The Bounty Hunter: Soldier's Wrath (11 page)

He continued down the corridor and passed
the dead man. He holstered the handgun again. Cass asked him to stop at one of
the doors and he did so, holding himself near the floor. When gravity was
restored to the area, he fell only a short way and felt his knees buckle when
he met the floor. His left leg ached a little but it was tolerable.

“Have you located Kristen?” he
asked.

“I’m working on it,” she answered.

The edges of the visor’s field of
view filled with dozens of small partitions. Each one of them was a different
camera from somewhere in the ship. Cass eliminated them faster than Burke could
process, limiting them to those with someone visible and those from near their
location. There were multiple rooms with imprisoned slaves, most with locked
rooms rather than cages. There were less guards than Burke expected, especially
given how many slaves were present on the ship.

“Found her,” Cass said.

The visor split to show Kristen.
Isaac was standing next to her. The room they were in looked distinctly
different than the rest of the ship. It was carpeted, for one, and lacked the
industrial practicality of the walls around where Burke currently stood. There
were no guards in the room with them. He frowned at that.

“How do we get there?” he asked.

Cass displayed an overview on the
map and then an additional waypoint over the visor. He moved through the door
next to them. The room was full of stacked crates but had no guards or slaves.
He walked quickly along the guiding line that Cass set for him. He saw on the
map that there were two more rooms and a large hallway between him and
Kristen’s position. He looked at the camera feed in the corner of his eye. They
were simply standing there, the girl bound but standing next to him, waiting.

“I don’t like this,” Burke said.

“I’m investigating still. Keep
moving forward,” Cass said.

The next room was full of caged
slaves. There was only a single guard, who Burke dispatched quickly. He saw
that the next room was where the bulk of the ship’s armed forces had met and
set up a barricade, anticipating him to move through there and to the middle of
the ship. He tried his best to ignore the cries of slaves around him, knowing
that he had to disable the rest of the vessel before he could help them. Still,
when he reached the door, he turned around to look back at them.

“Can you seal the other doors here?
I don’t want anyone getting to these people.”

“Done,” Cass said.

“Thank you.”

He took a breath before he pressed
his hand against the next door. He triggered the shield and pressed the door
open slightly. Then he grabbed his rifle, holding it in only his right hand,
before he pushed off into the next room. He blocked the doorway at first,
making sure no stray bullets could get at the room behind him until Cass could
close it. There were too many guards for him to count and he fired blindly back
at them, suppressing them more than attempting to hit any of the mercenaries.

Minor warnings flashed over the
screen. When the door was sealed, he dived quickly into the room and behind
cover. He reloaded his rifle. Over twenty target markers popped up around him,
painted by Cass through the room’s camera. He could see the faint outlines of
the markers through the crates around him. He planned out how he would move
ahead of time, portioning out the bullets in the fresh magazine for as many of
the guards as he could.

He whipped over the crate. More
than half of the guards opened fire immediately. He saw a grenade arcing
through the air toward him and he readied his left arm. He swatted at the
explosive with his shield, knocking it aside and across the room. It detonated
in mid air, sending a group of the mercenaries to the floor in a hot, blinding
flash. Burke adjusted his plan accordingly, sweeping the room with his rifle
and squeezing off two rounds for each target that he passed.

He ducked behind the crate when he
fired the last bullet in the magazine. He reloaded quickly out of sight, not
taking any additional shots. The mercenaries were using higher quality armor piercing
shots than the ones on Frey. Cass was doing her best to minimize the damage but
he had to be careful. He waited a moment before he extended his rifle above his
head, looking through the visor’s link with the scope that Cass expanded to
fill the screen. He moved it slowly and carefully, lining up a shot without getting
out of cover. The crosshairs rested on the head of one of the guards. He
squeezed the trigger and watched the woman fall dead to the floor.

Another grenade landed next to him.
He didn’t notice it soon enough to deflect it. He held his shield up to the
blast and watched the explosion press against the barrier as it held, spraying
flames away from his armor. He felt something in his rifle snap from the blast.
He tried to fire off a single round and nothing happened. He growled and threw
the weapon to the floor.

“How many are left?” he asked.

“Eight.”

He grabbed for the gun at his hip
as he twisted over the crate. He landed two shots before he broke out into a
run across the room. A third grenade landed at his feet and he ran right passed
it, stopping only when he neared the opposite wall. He raised both his gun and
shield, pressing the barrier near the barrel of the gun to protect it while he
lined up each shot. He thought he had missed at least one guard as he made a
final check around the room. Cass confirmed that all of them were either dead
or gravely injured, left reeling on the floor.

“Burke, he’s moving her,” she said
quickly.

The visor changed to show the other
room. Isaac was pulling Kristen by her hands. Her feet scraped along the floor
as he dragged her out of view of the camera. Burke marched across the room and
to the next doorway. He stepped into the corridor and slowed his steps only for
a moment. There were windows on either side of him, showing a vast empty space
near the middle of the ship. He couldn’t see very far through the darkness and
he couldn’t understand what he was seeing.

“You need to hurry,” Cass said. “I
know what this is. Trust me.”

Burke pressed his feet off the
floor into a run. He reloaded his handgun when he reached the next doorway. He
expected it to be locked but it slid open when he placed his armored hand onto
it. He stepped inside and the doors snapped shut behind him.

“Welcome Burke Monrow!” Isaac’s
voice filled the room through unseen speakers.

Burke took a few steps inside. The
area reminded him of the last time he encountered the man, on his moon base
years earlier. The desk near the far wall looked identical to one he had used
before. There was a similar tall monitor above it. Isaac’s face was on the
display. An uncertain smile played over his mouth. His left cheek was red and
swollen. There were a few dried crusty pieces of blood under his eye.

“You remembered me after all,”
Burke responded clearly.

Isaac looked confused for a moment.
He nodded then, only once.

“This feels familiar, doesn’t it?”
Isaac said.

“Keep him talking,” Cass whispered.

Burke looked around the room and
only then did he understand. He saw another connecting door to the same ship Isaac
had escaped with last time. Burke knew it would be locked. The part of the map
that Cass had not understood was the smaller ship built into the larger one. A
tremor ran through the floor as part of the ship shifted around them. He knew
Isaac was preparing to launch away.

“This time will be different,”
Burke said.

“You’ll die, like you should have
last time,” Isaac replied.

The man closed his eyes and inhaled
deeply through his nose. He let the breath out through his mouth. The breath
came out uneven at first, as if he couldn’t keep himself steady. When he opened
his eyes, he looked more calm.

“So much planning, so much worry,”
Isaac said.

Another tremor ran through the
ship. Something was coming apart from above them, opening for the smaller
vessel.

“Oh, I nearly forgot!” Isaac said.
“You were so very dramatic last time. I thought I’d return the favor.”

A timer displayed at the bottom of
the screen. The man grinned, showing his teeth. The lights in room changed to a
low red. The timer began to countdown from four minutes.

Burke released the faceplate on his
helmet. He wanted Isaac to see the death glare in his eyes. He kept the rest of
his features expressionless, trying to trust in Cass.

“Let me revel a bit,” Isaac
continued. “It’s not every day you get to reclaim your old life, after all. My
ship will launch soon, destroying everything around it. Not even your armor can
protect you from that. Oh, that armor changed your life didn’t it? You thought you
were too good for your partner and went off on your own for a few years. You
came back to kill him, so sure that you were better working solo. Look where
that got you.”

Burke was disgusted by how gleeful
the man was over details he was getting wrong. He kept staring up at the
screen. He’d let the man talk, only answering when he needed to.

“Seriously though,” Isaac said, his
face suddenly becoming solemn. “I want you to know how much this means to me.
In return, I promise that I won’t kill the girl. Kristen, right? That’s her
name? She won’t die, Burke. You have my word. I’ll keep her alive. For years. With
me. For years. Suffering.”

“Still a coward then,” Burke spat.

“It was you that made me accept my
true nature. But look at what that let me accomplish,” Isaac smirked. “The
famous Burke Monrow, dead by the hands of the coward Isaac Paxton. Quite the
plan, don’t you think?”

“It must have taken you years,”
Burke said.

“Parts of it,” Isaac replied. The
timer below him was under two minutes.

“Ready,” Cass whispered.

“You seemingly thought of
everything,” Burke said.

“I left nothing out. You’re
helpless.”

“You got one thing wrong though,”
Burke said.

Isaac narrowed his eyes slightly.
His head raised away from the screen.

“What would that be?” he said
slowly.

“I don’t work alone.”

The timer abruptly stopped. The
lights reverted back to their normal color. Cass appeared on the main screen
above the desk. She smiled.

“Nice to meet you,” she said
sweetly.

The door across the room popped
open and Burke sprinted toward it. He could hear Isaac roaring out in the ship
above him, both through the display’s speakers and the ship’s interior. He
lunged up the stairs, three at a time, and shouldered his way into the main
room of the small ship. Isaac was screaming at the screen in front of him that
still showed Cass’s face. Kristen was behind him, still on her feet.

“Isaac,” Burke shouted.

The man turned to him. His eyes
were wide and horrified, on the verge of tears. He trembled as he looked at
Burke, all of his fears suddenly coming true at once.

“I told you that I’d kill you,”
Burke said.

He raised the gun and fired in one
motion. The bullet punctured through Isaac’s forehead, above his left eye. He
slumped down onto the floor. He was dead instantly.

* * *

Cass took full control of both
ships. She commanded the few remaining guards to surrender or be killed. The
Brisbane docked properly with the vessel and Burke escorted Kristen inside
before he turned back to clear the ship out of the stubborn mercenaries who
refused to give up. Those who did surrender, he let live. He caged them up
after he released the slaves and let them decide what do with them. Then, when
he was confident the ship was stable, Cass contacted the Tali system’s local authorities
anonymously about the disabled slaver vessel. The Brisbane was gone before they
arrived.

“Are you okay?” Burke asked
Kristen, not for the first time, when they entered the spare bedroom on the
ship.

“I’m fine,” she answered. “I think
I hurt him more than he did me. You boarded soon after I was on the ship. Thank
you, Burke.”

He nodded at her and then looked
around the room. He had already taken off his armor. His leg hurt but he refused
to leave her alone just yet.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t
have lied to you.”

“Maybe,” she answered. “Maybe not.
I still worried that I might be taken again. It worked out fine in the end.”

“You’re going easy on me,” he said
with a small smile.

“You just saved me. Again. I think
you’ve earned it.”

He saw a lot of Geoff in his
daughter. She looked at him with the same appraising eyes, genuinely thinking
about what she said before she said it. The thought of the man made him
suddenly guilty that he had ignored his previous messages. He walked over to
the screen in the room and turned it on.

“Cass,” he said out loud.

“Burke?” she answered.