“Hi there,” she said kindly. “Are your mommy and daddy home?”
“I’m not allowed to talk to strangers,” the boy said.
“Oh, but we’re all strangers here. Everyone is new to this place. You’re not allowed to talk to anyone?”
This sounded reasonable to the boy and confused him. It was a conflict between what he just heard and what his parents had drilled into him time and time again.
“I just arrived here,” she said. “I’m going to be the school teacher for this town. Are there any other kids around that I can talk to with you?”
Again, the boy was unsure. He nodded once and then shook his head. He didn’t know what to do and stayed quiet.
“Why don’t you come with me and I’ll show you where the school is going to be built. Then you can show the other kids. It’s always good to be the first one to know something, don’t you think?”
The boy hesitated.
Burke lay on his stomach on top of a ridge overlooking the settlement. Cass was calculating the factors of the planet’s atmosphere on the trajectory of the sniper rifle’s rounds. They hadn’t known exactly which way Pond would come from and he had to stay far back to cover all of the possibilities. It would be a difficult shot.
The cross hairs on the scope lined up perfectly on Pond’s head. Burke could see that she was talking to a little boy. He looked at the estimated point of impact that Cass was displaying on his visor. The target reticule was off a little to the left. He trusted Cass’s estimation more than the scope. He didn’t want to chance accidentally shooting the child.
“I found a lot of information on Eva Pond while I kept track of her,” Cass said as he adjusted the rifle. “She was a slave herself as a child. Taken from a new planet like this one.”
“What do you mean?”
“She does horrible things to people now. I’m not excusing it, just explaining it. She probably does these things to others because of what was done to her. Do you understand?”
“No,” he said as he shifted his eyes from the scope. His shot was ready.
“You don’t believe in redemption?”
“I do,” he said. “I just don’t care.”
He squeezed the trigger and the bullet made a crater in the side of Pond’s head. Even from across the town, Burke heard the boy scream as he saved him.
From the Author:
Thanks for reading the story. This entry in the bounty hunter series is significantly shorter than the others. Rather than artificially inflating it and ruining the pace of the story, I’ve included a bonus short story of roughly the same length as Redemption. This short story is also based in the same universe as the Bounty Hunter Series.
There is also a preview of the next in the Bounty Hunter story: Vampire, at the end.
As always, thank you for reading.
Marines Against the Swarm
The ground opened up in front of the buggy before the driver realized what was happening. The vehicle was moving too fast to avoid the hole and launched over it, clipping the opening with its rear wheels at the last moment. The buggy was flipped, sending both the driver and Jack into the dirt. A high pitched wail blasted from the hole behind them. It wasn’t human.
He scrambled to his feet and pointed his rifle back at the hole. He saw that nothing had climbed out yet but he could still hear it. Too many thoughts fought for attention in his head: check the buggy, check to see if Scott survived the crash, check yourself for injuries, there’s a Dross in the tunnel that’s about to kill you. His vision was still unsteady from the crash and it took effort to focus. The sound of the alien wailing rattled him to his core and made him want to look away, but he knew if he took his eyes off the tunnel he might not live to look at anything else.
The tentacles appeared first and beat against the earth around the top of the tunnel, feeling for danger before climbing out. Jack knew better than to shoot at those. They were as thin as earthworms and moved quickly, jittery, and would only grow back later if he was lucky enough to land a shot. He gripped his rifle tighter and readied himself.
Claws gripped the rim of the tunnel and before Jack could react the alien pulled itself up onto the ground. The Dross was longer than it was tall and was near the size of the four-seat buggy. It stood ready to pounce on four legs, each with a brutal claw that looked almost too big for the rest of the creature. The alien’s skin was hairless and green, and hugged tightly to its body like a sheet stretched around a coffin. The head was close to that of a lizard’s, complete with four red eyes and a protruding mouth brimming with massive teeth. The tentacles grew in a tight bunch from where another creature would have a tail. To Jack it didn’t matter how many times he heard the Dross be called alien, to him they always looked like monsters.
Jack squeezed the trigger on his rifle and kept the iron sights as evenly as he could on his attacker. The alien reared up in response and screeched as most of the bullets penetrated its torso. A green substance, something Jack could never comfortably think of as blood, gushed from the multiplying wounds on its chest and fell thickly on the barren ground. Jack knew that without a clear head shot he would need more than one magazine worth of bullets to stop the creature. He began to back away to create some distance to safely reload.
The alien leaped at Jack the moment that the bullets stopped forcing it back. Instead of reloading he was forced to jump to the side to dodge the attack. He hit the ground and into a roll that brought him smoothly back upright. He turned to the alien and slammed another magazine into his rifle at the same time. The Dross was already making another jump at him and Jack didn’t have time to think or aim. He fired wildly, instinctively, and braced himself to be torn apart by the same claws that could carve through earth as if it were paper.
The bullets ruptured the alien’s head and its brains popped in a shower of green blood. The corpse fell harmlessly to Jack’s feet and he stared numbly at it, waiting for his mind to process what happened. When he was certain the thing was dead he stepped over it and faced the tunnel. He needed to keep his eyes on it in case more of them were on the way.
“Scott!”
“Over here! Fuck.”
He refused to turn his back to the hole and awkwardly stepped sideways and backwards toward Scott’s voice. Jack could still see the dead alien in the corner of his eye. Its tentacles were still squirming and twitching, as if they weren’t ready to give up and die along with the rest of the body. Jack felt his shoulders tighten.
“You’re close enough. Help me.”
Jack took a few breaths before he reluctantly turned around. The buggy was in front of him but it had landed on its side. The top of the frame was pressed against the ground and was pinning one of Scott’s legs. If it had fallen any further it would have crushed him. Jack put his rifle down and grabbed the part of the frame that was highest in the air. He glanced down at Scott, exchanged a nod, and pushed as hard as he could.
The buggy toppled forward loudly but Scott’s scream was louder. Jack immediately went for his rifle and aimed it toward the tunnel. It felt like hours passed before he was satisfied that nothing was coming to answer Scott’s scream. Jack turned around and scooped his arms under Scott’s shoulders. They had to get back into the buggy immediately.
“That leg is broken. I’ll have to drive.”
“It’s only one leg. The important one still works fine. You fucking put me back in the driver’s seat,” Scott spat.
“Dammit. Fine.”
Jack dragged him around the buggy and propped him inside. Scott grimaced as he shifted properly into the chair and looked like he would scream again when he pulled his own broken leg in with his hands. Jack jumped into the back of the transport and turned to face the tunnel. He stared at it prepared at any moment to fire at the enemy, but none came. It wasn't until they had driven so far away that he could no longer see the hole that he felt himself relax.
“If the fuckers are already digging up, why do they even need us to check on the
pounders?” Scott yelled back over the sound of the engine.
“Numbers, maybe. They want to get as many as they can in one shot.”
“Fucking crazy. We shouldn’t be doing this. We shouldn’t be here. They don’t even know if it’ll work.” The buggy lurched forward over a rock and Scott roared in pain.
“I guess we’ll find out.”
The rest of the journey passed in silence. Jack knew that it would have been better for Scott’s leg if they went straight back to the base, but they were only a few minutes away from the final pounder. They had been ordered to ensure that the three pounders came online when the signal was broadcast, and to manually start them if they did not.
After losing so much time from crashing the buggy they only had a few minutes to check everything when they arrived at the structure. It wasn’t very large, only a few meters tall and a quarter of that wide, and looked more like a frame of a building than a completed one. Inside the girders was a solid cylinder of metal that was designed to rise up into the air and then slam into the ground when it was turned on. It would repeat that action until it was powered down or destroyed. The vibrations it created enraged the Dross burrowed in the ground and they would swarm to its location.
“Turn the buggy around,” Jack said as he jumped out of the vehicle. “The second this thing turns on we need to get out of here.”
He walked up to the pounder and stopped in front of the control panel. There was a single lever on the panel and above sat a single red light. The tactical display inside his helmet let him know that the pounder was set to activate in about thirty seconds. If it failed he’d have to pull the lever for a manual start.
“Just get back in, Jack. We’re here more as bait than a fail-safe. It’ll activate.”
Jack nodded but didn’t move. Only a few seconds were left. The light switched from red to green and he ran. Something in the structure began to rumble and the cylinder rose up through the open roof. Jack jumped into the back of the buggy and Scott already had his foot on the accelerator. The wheels were spinning and they were moving before the first impact of the pounder hit the ground.
A wave of vibration rumbled through the earth so strong that Jack felt it reverberate through the buggy and into his bones. Before the pounder was half way up in the air again the ground began to burst. The aliens erupted to the surface spraying soil like fountains. This time the wailing came from more than one source and merged together into a shrill howl that seemed to come at Jack from every direction.
“Fucking drive. Faster.” Jack yelled to the front of the vehicle. The pounder slammed into the ground again and more holes appeared. “They’re everywhere.”
The momentum gained as the transport picked up speed made Jack stagger for a moment. When he recovered his balance he hauled himself up to the top of the frame and strapped himself in. He needed both of his hands to shoot and couldn’t have his focus split on staying upright. When he was fastened securely he unhinged a section on the top of his rifle. The iron sights snapped up to be replaced with a scope. He brought it up to his eyes and began to fire.
Most of the aliens crowded around the pounder. Through the scope Jack saw a few of them charge into the building and be crushed into a green pulp as the cylinder met the ground. For each that was flattened dozens emerged to replace them. There were more tunnels appearing than Jack could count.
“We’ll be coming up to the next one soon!” Scott shouted back over the sound of gunfire. “If we’re late it might start without us. It’ll be—Fuck!”
The buggy swerved suddenly and Jack felt his insides compress against the straps and metal on top of the vehicle. He felt dirt rain down on his helmet and back and knew that another tunnel must have opened up in front of them. He turned instinctively with his rifle ready and began to fire. The Dross was in striking distance of the buggy and needed to be stopped. Its claws were already held high even though half of the creature was still in the tunnel. Jack’s bullets clustered around the thing’s head and it fell limply down into the hole.
Scott swore again and Jack winced at the thought of what an unexpected turn like that must have done to his leg. The transport began to move again and they could no longer feel the vibrations from the first pounder. When the second one came into view Jack saw down his scope that it hadn’t activated yet. The timers displayed in his helmet said it should be online in ten seconds, and the final one after that in six minutes.
They were close when the timer elapsed and the pounder didn’t move. Scott was set to drive straight past it until Jack screamed for him to stop. He frantically unbuckled himself and leaped off onto the ground before the buggy came to a complete stop. He knew that their transport was faster than the aliens could run but not by much. They’d catch up soon and he only had a few seconds to pull the lever and get back in.
The light on the control panel was flashing red and he didn’t wait to see it turn green after he snatched the lever and yanked it down. He dived back onto the buggy and Scott had it moving before Jack had a chance to strap himself in. The second pounder began emanating the same sounds and vibrations as the first and more aliens burst up onto the ground. Jack steadied himself on top of the buggy with one hand and awkwardly pulled the harness around him with the other.
Through the scope Jack saw the oncoming mass of the aliens on the horizon. He couldn’t tell if they had managed to topple the first pounder or if they had given up but it didn’t matter, most of them were coming after them. Even more tunnels were appearing around the second pounder than they did around the first. Jack surmised that the initial pounder had stirred many aliens deep beneath the surface and the second one was the final disturbance they needed to claw out of the ground. He was suddenly dreading how many the third one would attract.
Jack was about to open fire on the nearest aliens when the buggy stalled for a moment. He reared his head around and saw the line of tunnels a few meters in front of them. Scott must have thought he could brake before he came to them but reconsidered and sped up instead. The transport surged forward, gaining speed even when three of the creature’s heads poked up from the tunnels and unleashed their combined menacing cries.
Scott pressed the accelerator to the floor and Jack held on for his life despite being strapped in. The buggy punched itself over the rift and lopped off the middle alien’s head. The aliens on either side were smacked into the rim of the tunnels with each of the front wheels. The rear wheels of the transport caught the edge of the hole at the end of the jump and brought them hard on the ground and to a dead stop.
Jack scrambled for his rifle and began firing wildly at each of the aliens on either side of the back of the buggy. He heard Scott yell something but couldn’t make it out over the gunfire and he didn’t dare stop to ask him to repeat it. He didn’t stop firing until they were moving again.
When they were clear of the aliens he craned his head around to look for the last pounder. He couldn’t see it without the help of his scope and his helmet’s display showed less than a minute until it activated. He was worried how much time their abrupt stop would cost them.
When they got out of range of the second pounder they could already feel the vibrations from the third. Ahead of them the landscape looked like a battle that had already been fought and lost. Easily twice as many holes as the last location littered the area like craters in an exploded minefield. The concentration of the aliens was around the pounder, and the bottom of the metal cylinder was caked in green blood and flesh. The structure looked more like a meat grinder than a military tool.
Instead of driving away from the swarm they now had to drive through it.
“We’re fucked,” Scott laughed. “We’re so fucked.”
“Focus.”
Jack watched Scott drive like a crazed man. His hands turned the steering wheel constantly, whipping it from side to side, either to slide around a hole he saw up ahead or to curve out of the way of one that freshly opened. Jack shot at any targets he could find
away from the pounder, not wanting to attract their attention yet. There were so many that he fired mostly to boost Scott’s spirits with the sound of at least one of them fighting back.
“Scout Team Eight, are you there? Your scheduled return was three minutes ago. What’s your status?” The voice came from inside Jack’s helmet. He took his left hand from his rifle and pressed a finger near his temple to respond.
“Sir, it’s a fucking mess out here. We were delayed but we’re still on our way. All objectives are operational and many targets are following us. Many fucking targets.”
“You’re the only team that hasn’t made it back yet. We have to close the gate whether you’re here or not. Tell your driver to haul ass.”
“Sir.”
Jack growled and brought the rifle back up onto his shoulder. Down the scope he saw the final pounder with enough aliens around it that they looked like a huge single mass of crawling legs. He shot in bursts, aiming as best he could with the transport rocking and veering below him, getting the attention of as many as he could with his last magazine.
“Scott, you were right about this one.”
“I know.”
“We’re just the fucking bait.”
“I know.”
“They’re closing the gate in a few minutes. Do whatever you can. As risky as you like. We’re dead if you don’t.”
The buggy reared forward and Jack had to hold on against the inertia pressing against him. From all the careful turning and navigating Scott had to do around the holes the approaching army of aliens had caught up some distance. Now, as the vehicle haphazardly bolted over tunnel entrances and made a bee-line back for the base, they were recovering their lead. Jack was shocked at how many new tunnels still kept appearing even as they got closer to the base, further and further out from the final pounder. They must have woken up the entire colony.
Bounty Hunter 2: Redemption Page 4