Bounty Hunter 1: The Bounty Hunter's Revenge (11 page)

“Are you deaf? Marcus. You bring the
body. You kill your crew. You keep what you want. You get paid. You leave. Why
is this hard for you? Is your crew still alive, too? Did you mess every order
up?”

“They’re dead,” I muttered, low enough
that it barely carried through the helmet.

“What?”

“I said, they’re dead.”

Cass unlocked the visor and I snatched
the handgun from the suit at the same time. Adam was too stunned as he saw my
face reveal itself from the helmet that he hadn’t even processed the gun I had
pointed at his head yet.

“Impossible. Fucking impossible. We were
so high we were practically in orbit. Impossible!”

I walked toward him as he looked like he
would dart to his desk, to whatever weapon he had hidden there. I surged
forward with the gun, waving it in front of his face at the same time that I
shook my head.

“Kill me then! You won’t get out alive.
You think my guards are like that scum we used to hunt? With their little
pathetic excuses for weapons? They all have armor piercing rounds. They’ll cut
into you like you’re back in the war.”

“So it’ll be a fair fight, then,” I
laughed. “But no. I’m not here for that. No fighting. The gun is to get your
attention. I’m not here to kill you.”

Adam had an expression on his face like
I just said the most ridiculous thing he ever heard. He was dumbstruck.

“Three years, Adam. Three years I sat
down there and could only guess at what drove you to do this. Why? That
question. Why? That more than anything nearly drove me insane. Every night.
Why? We were partners. No. Brothers. We had bled together more times than I
remember. Saved each other. Relied on each other. So I’m not here to kill you.
I just want to know why.”

Adam’s entire face was tense, as if it
took effort for his features not to fall apart. He looked at the gun, then back
at me. I saw in his eyes that he was trying rapidly to think of something,
thinking faster than he had to in years.

“Prove it,” he spat out, suddenly.
“Prove it. Give me the gun and I’ll tell you. You have my word.”

I looked at him for what felt like an
eternity. Our eyes were locked, as if we could read each others’ thoughts if we
looked hard and intensely enough. I lowered the gun at first, slowly, then gave
it a light toss into the air. I caught it by the barrel and extended it toward
him. He snatched it from my hand hungrily and aimed it right at my head.

“Good, good,” he spewed his words out
quickly. “I’ll tell you. Because of this. This right here. Giving me the gun.
You held us back. From money. From fame. You wouldn’t take the dirty jobs.
Always had to go after the criminals instead of working for them! You wouldn’t
even consider the money in it. You acted like you were too good for it, and too
good for me. Parading around in your fancy, overkill suit of armor like some god
damn hero. We killed people for fucking money, Burke! How noble can you
possibly fucking be!”

I closed my eyes. There it was. The
reason I needed to hear. A wave of disappointment washed over me along with
relief. I had been hoping for a different reason. A more complicated,
conflicted reason, but there it was, what I suspected all along: money. Greed.
I was letdown. There was only one thing left to happen. I opened my eyes.

“Thank you,” I said. “Now, will you kill
me again, or let me go? You could have just left back then, you know. You
didn’t have to shoot me. Would you do it again, now, or then, if you could go
back and change it?”

Adam laughed. It was a long, angry
laugh. He stamped a foot down into the floor as he laughed, all the while
pointing the gun at my face.

“See! There it is again! That fucking
too good for me fucking attitude! You know what, yeah, fuck you. I would. I
wanted your body as a fucking keepsake. Of course I’d do it again. I was going
to kill Marcus after the job was done, too. I guess I owe you a little
something for that. This won’t hurt.”

He punched the gun forward at my face as
he squeezed the trigger and gun clicked out its harmless sound of the hammer
striking no bullet, no primer. Nothing. I brought in no live weapons.

I took two steps forward and propelled
my right hand up into his face. The palm portion of my armored fist caved in
his nose, and it broke with a sickly crunch as it was compressed into his face.
The force of the blow knocked him off his feet, and I brought my knee up into
his spine as he fell, knocking him again into the air before he could hit the
ground.

Something snapped in his back, I guessed
a rib or three, before he collapsed onto the floor. I drove my left foot down
onto his arm, crushing it against the floor. I repeated it until I was
satisfied that the bone was broken, or shattered, and rendered useless just
like he had done to my arm.

I knelt down onto his chest, pushing the
weight of my armor onto his torso. His eyes were closed and shook wildly in
their sockets. I brought my left arm down and pointed my elbow into his left
thigh. The blade sliced out and pierced into his muscle, connected with the
bone and struck into it. I twisted and rolled the blade around until I was
certain that at least part of his leg was as mangled as mine.

“Three! Fucking! Years!”

I grabbed him by the neck and pulled him
upright. He could barely open his eyes but I didn’t care. I threw him against
the wall and punched him before he could fall. With each punch I kept him
upright. I was relentless, beating his face until I couldn’t recognize him
anymore.

I beat him with the force of my anger
and rage that I felt when I crushed the crawlers on my first night, when I had
to tunnel non-stop for a week to survive, and when I had to shoot a man in the
back after I had said I let him go. I pummeled him with the fury of when I had
to hold an old friend to the brink of death, and every time my leg trembled
with the memory of what was done to it.

Adam was dead long before I stopped
hitting him. He slumped to the floor in a heap, limbs twisted in directions
that only a dead man could tolerate. I was panting and shaking uncontrollably.
I felt no relief or closure, but also no shame or guilt over what I had just
done. I felt nothing. I was numb.

“Burke,” Cass’s voice seemed to come
from somewhere far away. “We need to leave. Now.”

I went to Adam’s desk. I tore out
drawers one at a time until I found the gun. I flicked the safety off and
pointed it to the ceiling. I let out a shot to make sure it was loaded. The
guards must have already heard something and were on their way. No need to be
quiet. A bullet ripped out of the gun with a loud bang. It was all I needed.

I kicked through the door and it smashed
into the first two guards that were waiting outside. I pressed forward as they
were knocked back, twisting myself around on my right foot while I triggered
the blade from my left arm. I sliced the blade in an arc across their throats,
severing their jugular arteries in one swift movement.

I snapped the blade back into the armor
and grabbed the closest dying guard with the same arm. With the suit’s
assistance, I held him up easily and used him as a shield as I barreled down
the hall. My right hand was free to extend under the guard’s arm and fire ahead.
Cass gave me estimates on the visor’s display with red targets. I was moving
too fast and didn’t have enough vision to aim carefully, but I was close enough
to maim my targets into submission.

One of the doors opened up to my left
when I was nearing the elevator. They were too close for me to turn and fire
and I threw the guard’s body at them instead. It crashed into them, knocking
the first two over who, in turn, stumbled backward into the reinforcements
behind them.

There were too many to shoot and the gun
was nearly out of ammunition anyway. I was putting so much strain on my right
leg that it was screaming at me in agony but I couldn’t afford to care. The
guards would recover soon and would be firing at me from behind.

I hit the button to open the elevator
door at the same time that a torrent of bullets came from behind me. Not all of
them had switched to the correct piercing rounds and I felt a barrage of them
bounce off the armor of my back. Others pierced through, not cleanly, but
enough to embed themselves in the metal and bite into the top layer of my
flesh.

I slammed the elevator door closed
when I was inside. My back felt like it was on
fire, and I had no idea how bad my injuries were. Cass had my vitals on the
visor immediately, searching for any critical injuries or ruptures. It felt
like there were hundreds of little trickles of blood running down my back.

“You need to get to a medical centre
immediately. There was no major organ damage but I can’t keep track of your
blood loss.”

“No. We need to leave.”

“Burke, this isn’t up for debate.”

The elevator stopped on the floor that
our ship was docked on and I rushed off, ignoring Cass’s warnings. I needed to
get back to the ship and get off the station. Nothing else mattered. Adam was
dead and nothing else mattered.

I don’t remember reaching the ship, but
I do remember waking up in the cockpit. My head was pounding and I could hear
people talking around me. I wasn’t conscious for long, and slumped back over
the ship’s control console. I felt like I was spinning, and any attempt to
balance myself only made it worse. Everything went black.

* * *

I woke up in a bed and knew that
something was wrong. Something felt wrong. The room was white, the bed was
soft, and I was alone. My helmet and armor were gone. But that wasn’t it.
Something was very wrong.

I was in a room in a hospital, I
reasoned. I shifted in the bed and felt what was wrong more clearly. I braced
myself and then moved my hands down my chest and to my right leg. And I felt
nothing. My leg was gone. I closed my eyes and swallowed hard. I moved my hands
back up onto my chest and convinced myself that I didn’t need to look under the
blanket.

I must have fallen back to sleep. When I
woke up Geoffrey was sitting next to the bed. He had my helmet in his lap and
he was hunched forward, resting on it as he looked at me.

I studied his face for a long time as I
thought my way through what must have happened. Cass had contacted Geoffrey
after I was shot and refused to find help. Despite what I had threatened to do
to him and his daughter, he had helped me. I knew the man had built up many
connections over the years, but not so many that he could shelter a murderer
and get him treated at the same time.

I had underestimated him, in more ways
than one. I looked down at my leg and realized that I had ruined more than one
thing in my search for vengeance.

“Burke,” he said. “She’ll want to talk
to you.”

He extended the helmet out in his hands
and I took it from him. I barely moved by reaching out to it but was enough
that pain erupted all over my back. I was careful as I lowered the helmet over
my head.

“I’m sorry,” Cass spoke in an explosion
of frantic words. “You were dying and I didn’t know what else to do. He was the
only one I could contact and he came and helped and brought you here and your
leg, Burke, I’m sorry, your leg. The doctors marveled at how you were walking
on it at all. There was nothing they could do.”

“How am I still on the station without
being hunted?”

Geoffrey answered that before Cass could.
He sat forward and spoke, “You weren’t the only one who hated Adam, and you
weren’t the only enemy he made over the years. You’ll still have to hide for a
while. A change of identity after that. We’ll work it out.”

“Geoff, I’m sorry. I didn’t—” he held a
hand up to stop me. He nodded slowly.

“Don’t say more things now that you may
claim you didn’t mean later. We’ll let our actions do the talking for a while,”
he stated. It was a rebuke, if a gentle one, but I deserved it.

He got up and walked toward the door. I
called for him before he could leave. He stopped and turned to me.

“The ship. Sell off what’s in the cargo
bay. Take whatever money it earns for yourself. I’ll only need enough for an
augmented leg and a gun. I’ll earn the rest of it back from you.”

“I already started, old friend,” he said
with a sad smile, and left the room.

I ran my hand down and felt at the
bandages around where my leg used to be. I felt even more damaged than I had
when I first woke up after the fall from the ship, but was surprised to
discover I was more relaxed. For the first time in years I had no driving force
pushing me along. I felt like I had been released from something horrible and
menacing. It was exciting and daunting at the same time.

“Cass,” I said. “I’ll leave it to you to
pick out the robotic leg. Whatever you think will work best with the rest of
your aegis.”

“
My
aegis?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do,” she replied. “Will we have a lot
of work to do in the future? Will it have to be a combat grade augment?”