Bounty Hunter 1: The Bounty Hunter's Revenge

by Joseph Anderson

  The Bounty Hunter’s Revenge

  By Joseph Anderson

  The Bounty Hunter’s Revenge

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright © 2012 by Joseph Anderson

  Also by Joseph Anderson:

  Interstellar Soldiers

  Marines Against the Swarm

  The Robot Impersonator

  The Wizard and the Dragon

  Bounty Hunter Series

  The Bounty Hunter Series One, Complete

  Revenge

  Redemption

  Vampire

  Into The Swarm

  Reckoning

  Contents

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part One

  I was looking down the barrel of a gun. My eyes traced along the length of the weapon to the hand that was holding it. Adam was holding the gun and bearing down on me. Everything could change with just the slightest movement of his trigger finger.

  The anger inside of me thrashed around like a starved animal. I reminded myself that Adam had reduced me to exactly that, a starved animal, years ago when he had shot me in the stomach and left me for dead. It took every piece of my willpower to suppress the rage I felt at his betrayal, and the molten fury that I was experiencing at having him once again pointing a gun at me.

  A part of me, a not insignificant part, was still hoping for a reason to appear that would explain what he did to me. That Adam had been forced or tricked into deceiving me, and that now he saw the error and we could go back to being partners. It was stupid and sentimental, and it was exactly that sentiment that allowed him to have the gun pointed at me instead of the other way around. It was also what allowed him to nearly kill me so many years earlier.

  * * *

  The day that Adam tried to kill me was supposed to be the most successful day of our careers. That turned out only to hold true for him.

  We met while serving in the military, and went into business together after the war. We became mercenaries, bounty hunters, and sold our services for the right price. It was a ruthless business of criminals and murderers, and we sought to bring some standards to the profession. We never took a contract that was proposed by the scum of the galaxy, no matter how much money they offered.

  This sense of dignity and honor made it hard for us when we first started, but over the years we persevered and grew quietly famous to the right sort of people. Most bounty hunters worked alone and were seen as renegades that were only honest to the highest bidder. We worked together and were able to flourish as a team. Having a partner you could trust turned out to be quite lucrative.

  The last year that we worked together had been our busiest yet, with clients actively seeking us out for jobs that required the best bounty hunters in the business. Our last contract was given to us based on that reputation, and was by far our highest paying yet. It was enough money to set us up extravagantly for decades, or comfortably for life.

  The target was a freighter’s worth of stolen cargo that a group of thieves were holding on a desert world.

  “The two of us are going to go down, neutralize the outer defenses and then eliminate all hostiles. We’re to retrieve the cargo and then destroy the base. The client was adamant that all of the thieves be killed as an example to those who might think about stealing from him in the future. Blowing up the base,” Adam explained, “I requested for fun.” He grinned.

  Success had brought us more than just more wealthy clients. It had given us the financial capability to afford the most advanced combat hardware. Our ship was stocked with hundreds of weapons, ranging from handguns to explosives. We prepared and equipped ourselves while in orbit before each mission. That time, as we drifted above the desert world, was no different.

  My power armor was among our recent and most expensive purchases. I had only been able to afford it at the beginning of that year and it was the most advanced piece of equipment I had ever owned. Our old military equipment was designed to give soldiers the bare minimum of functions to get them through only a few kinds of encounters. My armor was designed for anything.

  The suit was known as a battle aegis, and it covered my entire body with interlocking pieces of reinforced metal that could protect me from an attack at any angle. The material was strong enough to withstand most kind of bullets, blades, and small armaments. As a result, the suit was incredibly heavy and required internal mechanisms, and assisted computer control, for me to still be able to move with full range of motion and speed.

  Not all of our contracts were human targets and some required long stretches of time on alien worlds where it wasn’t feasible to constantly return to orbit. The suit was capable of providing oxygen and sustenance during those periods, and could keep me alive for days to weeks depending on the conditions of the planet. The suit could also maintain its power supply by absorbing energy from multiple sources, usually in the form of heat and light.

  I had spent over three years worth of savings on my armor, and it had been worth every credit.

  The battle aegis included an artificial intelligence, like many computers did, to handle processing combat data and assisting my movement. It could handle communications and even offer feedback and suggestions. There was an option to have the interface only announce information formally and succinctly as possible, but I had grown fond of the AI’s inserts, advice, and personality. She had a certain charm to her, even from her initial insistence that “she” was not a “she” since an AI didn’t have to conform to the idea of gender.

  “Hello Burke,” the voice came from inside the helmet as I walked out of my room and toward the ship’s bay. “We have a mission?”

  “Yes. Adam should have made the contract’s information available to you on the ship’s network. How are you, Cass?”

  “I am well, thank you. I see that you are in good health.” A few small windows displaying my heart rate and other vitals popped up on the visor as she said that. “I hope to keep you that way.”

  I smiled to myself and walked us to the rear end of the ship. Adam had already fed the required coordinates to the ship’s navigation computer and was waiting for us. He had also strapped on his power armor that was similar to my own. He hadn’t spent nearly as much money as I had, but he didn’t need as many features that I did. He relied more on me to do the majority of the fighting, and I relied on him to provide direction and deal with clients. Back then we still appreciated the strengths of each other.

  The back end of the ship had a massive door that lowered out as a ramp to allow easy access to delivered supplies, or the gigantic trophies of alien monsters that we required as proof to collect some of our more exotic bounties. It wasn’t uncommon to see multiple heads of aliens of varying sizes hooked and hanging from the ceiling in that room. On that day, however, there was nothing particular noteworthy when I walked in except for Adam aiming a rifle at me.

  “Whoa. Hey, easy,” I said with a laugh in my voice.

  “Shit, sorry,” I could hear a similar laugh in Adam’s voice.

  He lowered the rifle and the faceplate on his helmet popped forward and slid upwards to reveal his face. He nodded at me and then threw the rifle in my direction. I caught it without stopping my approach toward him. Out of habit, I snapped the magazine out of the rifle and checked the bullet count. I had done this so many times that I barely noticed what I was doing and relied on my subconscious to remember what was necessary.

  Cass was already processing and displaying information about the surrounding area. The temperature inside the ship—along with humidity, pressure, and other information—displayed at my peripherals, ready to be brought into clear view if
I required the information. When I looked through the windows on the ship’s main door, the estimated speed and altitude of the ship popped at the corner of my eyes. When I looked at Adam, a faint rotating green circle appeared around his face that let me know he was a friendly target and not to shoot at him.

  “We should be on the surface in a few minutes. The client told me that they tracked the stolen cargo to this planet. It’s mostly desert, more sand than rock, with a few scattered water sources. The atmosphere is breathable but, with the heat and how far away the system is from the major worlds, its far down on the colonization list and currently uninhabited.

  “The targets have a small base of clustered buildings that are barely defended. Seems like they don’t expect to be found this far out and hide amongst the sand on a planet like this. I don’t think we need to waste any time going in carefully. I programmed the ship to land next to them and we should be done in no time.”

  “Got it,” I nodded at him.

  “Kind of anticlimactic that this will be our big payoff mission. Easy assignment. I guess that cargo must be something special to be paying this much.”

  Adam brought his left arm up to his chest and looked down at it. With his right hand he began to press buttons on the forearm display. The lights in the room began to glow brighter, matching what the light level would be on the surface of the planet. When he was satisfied with the lights he brought his hand up and pressed the faceplate back into his helmet. I knew that his visor would be adjusting to the light just like mine was, making sure we wouldn’t be blinded for a few seconds after the ship’s door opened up and let the light flood in.

  “Can you see, Burke?” Cass asked.

  “Yes, perfectly. Thank you.”

  “What was that?” Adam asked.

  “Was just responding to Cass.”

  “Oh,” Adam snorted. “I still can’t believe you didn’t turn the AI off. It’s useless.”

  “Permission to overload his transmission receiver, Burke?” Cass asked.

  I laughed and shook my head. A tremor ran through the floor of the ship and up my legs. I looked out the window and could see only the pale blue of the planet’s atmosphere. It wouldn’t be long now until we ran out into the middle of a firefight. I took a few steps closer to the door and switched the safety off my rifle. Responding to the safety being disabled, Cass connected the suit’s network with the weapon and a quarter of my visor’s display was now whatever I would have seen if I looked directly down the rifle’s scope.

  “Should be just over a dozen of them, Burke. Try to see if you can’t get your armor shot this time,” Adam’s voice came through my helmet.

  A rattling came from outside the ship when we were close to the surface. It almost sounded like rain, but I was familiar with the noise. The ship must have been spotted and they were firing at it as it came closer. I almost felt sorry for them, with what was about to be unleashed upon them, before I remembered that they were criminals.

  The cargo bay door dropped open after the ship shuddered to a halt on the sandy surface. Without my visor I would have been blinded for a moment by the bright light that came in from the planet. Instead I had a clear view of the base in front of me. There were three buildings in a line, the largest of them in between two smaller ones, and a few barricades scattered out in front of them as if they had been placed as an afterthought.

  Three red circles flashed on my visor and hovered in a flourish over each of the multiple thieves dotted around the base. Each circle displayed “Hostile” in small letters.

  I rushed out the back and down the ramp that the door had made. One of the thieves got an early lucky shot that bounced harmlessly off my left shoulder. The impact caused my left hand to bounce off my rifle and I had to raise the weapon with only my right hand. I heard Adam laughing through a transmission over the fact that I had gotten hit already.

  Through the targeting portion of my visor that Cass maintained I lined up the scope’s cross hairs and fired a three round burst. I didn’t have to wait and see if the shots landed—I knew I had killed one of them—and moved the weapon to the next target. I turned left and brought the rifle to the target in that direction and met it with my recovered left hand at the same time. I steadied the gun and fired again, going for a head shot this time since I had both hands available to keep the sights steady. I saw the beginnings of a red mist appear around the man I hit and faced back into the heart of the base.

  The final target was hiding behind a wall about twenty meters in front of me.

  “I’m going around to make sure they don’t try anything funny with the cargo. You okay up here?” Adam said.

  “Of course,” I replied, and then cut off my channel to him so only Cass could hear me. “I need a hook here, and hold my gun for me.”

  I held my rifle close to my right hip until I felt it stick to the armor where Cass had temporarily magnetized it. My hands were free to grab the grappling hook that was ejected out of the belt portion of the armor. I launched it across the base and it caught onto the top of the wall that my target was huddling behind. Cass didn’t have to wait for a signal and started to ravel the hook’s line back into the belt, hurtling the two of us forward to the wall much faster than anyone could have ran.

  At the moment that I made contact with the wall I surged forward, placed my right foot onto the top of it and vaulted over. The hook smoothly snapped back into the armor and the compartment was sealed as if it had never been open at all. Before I landed I twisted both of my forearms quickly, triggering the blades that ran along the arm sections of the aegis. They sprang out of my forearms and emerged toward and extended passed my elbows.

  I heard the man scream out in surprise when he realized that I had already cleared the distance between us. When I landed behind him, I brought the blades down and behind me, hard, piercing right through his torso. I gave my forearms another twist, both to rupture the man’s insides and kill him as mercifully quick as possible, while also causing the blades to retract back into the armor.

  “Four more, Burke,” Cass announced.

  More red circles, one to match each assailant, appeared in my field of view. Two more shots hit me and ricocheted harmlessly off my chest like grains of sand blowing against a wall. I pulled up my rifle to my head out of habit. Even though I still used the display in my visor instead of manually looking down the scope, I still felt more comfortable when the rifle was pressed into my shoulder.

  I turned to face the target on my right and he ran. I calmly trailed the scope in front of him, predicting his path, and shot once to stagger him, and twice more to put him down. When I turned back to the others I found only two red circles indicating targets. One of them had slipped away.

  The one closest to my left was still firing at me, and I saw a blaze of yellow and orange fire spewing out of his rifle as I lined up my sights on him. The light made it hard to see exactly what I was firing at, so I lined up the cross hairs on the bursts of light, brought it up slightly and fired. Something must have caught his arm or chest because he staggered backwards, finger still on the trigger, shooting his gun awkwardly up into the air. That cleared my view and I took two more shots, one at his chest and another into his head.

  The third had made it closer to me than the others and I still couldn’t see the fourth man. I made a note that he must have ran back inside while I popped the final few bullets remaining in my magazine into the third target. He had still been using the hollow point rounds that couldn’t penetrate my armor and had only made it easier to shoot him by coming closer. I let the empty magazine fall out of the rifle and that was when Cass screamed into my ears.

  “Last target from behind!” A new window of view widened in my visor, showing me what the camera in the back of my helmet saw. He was only a few steps away and was carrying something with both hands that he looked like he planned to strap onto my back.

  “He’s got a scrambler pack, Burke. Quickly!” Cass yelled. She was in danger when o
ne of those was involved, too.

  The man didn’t know I could see him from behind and was still trying to sneak up on me. When he was closer I ducked down suddenly and he leaped at me, trying to pin the electrical explosive on me before I got out of range. It was capable of frying my entire system and leaving the armor as a heavy prison for me to be stuck in, instead of a powerful weapon. Every device has its weaknesses.

  I predicted that he expected me to roll away, and I was right when I surprised him by spinning back toward him with a blade extending out of my right arm. The man panicked and brought up the scrambler to block my attack. The blade pierced into the package and lodged itself into it. The thing began to spark and let out a high pitched whine. It was damaged but not enough to deactivate it. Pain shot up through the blade and into my arm but Cass was already assuring me that it wouldn’t do any permanent damage to me or her. I ignored it and went for another attack.

  The thief had already pulled out another weapon: a handgun this time, and wasted no time in bringing it to my temple and firing right at my head. The sound of it clanging off the reinforced metal hurt my ears more than the force of it hurt the rest of me. The man looked horrified that several close ranged shots had left no visible mark on me. I spun on my heels and brought the blade back down on him again, the tip piercing into his neck and coming cleanly out of the left side of his torso above his hip.

  I grabbed the scrambler pack with my left hand and threw it down onto his corpse. The thing continued to spark and jolt, sending tremors through the dead body.

  “Burke, there are seven more inside. Should be the last of them. I think they’re guarding the room with the cargo in it. I could use your help in here,” Adam’s voice came through in my helmet.

  “I’m on my way.”

  I reloaded my rifle on my way into main building. Cass was displaying a marker for Adam’s location and I could see her estimating a mapped layout of the inside of the base to help me find him. She adjusted the visor’s tint as I entered the building and I could see as clearly inside as I could out. I immediately saw stairs that headed downwards in the direction of Adam and Cass adjusted her outline to accommodate the basement level as we descended.