The Bounty Hunter: Reckoning (2 page)

She passed through the cargo hold
on her way up. The captain was gearing up with the others and she walked
between the group of them. The new man flinched when he turned and saw her,
causing an uproar of laughter from the others. Eric smiled at her while he
braced his long barrel rifle on his shoulder. He was the only one that Jess
knew she would miss; he would visit her in the engine room sometimes. He was
also the only other crew member who was augmented like she was, with a bridging
implant in his skull to connect with the prosthetic leg. She barely thought of
the difference they both shared anymore. She simply smiled back at him as she
climbed the stairs and turned into the command room.

They were in orbit above the
planet. She saw it through the helm’s front window. There were sporadic
stretches of water and green land around the shores of it. The rest of the
planet was the pale yellow of its vast deserts. The planet gleamed up at them
in the nearby star’s light. It initially stung her human eye. The augmented one
was unaffected.

Alan, the ship’s pilot, sat in the
center chair and was hunched over the main terminal. She never knew what kind
of attitude to expect from him, but he was his most obnoxious when Marcus was
in the same room. She felt more relaxed knowing that the captain would be off
the ship while they worked in the same room together.

“Did he tell you what we’re here to
get?” Alan burst out as she sat down. She was taken aback; it was unlike him to
be excited.

“No?”

“We’re here for Burke Monrow! The
Burke Monrow!”

“Who?”

“Really? You’ve never heard of
him?” Alan asked with his eyes wide. “He and Adam Bancroft were the fastest
rising bounty hunters in the galaxy. Some say they might have toppled the Thorne
Twins or even Asher.”

“You’re idolizing hired killers?”
Jess said and cocked an eyebrow.

“They don’t always kill. Especially
Adam and Burke. Well, used to. Burke’s dead.”

“So we’re here to retrieve a body?
I can’t see Marcus searching for a corpse out of the goodness of his heart.”

“The
Captain,
” Alan spat,
“is here for Burke’s armor. Not the corpse. He was wearing a Phalanx Ti Battle
Aegis when he—“

“Wait. He had a Phalanx Ti?” Jess
perked up. It was her eyes that were wide now.

“Typical of you to be more
interested in the hardware than the man underneath it.”

“Did he really have a Phalanx?
There are less than ten of those in circulation,” Jess explained rapidly. “No
one really knows where they come from. They’re amazing. You can’t get any
better of a personal arsenal. How the fuck did he die wearing one of those?”

“I don’t know. Who cares?”

“If the armor was left, that means
he was killed without time to retrieve it,” Jess said to herself more than to
Alan. “Maybe not even time to confirm the kill. I wouldn’t be surprised if he
was still alive.”

“No, no way. The guy who hired
Marcus—er, the Captain—was certain he was dead.”

“And who was that?”

“I don’t know,” Alan muttered.

“Brilliant.”

Jess turned away and looked at the
terminal. She placed her augmented hand on the console and interfaced with it,
making sure to keep contact with it. The system was much older than her arm and
had terrible bandwidth unless she had a physical bridge. She let her thoughts
race as the connection was established. She was excited about seeing the battle
aegis in person and was suddenly pleased that her final job was turning out to
be a pleasant one.

The ship’s artificial gravity was
slow to compensate for the change as they lowered down into the planet’s
atmosphere. She held onto the computer terminal as the ship shuddered and she
felt her stomach churn before the ship adjusted. A slew of errors crowded the
screen in front of her and she quickly dismissed all of the ones she was
already familiar with, problems that Marcus refused to pay to fix. She focused
on the new ones, rerouting power to avoid overloading the engine in tandem with
Alan’s flying. She had to admit he was a skilled pilot.

“I don’t know how you keep us in
the air, Jess. Most of this ship needs to be replaced.”

“Questioning your captain’s
decisions? How unlike you,” Jess grinned.

“No,” Alan’s forehead was creased.
“He’s your captain, too.”

“Not anymore. I gave in my notice.
Next time we put in port, you’ll be rid of me.”

“Marcus agreed to it?” Alan
frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe he’s finally going soft. I
don’t care.”

Alan was still grumbling to himself
when the ship touched down on the planet. The engine was still operational after
they settled onto the sandy surface and Jess immediately got to her feet. She
walked out onto the top of the stairs overlooking the cargo hold and watched as
the four men readied their weapons. The ship’s door opened slowly, lowering
down to form a gentle ramp out of the ship. The heat of the planet was immense
and smacked into them like a wall of hot air.

She closed her left eye to the
glare of the light and watched with her artificial one only. The men followed
Marcus slowly out onto the sand and then fanned out in front of what appeared
to be a ruined smuggler base. Jess had seen many of those over the years but
never one so devastated. As she looked closer, she saw signs of rudimentary
repairs to the arrays on what had once been the roof of the base. The ground
around the collapsed buildings had been cleared.

“Hey,” the new man spoke before she
could. “Someone’s been living here.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Marcus snapped.

She wanted to laugh but she kept
quiet as the four men split into two groups. Marcus took the new man closer to
the base while Eric and the other man broke off into the desert. She stood
still until all four were out of sight and only then moved down the stairs. She
could see the sand already creeping its way into the ship. She closed and
sealed off both doors to the engine room, hoping to minimize the contamination
that she knew she would be scrubbing away for the whole trip back.

Alan was talking over the ship’s
radio when she walked back into the command room. She could hear Marcus’s
responses as she sat and monitored the engine. She could already see new issues
cropping up and the ventilation losing efficiency.

“Have you found anything yet?” Alan
asked.

“Nothing so far,” Marcus’s voice
was riddled with crackling as it came through the helm’s speakers. “
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?”

“They haven’t called in,” Alan
answered. “We should just leave him behind, Captain. Close the doors and wave
through the windows while we take off.”

“Right. That’d be good. We could
see the look on his face.”

Jess let out an audible rumble in
her throat and leaned over the main terminal.

“Sorry to interrupt your murder
plan,” she said, “but I need to know if I can shut the engine off. We won’t be
able to able to tell the difference between the ship and the planet soon.”

“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.”

“Will do,” Alan responded and then
cut the transmission.

“I won’t let you leave him,” Jess
said simply.

“We were joking.”

“That’s getting harder and harder
to tell lately.”

She shut down the engine and then
leaned back in her chair. She opened her right hand so her metallic palm was
facing upward and displayed a three dimensional image of the engine she had
downloaded from the terminal. It hovered above her hand in a pale blue light.
The image rotated slowly, showing her where sand had already started to build
up. Then, suddenly, the sound of a single gunshot rocketed through the air and
she clamped her hand closed, dispersing the image in an instant.

“What the fuck?” Alan instinctively
grabbed for the shotgun under his terminal.

“No,” Jess spoke quickly. “I told
you Burke might have survived but there’s no fighting if it’s him. Your shots
won’t pierce through his armor.”

“Fuck that, I’m not a coward.”

“Yes you are! And it’s not cowardice,
it’s reality. Don’t give him a reason to kill you.”

He dived out of the room and she
watched him nearly fall down the stairs and onto the cargo bay floor. He danced
in place for a moment and seemed to realize his mistake of giving up the high
ground on the stairs. She heard something coming from outside. Alan must have
heard it too and he sprinted into the back of the ship and out of her sight.

Jess put her back to the wall and
away from the door. She both heard and felt the heavy footsteps of someone
climbing onto the ship. The door was moving next, raising up and closing them
inside. She would have done the same thing; it was a smart decision and she
cursed that he was being careful as well as having the advantage of his armor.

She turned and faced the wall just
as the light from the planet was sealed off completely. The artificial light of
the ship seemed cold and inadequate in comparison. She ignored it and held her
right fist to her left hand. She entered a command through the prosthetic arm and
felt her eye shift in its socket, whirling to respond to her commands. She
cycled through the different vision filters quickly until she stopped on the
x-ray lens.

The innards contained in the ship’s
walls obstructed some of her view but she could see Burke through the mess of
it all. She could see pieces of his skeleton through thinner parts of the
armor. Parts of it showed fractures. He was missing one of the arms of the
aegis and he kept that exposed limb behind him as he walked forward. His other hand
was blocking his face. Jess looked directly down and saw Alan through the
floor. He whipped around the wall and sent several blasts of the shotgun at
Burke. He stopped and braced himself against the shots, staying firmly on his
feet.

Alan turned back behind cover and
Jess watched Burke rush forward. He led with his naked arm now, firing the
handgun she hadn’t seen before. He timed the shots with each step until he was
on the other side of the wall that Alan was hiding behind. She watched Burke
pull out the remaining bullets from the gun and fire it purposefully without
any ammunition. The inert clicking of the hammer striking nothing filled the
air.

“You idiot, it’s a trick,” she
whispered hopelessly down at the floor.

Alan spun around the doorway once
more only to be punctured by a blade protruding out of Burke’s armor. It
pierced through his head and cleanly into his skull. Jess saw the cracks snake
out along the skull from where the blade went through and couldn’t help but
cringe. The blade popped free when Burke moved his arm away and Alan fell dead
onto the floor. She was sure he died instantly.

The computer terminal emitted a
series of beeps behind Jess and she turned to the screen. Someone was accessing
the system and she remembered reading about the AI component included in the
Phalanx aegis. She strained her mind to recall anything else she could about
the armor. It looked damaged when she looked down at it but it still withstood
Alan’s assault. She tried to remember if the visor of the armor had the same
functionality as her bionic eye. She couldn’t remember for certain and pushed
the thought aside. If he could see her as she could him, then she was done for.
She would have  to risk it either way.

The screen changed to show that the
ship’s roster was being accessed. Five crew members, of which only Marcus was
named. She turned away from it and looked back down at the floor. Burke had
moved into the engine room that took up the rest of the lower level. Jess moved
quietly out of the room and onto the railing overlooking the cargo bay. She
kept him in her view as she grappled the railing and heaved herself over it.
She climbed down it slowly, moving her hands to deliberately lower herself
until she was gripping the bottom part of the floor. Her feet dangled less than
a meter from the lower level and that was when she let go.

She landed nimbly on her feet and
looked through the single wall that separated Burke from her. He had done a
quick circuit of the engine and had turned back to walk in her direction. She
felt her legs tense as he looked her way; she was ready to run if he could see
her just as well as she could him. When he made no movement or reaction to her,
she made two quick strides and pressed herself against the wall, sliding along
it as he moved closer.

Alan’s body was slumped outside of
the right hand entrance. Burke was moving back toward it. Jess shifted herself
toward the left entrance. Alan’s blood had pooled and was running over the
floor toward her. She moved her feet away from the trickling blood and urged
Burke to move faster. She couldn’t risk moving into the room too soon but the
blood was threatening to touch her feet, causing her leave a trail when she
finally did move.