I crept slowly up the stairs. I didn’t want to leave the base without taking care of the other man but I also wanted to see the ship, and use the size of it to gauge how many I could potentially be up against. I leaned myself slowly to the floor and took the last set of stairs on my belly, all the while keeping most of my attention on what I could hear from the base below me. A few seconds were all I needed, and I had no intention of being snuck up on.
At the top of the stairs I poked my head out for just a moment. I knew that was all that Cass needed to capture what was out there. I saw a brief flash of the landscape around the ruined buildings and was quickly on my way back down again. No one shouted, or called an alarm, but that didn’t mean no one was out there. They may have simply not seen me.
Cass displayed what she had seen in a small window on the still cracked display of the visor. Over the years I hadn’t managed to fix it. I was back down at the bottom of the stairs when she began speaking to me. The second man must have walked deeper into the base to check the empty, partly collapsed hallways. He would only need a few minutes to search all of them.
“It’s a small ship. A very small ship,” Cass explained as she pulled up another window of the ship’s schematics. “A common transport. Mass produced in the last decade. It’s mostly just an engine with a few rooms tacked. A supply room, cockpit, and not even separate quarters for the captain. I’d say a crew of six, at the maximum. Two at a minimum. You might have already taken out half of them.”
“That would be nice, but let’s not count on it just yet,” I replied.
“Ah, that’s more like the Burke I know.”
I felt more confident about taking down the remaining man in the base, but I knew better than to charge at him. If there was anyone remaining on the ship, I couldn’t risk him communicating back and causing them to leave. I had to take him by surprise.
After another minute passed without hearing any footsteps, I slid out from the wall and into the hallway. I walked down toward the water room as calmly as I could. My heart rate was beginning to pick up again and it suddenly felt good to hold the blade in my hand. I tightened my grip when I reached the first corner and stopped to listen.
“Nothing so far. The new guy won’t keep his mouth shut. Might want to toss him out when we get off this shitty planet. Did the others find anything yet?”
I was certain that there had only been two men that had came down into the base. He must have been talking over a radio of some sort. There were others, then, and one of them must have been on the ship.
There was a brief period of silence during which he must have been getting an answer. Suddenly, he began laughing. “Right. That’d be good. We could see the look on his face.”
More silence. Then, “yeah, power it down. We’ll be here longer than I thought. From what I was told this dead guy could be miles from here. Just wanted to try here first in case we got lucky. Like we ever do. Message me if the others find anything.”
I heard the man begin to move back toward me. His footsteps were getting louder with each step. I tensed and then relaxed the muscles in my right hand around the weapon in preparation for when he got close enough.
“New guy!” the man yelled down the hall. “Fuck, what was his name,” he said, much quieter to himself. “Fuck it, why do I care? New guy! Come here.”
He must have stopped. I could no longer hear his footsteps and I knew I had to act. He would get suspicious if he didn’t get an answer, and he would expect one of his underlings to come running if he called.
“Gun, Cass,” I said, no louder than a breath.
“But?”
“Gun.”
As soon as I felt the compartment on my hip snap open I spun around the wall. I had the blade behind my back and brought it over my shoulder in a forward arc. I released it from my hand and sent it flying ahead of me, spinning through the air toward the man. I brought my armored arm up from my hip in the same moment, sliding the gun smoothly in my hand to aim it at the man’s head. I was ready to shoot if he reacted fast enough to yell out or fire at me.
The blade impaled the man squarely through his chest. It was sharp enough and had carried enough force that it went cleanly through his back with a splutter of blood. He looked surprised, as if he had been so sure he wasn’t going to die today, and fell to his knees with the same look on his face.
I must have missed his heart, because he was still alive and moving and remained upright with his knees on the floor. His hands were shaking when he brought the handgun up from his belt and pointed it at me. I could see that he barely had the strength to lift up the weapon, but I stood very still. He had no chance of penetrating my armor with such a small weapon even if he did land the shot, but the sound of the gun was all that was needed to doom me.
My face tensed up into a wince when I saw his trembling fingers clutch the handle of the gun. His cheeks puffed out before blood poured out of his mouth. His lungs were filling with blood and he knew he was dying. His hands kept shaking.
He slumped forward against the blade and the gun leaped out of his shaking hands. It spilled forward, and the moment that it fell seemed to last for an eternity. I knew it was rare for a gun to fire after hitting the ground. I had seen it happen dozens of times before without a bullet being discharged. My eyes were still transfixed on it as it sailed to the floor. The man had just said that he never got lucky.
The gun landed hard on the top-most part of the handle and a bullet sprang out and up into the ceiling.
I knew I didn’t have time to wait. I began to run, as fast as I could with the limp in my leg, back to the stairs. I raced up them and held the gun ready, with the blast of the man’s gun still bouncing around as an echo in my ears.
“How far is the ship from the top?” I yelled as I raced up the stairs.
“Thirty meters. Go straight out and to the left when you see it.”
Cass tinted the visor automatically when I got outside. I never stopped to check to see if the others were in range to fire at me. I couldn’t spare the time. I was mostly armored and had to risk it. I bolted for the ship and it felt like I didn’t breathe until I had my feet on the metal of the ship’s rear doorway.
I tossed my gun high into the air and caught it in my right hand. I put my armored hand onto the control panel on the inner doorway of the ship so Cass could interface with it. I turned into the ship as I held my hand there, holding the gun out and shifting my eyes rapidly from each of the two entrances at the far end of the ship’s bay.
“Done, Burke.”
The ship’s door began to rise behind me and I didn’t move until I heard it close up and lock into the ship’s hull. I shifted on my feet and led forward with my left arm as a shield. I wanted to change which hand held the gun for more protection but I couldn’t risk firing with my left hand. I was a better shot with my right hand and couldn’t risk hitting something vital in the ship. I was so close to finally leaving that I refused to take any chances.
Something was moving in the other end of the ship. I took a few more steps forward before the man appeared in the rightmost entrance way. He had what looked like a shotgun in his hands and he wasted no time in pointing it at me. I tucked my right arm tightly into my back and brought my left hand to cover my face.
A succession of quick blasts forced me to a standstill. Whatever he was firing wasn’t enough to pierce my armor, but it was hard enough to knock me over if I didn’t brace against it. The hole in my visor hadn’t felt so large and vulnerable since the night the crawlers attacked.
I heard the click of the shotgun trying to be fired without any ammunition and took my chance. I brought my right arm from behind my back and shot at the doorway, purposefully aiming for the frame of the door and not inside of it. I continued to fire as I walked to the door, timing the shot with my steps to mask exactly how close I was, and keeping him behind cover so he couldn’t pop out and take another shot.
When I got to the doorway I put my back to it wit
h my left arm closest to the entrance. I cocked the handgun quickly and snatched out the bullet from the chamber, yanked out the magazine and fired it empty twice quickly, emphasizing the gun trying to be fired while out of bullets.
He reacted as I planned, storming around the corner with his shotgun out. I twisted my left forearm as he did so and slammed my elbow into the doorway. He dived out right as the intact blade on my left arm punched its way out of the armor and directly into his cheek. I hoped he died instantly. His skull was lodged firmly into the blade and it collided with my arm when I retracted the blade back inside. It made a sickly popping noise before he fell, dead, to the floor.
“Did you get into the ship’s network from the control panel?” I said as I walked into the heart of the ship.
Cass had been correct with her assessment. The ship was small, and most of it was indeed the engine. The cockpit was a tiny room connected to three small rooms. The center one was a chaotic mess of food, plates, and trash. The rooms adjacent to it were the crew quarters, which was in an even worse state than the first room with piles of dirty clothes everywhere, and some sort of storage room that doubled as a weapons stockpile.
“Not much information on the network,” Cass explained as I rummaged through their weapons for a decent rifle. “Five crew in total. I don’t know how they’re all crammed in here. Captain Marcus is the only one named. I think you killed him already. The other two must have been sent out to search the desert around the base. The late captain didn’t exactly keep formal logs.”
“Or a clean ship,” I said with a grimace as I scraped what looked like crusted food off of the only rifle with a scope that I could find. “It’s like Adam found the worst mercenaries in the galaxy. It’s an insult.”
“You don’t know that it’s him for certain.”
“I’m pretty sure.”
Cass lowered the ship’s bay doors for me again. She linked the rifle’s scope with my visor and I used it to carefully poke outside of the ship for any signs of the remaining two men. When I saw no sign of them I walked carefully out onto the sand.
My right leg was throbbing from the exertion of fighting but I gave it no rest as I marched back into the base. I walked through the blood in the entrance to my room without a thought and grasped the remaining section of the suit. I slid it over my right arm and locked it into the torso’s socket and finally felt whole again.
Back on the surface I stood and waited. I could have left with the ship and been half way back into space by now, but I needed information. I was so certain that these thugs were connected to Adam somehow, and one of them had to know something. It was probable that they were using the same type of communication devices that their captain and pilot, but even if they knew they were walking back into an ambush they couldn’t survive in the desert on their own. They had to come back eventually.
I settled down on my stomach and kept my head low to the ground, alternating between looking through the scope and then glancing behind me. I had no way of telling which direction they would return. It wasn’t the first time since being stranded that I wished the rear view camera in my helmet hadn’t broken in the fall.
Hours went by without any sign of them and I was beginning to lose my patience. After so many years the ship next to me was almost like a taunt, a tease, of returning to my old life. Cass had said that there were no logs on the computer’s database but I could always visit some of my old contacts to track down Adam.
We often used the same handlers for many clients. The one we most commonly dealt with was an older man named Geoffrey. He owned a bar on a space station between a number of heavily populated systems. It served as a hub for trade and passengers looking to move between worlds. It would be a good place to start.
After a few more hours I decided to simply leave the two behind rather than waste any more time stuck on the planet. When I rose to my feet the shot crackled at me like the sound of a thunderbolt and ricocheted off the shoulder plate on my right arm. The bullet had hit me with such a force that it erupted in a spray of hot sparks when it collided with the metal, hitting it hard enough to knock me clean off my feet.
I landed on my back and immediately rolled over and crawled to the nearest piece of cover I could find. There was a large chunk of the building that had once been part of its wall nestled into the sand nearby, and I put it between me and the direction of the shot.
I checked my shoulder where I had taken the hit and saw that the metal plate had a fresh dent. If the bullet had been capable of that, a lucky shot would be capable of piercing right through me. Lucky. I recalled the captain’s gun that had went off when it hit the floor.
“One of them must be a sniper, Burke. I didn’t see him when you stood up. Hold the rifle out.”
I extended one arm out with the rifle in my hand, and kept my eyes on the visor window that displayed what the scope saw. The two men were small shapes on the horizon. One had a very large rifle while the other seemed to be unarmed from what I could see. They didn’t seem to notice the rifle looking at them and, from that distance, they’d probably have to know it was there in order to see it.
They began to move forward for roughly a dozen paces and then stopped, crouching down to search for me again. They’d repeat this every few minutes and moved slowly closer. Eventually they were close enough that I could make out their faces and see their movements more clearly. The unarmed one seemed to be having an argument with the sniper. He kept waving his hands in dismissive, angry motions. It looked like he was tired of their slow pace.
“Patience, Burke. Don’t make the same mistake that he is.”
“With a gun like that they may think I’m dead. I’m impressed he made that shot.”
“He’s even closer now, so be careful.”
I continued to wait them out. They were getting near to the ship and into range of my smaller rifle. I wanted to make sure they were as close as possible so I wouldn’t miss. I only needed one of them alive, and I moved the rifle in as small motions as I could to minimize the chance that they would notice it. I lined up the cross hairs on the unarmed man first and then to the sniper.
The stopped and the sniper crouched down to look for me. In the time it took him to bend his knees I shifted the rifle and fired twice at his hands. The first shot missed, but the second slammed above his forearm and into the broad side of the rifle’s stock. It whipped out of his hands and I twisted out of my cover. Cass released the faceplate and I brought the rifle up to my face as she did so.
“Don’t move!” I shouted.
Through the scope I saw the sniper scrunch up his face in frustration. He put up his hands but the other man did not. A look of panic washed over his face and he made an idiotic display of indecision as he danced on the spot, deciding whether he should run.
“Moron! He’s got us!” The sniper yelled at him.
The alarmed man seemed to ignore both of us and bolted for the ship. I only needed one of them alive, I had just reasoned, and this just made the decision easy for me. I tracked his head smoothly through the scope and squeezed the trigger. A single bullet cratered the back of his skull. He fell down dead onto the door of the ship, and his face leaked blood all over it.
The sniper hadn’t moved and I realized I had a grudging respect for this man. His skill as a marksman was impressive, even if his common sense wasn’t great. He was intelligent enough to realize when he was beaten and knew to take his chances with surrender. Even so, I didn’t take the sights of my gun from him.
“Your name?” I called out as I walked toward him.
“Edward.”
“Is that your real name?”
“No.”
“Not that it matters,” Cass said into my ear.
I nodded. I had Cass unlock the grappling hook’s latch on my belt and I pulled the length of the line as much as I could before slicing through it with the blade in my left arm. The hook hadn’t fared well over the years, and was a bloody mess from being used to drag ani
mal parts and carcasses. I severed the line below the hook itself and tossed it away.
Despite how accommodating Edward was being, I still refused to take any unnecessary risk when I was so close to getting off the planet. When I was close enough to him, I smacked him across the head with the back of the rifle. It wasn’t hard enough to knock him unconscious, but he was dazed and reeling on the floor.
I pulled his arms up and wrapped the hook’s line around his arms and fastened it tightly. This knot was repeated two more times, and the remaining length of the line was threaded under his legs and back around his arms again. I made one final knot and was satisfied that he was unable to even get upright without my help, never mind get his arms free.
“Stay,” I said simply, and I carried his sniper rifle with me as I walked into the ship. I kicked the corpse of the other man from the door as I did so. His blood was leaving a stain on my new home.
The ship’s bay was stacked with as many containers as I could cram into it. The engine of the ship protruded even in this area and took up a large portion of the ceiling. A lot of containers were left behind—mostly food and less valuable items. I had no doubt that Adam had found a way to strip away all of my possessions and funds that I had earned over the years of our partnership. What I could take with me and sell would end up being essential.
The bodies of all of the men had been piled together outside of the base, not far from where Edward was still tied up. I was holding his sniper rifle again as I walked toward him. The weapon was in pristine condition, and he obviously took a lot of pride in keeping it that way. I held it as a constant reminder that I had beaten him, and hoped it would remind him to cooperate.
“I need to know who sent you here, and where I can find him,” I said.
He looked up at me with defiance. The area around his right eye looked painfully swollen, and his skin had reddened from his temple down to his cheek. I’m not sure if he was more angry about the blow I had dealt him, or that I had ignored him for the hours that it had taken for me to load up the ship.
Bounty Hunter 1: The Bounty Hunter's Revenge Page 6