Burke looked back at the broken window in the ceiling. He judged the distance to be too great to reach, even with the launching mechanisms in his leg and armor. Cass displayed the exact distance over his vision and confirmed that they would fall short of reaching it. He looked across the room and to the single door on the other side.
“There are stairs in there,” Cass explained, cycling through the building’s cameras as she did so. “A quick climb to the roof. I’ll call the ship.”
“The new pilot better respond,” Burke said curtly.
“He will. Trust him,” she replied.
He moved quickly across the room. He felt empty bullet cases and broken glass crunch beneath his feet with each step. The guards that he hadn’t fired upon were shifting awkwardly on their feet, unsure if they were allowed to leave or were being apprehended like their boss.
“Useless! All of you!” Taggus screamed while he was carried across the room.
“Quiet,” Burke growled.
There was another stolen crate near the door. He was a few steps away from it when one of the guards wheeled around from behind it. Burke saw the shotgun in his hands and then felt the blast of it being fired at point-blank range into his face. The visor’s display was a frazzled mess of static and played tricks on his eyes before his vision fully cleared. The guard looked horrified that his weapon had done nothing even after being fired so close. Burke twisted his right arm to trigger the front blade out of the aegis’s forearm. He held it up in a mocking strike over the terrified guard’s throat and then lowered his hand. He twisted his arm again to retract the blade and then shoved the man out of the way instead.
“No killing, only wounding. Good, Burke,” Cass commended.
“Useless,” Taggus muttered again.
Burke shouldered open the door and stepped inside. The stairwell was a generous size, enough to accommodate a few people at a time. It was poorly lit, however, and Cass adjusted the visor to help him see. He could hear people shuffling up the stairs below them. More guards he guessed, rushing to where they heard the sound of gunfire.
“Up here!” Taggus yelled. “He’s up here!”
“There’s still time to break your arm,” Burke said.
He turned to the stairs and began ascending, two steps at a time. He judged the weight of the alien on his shoulder before he began to run. The guards below them could do him no harm, but they might be foolish enough to open fire and kill Taggus. The bounty on his head specifically wanted him alive.
“Faster!” Taggus roared. “He’s getting away!”
They were near the top of the stairs. Burke rushed up the final steps quickly, put his hand on the door handle, and twisted his arm so that Taggus collided hard into the wall of the stairwell. He heard the alien groan on contact and grinned.
The door wasn’t locked. Burke stepped through and closed it behind him. He was back on the roof and could see the broken window a few meters ahead. He looked up and saw the rain falling between the towering buildings of the city. He did not see or hear his ship.
“Cass, did you stay linked with the ship?”
“Yes, but we won’t need it. Rylan is a good pilot. He’ll be here,” she answered.
“Check on him.”
“That’s not necessary. I trust him.”
“I’m still trying,” Burke said.
The sound of the guards stomping up the last few stairs came through the door. Burke leaned back against it and lodged his foot to block it. He felt someone barge into the door and then fall away from it. A few moments passed before they opened fire. Cass unlocked Burke’s left arm and he stretched it out, holding Taggus away from the door and away from stray bullets that broke through. Burke looked up at him and saw the rain falling into his face.
“Just kill me,” he spluttered.
Burke stood against the door. He felt a second attempt as someone rammed themselves into it. Another torrent of bullets railed through the door and into him. He gritted his teeth and turned back to look out over the roof. He was about to once again condemn the new pilot, Rylan, for abandoning him before he saw the ship appear in the distance. It tore its way through the rain after weaving dangerously between two nearby buildings, barely large enough for the size of the ship. He wanted to shake his head.
“And you accused me of showing off,” Burke muttered.
“He’s just as good as flying as you are at fighting,” Cass replied, sounding like she had a smile on her face.
He huffed and then felt a third collision into the door behind him. Bracing it or not, he knew the door would likely break soon. He kept his eyes locked on the ship. Usually he had time to admire the vessel he and Cass had purchased, with its sleek exterior in the same black and white colors of his battle aegis. On the roof, he urged it to move faster and then wanted to curse himself as his wish came true. He watched as Rylan recklessly swung the ship into a spin, turning into the momentum of the ship for a last burst of speed before it abruptly came to a halt a few meters away from the roof. The sound of the engine was enough to blare out the gunfire from behind him.
The front doors of the ship, on the lower level and below the helm, began to open and Burke pressed away from the door. One of the guards rammed into it just as he pressed away and he heard the door crash onto the roof. Burke held Taggus out in front of him, as if he was a war banner he was leading into battle. The alien screamed in fear as he was held out over the roof, seemingly about to fall off of it. Burke slid over the final meter on the roof and crouched down as a wave of gunfire slammed in his back. Cass triggered the launch mechanisms in his leg and armor and he was propelled forward. He felt the moment during which he hung in the air and the ship elongate: the bullets crushing themselves into his back, Taggus screaming, and the roar of the ship’s engine. Then he felt his feet on the floor of his ship and the doors snapped together. The floor lurched beneath him as the ship turned and flew away. The bullets smacking into the broad side of the ship were lost in the rain.
* * *
The ship ascended smoothly into a low orbit around the planet. Burke had spent days on the surface with Cass and was happy to be back in his home. They had owned the ship for less than a year but he already felt the most comfortable when he was within it.
He had asked Cass to name the ship. At first, she had been ecstatic to be the one to name the vessel and then spent the next few days agonizing over the decision.
“Brisbane,” she said, trying to hide the fact that she was nervous. “I think we should call the ship Brisbane.”
Burke had been taken aback by her choice, so much so that he hadn’t noticed she was worried about offending him.
“You’ve been reading my war records?”
“I read them a long time ago,” Cass said. “Are you happy with the name?”
In truth, he had been uncertain. Brisbane had been the last city on Earth to fall to the animalistic aliens that now infested the planet. He had been present on the surface the day that the planet was abandoned, ready to defend the city while the last few inhabitants made their escape. In the months after hearing her choice, however, he had grown to appreciate it. He liked the name.
The Brisbane reached orbit before Burke could deposit Taggus into an empty jail cell on the upper level of the ship. He untied the vruan and then pushed him into the cell. The alien had his hands clutched around the bars the moment after Burke locked the barred door. Taggus pressed his head between the bars and hissed out words in his native language. Burke couldn’t understand it.
“Your race helped construct the universal language. That’s why we have so many clicking sounds to make when we talk,” Burke said. “Use it.”
Taggus continued to hiss.
“He says you’re not worthy of the effort,” Cass announced, translating quickly.
The vruan continued to ramble.
“I was worth the effort on the planet,” Burke pointed out.
Taggus’s skin shifted abruptly to a scarlet purple.
He hissed and clicked out more words.
“He’s swearing at you now. A lot,” Cass said slowly.
“It’s nothing personal,” Burke said. “You stole some things. You’ll be imprisoned for a while. They’ll let you out. Hopefully I won’t have to find you again.”
The alien let out a low roar. His eyes widened as a sucking noise emitted from his throat. His cheeks puffed out for a moment and then he spat on the floor between them. The blob of mucus at Burke’s feet was thick and the same color as the vruan’s skin. Taggus hissed again.
“I don’t think I need to translate that,” Cass said.
“Yeah that part was pretty clear,” Burke agreed.
He turned and exited the room, leaving the light on for Taggus. The jail cells were on the starboard side of the ship and were the closest room to the engine at the rear of the vessel. The port side was entirely made up of three bedrooms: the middle one for himself, the closest one to the helm for Rylan, and an unoccupied one near the engine room. The kitchen, meeting area, and armory took up what remained of the starboard side.
Burke walked into the armory and put away his rifle and the holdout pistol he kept in a hidden compartment in his armor’s hip. He removed the helmet of his aegis first, already aware that Cass transferred herself back into Brisbane’s network and was synchronizing herself with its systems. He frowned when he looked over the torso portion of his armor. He had sustained enough hits to leave blackened streaks that he would have to clean. He was happy to see that he had taken no damage—sometimes it didn’t seem fair, he was virtually invincible against the standard firearms that common criminals used. It took military grade firepower to break through the protective layers of armor, and even then it would require a number of direct hits. The battle aegis was one of the most advanced pieces of hardware he had ever seen, and had also been the most expensive. It had taken him years of saving before he purchased it.
Stripped of all the pieces of the armor, he felt light and exposed standing in only thin underclothes. He looked down at his augmented leg and knew he carried a piece of the armor with him, always. He had lost it years earlier, when his leg had been broken and crushed. He had requested the leg portion of his aegis be used in the construction of the prosthetic and it interlocked perfectly with his armor. He looked down at the small insignia of the company that had made it—Spectrum Industries. That piece of hardware had not been cheap either.
He walked out of the armory and into his quarters. He barely gave the room a glance as he moved directly for his shower. Spending days in his armor had left him feeling unclean. He felt instantly better when the hot water hit him, scraping the feeling of dried sweat from his skin and hair. He felt fully at ease by the time he began to towel himself dry in the middle of his room.
“You should come and speak to Rylan,” Cass’s voice spoke quietly throughout the room. He was used to her unannounced presence.
“I’ll be a few more minutes,” Burke answered.
He looked around the room as he dabbed himself with the towel. The room was far larger than his previous ship. The luxurious conditions had been surprisingly difficult to adjust to after so many years of scraping by. His bed was twice the size than was necessary for only him. There was a robust collection of exercise equipment and free weights stored in the far wall across from the bed. The room’s private computer system was of a similar high quality, complete with a display screen that encapsulated the wall opposite the private bathroom. They were small features in comparison to the millions of credits they had spent on the ship’s engine, reinforced hull, and outer weapons. Still, he had been shocked to find that the smaller details had been the hardest to adapt to.
Burke used the wall display as a record of his life since he became a bounty hunter. After he got dressed, he looked over the information he had collected and organized on the wall. The top left corner had been devoted to Earth and the aliens, the dross, that had claimed it. Next to it he listed out everything he knew about ACU, a secretive branch of the government that hired Burke at least once a year. His last job for them had been to return to Earth to retrieve a crashed drone. He had been paid well but the task had never made sense.
“Cass,” he said out loud, keeping his eyes on the screen.
“Burke?”
“Any messages from Havard since we’ve been back?”
Havard was the head of ACU. He oversaw many different research projects, ranging from alien biology to weapons development. Burke had purchased his battle armor from ACU along with Cass, the AI that came with the aegis. Throughout the previous year, Havard had been pestering Burke to sell Cass back to them. She was apparently unique among AIs, as she was still functional after five years of operations. The unrestricted AIs in ACU rarely lasted six months.
“No messages,” Cass answered.
Burke frowned. He was certain Havard was involved in far more than he let on, and it was unlike the man to give up on something so suddenly. He had offered a ludicrous amount of money to repurchase Cass or at least make a copy of her. Burke had left the decision up to her and had been happy when she declined. He looked over the display and wondered if Havard was plotting something. Cass often mentioned strange transmissions arriving from ACU that she was unable to decipher. It made him uncomfortable.
Next to the files on ACU were the ones on himself: Burke Monrow, Bounty Hunter, 32 years old, and a wanted man. He felt instinctively at his augmented leg when his eyes looked over the open bounty on his head for the murder of Adam Bancroft. They had fought together in the war for Earth and went on to work together afterwards as bounty hunters. Adam had betrayed Burke and left him for dead on an isolated world. He had lost many things from that betrayal: his leg and name among them. He had acquired a new name after getting his revenge on Adam. He went by Jack Porter to avoid the problems that came with an active price on his head. He knew all too well how many bounty hunters would be on his trail if he had not meticulously crafted the new identity for himself.
He looked over the rest of the display and was temporarily overwhelmed by the open files that needed answers. There were dozens of profiles on suspected slavers, a target that Burke never hesitated in tracking down whether there was an active bounty or not. He saw a picture of Eva Pond, a slaver he had killed more than a year earlier, and wondered if her associates would ever strike back at him.
Geoff, one of his main contacts for high priority work, was next to the slaver groups. Burke had saved his daughter many years earlier after she had been kidnapped. The leader of that group had evaded him while he rescued her, and he often asked Cass to reach out and find any information on the man. The latest update to the file had been years ago but he still kept it near the middle of the wall. He hated that the bastard had gotten away from him.
He glossed over the hundreds of other names and faces—rival bounty hunters, old war friends that he lost touch with, his contacts in the human fleet. Frank Copper. Admiral Viscard. Natalie Ambrose. Burke’s look softened when he came to the name Jessica Richmond.
“Burke. Are you coming out?” Cass asked.
“Soon. What’s the latest on Jess?”
He had unknowingly wronged Jess and nearly killed her. She had tracked him down and had the opportunity to kill him, and then forgave him instead. Burke still felt that he hadn’t deserved that show of mercy. He asked Cass to gently watch her whereabouts if there was ever an opportunity to repay that show of kindness.
“Her ship was last seen in Prime,” Cass said slowly. “It went out of range of the system’s network two days ago. Heading in the direction of the Stratos system. Smuggling through the trade embargo there, I think.”
“That could be dangerous. Will you keep an eye on her?”
“I like Jess,” Cass replied. “I’d do it even if you didn’t ask me.”
Burke turned away from the display. He knew the screen would automatically power off after he left the room. He looked down the corridor to the open door to the command room a
nd walked toward it. The helm was alight with several screens of its own. There were four terminals in total in the room: three on each side of the square room, with a chair that raised and lowered so the user was surrounded by the consoles, and one central podium. Each of the consoles handled different areas of the ship: navigation at the front, and interior systems and weapons on the sides. The central podium was for Cass and it hummed to life as Burke entered the room, displaying the holographic representation of the AI. She was smiling at him.
“Took you long enough,” she said. The speakers built seamlessly into the podium made the words sound like they came from her mouth. In the early days, when she first received the experimental projector, she had been unable to match the movement of her lips with the words she said. After months of experience, she was now natural enough to pass as a person being transmitted to the ship.
Burke walked around the podium to look at Rylan, who was busy at the helm. The man had only been with them for a month and was the direct result of Jess’s act of forgiveness. It had been the moment his outlook on life had shattered. He realized he had barely recovered anything of his life after Adam tried to kill him, living in isolation for too long. Burke was trying his best to trust again and hiring the pilot had been one of the first steps toward the goal. Still, he had not yet entrusted the man with his real name.
“Welcome back Captain,” Rylan said, looking at Burke in the reflection in the ship’s main window.
“Call me Jack, please,” Burke said. “Captain makes me think of the war.”
The Bounty Hunter: Resurrection Page 2