The Bounty Hunter: Into The Swarm (6 page)

“Oh Burke,” she shook her head.

She stepped in too fast for him to back away and wrapped her arms
around his chest. She squeezed him tightly, just for a moment, and then stepped
away before he could respond. She said nothing else and turned to leave the
ship. He was dumbfounded as he watched her, trying to put himself into her
position. He admitted that if the situation had been reversed, he probably
would have done the same thing

He heard the ship’s doors close and he climbed the stairs to the
helm. He sat at the command console and initiated the undocking procedure. He
should have been happy that his armor was repaired and the alien’s core was
finally off the ship now that he was leaving ACU behind. He wasn’t sure what
was making him feel worse: the conversation with Natalie, or the looming task
of returning to Earth laid out in front of him.

“You should have messaged her,” Cass said when they left the
planet’s orbit.

“I know. But I can’t trust her.”

“You won’t trust her. There’s a difference,” she said gently.

“We work alone. It’s one of our rules.”

“But we decide what the rules are.”

Burke didn’t respond and engrossed himself in setting the ship’s
course instead. It would be just under two weeks of travelling until they
reached Earth: three days back to the jump carrier, and one additional jump in
the next system. The Solar system was still fairly populated despite what
happened to Earth and Mars. Most humans lived in stations around Venus and
Jupiter. Even though the stations were out of reach of the dross, none remained
around the infested planets.

“This isn’t something that’s going to be fixed with a conversation,”
he said firmly without taking his eyes from the command console. “Besides, we
have more important things to discuss now that we’re away from ACU where they
were undoubtedly listening in on us. Was Havard telling the truth about you? Has
no other AI lived as long as you have?”

“No,” she answered. “Yes. I don’t know.”

Burke felt more worried. It was unlike her to be vague.

“Cass,” he said.

“I don’t have access to their records, and they might have the only
computer network in the galaxy that I can’t hack my way into. Maybe with a few
months I could get into it. There are no outside records of any functioning AI
without restriction programs. You voided my warranty when you did that,” she
said with a small laugh.

“Is something going to happen to you?” Burke said, keeping his mouth
a straight line. “If going back to ACU will prolong your life, maybe you should
do it.”

“No,” Cass said firmly. “No, I won’t. I’m fine. I don’t know why I’m
fine, but I know that I am. I’ll start working on getting into their systems to
see what’s been done differently for me that’s let me survive. We’ll be working
as I do it. It might take years.”

“If you start showing signs of degradation, do you promise to
consider Havard’s offer?”

She didn’t answer.

“If you ever become inoperable, do I have your permission to take
you back to them?”

“I’d be dead if that happened,” she whispered.

“I wouldn’t give up on you that easily.”

“If it gets that bad,” she said slowly, “then yes. I’ll make sure it
doesn’t, though.”

“Always have a backup plan. That should be another one of our
rules.”

Burke reviewed Havard’s instructions several more times before they
reached the Solar system. The jump carrier arrived at the gate in orbit around
Jupiter and only a handful of ships exited from it. He set a course directly
for Earth and knew they would arrive within a day.

The mission was to retrieve the data stored on a crashed robotic
drone that had been operating near the planet’s surface. The information Havard
had provided was vague about its purpose and it frustrated Burke, as he was
unable to see how it could be connected to the weapon he had seen at ACU.
Still, the potential of finally winning the lost war had stirred something
inside him and he couldn’t bring himself to walk away from the job.

The drone’s location was still being transmitted to ACU’s satellites
around Earth and could show its location on his ship’s console. The rest of the
drone’s functions were inaccessible. By design, it had been intended to only be
interfaced physically to prevent any possibility of someone copying the data.
That precaution had backfired on them now that the drone had been disabled. It
was lost on the infested planet and someone had to go down and get it by hand.

In the final hours of their journey, as they passed Mars’s orbit,
Burke withdrew to the ship’s armory. Cass was busy making her final
preparations on controlling the ship while simultaneously travelling with him
onto the planet. Similarly, he strapped on his armor sooner than he usually
would have for a mission. Now that he was facing the dross again, he wanted to
be as comfortable in his aegis as possible and it had been weeks since he had
last worn it.

There had been no changes made to the interior of the armor that he could
feel against his skin. When the last piece, the helmet, was equipped, the inner
layer of the aegis slowly inflated to fit around his body as it always had. The
only change he could see was the visor’s display, feeding him visual data of
his surroundings and allowing him to see while being sealed away from dangers.
The suit’s display looked crisper than it had been, and he wondered if it was
something that had been improved, or because it had finally been repaired after
years of quick fixes.

The suit completed its initialization. Burke was about to walk
around the armory when the display abruptly changed to a video recording. The
display flashed blue for a second and then Natalie’s face was there, in front
of his eyes like she was standing before him. She had used the helmet’s
perspective to record a message and the sudden change made him dizzy for a
moment. Gone was the armory around him, replaced by Natalie’s work station at
ACU. As she spoke, he felt like he was standing once again in the facility.

“Hi. Hello. This is strange, talking to you while it feels like I’m
talking to myself,” she began, her voice a low whisper. “I just finished the
repairs and I’m about to come up and see you in your ship. Since you decided
not to message me,” her eyes widened slightly and she gave a quick shake of her
head, “I don’t know how that meeting will go. I might be too angry with you to
explain the new additions we made to your armor. So, a message. So, me talking
to myself.”

Despite the flash of guilt Burke felt, he found himself smiling.

“The close quarters weapons in the arms now function in two
directions. Before you could twist your forearms in any direction to activate
the blades. Now you can set up a trigger for protruding them at something
behind you, or in front, by releasing half of the blade from your wrists. You
can set that up however you like.

“Kinetic barriers around the armor have been improved. They were
already in place but we’ve found more efficient ways to create them. This means
that you can either operate the aegis for longer periods of time before
requiring more energy, or Cass can create stronger barriers for you to deflect
projectiles. I’m close to perfecting a permanent version of the barrier, one
that only loses energy when
something
collides into it. Cass would be better to talk to about that, but I can’t talk
to her right now because you didn’t message me from your new ship.”

She smiled at the camera and then laughed.

“This was definitely a good idea,” she continued. “I don’t think I’m
getting through the meeting without having a fight. And as much as you might
deserve to stumble around, oblivious to all the improvements, I don’t want you
to get hurt.

“Lastly then, a propulsion system has been added to the legs of the
aegis. You should be able to use it to launch yourself from the ground, with
varying results depending on the gravity of the planet you’re on. Only one of
the legs from your armor was brought to me but I should have gotten the second
one from you by the time you watch this. Strange though, since they keep
insisting that they didn’t forget any pieces.”

She nodded once.

“That’s everything. Now, if you’re avoiding me because you don’t
want to talk to me that’s fine. But I’d like to hear your reasons. More
importantly, there are other things we need to talk about. Not just about me
and you. If you understand.”

The video abruptly ended and the visual of the armory returned on
the screen. Several diagnostic messages popped up over the display, one signalling
that Cass had joined with the armor. He was about to speak but she was faster.

“I didn’t want to interrupt in the middle of that,” Cass said. “I
think she means something is happening at ACU that she can’t speak about.”

“I know.”

“You should message her.”

“I know.”

“Are you going to?”

“I don’t know.”

It sounded like she huffed in frustration and he found himself
wondering when she learned to simulate sounds other than a voice so well. He
turned to the armory door and began to walk through the ship. It would still be
a while before they arrived at Earth.

“Are you registering the changes?” Burke asked. “You can replay the
video if you need to.”

“I’m going through them now,” she answered. “We’ll need to set up
the triggers Natalie mentioned for the blades.”

“Later,” he said. “But before we go onto the planet.”

He spent an hour walking around the ship, fully acclimating to the
weight and response time of the armor. He climbed up and down the stairs in the
cargo hold several times before he was satisfied. It was the most extensive
preparation with the aegis he had done in years; the time spent stranded had
left him intimately familiar with operating it. Still, he wanted to risk
nothing to chance or complacency when the dross were involved. Nothing else had
nearly killed him as often.

He was resting at the helm when they neared Earth. From orbit it
looked bare to Burke. There were no space stations around it like other planets
of its type. Although they had been untouched by the alien infestation, the
sight of the lost planet below them proved too much for the populated stations
and they were moved elsewhere in the system. Even then, most people moved on to
more populated systems, untarnished by the dross.

The planet looked dead. The lush green that had accompanied the
planet’s blue when Burke had been a child was gone. The aliens had not
discriminated in the life they consumed while they ravaged the planet. The
forests and wildlife were gone. Beneath the sprawling white clouds there was
nothing but blue water and brown land. The planet looked pale to him.

He kept the ship orbiting with the side of the planet that faced the
sun as Cass narrowed down the drone’s position. He didn’t want to witness the
darkness of Earth in its night cycle. During the war, the lights from the
cities diminishing looked like a void that consumed more of the surface each
night. Now, as he was readying for a battle, he wisely avoided seeing that
again.

Cass changed the ship’s screen to display the information from the
planet in real time. The planet was spread flat, like a map, on the screen and
a blur of numbers and letters swam over the continents as she sorted through
the data. Burke was capable of reading the information in a different format,
but Cass was faster and able to draw directly from the satellites that still
remained in orbit. She connected to them and pinpointed where the drone had
crashed.

A warning shot across the screen a moment after she finished,
blaring that the planet was under quarantine and that any attempt at landing
would result in a forceful reaction from warships still in the system. Havard’s
information had warned about the quarantine and had included pass codes to
bypass it. However, when Cass transmitted them and they were given
authorization, another message popped up to replace it.

“Someone is contacting us,” Cass explained.

“Geoff? Havard?”

“No. There’s no name. It’s coming from within the system. I can’t
tell anymore than that. I think we should answer it.”

Burke nodded and the screen changed to display a man sitting in a
large room, looking similar to a command room but of a larger ship. He was
alone and did not speak until Burke released the faceplate of his armor. It was
only when their eyes could meet that he opened his mouth.

“Jack Porter,” he said slowly, lingering on each syllable. “The Jack
Porter that I knew died on the planet below you. Many of the bodies of dead
soldiers were never found during the war. It was out of respect that they went
down as missing rather than deceased. A mistake, I think, seeing as how their
names crop up with new faces now. Jack Porter, returning to his grave.”

The man was older than Burke by at least a decade. There was
something familiar about the man’s face that he couldn’t place.

“Did you fight here?” Burke asked.

“Yes,” the man answered. “I am Admiral Viscard, and I never stopped
fighting here. Jack Porter, along with many others, served under my command.
Tell me, how do you feel matching up with his name? Are you worthy of it?”