The ship was quiet and he didn’t like it. Cass, the ship’s AI, was in hibernation while she performed her nightly maintenance. The ship felt dead and empty without her presence turning on the lights as he moved from room to room. He knew better than to interrupt her when she was running diagnostics on herself: if stopped, she would have to start the process all over again. Still, when his leg hurt he preferred to have her to talk to and take his mind off the pain. Sometimes he would run on the treadmill in his room but his leg felt particularly raw that night, too sensitive to exercise out the problem.
He limped into the helm of the ship and took his seat at the command console. The screens flickered to life and showed that Cass still had an hour left of hibernation. They were currently docked inside a larger ship: a jump carrier, housing thousands of people and their ships while it carried them over the vast distances between star systems, cutting a journey of months to only a few days. The screen next to Cass’s systems showed that eighteen hours remained until the jump was complete.
They had been travelling for weeks. They had been given a job to capture a dangerous alien and then deliver it to their contact Havard, a man who operated the human government’s branch that specialized in hostile alien species, ACU. The alien had been a shapeshifter, plainly named Species 1260 by Havard, and had been hiding on a space station. Burke had tracked it, found that it had been breeding, and killed its offspring that were masquerading as humans.
The job had bothered him. He had hunted the species of alien before but had never found any that were reproducing. They had murdered many humans and taken their place on the station, mimicking their jobs and lives, fooling their friends before murdering them too and replacing them with more of their own. Worst of all, Havard had requested one of the breeding aliens be brought back alive—another thing that had never been asked of Burke before. That stipulation had never stopped bothering him. It gnawed at his sense of justice that the alien was allowed to live, and made him suspicious of Havard’s intentions.
What remained of the alien sat next to the ship’s command console. The true form of the alien was a small core, not much bigger than an apple, and the flesh that it constructed around it acted as a protective shell. The core was pale and looked like it was made of ivory. Once a day, since taking it on his ship, Burke had burned the outside of it to strip away the initial layers of carbon it drew from the air around it. It sat inert at the helm and, so far, he had resisted the daily urge to smash it to pieces.
His leg flared up again and he left the room out of fear that he might strike the core out of anger. He wouldn’t be paid if the alien was destroyed and, as much as he hated to admit, he and Cass needed the money. He slowly descended the stairs to the lower level of the ship, leading down with his left leg of flesh and bone and easing his augmented one down afterwards. The cargo hold was small and stacked full of crates: food, water, medical supplies, and emergency stores of fuel. He walked passed them and into the armory at the rear of the ship.
His battle aegis stood in the middle of the room. It was the most useful tool he owned but also, along with his prosthetic leg, a constant reminder of the betrayal he had suffered the year before. He had purchased the aegis shortly before his old partner, Adam, had tried to kill him. Adam had left him for dead on a remote planet and Burke had barely survived, scraping out an existence for three long years before he got his chance to leave.
The ship he now stood in had been that chance. A prize he had taken from a group of mercenaries that had been sent to retrieve his body and armor as a final insult. He had killed them, taken the ship, and acted out his revenge on Adam. Burke lost his leg in the process and, after spending three years relying on the aegis to survive, not a day went by when the sight of it didn’t bring back memories of being stranded on the uninhabited planet.
Cass had been the only thing that had kept him sane over those years and he was grateful. She had been only a tool before that, a feature of the aegis that provided information to him as he fought. Without her, he would have died. A year later he considered her his partner in bounty hunting, and that they both went out on missions together when he put on the armor. He looked over the helmet piece and saw the deep claw marks from his last job. The armor was strong enough to withstand most bullets and explosions, but Species 1260 had been strong enough to scrape layers from the suit after a few attacks.
He ran his fingers over the helmet and felt angry once again. He should have killed the alien, but Adam’s betrayal made Burke stop and reconsider. He didn’t trust Havard anymore but he wasn’t sure if he had legitimate reasons not to, or if it was because of what Adam had done to him. Burke was always surprised that he trusted Cass so genuinely. She had saved his life but then so had Adam when they fought together in the war.
He sat back and rubbed uselessly at the metallic thigh of his leg, somehow deriving a small amount of comfort from it. He thought of fighting with Adam on Earth, against the dross and how many times they had nearly died. He had had no aegis then, only small scraps of body armor and a rifle that never had enough ammunition. He tried to remember all the times that he had shot at a dross that was close to piercing through Adam’s back and how many times Adam had returned the favor. There were too many fights to count, too many near deaths to remember amongst the blur of a hundred battles. Burke had been born and raised on Earth and the thought of the dross now inhabiting it made his insides boil.
He remembered the final battle on the planet and how anticlimactic it had been for him and Adam. They were assigned to guard an evacuation in the middle of a city, so far away from the alien’s advance that they didn’t even fire a bullet. They had been lucky. He bitterly reflected on how fortunate he had been to leave that war unscathed, only to be betrayed by the man who helped him the most to survive it.
The cycle repeated, Burke wondering if it wasn’t Havard’s fault that he no longer trusted him.
“You’re awake?” Cass’s voice filled the room. They had installed each room with speakers, cameras, and microphones after claiming the ship. She could shift her presence from each room and emit her voice like it was coming from a person standing in front of Burke.
“Yeah. My leg woke me up,” he said, surprised that he had spent an hour mulling over the past.
“Again?” she sounded concerned. Her voice was as fluid as any human’s. He rarely thought of her as an artificial intelligence anymore. She had come with restraining programs to limit her thoughts and processes. He had removed them.
“It’s because we’ve been stuck on the ship for so long. It’ll be better once we deliver the alien and can find some more work.”
“You mean the vampire?” she said sarcastically.
He laughed. She was right, he thought, and she was turning his own joke back on him. Species 1260 were shrouded in mystery and conspiracy theories about their origins. Havard did his job well of keeping that information under wraps, but that didn’t stop people from speculating. They had been dubbed “vampires” and were a common topic in horror stories. Most of the theories around them were wrong and most people didn’t believe they existed. Burke disliked the name as well but had used it mercilessly to tease Cass.
“I’m still not sure about handing it over to Havard,” he said more seriously. “Am I over reacting about this?”
“Maybe,” Cass said and then hesitated. “Remember what you did to Geoff?”
Burke closed his eyes and winced as if he had been struck across the face. Geoff was one of his oldest friends and Burke, after escaping from his three years of isolation, had made the mistake of thinking Geoff had helped Adam try to kill him. Burke had acted on impulse and nearly killed Geoff without giving him a chance to explain. The old man had forgiven him but he always saw the trepidation in his eyes when they met face to face for work, like Burke was a rabid animal that might lash out at any time. Their friendship had been permanently damaged from that day.
“I remember,” he muttered.
�
�Well, you had more of a reason to be suspicious of him than you do of Havard. I don’t like him either, but we haven’t seen enough to condemn him just yet.”
“Maybe you should make those decisions from now on,” he said with a small smile.
“What?” she sounded surprised. “You mean you don’t know that I do already?”
He let out a quiet laugh and shook his head. He stood up and felt that the pain in his leg had subsided enough that he might be able to sleep again. He walked out of the armory. Cass’s voice followed as he walked up the stairs.
“Burke, I have something to ask. I’ve been wondering for a while.”
“Okay,” he said as he walked into his room.
“You trust me. I know you do, but Adam worked with you longer than I have. Why do you trust me after what he did to you?”
“I could say that it was because of what happened when we were stranded. I could say that you didn’t only keep me alive, but kept me focused and as calm as I possibly could be in that situation. I could say that but it would be a lie. Do you really want my honest answer?”
There was a moment of silence as the question lingered in the air. The lights of the room dimmed and Burke stood next to the bed.
“Yes,” she said finally.
“I don’t know.”
* * *
Cass undocked the ship from the jump carrier when they arrived at the star system. It was one of the first that humans had colonized shortly after expanding from Earth. Despite being a system with fewer planets than most, there was a large population present around the star. There was a high density of space stations and sealed, protected cities on the barren moons orbiting each planet. Burke was familiar with the system and had taken contracts in it many times.
“I don’t see where ACU is located,” Cass said as they drifted away from the jump carrier.
“They’re not in the system,” Burke began to explain as he took his seat at the helm. “They’re outside of it, and you won’t find them on any public records. It’ll be at least three more days of travel before we reach them. Less when we have a faster ship.”
“A rogue planet?” Cass was incredulous. “That’s highly impractical.”
“That depends on your priorities. The work they do requires privacy. Not everything they do would be considered ethical, even if it is ultimately necessary. As far out as they are, they’re rarely bothered by ships and can easily monitor any that come close.”
The thrusters on the ship turned it into the direction of the coordinates Burke entered from memory of his previous visits to ACU. He had purchased both Cass and his aegis from their facilities, although Cass had no memory of the place after he removed her restraining programs. The ship’s displays were soon dark and empty as they left the star system behind them.
“We should use the days we have to finalize the details of our new ship,” Burke suggested. “Did Havard tell you how much he would be paying us?”
“Enough that we can afford some of the ships we looked at before.”
He nodded and leaned back in his chair. Cass displayed the top five candidates of ship models that they had previously looked at on the ship’s main screen. The most expensive had an impressive list of features: weapon systems for both space warfare and planetary attacks, ample storage space, and multiple prison cells for transporting more than one bounty at once. At more than one hundred meters long, it was nearly double the size of their current ship and comfortably out of their price range.
The third ship on the list was the most expensive one they could afford and they spent most of the trip to ACU discussing which variations on the model that they would require. Cass wanted a more robust computer system inside the ship and Burke agreed, knowing how essential her information gathering had already been on their current ship’s less than stellar hardware. The point they contended was the ship’s living quarters.
“All I want to add is a food processing unit,” Burke stated. “I’m sick of the simple meals that I have to eat when we’re away from a station for weeks.”
“That’s fine,” Cass said tersely. “You’re not listening because I’m not disagreeing with you about that. I think you’re allocating too many of the rooms for storage. We need more rooms with beds in them.”
“No,” he said firmly. “We only need one, and I’ll be the only one to use it.”
“What if Geoff needs to be present for a contract?”
“He has his own ship,” he retorted.
“What if someone asks us to rescue someone? What then?”
“There’ll be beds in the prison cells.”
“You’re being unreasonable,” she said. “Besides, we could avoid the issue entirely by saving up for a little while longer. We’re not far away from affording our first choice.”
“No,” he said, softer but with more of a scowl on his face. “We’ve passed up too many jobs because they didn’t pay enough. I’m tired of saying no to catching murderers because we need the money from a different job.”
“I understand,” she said. “We’ll save up again eventually. Please try to reconsider the rooms. You don’t have to let someone use them permanently, only when it’s necessary.”
They hadn’t reached a consensus before they reached ACU. The planet was lost in the darkness of space without any nearby star to illuminate it. It was only when they were close to it that the lights from the sprawling structures on the surface were visible. The planet itself was a stark, gray rock devoid of any life or atmosphere. ACU’s structures consumed most of the surface and even stretched above it into space, connected with some of the orbiting stations with vast elevator systems.
The planet had a solitary moon that had been similarly built upon but with a higher density, as if it was one solid structure instead of separate ones that had been built gradually over its surface. Burke had never been to the moon and had always wondered about its purpose.
It had been four years since his last visit and the only new addition to the facility surprised him. A jump gate, smaller than the ones that the standard jump carriers used but recognizable all the same, now orbited the planet. He saw no carriers circling around it. He made a mental note to ask Havard about it if he got the chance.
A warning appeared on the ship’s screen as they lowered down into orbit around the planet. The screen was white with large red, bold letters instructing them to turn away and that they were in restricted space. Burke opened a communication channel and spoke loudly into the room.
“Clearance code: 268780. That’s probably out of date. Since I know someone is already listening to this, get Natalie Ambrose to confirm access for Burke Monrow.”
A few minutes passed before the screen changed again to display a woman’s face. Her eyes were narrowed at first, as if she was skeptical of what she was seeing as she looked at him. He smiled and her eyes relaxed. She smiled back.
“I thought you were dead,” Natalie said.
“That’s what the guy who tried to kill me said.”
“Well done,” her smile widened. “Your new code: 942157. Our identity scanner is picking you up as Jack Porter? That’s new.”
“A fake. A dead soldier, I think. I don’t like it but I didn’t get to ask for who I got,” he explained. “Is Havard available to meet me?”
“I’ll find out while you land. Sending coordinates now. It’s nice to see you again, Burke.”
“You too.”
The ship descended smoothly toward the planet’s surface. Burke got out of his seat and prepared to disembark.
“I like her a lot more than Havard,” Cass commented. “Maybe we can deal with her from now on?”
Burke went to his room for a glove to protect his hand as he handled the alien’s core. It was capable of leeching resources from his flesh if he held it for long enough, a painful process that he knew felt like being burned from the inside. He held it safely with the glove and walked down into the cargo hold. He stood and waited for the docking procedure to
complete.
The ship’s doors slid apart and Burke squinted at the brighter light that shone into the room. The interior of ACU’s buildings were mostly white, and were a severe contrast to the dim light in his ship, especially after weeks of the darkness of space outside the window. He saw several figures in the light before his eyes adjusted to it. He blinked a few times and then saw them moving onto the ship. There were at least six women and men and Havard stood in the middle of them.
Burke was surprised by his presence. In all of his visits to ACU, Havard usually met with him long after he arrived. The other people that entered the ship rushed passed without even looking at Burke, sweeping through the ship and checking all of its corners. He was used to that invasion, but he still didn’t like it. He tolerated it, knowing that they had to check for anything that might be smuggled into their facilities; they had a strict control on what entered and left the premises. He also knew that they were checking for potential stowaways: any of Species 1260 that was hiding in the shape of a crate or blending into one of the walls. They would be looking for hours.
“Took you longer than usual, but I can see why,” Havard said and then gestured to the dingy insides of the ship. “I’m glad to see that you’re still as capable as when we last worked together.”
“Good,” Burke replied simply.
“What happened here?”Havard asked as he looked at Burke’s leg.
Burke didn’t know how Havard could tell the augmented leg apart through his pants, and he grinned to mask the anger that threatened to show on his face at the blunt question. He hadn’t been paid yet. He didn’t like the leg or the implant in his cheek that was required to bridge the artificial nerves with his brain. Often, he found that his cheek itched whenever he thought of it. He disliked that Havard was so casual about asking, too.
“It had to be cut off.”
“I see that,” Havard shook his head. “What I don’t see is the kind of quality augment that we could have given you. Why didn’t you contact us? We could have worked something out.”
The Bounty Hunter: Into The Swarm Page 2