The Bounty Hunter: Reckoning (9 page)

Her footsteps were light as she
crept around to the stairs. He was shifting his gun abruptly in all the places
that she wasn’t standing in as he moved down. At the bottom of the stairs, she
threw the handgun into the corner and watched as he fired at the noise. She saw
him turn as soon as he realized he had been tricked but she was too fast. Her
metal hand slammed into his cheek and another series of shots blasted out of
the gun. She was temporarily deafened from the noise but kept her eye on him in
the dark, punching him once again in the face before ducking away from him
barrelling forward, swinging his fists in wild, wide arcs into the dark.

Jess slammed her fist into Burke’s
back, low around his spine and sent him to his knees. She quickly put her left
hand on her right arm and triggered electric prongs from her fist. A jolt of
electricity jumped between the two tips as they charged and she put them below
his neck from behind. She sent several pulses in until she was satisfied that
he was subdued. He wasn’t unconscious, she knew, but he would be soon.

She grabbed his legs and dragged
him to the jail cells.

* * *

Burke opened his eyes. His head
felt heavy and it hurt when he tried to move. He was restrained to something. The
jail cell was behind him. He turned to look and saw that he had been sat down
and tied up, his wrists were bound together through the bars. It was a good
knot, and he quickly knew that he wasn’t able break himself out of it. He
looked around the room and saw that the lights had been turned back on. The lights
were still dim, as if only the emergency power had been reconnected. He scowled
at that. Cass wouldn’t be able to function properly and call for help if they
only had the back up power.

His assailant wasn’t in the room.
He intended to be standing when they returned and he moved his legs to start
pushing his back up the bars. His left leg moved and his foot slid uselessly
over the floor. His right augmented leg didn’t move and that was when he
discovered the true restraint. The leg was disabled and, without any assisted
movement from it, it became a dead weight keeping him pinned to the floor. He
cursed and growled when he realized his attacker had taken no chances. He was
helpless.

The door opened and Burke saw the
same dim light come in from the cargo hold. The woman walked in holding a long
barrelled rifle and he made his face as expressionless as possible. He stared
up at her and looked at her face as she walked toward him. He didn’t recognize
her. Quickly, he mentally flipped through anyone that could possibly want him
dead: it was a long list, but she didn’t match anyone on it. An assassin maybe?
Part of the slave cartel? Another bounty hunter?

“Burke Monrow,” she said calmly as
the door slid closed behind her. “Your AI is very loyal. I couldn’t risk having
the ship on full power when she wouldn’t cooperate.”

“If you fucking hurt her,” Burke
spat.

“No. My problem is with you, not
her,” she took a few steps and stopped in front of him. She propped herself
with the rifle on the floor, leaning forward on the barrel. “My name is Jess
Richmond. Do you know me?”

“No.”

“How about this weapon? Recognize
it?”

Reluctantly, he looked up and down
the rifle and felt a tension grow in his stomach. He did indeed recognize it
and closed his eyes, feeling defeat run through him. He was fucked, he knew,
just like Adam had been fucked when he got off Meidum. What he didn’t
understand was how.

“How did you get that?” he spoke
slowly.

“I was on the ship. You didn’t see
me, but I sure as shit saw you, right before you left me on that shitty planet
for a fucking year.”

“Oh, a year? I was there for over
three.”

“Don’t be fucking petty with me,
Burke.
This isn’t a fucking contest.”

He glared up at her but found he
couldn’t commit as much to the defiant look as he wanted to. Despite himself,
he felt guilt.

“I understand why you killed Alan
and Marcus,” Jess continued. “Don’t look at me like that, of course they had
fucking names. They were armed. They probably fought with you. I know Alan did.
But Eric, the one who had this rifle, he wasn’t a threat. He couldn’t hurt you.
You killed him while he had his back to you. You fucking coward.”

“Coward?” Burke snapped. “I was
stopping the cycle. Someone left me there just like you—”

“Adam,” Jess enunciated each
syllable like they were separate words. “I know. You left your computer. I know
all about you,
Burke.
You fought on Earth. You were, maybe still are, a
bounty hunter with principles. I know you killed Adam right after you got off
Meidum and that you got away with it, too.”

“Then you should know that I had to
kill your friend,” Burke raised his head. “You’re living proof of that, aren’t
you? If I had let him live he would have come after me, just like you did now.
I was ending the cycle before it began.”

“Well fucking good job with that,”
Jess yelled. “Fucking well fucking done!”

“So kill me already,” he kept his
eyes open and on hers as he spoke. “I know that I deserve it, just like Adam
deserved it from me. What are you waiting for?”

Jess shook her head. She was
smiling. It was a wild, untamed smile like she had just heard a joke and
couldn’t stop smiling even if she wanted to.

“Did it ever occur to you to take
Eric with you? Did it ever occur to you that you could have dropped him off on
some space station and then went on your way? Did it ever occur to you that he
might not come after you, and might not kill you?”

“No,” Burke said simply.

“Blinded by rage and vengeance,
then. Looking back now, do you think you should have considered taking him?”

Burke didn’t answer. His mouth was
a straight line.

“Let me tell you. I’ve wanted to kill
you since the day you left me there. I bled my first night. I nearly died from
those fucking crawling things. Each day that passed was just another reason to
kill you when I finally got out of there. And then I found your computer, and
the journal you made. Your ramblings and thoughts and your stories. And you
know what I discovered?”

Burke stayed quiet. He didn’t move.

“I discovered,” she continued,
“that you’re a good man. But even then, I wanted to kill you. I still want to
kill you. Maybe that doesn’t make me as good as you. But I started thinking about
how a good man could do the things I saw you do. The man that said he fought
the dross infestation on Earth. The man who said he wanted to use the ‘lucky
break’ as a way to help more people. That man who said those words, is the man
I saw kill my friend in cold blood.

“I see a man now who is pathetic. A
shadow of his former self because he succumbed to his anger. You could have let
Adam go. Who knows what you’ve done since then. How many nights have you tried
to justify to yourself that you’re not a murderer?”

Burke closed his eyes.

“So here’s
my revenge
,” Jess
said through her teeth. “The good man who thinks his actions were justified. My
revenge is worse than that. I forgive you.”

Burke’s eyes snapped open. A
shuddering sensation ran down from his neck and through his body.

“I forgive you,” she repeated.
“Just like Eric might have forgiven you but you’ll never know.”

He felt his grasp on his life
shatter. Abruptly, the last year was altered. Each action and decision was
predicated on the one before, traced all the way back to the source of it on
Meidum. His hands began to shake at his sides. Even Cass had disapproved when
he had shot the man, he suddenly remembered. He closed his eyes again and kept
them closed even as Jess walked around and loosened his restraints. There was a
faint pressure on his augmented leg as feeling was restored to it. He could
move and was free but he stayed there on the floor, his back pressed against the
bars of the cell.

“How do you know I won’t kill you
now, too?” he murmured.

“I don’t. If you kill me now, then
you really are a thoughtless killer. Eric was a mistake, yes, but it wasn’t
killing purely for the sake of it like mine would be. You would have to live
with that disgusting decision for the rest of your life, but I’ll be dead and
won’t know the difference. I’m not afraid of death, but if you conduct yourself
like the universe will always be horrible to you, how is that living at all?”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“I’ve already forgiven you,” she
answered. “However, there are still other things. I want my ship back.”

Burke nodded. His eyes were still
closed. “It’s yours.”

The weapons were stored in the
hangar. Burke equipped his battle aegis and Cass transferred the ship’s
database to its systems. He left the rest of the ship to Jess and then stayed
on the station for the final four days before his new ship arrived.

Jess walked around Freedom and
admired the changes that had been made to its interior. She had the time to
appreciate them now, and the state of cleanliness that it had been restored to.
The shared quarters were now a single bedroom that didn’t smell like stale food
and sweaty clothes. She no longer had to live in the engine room.

She sat at the helm and leaned over
the consoles. She was a decent enough pilot to navigate space routes, but
perhaps not skilled enough for complicated landings on varying planets, each
with their different levels of gravity and atmospheres. Still, she was a
capable enough mechanic to keep the ship operational by herself. She remembered
that she wanted to move on to a new job before Meidum, and now she had her own
ship and her own decisions to make.

A trader, she considered, perhaps
even a legal one. The cargo hold would need to be expanded. The jail cell would
have to be removed. The ship would need a crew. She grinned at the plethora of
problems that were already presenting themselves as she left the hangar and
eased the ship out of the station. She felt like the whole galaxy had just
opened up to her.

* * *

The new ship arrived and Burke took
little joy in it. It was meant to be a momentous occasion; he had finally
restored his life to its former glory in terms of his job and ability to help
people. The rest of his life felt like it couldn’t be any further from what it
had once been.

The ship was sleek and deceptively
large on the inside. The outer hull and weapon systems had been the most
expensive parts of the ship: there were several mass driver turrets for
launching solid projectiles, two missile launchers, and reinforced armor
capable of withstanding several direct explosions. Where his previous ship had
been clunky and rough, the new one was smooth and curved for easier propulsion
through planetary atmospheres. The outside armor was black, white, and
partially blue, and reminded Burke of the color of his aegis.

There were two levels to the ship.
The doors parted in the middle at the front of the ship where it touched the
floor of the hangar. A ramp extended outward to open up into the storage area.
Designed for combat, the ship had less space for cargo than Freedom, and the
initial room ended sooner with a doorway to the compartment at the end of the
ship. The engine was at the back, with its machinery spanning two vertical
levels from the floor to the ceiling. The stairs to the upper level were on the
first wall in the engine room and Burke climbed them, barely noticing the
electric hum of the vastly more powerful engine that his new ship had.

Cass had already transferred
herself into the new network and was bouncing between the rooms. The computer
system was several times more advanced than the previous one and she reveled in
the processing power. As Burke moved through the upper floor—through the
central corridor with the unstocked armory, jail cells, and extensive kitchen
on the starboard side, and the crew quarters on the port side—Cass excitedly
listed off all the ship’s many features. He stopped at the end of the hall, at
the door to the command room, and looked back. Crew quarters on the port side,
he looked again. More than one.

“Why are there three bedrooms?” he
asked out loud.

“I didn’t want you to regret the
decision,” Cass said happily, confident in her deception. “After what happened
with Jess, don’t you think now that you were being unreasonable? We may have
guests at some point.”

Burke closed his eyes and nodded. A
few days ago he had been vehemently against the idea of extra bedrooms and
would have been furious with Cass for going against what had been a mutual
decision. Now he saw where he had been wrong. Normally he would have smiled and
admitted his mistake to Cass, happy that she was looking after his best
interests. He turned instead and walked into the command room.

The helm was larger than he
anticipated. The doors opened up into a square room with a curved computer
terminal on each of the three walls. There was a chair in front of each
terminal. Once seated, the occupant needed to turn around and be surrounded by
the computer systems on either side of the chair. The one at the front of the
ship was for the pilot. He guessed the other two were for weapons and ship
diagnostics. The room was alive with flickering lights and screens already
displaying updates from all over the ship. He should have been pleased.