Bounty Hunter 2: Redemption (3 page)

The
display became a blur of images. Thousands of pictures of faces that looked
similar to Copper’s. Burke knew that there would be many false matches from the
different angles, perspectives, and qualities of the pictures. They all came
from dozens of different systems.

“That’s
a lot more data than we used to get. Adam used to handle this side of things.
He’d hire outside help too, but they never came back with this many pictures,”
Burke said.

“I
like being thorough,” Cass said, her voice higher than usual. “Hacking comes
more naturally to me than a human, anyway.”

Burke
smiled and took another mouthful of potatoes. They were much better than the
dry food, plump with salt and preservatives, that he would be eating for the
next few weeks. Once again, he missed his old ship and its larger storage
space. Soon, he thought. He chewed while he stared up at the screen.

“If
Copper got out of the system then we’ll have to let this one go,” he stated.
“Let’s commit a few weeks to this and take a chance. The pay is good enough.
I’ll set the ship for the Stratos system and we’ll narrow down our search on
the way there.

“How
many pictures are you displaying right now?”

“Currently:
146,762.”

“Fuck.
Give or take a few?”

“No,
146,762.”

“Hah.
Okay. Remove those that didn’t come from Stratos. What does that leave us
with?”

Parts
of the screen started to go blank as Cass sorted through them. Burke set his
plate aside and entered the coordinates for the first gate they’d use on the
way to the system. It would be two jumps and more travel time in between them
before they arrived.

“Done,”
Cass said before he finished at the computer terminal.

“How
many?”

“Ten
thousand, roughly. Give or take a few.”

“That’s
still a lot. The trip should take about eight days,” he said and then shook his
head at the task in front of them. “Well, we should start right away. Separate
each set by planets and stations first.”

The
information was categorized and labeled as the ship hurtled toward the first
gate. Burke never stopped working even during the jump, choosing to stay in his
own ship instead of enjoying the amenities of the jump carrier. The work was
painstakingly slow and required a lot of comparison between pictures to rule
people out.

Cass
was little help during that work, stating that all the pictures looked like the
same person to her, and she didn’t understand how humans could always tell each
other apart. She instead took over navigating the ship and reminded Burke when
to take a break so he didn’t strain his eyes.

Over
half of the pictures were discarded. Although they shared similar distances
between the eyes, nose, and mouth, he was able to clearly see the difference
when put side by side Copper’s original photograph. When they completed the
jump into the Stratos system the possible locations had been narrowed to nine. They
were all spread across five of the inhabited planets in the system. It was more
than Burke would have liked, but he had dealt with worse.

“That’s
a lot of possibilities,” Cass said, sounding skeptical. “How does the tracer
help?”

“We
go physically from planet to planet and go into an orbit low enough to scan for
their identity chip, just like the jump carriers scan for mine. We have to be
close enough for the tracer to pick up the response from their chip.”

Burke
put his hand on his left thigh. His chip had been in the leg that he had lost.
Geoff had given him the new one with the forged identity, Jack Porter. Jack was
older than Burke, which had been a source of amusement for both Geoff and Cass.
The chip was embedded into the bone in his thigh. Two implants and an augmented
leg. He wished he could tear at least one of them out of him.

“That
could take a while if we go to the wrong planet first,” Cass said.

“If
these people were easy to find they wouldn’t need to hire us to do it. Let’s
hope we find him at all and that this trip wasn’t for nothing.”

They
started with the planets closest to the system’s star and worked their way
outwards. Each time the ship had to be lowered down near the boundary between
the planet’s stratosphere and troposphere. Burke would stay at the helm for
most of that time and look at the worlds below them. Some had less dense
atmospheres than others: few clouds and a clear view to the planet’s pale
surface. The inhabitants on those kinds were crammed into smaller cities,
loosely scattered over the world. It was faster for the ship to travel to each
settlement separately rather than systematically loop around the planet.

The
fourth planet was an accommodating one for humans. The clouds were thick and
sprawled out over the world. Underneath was a shining surface of greens and
blues, seemingly covered with thick vegetation and hardly any desert that Burke
could see. He knew such planets usually had a breathable atmosphere and were
among the most heavily populated in human space; however, he saw few signs of
people as the ship lowered down.

“I’ve
never been here before,” he said to Cass. “Is there something wrong with this
planet?”

“Stratos
VI on the maps. Brontes to the locals. Earth-like conditions.”

“They
shouldn’t say Earth-like anymore,” he muttered. “No one’s been able to live
there for decades. The infestation took care of that.”

“Ah,”
Cass continued, seemingly not hearing him, “higher concentrations of oxygen in
the atmosphere have led to a more hostile environment than anticipated.
Indigenous wildlife is much larger than commonly found on other planets of the
same type, especially in the amphibian and insect populations. Storms are more
common, and lightning strikes result in large forest fires most of the year.”

“Sounds
lovely. I can’t see why no one would want to live here. We found our
retirement—”

The
command room came to life with a siren and a message on the screen: Frank
Copper Located, calculating exact position. Cass started to slow the ship while
Burke huffed.

“Fucking
typical. Next job we take, we should look up which is the most dangerous planet
in the system and fly to that one first. Save some time.”

He
got out of his chair and left the room. In the armory he put his aegis on while
he trusted Cass to lower the ship and land a few kilometers away from where
Copper had been found. Each section of his armor was slid on separately: the
second leg, then the two halves of the torso that locked together with the
legs. The arms and helmet went on last. The suit was loose on him until all the
pieces sealed together.

His
aegis was the most expensive and useful tool he owned, since it was also how he
had acquired Cass. The armor served multiple purposes, both for defense and
survival. He was kept safe from environmental hazards by having the suit supply
all of his needs: oxygen, hydration, and even sustenance during longer
expeditions off the ship.

Once
all the pieces were equipped, Burke initialized the aegis’s systems and felt
the interior of it expand around and fit his body. There was a gel-like
substance under the fabric of the interior, one that responded to his movements
and assisted him when trying to move in the otherwise overwhelming heavy armor.

Cass
was the final piece of the arsenal. She knew his combat behavior and tactics
and could anticipate his needs. She could display hazards from outside Burke’s
field of view and estimate target locations on the suit’s visor display after
seeing them once.

The
ship came to a stop and Cass transferred herself from the ship’s network to the
aegis. An indicator blipped twice on the visor to let Burke know that his
system’s start up was complete.

“We
should leave the weapons,” he said. “The hidden handgun should be enough. Maybe
we’ll get lucky and get near him before he runs off.”

“Agreed.
I’ll keep watch for the wildlife.”

He
unlocked the opening at his waist and withdrew the grapple line from it. He
detached the hook and let the line ravel back inside. He made sure the handgun
was in the compartment at his hip and that it was loaded. Finally, he twisted
his arms and the blades hidden along his forearms sprang out of the armor. They
ran out and behind him from the elbows, a weapon he rarely used unless things
were desperate. With another twist, the blades retracted back inside.

He
stepped out into the cargo hold. His footsteps were heavier now, sending small
tremors through the ship. The doors opened slowly and Burke stepped outside and
onto Brontes.

* * *

The
ship had landed in a clearing a few kilometers from the nearest settlement.
There was forest a few hundred steps in every direction, but nothing hostile
that Burke could see. There were birds flying above the trees. No, not birds,
he thought, more like dragonflies.

“Make
sure the ship is sealed up tight. I don’t want to take anything back with us.”

He
lifted off his faceplate and was hit with a wave of heat. The planet was far
warmer than he was used to, and the air was heavy and humid. He couldn’t see
any soil through the thick grass around his feet. He had no idea what might be
slithering around unseen, and was suddenly thankful for the armor around him.
Oddly, his augmented leg felt more exposed than the rest of him. He tried to
push the thought aside as he walked on.

The
faceplate joined back into the helmet and Cass displayed a map of the area over
his visor. There was a river to the east that ran south toward the settlement.
A stationary dot signified Copper’s location. He was a kilometer east from the
town, across the river and through the forest.

“He
didn’t pick the safest spot, but it’s a good one to avoid people. Smart,” Burke
said.

“Be
careful in the trees. Spiders here are responsible for more deaths than
anything else. Humans are food for them, to put things in perspective. I don’t
think they’ll get through our armor but they’ll still try.”

“Noted.”

He
marched across the clearing and into the forest. Things fluttered out of the
corner of his eyes but there was nothing that Cass marked for him. At the river
he saw the first animal: a large, bloated amphibian that sat lazily next to the
river. He estimated that it was too big to fit through his ship’s doors.

“The
locals call them grollon,” Cass explained. “They’re not hostile, but not
friendly either. They won’t bother us if we leave them alone.”

Burke
walked farther away from it before approaching the river. As he advanced he saw
the beast open its mouth and whip out an elongated tongue into the water. It
snatched what looked like a fish from the river and yanked it into its mouth
with its tongue. It chomped on it once, only once, and then swallowed.

“Copper
picked the best planet to hide on. I want to leave already,” he grumbled.

“The
information I have didn’t mention they could do that. We better not go in the
water. Focus now.”

The
river ran quickly and he couldn’t see the bottom of it. He went for his grapple
hook and then remembered he only had the line to capture his target. He
crouched at the river bank instead, and prepared to jump across it.

The
augmented leg wasn’t without its uses. It was stronger than his own, like a
permanent limb that gained the assisted strength of the aegis. Given time it
could be used to propel himself over obstacles. He readied it as he crouched.
Cass could have done it for him, but she knew he liked to remain in control of
his movements.

He
leaped forward and the leg launched him from the ground. He vaulted over the
river and led with the augmented leg, landing with it and letting it absorb the
force of his weight. He stood up and looked back at the water. He had cleared
the other side by four meters. More than he intended.

“You’re
getting better at that,” Cass remarked.

“It
still feels weird. Like my leg is being wrung out.”

He
continued through the forest. Cass would display the map every few minutes and
show how much distance was left between them and Copper. The trees they walked
through were taller than most that Burke had seen. They had few branches, with
all of them at the very top of each tree. Their trunks were thick with bark. He
could see heaps of it at the base of the trees as he walked passed.

He
saw the first spider when he was near Copper. A small, furry animal raced
through the trees and dashed in front of him. He thought it looked like a
rabbit, but it had a tail longer than a rat’s. The spider burst from under one
of the piles of bark, closed its jaws around the small animal, and snapped back
into its nest.

Burke
stopped and looked at all of the potential nests at the base of each tree. The
spider would have been taller than him if it stood upright on its back legs. It
had moved faster than his eyes could process, showing as a blur. Cass displayed
a stilled image of it that she had captured.

“Twelve
legs, not eight,” she said. “Not technically a spider. It definitely won’t be
able to get through the armor but it could knock you over and drag you down. It
might take us a while to get back out.”

He
started forward once more, giving each tree as much space as he could. He left
the forest without being attacked and stepped into another clearing. The map
showed on his visor that Copper was closer now. He could see a lake in the
distance, and the thick grass that he now stood in stretched all the way down
to it. There was a small, sturdy shack near the water that matched where
Copper’s position pinged on his display.

Burke
walked to it quickly. He knew that if he got to Copper before he could get to a
transport that he would have nowhere to go. Burke could run faster than a man
in his aegis, and his mark didn’t have the option of running into the lethal
forest without protection.