The Bounty Hunter: Reckoning
Read The Bounty Hunter: Reckoning Online
Authors: Joseph Anderson
The
Bounty Hunter – Reckoning
By
Joseph Anderson
The Bounty Hunter – Reckoning
All
Rights Reserved
Copyright
©
2012 by Joseph Anderson
Also by Joseph Anderson:
Bounty Hunter Series
The Bounty Hunter
Series Two, Complete Set
The Bounty Hunter
Series One, Complete Set
Author’s Note:
The
Bounty Hunter stories are a series of novellas. Each story is intended to be
self-contained, like an episode of a television series. Although some names and
references are made to prior events, each story can be enjoyed on its own.
If, however, you prefer to read things
in order, the series begins with
The Bounty Hunter
Series One
.
Thank
you for your time and I hope you enjoy the story.
Reckoning
Burke Monrow was unaware of the intruder on his
ship. He and Cass, his AI partner, had been docked inside a space station for
over a month. They were waiting on the delivery of their new ship, one they had
spent the last year saving for, and Burke was becoming impatient. He paced back
and forth at the helm and spoke with Cass.
“How long until it gets here?”
“Three days,” she answered tersely,
her voice emitting from the ship’s walls as fluidly as any person’s. “That’s
one less day than when you asked me yesterday.”
“I’m annoying you,” he stated.
“Only a little.”
He sat at the main computer console
and brought up the purchase invoice for the new ship. Over ten million credits,
nearly all of the money they had, was ready to be transferred once the ship
arrived. It would leave them with a meager amount left in savings but they had
managed to keep the current ship they used as a backup. They had disagreed
about that. They had disagreed about a lot of things when picking out the new
ship.
“We should still sell this one,”
Cass argued.
“And what if we crash? We should
always have a spare.”
“It will cost us a lot every month
to keep a second ship at port. We should save the money instead, and only buy
another ship if we ever need it.”
He shook his head. Cass huffed.
“Fine,” she conceded. “I still say
we should have included extra bedrooms in the ship’s layout. You don’t know
what we’ll need in the future.”
“We’ll never need those,” he said
firmly. “It’ll be just the two of us. No one else will ever step onto this ship
unless I have them in chains for a bounty.”
The intruder shifted silently in
the lower level of the ship, in the engine room. Burke didn’t hear a thing, and
Cass’s focus was solely on him. She had checked the ship’s doors when they last
re-entered the ship and had seen no record of unauthorized access. She felt as secure
as Burke did in their home.
The main screen at the helm
abruptly changed to display an incoming message. Burke sat up and straightened
his back before he accepted the connection. Havard’s face appeared on the
screen and he nodded a greeting to Burke. They had worked together many times
in the past but only twice in the last year; still, they had been the most
lucrative jobs of that time. Over a third of the cost of the new ship had come
from Havard and ACU, the branch of the human government that he ran.
“Another job already?” Burke asked
as he looked up at the screen.
“Actually, no. Something else.”
Burke tilted his head. Havard had
never been social and only ever contacted him about business. The abnormality
of it bothered him.
“I have a gift for you,” Havard
explained. “You recently ordered a new ship.” He immediately raised his hand as
if to halt Burke. “Please, don’t insult me by asking how I found out. The
delivery will be delayed by two days from now. I had something sent to the
shipyard and installed for you.”
“What is it?”
“A present,” Havard smiled. “You’ll
have to wait and see for yourself. Think of it as a token to commemorate us
once again working with each other toward common goals. Speaking of that, I
have a request. Do try to keep what I’ve said in mind.”
Burke braced himself. Nothing was
ever given freely from ACU. They were always equal in their transactions. He
had purchased both his power armor and Cass from their facilities, both at a
fair price. The fact that Havard had decided to break that trend set him on
edge.
“Last time we spoke,” Havard began,
“I offered to purchase back the AI we sold you.”
“The answer is still no,” Cass said
loudly.
“I have a new proposal,” Havard
continued, as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “I offered you six hundred million
credits and a replacement AI unit. Instead, one hundred million credits just
for a copy. A full copy of your ship’s systems to be sure we save every file of
the AI.”
Burke scrunched his eyes. He knew
how much Cass would be annoyed that Havard refused to use her name when he
addressed her. He tried to put himself into her position and didn’t envy her
decision. For all intents and purposes, the money being offered was free. A
copy would mean nothing was lost or taken for the payment. The only question
was how the copy would be treated and used, and if Cass could accept those
consequences.
“No,” she answered, and Burke knew
instantly that he agreed.
“Two hundred million,” Havard
offered. “Burke, see reason here.”
“It’s not my decision,” Burke said
and shook his head. “She’s her own person, Havard. The sooner you realize that
the sooner she might warm up to helping you.”
“No deal,” Cass repeated.
“Fine,” Havard said through his
teeth. “Fine. I’ll have to think of something else. Until next time, Burke.
And,” he hesitated, as if he loathed what he was about to say, “
Cass.
”
The connection abruptly ended and
Burke laughed.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever
seen him flustered,” he said.
“I don’t understand why he has
trouble using my name now,” Cass said quietly. “He used it before. Why the
change?”
“The name means something different
now. Before, it was just a label. Now, for him, it’s admitting that you’re a
person instead of a computer program. I don’t think he understands that.”
“Then I pity him.”
The connection to ACU was still
open even after Havard cut off the conversation. Burke stopped himself from
immediately severing it, wondering if he should use it to talk to Natalie. She
had been the technician that had taught him how to use the power armor he
purchased, and they had kept in contact for a time afterward. He had cut off
that contact since he decided to work alone with Cass, only dealing with others
when it was necessary. Cass had been pressuring him to talk to Natalie for
weeks.
He stretched out his hand and
killed the connection. The screen went blank and then went dark. The lights
around him followed suit and a loud noise shuddered from the ship below. The
monitors in the command room abruptly shut off as all power was lost. A dim
light came through the ship’s windows from inside the station, causing the
metallic surfaces to gleam in the dark. The ever-present sound of the ship’s
engine whirling power throughout the ship slowed and then stopped.
“Cass?”
Silence.
He grabbed the gun he kept hidden
under the command console and sprang to his feet. He turned to face the
consuming darkness of the ship and stepped toward it, leading with the barrel
of the gun. He felt naked and exposed without the protective layers of the
armor he wore outside of the ship. It had been years since he had been in a
fight without it and he was shocked by how vulnerable he felt. He pushed it
aside, concentrating on what he could hear as he stepped blindly forward.
The creaks of the ship were
magnified when there were no other sounds to mask them. The low humming of the
lights were gone. The ventilation systems, with their gentle roaring of air,
were dead. He felt hot without the air moving around him, as if his skin was
irritated. He heard someone’s footsteps in the darkness and whipped around,
firing two shots in their direction. He saw a person in the muzzle flashes of
the gun, with sprawling shadows behind them. He fired again in the direction
they had been running and saw nothing, only an empty corner of the ship.
He took another step and then heard
something again. He shot in its direction only to see one of his guns
clattering over the floor. It had been thrown across the room and he knew
immediately that he had been tricked. He spun around on his heels a moment too
late, turning to meet the fist that slammed across his face. He fired
instinctively, but he was too close to properly aim. He saw a flash of his
attacker’s face, their features lost in the shadows, before another punch
struck him.
He dropped the gun and lunged
forward, swinging his fists wildly into the dark. His attacks met only air and
he stumbled forward with the force he had committed into the swings. His
assailant seemed to suffer no loss of sight in the dark, dancing out of his
reach and grappling him from behind. He felt two more hits jolt into his back,
rattling against his kidneys and dropping him to his knees. He felt something
puncture his back then, two sharp prongs between his shoulder blades before a
stab of hot lightning surged through his body. His muscles spasmed
uncontrollably as the shock ran through him three more times. He felt paralyzed
but was conscious as he felt the hands around his legs, dragging him down
toward the jail cell of his own ship.
* * *
One Year Earlier.
Jess Richmond was the mechanic on
the smuggler ship Freedom, where she was worked like a slave. The captain kept
the ship in a sordid state, from the crumbling outer hull to the cramped,
interior quarters. The rest of the crew, a pilot and three other men, kept the
place in an almost broken mess and the engine was treated no differently. Jess
lived in the engine room, keeping the ship from falling to pieces more than she
did anything else. The captain refused nearly all of her requests for spare
parts since he learned she was talented enough to jury rig the ship together
from scrap they found during jobs. It was a mistake she had learned to regret
during the six months she had been living on the ship.
“We’ll be landing soon,” Captain
Marcus said after stepping into the engine room. “Make sure everything is
ready.”
He never knocked or gave any
warning when he came into the room. There were two doors into the engine room
and Jess kept both of them closed. She didn’t care if he ever caught her
changing or sleeping but she knew he didn’t know that, and it was the
inconsideration of it that bothered her.
“Am I coming with you?” she asked
curtly.
“No. We’re landing on a desert
planet. Named Meidum. I want you focused on the ship so we don’t get stuck down
there. I want to know about any damage we take while landing.”
Jess nodded once. The ship was kept
maintained at minimal standards and that meant entering any atmosphere was
risky. An arid planet would make for an easy landing but a treacherous lift
off. Sand had a bad habit of getting stuck everywhere if it was trudged in with
the crew, and she knew it would be.
“This is my last job Marc,” she
said before he turned to leave. “I thought you should know before we start
heading back to port. You can start to find a replacement while we travel.”
“Yeah, okay. That’s fine.”
“I expect to be paid my share for
all the jobs we’ve done. You’ve been behind on a few of those payments lately.”
“Yeah. Like I said, that’s fine.”
She narrowed her eyes and he
shifted under her stare; it was a miniscule movement, one that most people
would have missed. One of her eyes had been removed when she earned her
qualifications to repair starships. It was a necessary augmentation to identify
the hundreds of thousands of parts that could vary or be modified on different
ships, or when repairing the outer hull while drifting in space. A light wasn’t
always guaranteed when moving between systems and the artificial eye solved
that problem for good. She studied him with both her natural eye and augment
combined and saw him twitch.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “When I
said the same thing two months ago you begged me to stay on for a while
longer.”
“I’m sure,” he nodded his head
quickly, one too many times. “Did you add the new guy to the ship’s records
yet?”
“No. It’s just the five of us on
there still. Tell him to do it himself.”
“Ha!” Marcus laughed. “You’re still
angry at him? You almost took his head off with that arm of yours.”
She placed her left hand on the
cold surface of her right arm. It was the only other augmentation she had, from
her right shoulder down to her fingertips. It helped with her work but that
wasn’t the reason she had it. The new guy had been calling her “blondie” even
after she told him her name. After the third time, she had swung her right fist
into his face hard enough to knock him unconscious. It was the only time she
had ever seen someone knocked out in a fight, and she had seen a lot of fights.
“He wouldn’t have deserved that,”
Jess said. “The punch was punishment enough. He remembers my name now.”
“I can never remember his. Not that
it matters. Don’t bother adding him to the system.”
“You’re not keeping him on?”
“Something like that. So this is
your last job. Anything about the engine I should tell the new mechanic?”
“I’ll leave you a list,” she
smiled. “A very long list.”
Jess lingered in the engine room
for a few minutes before heading up to the helm. The ship’s hardware had never
been updated and had already been obsolete when it had been purchased. Despite
many requests for a diagnostic terminal for the engine room, she still had to
trek up to the command room to use its consoles to see the ship’s status. It
was one of the many reasons she had decided to leave when they docked at the
next station. Marcus’s recent decisions about work bothered her even more. The
crew was engaged in increasingly questionable jobs. She had no qualms about
smuggling illicit goods but she would have no part in dealing with slave
traders. She hoped that the current job wasn’t involved in that. She didn’t
want to have to fight before leaving the ship.