Bounty Hunter 2: Redemption (5 page)

Even
after dropping the body off at the prison in the Prime system, the thought
stayed with him. Could there ever be anything so frightening to force him to do
what Copper did? He didn’t think so, but the question nagged at him. He
received payment for the bounty, a third of the total that he wanted, and heard
nothing about the altered reports. Financially, it had still been worth it,
even if it felt anything but successful for Burke.

* * *

The
little boy was playing outside of his house. It was a new house for him, a new
home on a new planet. He had been there with his parents for only a few weeks.
Sometimes at night he felt too hot while he adjusted to the new climate. It
hardly ever rained though, and he liked that. He could almost always go outside
to play.

The
planet was newly colonized in a recently connected star system. Land was cheap
to attract new settlers, an opportunity for some even in the face of unknown
dangers and less civil protection. Most people knew that and were courteous to
each other, especially in the early days of building on a new planet. Most
people knew that they needed to stick together to succeed. Most people.

The
boy’s parents were away working and he should have been inside the house. He
was old enough to look after himself but also old enough to think he knew
better. The woman that approached him often took advantage of things like that.
The fringe worlds were the places most ripe for her kind of harvest.

“Hi
there,” she said kindly. “Are your mommy and daddy home?”

“I’m
not allowed to talk to strangers,” the boy said.

“Oh,
but we’re all strangers here. Everyone is new to this place. You’re not allowed
to talk to anyone?”

This
sounded reasonable to the boy and confused him. It was a conflict between what
he just heard and what his parents had drilled into him time and time again.

“I
just arrived here,” she said. “I’m going to be the school teacher for this
town. Are there any other kids around that I can talk to with you?”

Again,
the boy was unsure. He nodded once and then shook his head. He didn’t know what
to do and stayed quiet.

“Why
don’t you come with me and I’ll show you where the school is going to be built.
Then you can show the other kids. It’s always good to be the first one to know
something, don’t you think?”

The
boy hesitated.

Burke
lay on his stomach on top of a ridge overlooking the settlement. Cass was
calculating the factors of the planet’s atmosphere on the trajectory of the sniper
rifle’s rounds. They hadn’t known exactly which way Pond would come from and he
had to stay far back to cover all of the possibilities. It would be a difficult
shot.

The
cross hairs on the scope lined up perfectly on Pond’s head. Burke could see
that she was talking to a little boy. He looked at the estimated point of
impact that Cass was displaying on his visor. The target reticule was off a
little to the left. He trusted Cass’s estimation more than the scope. He didn’t
want to chance accidentally shooting the child.

“I
found a lot of information on Eva Pond while I kept track of her,” Cass said as
he adjusted the rifle. “She was a slave herself as a child. Taken from a new
planet like this one.”

“What
do you mean?”

“She
does horrible things to people now. I’m not excusing it, just explaining it.
She probably does these things to others because of what was done to her. Do
you understand?”

“No,”
he said as he shifted his eyes from the scope. His shot was ready.

“You
don’t believe in redemption?”

“I
do,” he said. “I just don’t care.”

He
squeezed the trigger and the bullet made a crater in the side of Pond’s head.
Even from across the town, Burke heard the boy scream as he saved him.

From the
Author:

Thanks for
reading the story. This entry in the bounty hunter series is significantly
shorter than the others. Rather than artificially inflating it and ruining the
pace of the story, I’ve included a bonus short story of roughly the same length
as Redemption. This short story is also based in the same universe as the
Bounty Hunter Series.

There is also
a preview of the next in the Bounty Hunter story: Vampire, at the end.

As always,
thank you for reading.

Marines Against the Swarm

The
ground opened up in front of the buggy before the driver realized what was
happening. The vehicle was moving too fast to avoid the hole and launched over
it, clipping the opening with its rear wheels at the last moment. The buggy was
flipped, sending both the driver and Jack into the dirt. A high pitched wail
blasted from the hole behind them. It wasn’t human.

He
scrambled to his feet and pointed his rifle back at the hole. He saw that
nothing had climbed out yet but he could still hear it. Too many thoughts
fought for attention in his head:
check the buggy, check to see if Scott
survived the crash, check yourself for injuries, there’s a Dross in the tunnel
that’s about to kill you.
His vision was still unsteady from the crash and
it took effort to focus. The sound of the alien wailing rattled him to his core
and made him want to look away, but he knew if he took his eyes off the tunnel
he might not live to look at anything else.

The
tentacles appeared first and beat against the earth around the top of the
tunnel, feeling for danger before climbing out. Jack knew better than to shoot
at those. They were as thin as earthworms and moved quickly, jittery, and would
only grow back later if he was lucky enough to land a shot. He gripped his
rifle tighter and readied himself.

Claws
gripped the rim of the tunnel and before Jack could react the alien pulled
itself up onto the ground. The Dross was longer than it was tall and was near
the size of the four-seat buggy. It stood ready to pounce on four legs, each
with a brutal claw that looked almost too big for the rest of the creature. The
alien’s skin was hairless and green, and hugged tightly to its body like a
sheet stretched around a coffin. The head was close to that of a lizard’s,
complete with four red eyes and a protruding mouth brimming with massive teeth.
The tentacles grew in a tight bunch from where another creature would have a
tail. To Jack it didn’t matter how many times he heard the Dross be called
alien, to him they always looked like monsters.

Jack
squeezed the trigger on his rifle and kept the iron sights as evenly as he
could on his attacker. The alien reared up in response and screeched as most of
the bullets penetrated its torso. A green substance, something Jack could never
comfortably think of as blood, gushed from the multiplying wounds on its chest
and fell thickly on the barren ground. Jack knew that without a clear head shot
he would need more than one magazine worth of bullets to stop the creature. He
began to back away to create some distance to safely reload.

The
alien leaped at Jack the moment that the bullets stopped forcing it back.
Instead of reloading he was forced to jump to the side to dodge the attack. He
hit the ground and into a roll that brought him smoothly back upright. He
turned to the alien and slammed another magazine into his rifle at the same time.
The Dross was already making another jump at him and Jack didn’t have time to
think or aim. He fired wildly, instinctively, and braced himself to be torn
apart by the same claws that could carve through earth as if it were paper.

The
bullets ruptured the alien’s head and its brains popped in a shower of green
blood. The corpse fell harmlessly to Jack’s feet and he stared numbly at it,
waiting for his mind to process what happened. When he was certain the thing
was dead he stepped over it and faced the tunnel. He needed to keep his eyes on
it in case more of them were on the way.

“Scott!”

“Over
here! Fuck.”

He
refused to turn his back to the hole and awkwardly stepped sideways and
backwards toward Scott’s voice. Jack could still see the dead alien in the
corner of his eye. Its tentacles were still squirming and twitching, as if they
weren’t ready to give up and die along with the rest of the body. Jack felt his
shoulders tighten.

“You’re
close enough. Help me.”

Jack
took a few breaths before he reluctantly turned around. The buggy was in front
of him but it had landed on its side. The top of the frame was pressed against
the ground and was pinning one of Scott’s legs. If it had fallen any further it
would have crushed him. Jack put his rifle down and grabbed the part of the
frame that was highest in the air. He glanced down at Scott, exchanged a nod,
and pushed as hard as he could.

The
buggy toppled forward loudly but Scott’s scream was louder. Jack immediately
went for his rifle and aimed it toward the tunnel. It felt like hours passed
before he was satisfied that nothing was coming to answer Scott’s scream. Jack
turned around and scooped his arms under Scott’s shoulders. They had to get
back into the buggy immediately.

“That
leg is broken. I’ll have to drive.”

“It’s
only one leg. The important one still works fine. You fucking put me back in
the driver’s seat,” Scott spat.

“Dammit.
Fine.”

Jack
dragged him around the buggy and propped him inside. Scott grimaced as he
shifted properly into the chair and looked like he would scream again when he
pulled his own broken leg in with his hands. Jack jumped into the back of the
transport and turned to face the tunnel. He stared at it prepared at any moment
to fire at the enemy, but none came. It wasn't until they had driven so far
away that he could no longer see the hole that he felt himself relax.

“If
the fuckers are already digging up, why do they even need us to check on the
pounders?” Scott yelled back over the sound of the engine.

“Numbers,
maybe. They want to get as many as they can in one shot.”

“Fucking
crazy. We shouldn’t be doing this. We shouldn’t be here. They don’t even know
if it’ll work.” The buggy lurched forward over a rock and Scott roared in pain.

“I
guess we’ll find out.”

The
rest of the journey passed in silence. Jack knew that it would have been better
for Scott’s leg if they went straight back to the base, but they were only a
few minutes away from the final pounder. They had been ordered to ensure that
the three pounders came online when the signal was broadcast, and to manually
start them if they did not.

After
losing so much time from crashing the buggy they only had a few minutes to
check everything when they arrived at the structure. It wasn’t very large, only
a few meters tall and a quarter of that wide, and looked more like a frame of a
building than a completed one. Inside the girders was a solid cylinder of metal
that was designed to rise up into the air and then slam into the ground when it
was turned on. It would repeat that action until it was powered down or
destroyed. The vibrations it created enraged the Dross burrowed in the ground
and they would swarm to its location.

“Turn
the buggy around,” Jack said as he jumped out of the vehicle. “The second this
thing turns on we need to get out of here.”

He
walked up to the pounder and stopped in front of the control panel. There was a
single lever on the panel and above sat a single red light. The tactical
display inside his helmet let him know that the pounder was set to activate in
about thirty seconds. If it failed he’d have to pull the lever for a manual
start.

“Just
get back in, Jack. We’re here more as bait than a fail-safe. It’ll activate.”

Jack
nodded but didn’t move. Only a few seconds were left. The light switched from
red to green and he ran. Something in the structure began to rumble and the
cylinder rose up through the open roof. Jack jumped into the back of the buggy
and Scott already had his foot on the accelerator. The wheels were spinning and
they were moving before the first impact of the pounder hit the ground.

A
wave of vibration rumbled through the earth so strong that Jack felt it
reverberate through the buggy and into his bones. Before the pounder was half
way up in the air again the ground began to burst. The aliens erupted to the
surface spraying soil like fountains. This time the wailing came from more than
one source and merged together into a shrill howl that seemed to come at Jack
from every direction.

“Fucking
drive. Faster.” Jack yelled to the front of the vehicle. The pounder slammed
into the ground again and more holes appeared. “They’re everywhere.”

The
momentum gained as the transport picked up speed made Jack stagger for a
moment. When he recovered his balance he hauled himself up to the top of the
frame and strapped himself in. He needed both of his hands to shoot and
couldn’t have his focus split on staying upright. When he was fastened securely
he unhinged a section on the top of his rifle. The iron sights snapped up to be
replaced with a scope. He brought it up to his eyes and began to fire.

Most
of the aliens crowded around the pounder. Through the scope Jack saw a few of
them charge into the building and be crushed into a green pulp as the cylinder
met the ground. For each that was flattened dozens emerged to replace them.
There were more tunnels appearing than Jack could count.

“We’ll
be coming up to the next one soon!” Scott shouted back over the sound of
gunfire. “If we’re late it might start without us. It’ll be—Fuck!”

The
buggy swerved suddenly and Jack felt his insides compress against the straps
and metal on top of the vehicle. He felt dirt rain down on his helmet and back
and knew that another tunnel must have opened up in front of them. He turned
instinctively with his rifle ready and began to fire. The Dross was in striking
distance of the buggy and needed to be stopped. Its claws were already held
high even though half of the creature was still in the tunnel. Jack’s bullets
clustered around the thing’s head and it fell limply down into the hole.