The Bounty Hunter: Soldier's Wrath (10 page)

“Knocking them hard enough might
stall their engine,” Rylan called out, apparently listening in.

“Another missile near them?”
Natalie asked.

“Or I can ram them,” Rylan
responded.

“Try both,” Burke directed.

The Brisbane surged forward.
Natalie sent a missile out and Burke watched the projectile leave a thick trail
of exhaust matter as it rocketed forward and in front of the vessel. The
explosion was larger than the one the mercenary ship had sent at them. Rylan
worked in tandem with it, diving forward and crashing the bottom of the
Brisbane against the other vessel. A horrendous sound of scraping and tearing
metal was felt through the ship, vibrating through Burke’s legs and causing him
to wince. Then, the other ship tore away. He felt the floor underneath his feet
lurch suddenly.

“It should work eventually!” Rylan
protested.

They tried a second time. Once
again, Burke felt like his leg was coming apart. The pain ceased to be a
distraction and was becoming too much to ignore. Once again, the mercenary ship
broke away.

“Keep trying,” Burke said. “Cass, I
need your help in the armory.”

He walked as quickly as he could
through the main corridor of the ship. The enemy vessel must have shot at them
again because he felt the floor twist under his feet. Rylan must have barely
avoided the missile if the ship’s gravity shifted enough that Burke felt it. He
steadied himself and entered the armory. He placed his armored left hand over
his right forearm. He unlocked the panel there and the manual interface with
the aegis, something he hadn’t used in years. An opening emerged from the forearm
and he felt the bite of a needle pierce his arm from inside.

“Cass,” he said.

“You should have let me do that,”
she said.

“I need something for the leg.”

“You need to rest,” she countered.

“I don’t think I’m done yet. Even
if we stop the ship someone has to go over there and board it.”

Cass was quiet for a moment. Then
she directed him to the small box of medical supplies they kept in the lower
cabinet of the armory.

“Your blood pressure is fine.
There’s no bleeding,” Cass said quickly. “A low dose of morphine. I’ll monitor
it.”

Burke followed her orders. He
slotted the vial into the compartment in the armor and then sealed it up again.
He felt the needle retract from his arm and then stab into him again.

“What was that for?”

“You didn’t do it right,” she said
sweetly. “I told you, you should have let me do it.”

He felt the interior of the aegis
press against his arm more tightly. He clenched his right hand and then
released it. He didn’t feel any better.

“Captain,” Rylan’s voice filled the
room. “We need you up here.”

Burke’s leg felt a little better by
the time he reached the command room. He set his jaw forward when he saw why
the pilot had called him. A larger ship was stationary ahead of them, at least
five times the size as the Brisbane. He watched as the mercenary vessel sent
out a final missile and then docked inside the larger ship. Rylan pulled the
ship up and away from the missile and then settled them back down.

“That’s a slave ship. Cass, do you
recognize the class?” Burke asked.

“Yes,” she answered.

“We took one of these down before
we hired you,” he said to Rylan.

The pilot nodded. Parts of the
enemy vessel lit up with red target reticules, based around the rear engines of
the ship. Similarly, the larger ship’s guns flashed as a series of bullets
collided into the Brisbane. Cass displayed a real-time overview of their ship.
The armor they had paid so extravagantly for held against the enemy bullets.

“I’ll get us under their guns,”
Rylan said.

“I’ll help you with the missiles,”
Cass said to Natalie.

Burke held onto the podium. The
other ship was too big to fit into the display as they neared it. He recognized
the signs of the engines readying to power up and fly away. The target
reticules pinged once, twice, and then the missiles were launched.

“They build them too big and too
cheap,” Burke said.

The missiles crashed into the
ship’s engines and erupted in a blue and orange blaze. A further series of
explosions thundered throughout the rest of the ship. They weren’t close enough
to hear or feel the vibrations through the vacuum of space, but Burke’s
imagination seemed to fill in the sounds of those explosions for him.

“Cass,” he said.

“Shoot out their docking
platforms?” she said for him.

He nodded once. Rylan circled the
ship once more. A trio of missiles left the ship. Another series of explosions
collapsed the lower part of the slave ship.

“Take us in,” Burke said. “Make
sure the lower cargo hold is sealed off when I get down there.”

He grabbed for his rifle and held
it in his hands as he walked down the corridor, once again feeling like he was
in control.

Kristen was shoved forward by one
of the guards behind her. They had removed her restraints. She stumbled a few
steps but did not fall over. She didn’t want to give them the satisfaction.

“You look exactly how I don’t
remember you,” Isaac said with a sigh.

The man looked pathetic to her,
like he had been rehearsing the line for weeks to perfectly convey how little
he cared about her. He was nearly shaking when he spoke. She balled her right
hand into a fist and punched him across the face. He staggered back from the
blow, raised his hand like he expected to find blood, and then smacked her with
the back of his hand. He looked smugly at her, as if he expected that to be
enough to send her to the floor. She only took one step back from the slap and
then punched him again at the same side of his face. His skin went red but was
not broken.

“Restrain her! What am I paying you
for!” he shrieked at the two men behind him.

She felt a pair of arms come around
her chest. She didn’t bother to struggle. She felt like her chest was on fire.

A cat was brushing up against
Isaac’s legs. He seemed to ignore it. Even from a few steps away, Kristen could
hear the cat purring.

“I should have remembered how much
you struggled from the last time I, ah, had you,” Isaac smiled.

“I’m certain you do,” she spat
back. She made a show of biting her teeth together. Another reminder. She took
satisfaction out of how he instinctively grabbed for where she was sure she had
left a scar.

A strong vibration rumbled through
the floor of the ship. The cat scampered away. Then, a stronger blast shuddered
around them. The guards stumbled forward and Kristen broke free. She lunged at
Isaac for a third strike, bringing her fist across his face and finally
breaking skin. The cut split open below his left eye. Blood dribbled down his
cheek and the man screeched. The guards recovered and grabbed again. She felt
one of them slam a knee into her back.

“That was Burke, you know,” she
gasped from the pain around her spine.

“I know,” Isaac said, wiping the
blood from his face.

“He’s going to kill you no matter
what happens here.”

“He’ll try,” the man replied.

“He’s going to come on this ship
and march right in here.”

“Ah,” Isaac let the word hang
between them. He shook for a moment, caught between fear and excitement. “But
that’s exactly what I want him to do.”

* * *

The doors in the cargo hold closed
behind Burke as he entered the room. Cass displayed a verification that the
room was sealed off from the rest of the ship. She displayed a similar
notification that the aegis was sealed off from the outside air around it. She
ceased filtering in oxygen for Burke to breathe and supplied it from the
armor’s reserves.

The bottom doors in the cargo hold
expanded slowly. She magnetized the boots of the armor to the floor as the
cargo hold lost pressure as it was exposed to the space outside the ship. The
cargo containers, strapped securely down to the walls and floor, still rattled
for a moment around them until all of the air was removed from the lower level
of the ship. When Cass released the armor from the floor, Burke stepped forward
and felt like he was moving underwater.

He lowered himself slowly through
the lower doors. He grasped the rim of the opening with both hands and pushed himself
down into the wrecked docking platform. The fires of the resulting explosion
from their missiles had already been extinguished, as all of the air was sucked
out of the large room. He saw a few clustered pieces of destroyed shuttles that
were pressed around the Brisbane above him. There were only a few corpses
around the charred remains of the platform.

“Over there,” Cass directed.

Part of the far wall became
highlighted on his visor. The destroyed room was mostly dark and Cass did her
best to filter what light remained through the armor’s helmet. Burke pushed
himself away from his ship and down onto the floor below them. He felt his feet
latch onto the floor with each step, magnetized one at a time and allowing him to
move quickly despite the lack of gravity in the room. A few windows had managed
to remain intact around the edges of the room, displaying other rooms that
still held onto their artificial gravity and oxygen from the rest of the ship.
He didn’t see any people yet.

He made his way across the room,
often trudging around large chunks of shuttles that had apparently fused
themselves to the floor after the explosion. When he reached the far wall,
there were less debris and the floor was mostly clear. Cass continued to direct
him to the door a few paces to his left. The door was sealed closed. There was
a panel next to it that had survived the blast.

“I need a manual connection with
it,” she said.

He put his back to the wall and
stretched out his right hand to place it on the panel. He knew from experience
what was about to happen and he kept himself tight against the wall. The visor
in front of his eyes flashed as Cass connected to the larger ship’s systems.
She cycled through an outline of the entire vessel. It looked identical to the
other one they had boarded months earlier; however, Cass noticed something he
didn’t.

“There are some heavy modifications
in the middle of the ship,” she said.

“I don’t see them.”

“They’re hidden quite well. I’ll
have to go deeper into the network to find out. I’ll investigate while I try to
get access to their cameras. You can let go now. I have a link.”

Burke lowered his hand and pressed
it against the wall. He shifted his feet and found that they were already stuck
to the floor.

“Get ready,” she said.

The door opened. Something
immediately slammed into it and was stuck against the small opening. Air roared
out of the interior corridor as it was lost into space. The door opened wider
and the object was revealed to be a chair. He heard screams as several of the
ship’s guards came hurtling through the door after the chair, still shrieking
before they were sucked out into the vacuum that had claimed the platform.
Their screams soon stopped as all of the air left their lungs. He had seen
people die from exposure to space many times before. There were worse ways to
die, he thought, but not many.

Remnants of the fires were pulled
through the corridor as the air around them was lost. They puttered out as the
corridor lost all of its pressure. Burke waited another moment before he
stepped inside, pulling himself through the next area that had once again lost
gravity. The door closed behind him, prompted by Cass, and the ship’s outline
once again filled his view.

“It’s going to take me a few minutes
to convince the ship’s computer that it’s safe to restore life support here,”
she explained.

The corridor was brighter than the
docking platform, having not yet lost power. Burke saw movement as he passed
one of the connecting corridors. He quickly twisted his left arm and brought
the shield up to protect his face, mere seconds before a wave of bullets
crashed into the shield. At the end of the hall, there was a mercenary that had
been intelligent enough to put on a protective suit after the ship sustained
its hits. The suit was made of fabric and protected him only from exposure.
Burke kept his shield up, not willing to risk any shot that might puncture his
aegis. Even a small fissure could cause major problems.

Cass released his feet from the
floor and he pressed forward. The mercenary held his handgun in his right hand,
firing as he moved forward. He shifted his legs and free hand on the walls
around him, turning freely with the lack of gravity and making it difficult for
Burke to focus. He reached for the handgun in the hip compartment of his armor,
not the rifle at his back, and aimed carefully from behind the shield. He
twisted the barrier away and fired in the next instant, sending two bullets
into the mercenary that cut through the suit. He saw the fabric deflate around
the man and a rush of air and blood squirt out from the bullet holes he made.
He aimed a third shot at the man’s head. A mercenary that defended slavers or
not, he couldn’t bear to watch someone’s blood unravel out of them like that
while they were alive.