun trying
to be fired without any ammunition and took my chance. I brought my right arm
from behind my back and shot at the doorway, purposefully aiming for the frame
of the door and not inside of it. I continued to fire as I walked to the door,
timing the shot with my steps to mask exactly how close I was, and keeping him
behind cover so he couldn’t pop out and take another shot.

When I got to the doorway I put my back
to it with my left arm closest to the entrance. I cocked the handgun quickly
and snatched out the bullet from the chamber, yanked out the magazine and fired
it empty twice quickly, emphasizing the gun trying to be fired while out of
bullets.

He reacted as I planned, storming around
the corner with his shotgun out. I twisted my left forearm as he did so and
slammed my elbow into the doorway. He dived out right as the intact blade on my
left arm punched its way out of the armor and directly into his cheek. I hoped
he died instantly. His skull was lodged firmly into the blade and it collided
with my arm when I retracted the blade back inside. It made a sickly popping
noise before he fell, dead, to the floor.

“Did you get into the ship’s network
from the control panel?” I said as I walked into the heart of the ship.

Cass had been correct with her
assessment. The ship was small, and most of it was indeed the engine. The
cockpit was a tiny room connected to three small rooms. The center one was a
chaotic mess of food, plates, and trash. The rooms adjacent to it were the crew
quarters, which was in an even worse state than the first room with piles of
dirty clothes everywhere, and some sort of storage room that doubled as a
weapons stockpile.

“Not much information on the network,”
Cass explained as I rummaged through their weapons for a decent rifle. “Five
crew in total. I don’t know how they’re all crammed in here. Captain Marcus is
the only one named. I think you killed him already. The other two must have
been sent out to search the desert around the base. The late captain didn’t
exactly keep formal logs.”

“Or a clean ship,” I said with a grimace
as I scraped what looked like crusted food off of the only rifle with a scope
that I could find. “It’s like Adam found the worst mercenaries in the galaxy.
It’s an insult.”

“You don’t know that it’s him for
certain.”

“I’m pretty sure.”

Cass lowered the ship’s bay doors for me
again. She linked the rifle’s scope with my visor and I used it to carefully
poke outside of the ship for any signs of the remaining two men. When I saw no
sign of them I walked carefully out onto the sand.

My right leg was throbbing from the
exertion of fighting but I gave it no rest as I marched back into the base. I
walked through the blood in the entrance to my room without a thought and
grasped the remaining section of the suit. I slid it over my right arm and
locked it into the torso’s socket and finally felt whole again.

Back on the surface I stood and waited.
I could have left with the ship and been half way back into space by now, but I
needed information. I was so certain that these thugs were connected to Adam
somehow, and one of them had to know something. It was probable that they were
using the same type of communication devices that their captain and pilot, but
even if they knew they were walking back into an ambush they couldn’t survive
in the desert on their own. They had to come back eventually.