The Bounty Hunter (Cade Korbin Chronicles Book 1)

by Jasper T. Scott

  Bry climbs down from my leg. She lets out a chirring breath that sounds like relief to me.

  I glare at her. “And where is the father?”

  Chirr.

  “You should have thought about that before you hitched a ride off world with me.”

  Chirr...

  A giggle draws my attention back to the women watching me.

  Violet looks amused.

  Aurora less so. “You always talk to yourself?” she asks.

  “She understands me,” I insist, then belatedly realize how stupid that sounds. I regard Bry speculatively. “At least I think she does.”

  Aurora snorts and mutters something I can’t hear before turning away and walking up the ramp.

  I meet Violet at the bottom of the ramp.

  She nods to me. “Did you manage to find some breakfast?”

  “I thought you lost your appetite.”

  “I did. Then I found it again.”

  Sounds like a convenient way for her to avoid braving that horde of alien piranhas. “Come on.” I jerk my head back the other way. “There should be a rec hall down here. We can eat there.”

  * * *

  Violet and I wind up spending the whole day below decks, playing holo games and talking about her life and the events that led her to Margrave, while Aurora stays up in the cockpit doing Deus knows what to pass the time. Maybe she’s still working on that assignment I gave her to track down our target.

  Violet’s story is a predictable one. She comes from a good family. Lots of credits. She was on trip to the Alliance for work when her Starliner got yanked out of FTL by raiders in the neutral zone, and a bunch of the passengers were taken hostage to ransom them back to their families.

  Her family never paid, so the raiders sold her on the black market.

  While she’s telling me that story, Bry comes and goes. She’s feeding her horde of little monsters in the mess hall. At first, I had to go with her to open the door, but then I showed her how to work the physical control panel, and she caught on quick.

  Each time she comes back from the mess hall looking a little smaller and more deflated, as if her kids are literally sucking the life out of her.

  In between all of that, I find convenient moments to walk around the ship with Violet so that I can place the flat, rectangular camjackers from my bag against the ceiling beside the Seraph’s holocams.

  Each time I do so, an electric jolt of adrenaline goes sparking through me, and I expect to hear Aurora come bursting out of the cockpit with her weapon drawn. But she doesn’t appear to notice anything amiss. Not even a bot can pay attention to everything all the time, and I’ve been careful to sprinkle my illicit activities between hours and hours of meaningless fluff.

  Having control of the ship’s security system will make sneaking around tonight a whole lot easier.

  Violet and I are sitting in opposite corners of a couch in the rec hall, watching an old holovid. It’s a sci-fi movie about the Priors coming back from some distant, uncharted corner of the galaxy, and invading us. Despite their superior technology, the Free Systems Alliance and the Coalition work together to find their weakness and fight them off together.

  It’s not a bad story, but predictable. Humanity puts aside its differences to unite against a common enemy, ultimately defeating them and somehow learning in the process that the myriad issues which divide us aren’t as significant as we thought.

  My mind is already on the task ahead of me.

  A motley group of unlikely heroes stand in the smoking ruins of Earth, promising to rebuild together. Then credits roll. I stand up and stretch.

  Violet looks at me with sleep-laden eyes.

  “Tired?” she asks.

  “Yeah.”

  We leave the rec hall together and stop to check in on Bry before we head up to the main top deck. She’s tucked into a ball, apparently fast asleep. Fifty tiny green-stained furballs are clinging to her, dimpling her white fur.

  “Awww,” Violet says. “They finally fell asleep.”

  I snort and shake my head. I’ve never had kids, but from what I’ve heard about it, there is one universal truth that all parents seem to agree on: after you have kids, you can say goodbye to getting a good night’s sleep.

  At the top of the ramp, I notice that the door to the cockpit is closed; the sensors in my holoband show Aurora in the pilot’s seat, exactly where she’s been all day.

  I guess being a bot has some advantages. No need to get up and stretch your legs. That’s just a waste of energy.

  Violet peels off along the way to the bunk room that she and I share, saying she could really use a shower. I acknowledge that with a nod, go to our room, kick off my boots and lie down in my bed. I pass the time by scanning offline guild records on my holoband. May as well work the same angle I told Aurora to. We can compare notes later and see if we agree.

  I’m interrupted halfway through that task as Violet comes striding back in wearing nothing but a towel. Then she drops the towel in a laundry chute beside the lockers, leaving her completely naked. I try not to stare, but that’s easier said than done.

  Is she trying to convince me to accept last night’s offer?

  But the way she’s moving isn’t seductive, it’s perfunctory. She pulls out another gray jumpsuit and socks from the lockers by the door, and pulls them on while I watch.

  “Like what you see?” she asks with one eyebrow raised.

  “You’re a beautiful woman.”

  She blushes slightly and looks away. Another glimmer of that incongruous shred of innocence that I saw when she opened the door to that cheap hellhole on Margrave and realized that I wasn’t there to take something from her like every other man she’d met.

  Her utter lack of modesty—getting dressed in front of me—is more fitting with the profession I found her in. It’s going to be hard for her to go back to the life she had. She was a married woman. With two kids. She told me all about it today. That’s who she’s going to see in Alpha Centauri. But her husband refused to pay the raiders’ ransom and that was two standard years ago. To me, that leaves a lot of open questions about the current state of their marriage. Will Violet divorce him? Fight for custody of her kids?

  “What is it?” she asks, sitting on the edge of her bed and regarding me curiously.

  “What are you hoping to find when you get home?” I ask her.

  “I don’t know. Maybe the life I had, if my husband will take me back after everything that’s happened.”

  “Happened? You cheat on him?”

  Violet lets out a short, bitter laugh. “Only like a thousand times.”

  “Not what I meant. You, of your own volition. Not for a job that you were sold into.”

  “No, never.”

  “Okay, then why wouldn’t he take you back?”

  “Well...” Violet’s eyes flick down. “Because I’m damaged now.”

  “Wrong. Wipe the slate. Never happened.”

  “But he’ll still know, and I’ll have a big empty blank where some chunk of my life used to be. Eventually he’ll tell me what it was.”

  Interesting. Here I am thinking that she should be pissed as hell at the man who supposedly loved her, yet wouldn’t part with precious credits to get her back. Meanwhile, she’s worried about what he will think of her now. She’s carrying around so much guilt and shame that she can’t dig through it to find her dignity—or indignation.

  “Why would he tell you?”

  “Because... I’ll ask him. Or I’ll find out on my own.”

  “Then get a minder to craft an elaborate story to explain away that missing part of your life.”

  “It’ll be a lie,” Violet says.

  “The truth’s overrated.”

  She looks up. “Is that what you did? Erased the ugly truth and painted pretty lies in its place?”

  A knot forms in my throat and I swallow thickly. “No.” My voice is suddenly rasping, like a dull knife sawing on bone. And the fact that I k
now what that sounds like is yet another memory that I’d be better off without.

  But I haven’t parted with any of it. It just wouldn’t be right. Those lives are gone. I took them. I don’t feel too bad about the ones who deserved it, but not all of them did, and the thought of scrubbing my memories just to get the innocent blood out makes my stomach turn.

  “Okay. I get your point.”

  “I might not like what happened to me, but it’s what made me who I am now. Taking it all away would change me into someone else, and I’m not sure if I want to be someone else.”

  Her case is a little different from mine, but I can understand the anxiety surrounding memory erasure.

  “Regardless, none of it’s your fault. You husband should understand that.” I say should, because I don’t think he will. It doesn’t fit the MO. If he was so in love with her, why not pay the ransom?

  Raiders are businessmen, and in order to ensure the long-term viability of their business, they do honor deals. Everyone knows it. You pay the ransom; you get your people back. Simple as that. Don’t pay the ransom, and they’ll get their credits some other way—such as by selling your loved ones into slavery.

  “I hope so,” Violet says slowly, still staring at the deck between her feet.

  It’s really none of my business, but after going this far out of my way to help Violet break free from slavery, it would be pretty damn pointless to let her shame and her guilt keep her enslaved to a man, even if that man is her husband. “The better question is, will you take him back?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” she asks.

  “He didn’t pay.”

  “He couldn’t. If he did, our girls would be targeted next. Or I would get abducted and ransomed again. And again...” She trails off shaking her head.

  “You live in the Coalition.”

  “But we do business in the Alliance. We’d never be able to travel there again.”

  “Seems like a small price to pay to have your wife back.”

  “Maybe. I’m sure he had his reasons.”

  “Yeah. I can think of a few.”

  Hurt flashes across Violet’s face as her eyes come up from the deck. “Look, I already thanked you for your help, but that doesn’t give you the right to go judging my entire life and family. Have you ever been married?”

  “No.”

  “Then you have no idea what you’re talking about. For all you know, my husband paid the ransom, but they decided to sell me anyway and double their payday.”

  Or he hired the Raiders who abducted you. But I don’t say that. I can see that I’ve pushed the truth too hard, stretching the lies she’s told herself to the breaking point. If they break, who’s going to pick up the pieces?

  Me?

  I travel light. Have to. And I’ve got enough pieces of my own to carry around.

  So I keep my mouth shut and pretend to go to sleep.

  Chapter 35

  A few minutes after I hear Violet’s breathing slow with sleep, I turn my holoband back on and get to work. Using the camjackers I placed around the ship throughout the day, I jack into the feeds and look for Aurora. No sign of her anywhere, and the cockpit door is still sealed. Maybe she went to her room? I don’t have eyes in there. Not yet.

  Only one way to find out.

  I set the cameras I jacked into to play a loop of the last hour of footage. That should give me plenty of time for snooping.

  Then I slip out of the bunkroom and down the corridor. Reaching the amidships area with the access ramp, I turn left and start down the right hand corridor. The one where the captain’s quarters should be.

  Stopping in front of the door, I skip the holoscreen and try knocking on the door the old fashioned way. When Aurora doesn’t answer, I pull a door jacker out of my pocket, place it below the control panel and wait a few seconds for it to override the lock. As soon as the status bar on my holoband reaches the end, I pull up the door controls and open Aurora’s quarters. I step through into a room that’s much more spacious than the one I’m sharing with Violet. Mentally shutting the door behind me, I take a moment to study Aurora’s quarters.

  A big bed, not a bunk, is situated below a broad rectangular viewport that shows the dizzying swirl of FTL space. At the foot of the bed is a door to a private en-suite bathroom. At the other end, an alcove with a chair and a data terminal.

  In the foreground is a living area with a couch, a holoscreen, coffee table, and two armchairs. To the right of that, some basic food prep appliances, and a mini fridge. To one side of that, a big executive desk and two chairs. One in front, one behind. A holdover from when this was a multi-crew ship and the captain would hold private meetings in his quarters.

  Curious about something, my gaze tracks back to the en-suite bathroom. Aurora’s a bot, so she doesn’t strictly need those facilities.

  Walking over there, I peek in through the open door and find the bathroom fixtures all exactly where they should be. Maybe Aurora likes to entertain meatbag companions.

  Or maybe it’s not about the company she keeps. Even bots sometimes need to expel waste. The more life-like models like her can still eat and drink for fun, and when they do, they have to do something with the undigested solids and liquids.

  And of course, even synthetic bodies need cleaning—just not as often.

  I suppose it tells me something about Aurora that she’s kept all of these biological fittings and fixtures. It means she’s not some jaded old soul that no longer cares to remember how it used to live. She still lives like a bio, not a bot. That fits with what she told me. She didn’t choose to transcend her biological body. She was killed and forced to come back in a synthetic body.

  I file that bit of info away and set my mind back on the reason I came in here. Striding past the bed with its smooth, glossy red bed covers, I stop at the data terminal, reach into my pocket, and pull out another jacker. This one is tiny, just a fingernail-sized golden wafer that plugs into a physical port in the front of the terminal.

  It takes a few seconds to do its job, and then a bright holoscreen swirls to life above the desk. The password screen appears, then vanishes just as quickly.

  I’m in.

  Pulling out the chair on a folding arm that’s bolted to the deck, I sit down and get to work. It’s time to find out who Aurora is and what secrets she’s keeping.

  * * *

  I’m looking for any and all record of communications between Aurora and Mohinari. Being a bot, most of her comms get routed directly through her integrated comms, but the long-range messages that went through the hypernet go through her ship’s comms, and those records are all accessible from here. I search for Mohinari’s name. Nothing comes up.

  That’s actually a good thing. It means Aurora isn’t secretly colluding with him to take me down. Clients and hunters rarely have direct contact with each other. It’s safer for everyone if they don’t.

  I glance at the PIP window with the feed from the camera that I jacked in the amidships access corridor. I need to have some warning if Aurora leaves the cockpit while I’m snooping around in here.

  But the door to the cockpit is still sealed.

  Next search parameter: I try the target’s name this time. Rama Drakos.

  Three messages pop up. All of them routed through the Syndicate’s anonymous servers.

  The first message was an initial inquiry from Aurora, asking for more details about the contract on Rama. The reply was a one-liner with detailed background info attached, including records of contracts that Rama completed for Mohinari. And the one that bought Mohinari’s wrath, where she took the credits and ran without even trying to fulfill the contract.

  So far everything checks out.

  The second message is relayed from Mohinari, asking to meet with her in person to discuss the job.

  Aurora agrees to the meeting. They set a time and place to meet in Liberty City. Cross-checking the date and time on my holoband I discover that it was just a few hours before I literally
bumped into Aurora at the Spaceport. While I was busy helping Omar and his family escape, she was meeting with Mohinari.

  The little ironies that make the galaxy go around.

  Let’s see what else...

  The third message is also Mohinari talking, about an hour after their meeting. He says he liked her, and she should forget about the bounty and come work for him directly. He adds that he doesn’t think she should bother with the contract on Rama. She should leave that for a more experienced hunter rather than waste her credits getting resurrected in yet another body.

  Aurora thanks him for the advice, declines the job offer, and insists that she will get the job done, even if she has to partner with a more experienced hunter in order to do it.

  Her reply was sent through her ship’s comms about an hour after meeting me at the Spaceport. She probably read the message first on those glowing retinal displays of hers, but waited until she got back to her ship to reply. Mohinari would have been in the same city as her at the time, so using her ship’s comms was only necessary for anonymity’s sake. Messages between clients and hunters get routed through the hypernet to the nearest Syndicate enclave and then back to the client.

  Security and anonymity for clients and hunters alike.

  Okay, all of this checks out with what Aurora has told me. It even explains why she was so determined to get my help. Mohinari basically told her she’s going to get herself killed (again) by going after Rama. She took his advice to heart and went looking for a partner. Bumping into me was pure kismet, just like she said.

  Hell of a big galaxy for coincidence like that, but okay. I’ll take it.

  Seems like this is all above board.

  And I guess actions speak louder—

  She probably could have killed me a dozen times already.

  My bad for being so trusting. Granted, her membership with the Syndicate and the death sentence it would mean for her if she tried anything was enough to make me halfway trust her.

  And now, after checking the extent of her dealings with Mohinari, I’m feeling better still.

  It’s a weight off my mind to know that I don’t need to sleep with one eye open aboard Aurora’s ship. Mohinari didn’t send her after me, and there aren’t any other contracts out for me.