“Sunday is a good cat,” he murmured, still staring around the room.
He had two separate bedrooms: one for himself, and one for whichever slaves he currently kept close to him. He took men and women from his personal stock, usually one at a time but not always, and would use them himself. He took better care of them when they were close by and visible, giving them food and clothes and access to whatever entertainment they liked. When he was bored of them, he’d send them back into the outer sections of the facility ship where the rest of the slaves were kept. When they were once again out of sight, he lost interest in how they were treated. He honestly didn’t know if the conditions for his slaves were poor or not. He didn’t care.
Only a small handful of guards were kept on the ship, and even those few were sometimes too much for Isaac’s paranoia. He allowed only one delivery, once a month, to bring supplies to the ship. Toward the sixth year in hiding, he requested more slaves to be brought to him, sometimes even purchasing some for himself. The comforts of his protective room bored him. Some nights they even had the opposite effect, taunting him into a rage. The expensive decorations and meticulously crafted life laughed at him, a reminder that he wasn’t suddenly forced into isolation, but actively planned for it. The word coward jumped at him from every detail of the prison he had crafted for himself. The word coward would always remind him of Burke Monrow.
He remembered well the small taste of freedom he had experienced over a year earlier. He often lost himself in the slew of data collected from the Torrentus Cartel’s hacker agents. He would look through posted bounties and the hunters that collected them. He followed the career of Burke and Adam closely, and noticed when Adam abruptly began working alone. Burke was gone for a year. And then another. And then another. Three years passed without any sign of the man who had forced him into hiding.
“We might be leaving soon,” he had told Sunday. The cat seemed indifferent to the idea.
He was ready to return to his old life but then Adam was murdered, and Burke was the prime suspect. Isaac retreated back into isolation then, bitter and miserable. He killed two slaves that night. He tied them down onto his bed and, shaking and trembling, beat them bloody and dead.
Hope began to build in him as the next year passed. That hope often morphed and twisted into other emotions: hate and terror. Another week would pass without any sign of Burke. Isaac began to think the bounty hunter was falsely accused of murdering Adam, and had never returned from his three year disappearance. Another week would pass with Isaac second guessing himself, petrified with fear to risk leaving his base. He killed slaves during those weeks. He spent more money replacing them. He became obsessed with looking over any information on bounty hunters and their commonly used contracts. He’d refresh postings hundreds of times a day, desperately seeking any sign that Burke Monrow was still alive, all the while hoping that he was still dead.
Isaac’s boss had been the catalyst to begin his plans. The head of the Torrentus Cartel, Gordon Pavel, was losing patience with Isaac. He was neglecting his agents too often. The operations in his system were progressing too slowly. Faced with an additional threat from within, Isaac forced himself to act. He began to plan a way to know for certain if Burke was alive or dead. Some nights he was a nervous mess as he fussed over the tiniest of details. Some nights the process of having something productive to do was invigorating. He felt like he was actively reclaiming his past life. Some nights he would vomit from the stress of it all.
“Am I doing the right thing?” he asked the cat.
Sunday turned her head up to him and squeezed her eyes shut. She squinted up at him and then turned away. She continued to purr. He considered, not for the first time, that he was legitimately talking to his cat. The ridiculousness of his life appeared in front of him and, as he usually did when he met that confrontation, he lashed out and shoved the cat from his lap. The animal landed on the floor in a scramble of flailing legs and then was gone, racing along the carpet and vanishing into another room.
Isaac turned to the computer terminal at his desk. He had a constant connection to the mercenaries he had sent to Frey, already stationed around Stheno and monitoring the girl’s apartment. He had positioned his own ship in the Tali system but at a safe distance from the planet. He cycled through the video feeds from each group—five in all—and saw no sign of Burke. The girl had left her apartment and returned three times since the surveillance was put into place. Isaac tried to remind himself that it was impossible for Burke to have traveled to the planet and that is was unlikely that Geoff had even contacted him yet. Even so, he wrung his hands together, repeatedly interlocking and releasing his fingers, as he stared at the screen.
Gordon Pavel would be calling within an hour and Isaac knew he had to be calm and collected in front of his boss. He got out of his seat and stepped toward the doors to his ship. He decided to do another test of its systems, the fourth test that day, to make sure he was prepared to leave in as little time as possible if his plans failed and Burke reached him. The small ship was fully integrated into the larger one and would leave a gaping opening when it left. He needed to make sure the ship could smoothly detach itself from the outer system. He had planned for even that failure, but it wasn’t all bad. The force of the ship leaving should be enough to kill anyone left standing in his room. If his next encounter with Burke ended like the first, Isaac was ready.
* * *
“Cass, I made a mistake. I’m not ready for this.”
“You are. This panic is temporary.”
“I took on too much, too fast.”
Burke stood in the room at the back end of the ship. He leaned himself against the corner, as far away from the door as he possibly could. Lumen still lay in the middle of the room. He tried not to look at her as he spoke. There was no one else in the room.
“Rylan knows who I am,” he said. “Geoff made a mistake and I can’t even be angry with him. Natalie came here thinking that I was already fixed and look at me. I can’t do this.”
“Rylan hasn’t done anything yet,” Cass said softly. “I don’t think he’ll betray us, but if he does we can handle it. We can get another ID change. We have enough credits saved up to overhaul the ship and fit it with new credentials. It’d be expensive but we could manage.”
“I don’t like uncertainty,” Burke said, his eyes closed. “I’m trying.”
“Natalie knows who you are. You trust her. She cares about you Burke,” Cass said. “So do I.”
“And Kristen? She’s in danger. I can’t afford to be worried about myself.”
“You can, actually. It will be four days before we reach Frey. That’s four days that you can’t do anything to help her. Relax as best as you can. Talk to Rylan. It will be okay.”
“I lied to her,” Burke said lowly.
“To Natalie?”
“To Kristen. When she was taken, I lied to her. I told her I killed everyone that was involved with her abduction. Everyone. Now she’s in danger again.”
“A lie isn’t always a bad thing,” Cass said frankly. “Deception isn’t always malicious. We’ll stop them. They won’t take her again.”
Burke stood still for another moment. He felt only a little better. He nodded once and forced himself to walk across the room. He closed the door behind him without a second look back at Lumen. He walked passed the engine and climbed the stairs to the upper deck. He could see Rylan in the distance, through the open doors to the helm, still sat at the pilot’s console. He suddenly wanted to ask Cass if she was monitoring all outgoing messages but stopped himself, knowing that she likely already started the moment Geoff said his real name. The thought uplifted him a little more, knowing that he could be certain that Cass, at the very least, would always support him.
He didn’t want to face the pilot right away. He turned at the door to his room and saw Natalie was waiting for him. She was looking through the files on the wall display. She jumped in place as the doors opened, startled by
his sudden appearance. She laughed at herself and looked at him.
“You caught me spying,” she said, smiling.
“I said you could look,” he said, his voice level. He walked across the room and sat down on the bed.
“How are you doing?” she stepped toward him. She stood over him instead of sitting next to him on the bed. She held her hands out to him and, when he didn’t take them, she crossed them over her stomach.
“I don’t know.”
“I want to tell you something. Will you listen?”
He nodded. It was a tiny movement.
“I won’t lie and say I understand what you’re going through. I can’t. I know that in a way, you’re only now dealing with what Adam did to you. After what the two of you did on Earth, I can’t imagine how that must feel.
“Among the soldiers who survived the war on Earth, more have killed themselves than those who haven’t. The effect of fighting for your home planet, and then losing it, is something that will be studied for centuries. You went through that with Adam, together, and even managed to stick with each other and work after that. You stuck with that person despite him being a constant reminder of the war you both lost. To have that person turn on you, the person that understood the most horrible thing that ever happened to you more than anyone,” Natalie’s voice trailed off.
Burke was very still on the bed.
“I can’t understand it,” she repeated. “But I can accept it. You’re not wrong to feel the way you do, and to be worried. But not everyone who cares about you will turn on you, no matter how it might seem sometimes. I promise you that.”
He nodded once. She held out her hands again. He reached up and squeezed them softly. She sat down next to him and rested against him, her head on his shoulder.
“I am going to ask you a strange question,” she said. “I want you to be honest.”
“Okay,” he said slowly.
“Do you ever miss him?”
“Who?”
“Adam.”
He was taken aback. For a brief instant, he looked at her like it was the stupidest question he had ever heard. Then, he found his mind wondering at the answer and was surprised by what he felt.
“There were only three of us that survived from the beginning,” he began. “In our squad. Most of them died. We got replacements. Most of them died too. Our squad captain, Moira, nearly died. A dross crushed half of her head but she lived through it. She wasn’t well enough to fight again until the war was over. I took over her position. Maybe I shouldn’t have. Adam was always better with people than I was. He could make them think what he wanted them to.”
Burke smiled. Natalie thought he looked sad, only for a moment, before he gave a short laugh.
“I didn’t know him before the war,” he continued. “He was born on Earth, like me, but we never met until the fighting started. I don’t know if it was the war that changed him into who he became, and that it only took a few more years for that change to be complete. Or maybe losing the war was what started the change. I don’t know. It changed me, I’m certain of that. I can’t remember much of my life before it.
“My family died. My friends. It was only Adam and the other soldiers that joined us near the end—the few that survived—they were the only people in the entire galaxy I knew, right after losing the planet. I can see why many people couldn’t cope. Maybe I wouldn’t have without working with Adam. Maybe Adam couldn’t either, and it was only a matter of time.
“I don’t know, Natalie. I don’t miss who he became. I miss who he was. I miss who I was before he tried to kill me, but maybe that’s not even his fault. Maybe that was just the moment that the war caught up with me. Maybe I was already broken and it took until then for me to realize it.”
Natalie put an arm around him and pulled him against her. She pressed the side of her head against his.
“That makes perfect sense,” she said.
“I wish it didn’t. You didn’t come here for this.”
“I said that I accepted you, as you are,” she said firmly, but pleasantly. “I meant it.”
She raised a hand to his face and turned his head to hers. She kissed him once on the lips and then on the forehead. He didn’t take his eyes from hers. They eased back slowly onto the bed and turned to face each other. He moved his arms around her back and she did the same to him.
“I missed you,” she whispered softly, barely loud enough for him to hear.
She held him for a while, silently running a hand through his hair, until he fell asleep.
* * *
Natalie walked across the bedroom as quietly as she could. She turned back when she reached the door. There he was, she thought, someone who used to be one of the most famous bounty hunters in the galaxy, curled up on the bed and looking the most vulnerable she had ever seen him. It felt like an ache in her chest to see him in such a state; both for how much he had changed, and for how earnestly he has was trying to better himself. She had only been told briefly what Jess Richmond had said to him. Whatever it was, Natalie was thankful.
She turned the lights off and opened the door in one quick, smooth motion so it didn’t make any noise. She closed it similarly behind her and then stood in the main corridor of the ship. Her hand felt instinctively for her tablet in her pocket and she felt a sudden pang of guilt at the act. She pressed it aside.
The moving parts of the ship’s engine were visible through the far doors to her right. The command room of the ship was visible to her left. Rylan was no longer seated at the front chair and she wondered at that. She had many things to do, installing the new hardware to the Phalanx Ti Battle Aegis chief among them. She remembered well her first meeting with Burke and teaching him how to use the armor, urging him to be careful until the suit adapted to how he moved. Her thoughts were about to drift back to that day when she felt her stomach growl. She couldn’t remember when she last ate.
The ship’s kitchen was more robust than the one in her apartment at ACU. She wanted to laugh at that: Burke and Cass had only had the ship for a short time but it already felt homely and lived in. In her home, she ate mostly dried packets of food that resulted in the minimal amount of mess to clean up. On the Brisbane, she rummaged through a full freezer and then fridge, finding more raw ingredients—meats, fruits, and vegetables—than precooked meals. The food was packed tightly together in separate boxes, ensuring that nothing would ever shift around and smash together if the ship either lost gravity or took a direct hit from something.
She decided against cooking something from base materials and chose one of the rare microwavable meals hiding at the bottom of the freezer. She poured herself a glass of apple juice from a large, resealable carton in the fridge. When her meal was heated up, she stabbed through the dull looking meat and vegetables with a fork and, when she was satisfied with how hot it was, emptied the food onto a plate and carried it into the meeting area adjacent to the kitchen.
Rylan was sitting alone at the extended table. There was a wide screen display on the wall that was usually set to current news and reports. The display was turned off, however, and Rylan was sitting in the room in silence. She took the chair across from him. He looked at her, opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He closed his eyes and she watched them shift about in thought under his eyelids. When he opened them again, he spoke quickly.
“What happens to me now?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
The pilot angled his head toward her, looking impatient at her apparent stupidity. She thought his reaction was funny but kept her face expressionless. She skewered a piece of soggy broccoli with her fork and put it into her mouth. The vegetable was full of moisture that was far hotter than she expected. It burned her tongue. She kept her face plain, not reacting to the pain as she stared at him.
“When is Burke going to kill me?” he asked.
“That depends,” she said.
“On what?”
“Well, he’ll only kill
you if you give him a reason to. It would have to be a good reason, too. Do you plan on doing that any time soon?”
“No, but—”
“But nothing,” she said curtly. “That man has hunted and arrested serial killers, giving them over to the authorities instead of killing them. He gave the justice system its chance to punish them. If it failed, which it sometimes did, he hunted them again and kill them before they can hurt another person. Are you a serial killer, Rylan?”
“No, but—”
“Then I wouldn’t be too worried.”
The screen on the wall came to life seemingly by itself. The screen was a uniform blue for a few seconds before it switched to black. Cass appeared on the screen as a copy of her holographic form over the podium in the command room. Despite the two-dimensional screen’s capabilities at rendering her as more human, she retained her artificial look and features. She looked like a human woman that was out of phase with her surroundings, part of the light passing through her and adopting the shifting colors of her skin. Parts of her face were purple and blue. Her eyes were green, then black, then green again.
“We were going to tell you eventually,” Cass said, knowing they’d accept she had been listening. She was always monitoring the common areas of the ship. She restricted herself from the private bedrooms unless it was a necessary interruption.
Rylan inhaled deeply and then let the breath go in a loud huff. He raised a hand up to his head and held it there.
“I’ve heard of Burke Monrow,” he said finally.
Cass looked surprised. Natalie forked another piece of broccoli.
“It was on the news. A lot,” he continued. “Fought through a space station by himself and killed its owner. Foras station, in Prime. Was that true?”
The Bounty Hunter: Soldier's Wrath Page 4