I heard gunfire before I saw Adam and I rushed through the hallways toward the sound. I found him pinned down behind a corner of the far side of an entrance into what looked to be the largest room on the level. I poked my head around the corner and saw seven red circles light up immediately. I yanked my head back just before a volley of bullets ripped through where my head had just been and slammed into the wall behind me.
“Be careful!” Adam hissed at me, so loud that I heard him both through the transmission and through our helmets nearby. “Seems like these assholes made the new guys attack us first while they stayed behind and hoarded all the armor piercing rounds. Fucking cowards.”
He twisted around to show me the two holes in his armor. One was at the shoulder and another on his upper arm. As if he knew what my immediate question was going to be, he shook his head and answered: “they only hit the armor and went through. A bit of system damage but nothing on me. I’m fucking pissed. These things are expensive to repair.”
I nodded at him. Instead of extending my head around the corner, I held the rifle with both hands and propped it upright in front of me. I slowly extended so it gradually poked out around the corner. The rifle was mostly black, and blended in with the dark interior of the base. The thieves didn’t notice what I was doing and I lined up my first shot with the visor’s view with slow movements.
I only needed one shot for the first target. I lined up a second as fast as I could, considering how awkward it was to move a rifle the way I was holding it. After I killed a second man they all ducked down behind the crates they were using for cover. A few tense seconds went by while I frantically searched the entire view for any sign of movement. I was about to give up and move into the room properly when I saw something be thrown out from behind cover.
“Grenade!” Cass shouted at me.
I knew how she liked to deal with grenades and immediately dropped my rifle. I held out my right hand toward the explosive after it landed between Adam and myself. Cass magnetized the armor at the palm of my hand and the grenade snapped into my fingers. I closed my hand around it at the same time that she cut off the magnetization and hurled it smoothly back into the room in one motion. I saw two of the thieves pop their heads up in the instant before the explosion.
I rushed with Adam into the room and was ready to clean up whatever the grenade didn’t do. The blast had killed three of them and blinded the final two. If the contract hadn’t specified that all the thieves had to be eliminated I would have argued with Adam about taking them back as prisoners. Part of me was still the sentimental soldier. I knew what the bounty required, however, and I took care of my half of the remaining two.
When the smoke had cleared I saw that Adam was already following the cargo’s tracker toward the far end of the room. I trailed behind him, not fully relaxed just yet in case they had greater numbers than had been estimated by the client. Looking around the room I saw that they had quite the treasure trove of what I assumed were stolen goods. Crates were stacked up to the ceiling and looked to contain a wide variety of things judging from their varying shapes and sizes.
“Adam, we might want to look at what else they have here,” I called out to him.
“What? Oh, yeah. Uh, no, actually, we need to get this back as soon as we can. We’ll come back for the rest.”
“What? It’ll only take a few hours. We should do it right now.”
He didn’t answer. I walked up closer to him and saw that he was crouched over one of the larger containers stuffed into the furthest corner of the room. Cass connected the tracker display that Adam was using into my visor and I saw that he had found the tracking beacon. That container was what we needed to get back with us.
“We’ll come back, Burke. Help me carry this back to the ship.”
We worked our way carefully with the cargo out of the base. We kept our faceplates sealed and stopped often to look ahead, just to make sure everything was clear. It was slow going but we had no idea what was in the container and didn’t want to risk damaging it. Failing to retrieve something would be a problem, but inadvertently destroying what we were sent to fetch would be a much bigger problem. We’d be responsible for replacing whatever it was. At the high payoff for returning it, we didn’t want to take any chances.
We made it onto the ship without incident and securely fastened the container on the far wall away from the cargo doors. I unsealed my faceplate and saw Adam do the same. He looked worried. I was puzzled and unsure about what was going through his head.
“We should go back for the rest of the stuff now,” I repeated the suggestion.
“No,” he stated.
“You told the client we’d destroy the base, remember? We can’t come back for it later.”
“He won’t know the difference. We’ll just come back.”
“He’s paying us a lot of money, Adam. I don’t think we should risk it.”
“Exactly, so we should leave immediately and get his property back to him,” Adam countered.
“What? You’re not making any sense.”
He waved a hand at me dismissively and walked up into the ship. I was confused and annoyed, but what would happen next never crossed my mind.
The ship shuddered as it began to lift off from the surface. The cargo door was still wide open and hung loosely out of the ship after it began to gain altitude. My hand was only a few centimeters from the door’s control panel when I heard Adam come back into the room. I heard something odd as he did so, like the sound of a electric spark, that made me freeze before I could hit the button. Cass was roaring something out at me but I couldn’t hear her.
I turned around and saw that Adam had a scrambler rifle pointed at my chest. I turned instinctively away from it before he fired but I wasn’t fast enough. The front part of the rifle launched forward trailing two thick wires behind it and connected with my armor, with two sharp prongs piercing into the metal above my stomach.
“Burke! Watch—,” Cass’s voice was cut off as a surge of power overloaded the suit’s systems. I managed to get my right hand around the rifle’s prong before the suit became unbearably heavy and seized up around me.
“Adam! Why!”
He said nothing. He yanked the rifle back, hard, above his head, and the wires snapped away from the piece still stuck in the suit. I fell forward from the force of his pull and landed rigid as a statue onto the ground. My entire body armor was frozen and locked in place and I was trapped there, in front of Adam with the cargo door still behind me.
He started to walk toward me, carefully, like a hunter skulking forward unsure if its prey was really dead. The ship lurched as he got closer and I felt the vibration of the change of course come to me through the floor. I suddenly felt lighter, as if I was slipping, and the last thing I saw in the ship was the look of alarm on Adam’s face before I slid right through the cargo door.
I was in a free fall with my body trapped in the shell of metal. I was mostly paralyzed and could only struggle against the armor in tiny movements. The armor was just as heavy as ever and I was hurtling down to the surface. At first I fell with my back facing the ground, and the air whipped up at me as I stared up at my ship becoming a more distant object with each second.
When the ship was only a tiny speck in the sky I saw something near it light up. Something was coming toward me. At first I thought it was the ship itself, turned around for Adam to come back and finish the job, but it was moving too fast. And then I realized that he was finishing the other job: he was destroying the base.
The missiles left thick, white streaks behind them as they roared passed me and to the ground. They caused a rush of air that pushed me on their way and sent me into a spin. I would alternate from seeing nothing but blue sky and then nothing but sand stretching below me as I got closer and closer to the ground. I saw the explosion that must have been the base before I heard it, miles away from where I was headed to land.
As I got closer to the surface everything became a d
izzying blur and I was forced to close my eyes. The air rushed at my face and funneled around my head in the free space of the helmet. I couldn’t even close my visor and Cass was still offline from the scrambler that was still embedded in my stomach. My right hand was still closed around it.
I began to twist my right hand as hard as I could and created the barest of motions through the armor in the process. The inertia of falling was beginning to take its effect on me and, with my eyes closed, I had no idea how close I was to the surface. I concentrated on nothing else but my hand, slamming it around the inside of the armor to try to loosen the scrambler.
I opened my eyes when I finally, somehow, popped it loose and it spiraled out away from me. The ground was closer than I thought it would be and I began to panic. The aegis wasn’t coming back online. I was falling so fast that it felt like the ground was rushing up to meet me rather than I was rocketing down to crash into it.
In my final moments of consciousness I felt chills and spasms, like another electric shock, rumble through my body. My vision went black and I thought I felt my faceplate slide down to cover my face before I was gone. The impact felt distant, as if I was numb to it and had fallen in a dream. In that moment, for all I knew, I died.
* * *
“Burke. Don’t move.”
I tried to move.
“Burke! Don’t! Move!”
“Adam?”
“Cass. Do you remember what happened?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“No.”
“Do you know where we are?”
“No.”
“Go back to sleep.”
I opened my eyes. Everything was dark. I couldn’t move my arms or legs and I felt like something heavy was sitting on my back. My chest was facing the ground, or at least it felt that way. My visor must have been down but the suit’s power was off. It displayed nothing and I couldn’t see out of it.
“Cass.”
Nothing.
“Cass?”
Still nothing.
I blinked a few times as if that could magically clear the darkness in front of me and make the visor turn on. Miraculously, it seemed to work at first. I thought I saw a faint light growing brighter each time I squeezed my eyes open and shut. I closed my right eye and only used my left, and I was in total darkness. I closed my left eye and only looked through my right eye, and I could see the light. Not a miracle, then. There was a crack in the faceplate.
The hole was small, maybe the same size as a fingertip, but I gazed curiously out of it. It must have been dark out or else I would have noticed it sooner. The sand looked strange bathed in what I guessed was moonlight. It looked dark and blue and cold. I strained my memory and tried to recall if this planet had any moons. I couldn’t remember. I tried to move.
“Burke!”
The suit came to life around me and the pressure on my back seemed to lessen. I still couldn’t move my limbs but I successfully wiggled my fingers and toes. Not paralyzed then, just stuck in the suit.
“You’re still not allowed to move. Keep trying and I’ll power down again.”
“Sorry. How bad is it?”
The visor blinked on and off in front of me. I could see that Cass was trying to conserve as much power as she could. I recalled that this planet had a much longer day and night cycle than most planets. She needed to store as much power until the night was over and she could recharge in the sunlight.
The visor’s display was damaged, and cracks ran over the screen like fault lines spreading chaotically from the single hole near my right eye. Cass didn’t waste energy displaying what was outside and instead showed me my vitals. I had broken my right leg, my left arm, and a number of ribs. I had several fractures. I was confused how I had survived the fall at all.
“I only had a few seconds,” Cass explained, as if she had guessed my thoughts. “I don’t know how you pulled out the scrambler but I came back online with only enough time to seal you in, dampen the fall, and harden the side of the armor that I thought would hit the ground. I didn’t have time to process the trajectory and had to guess your front or your back. You’re lucky I guessed right.”
I laughed and pain shot through my body like a siren. I stopped laughing.
“No moving,” she said gently. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do better. I’ve been keeping you hydrated and nourished but we’ll run out in a few weeks. I had to use a lot of trial and error with the suit’s pressure to set your bones properly. I,” she stopped for a moment, as if unsure how to go on.
“I’ll be able to see how you’re healing in a few days. You may not be able to take the chest plate off until you can get outside medical attention. Your leg took the worst of the fall, and I wasn’t able to set it properly. You may never be able to use your right leg without the armor helping you ever again. I’m sorry, Burke.”
“You did your best. I’m alive. Adam did this, not you,” I felt like I was straining to talk now, with each extra word my chest began to tighten. “Why?”
“No. You need to rest. You have to stay still for a few more days and then we’ll try to move. To sleep now.”
“A few more days?”
“To sleep.”
“Burke. Something is here.”
I don’t know how much time had passed. A few days, maybe. I reminded myself not to move while I opened my eyes. I stupidly waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness before I remembered that I was still stuck inside the suit and helmet. I closed my left eye and peered out through the hole. I saw that the planet was still in its night cycle but it wasn’t quite as dark. Nearing dawn, I guessed. I couldn’t see whatever Cass was talking about.
“Listen,” she said.
I closed my eyes. There was no wind at that moment. I tried to listen for a person or a ship. Maybe Adam had came back to confirm his kill, I thought bitterly. Enough time had went by that he could have received payment for the cargo and came back. But I heard nothing like a ship. Just a faint rustling followed by a sudden grunt, like a sneeze of a small animal.
“It’s coming closer. I wanted a few more days to be on the safe side of your recovery, but we might not have another chance,” Cass was rambling quickly. “I hope your sidearm isn’t damaged.”
I both heard and felt the click of Cass opening a compartment at my right thigh. It took effort but I gradually slid my right arm down so my hand could reach in to the slot and grip around the handgun. I pulled it out and slowly brought my arm back up to its starting position. The gun felt intact from what I could feel from moving it.
“It’s approaching from your left side. You’ll have to wait until it walks around to your other side before you take a shot. No sudden movements. You need to kill this thing for food, Burke. I don’t have enough supplies to keep you alive forever.”
A few minutes went by with nothing but the sound of the creature sniffing around us. Occasionally I felt a little pressure on my back or my left arm. It must have been confused by what I was. I must have smelled like something edible but it could only find hard metal where it looked. I lay as still as I could.
I wanted to recoil from the animal when it came into view. It was the size of a large dog but hairy like a rat. It had the nose of something close to a pig’s and its eyes were hidden amongst layers of thick, sand covered fur. It put its nose into my right shoulder and inhaled deeply, huffing air in and out so close to my face that I could smell it. I started holding my breath.
The animal ran its nose up to my helmet. It must have been able to tell that my scent was coming through more strongly through the crack in the visor. I was soon unable to see anything when its head blocked the hole entirely, and I took that as my opportunity. I carefully turned the gun in my hand upwards. What I guessed to be its stomach was above my forearm and slowly rose the barrel of the gun up at it.
There was an instant before I fired that the animal must have felt the movement and let out a noise that was half growl, half squea
l. I squeezed the trigger and, when the gun successfully went off, fired as many shots as I could before the creature lunged away from me. I must have gotten at least three hits in. I heard more squealing nearby for a few moments and then nothing.
“Poor thing,” Cass said sadly.
“It was your idea,” I replied.
“Doesn’t mean I can’t feel bad about what’s necessary.” I was surprised by how genuinely upset she sounded.
“Am I allowed to move?”
“I want to be in control at first. I’ll use the armor like a full body cast. It will hold you upright and I can make sure no more damage is done while moving. From what I can see you’re healing quickly, but if you twist the wrong way or put too much pressure on your leg, then,” she trailed off.
“I understand.”
“This will still hurt,” she explained softly. “Now you can’t move at all. Normally the suit responds to your movement and assists you since its too heavy for you to move on your own. If you move the wrong way while I’m moving something, you may pull something. Or worse, you may break another bone or undo all the healing you’ve done so far.”
“Stay limp and let you move me, got it.”
The sensation was strange. I felt like a marionette being pulled up right by its strings. Cass was excruciatingly slow and was careful enough that I didn’t feel much pain for the first few minutes. However, when it came to bending my right leg I had to set my teeth firmly together to stop myself from screaming. It didn’t hurt as bad when she moved the lower armor into an upright position, but by then my weight was fully supported by the inside of the suit.
Bounty Hunter 1: The Bounty Hunter's Revenge Page 2