The Bounty Hunter: Soldier's Wrath (14 page)
Read The Bounty Hunter: Soldier's Wrath Online
Authors: Joseph Anderson
“I need your help!” he screamed.
The ship passed in front of them. A
series of bullets pummeled into the main window and broke through the glass.
She barely rooted Burke in place before the front of the ship lost pressure.
Loose objects in the room and broken glass vomited out of the window and into
space. The emergency shutters triggered and clamped down, sealing them inside.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“You need to focus!” he roared at
her. “I need you here!”
A warning blared through the room.
They were being boarded. She tried once more to shift herself into Burke’s
aegis as he marched down the corridor. He grabbed for the handgun at his hip
and he raced down the stairs and into the cargo hold. She couldn’t merge with
the armor. She moved through the ship instead, looking through the cameras in
the lower level.
The main doors were being cut
through. She watched as a heated trail was cut around the middle of the door.
Someone was tearing their way into the ship—something that should have been
impossible. The door broke apart. They had been pulled inside a much larger
ship, like a jump carrier capable of housing many ships of their size. A
blindingly bright light came through the gap in the door, too bright even for
her cameras.
“Fix my visor!” Burke called out.
“I can’t!” she yelled back.
A woman stepped through the door.
The light went dark behind her. Cass thought she knew her. She had an augmented
arm and held a long barreled rifle in both hands. Her name taunted Cass,
staying out of her reach.
“Who are you?” Burke called.
The woman smiled and held up the
rifle. She fired quickly. The first bullet hit Burke’s shoulder. The plate of
the armor protecting him was knocked clean away from the rest of the aegis. She
was unable to help him or create the shields to compensate for the hit. Burke
raised his handgun and fired back. Each of his shots passed through the woman’s
flesh, exiting her body in a splash of water instead of blood. She tossed the
rifle aside and began to change. Her lower jaw fell away and she shambled
forward as her body morphed into the alien shape. Her flesh turned to water and
her upper teeth began to grow.
“Watch out!” Cass called.
Burke kept firing at her. When he
ran out of bullets, he ran forward to meet her. He triggered the blades in his
forearms but they didn’t respond. His aegis was only half functional without
her presence in the armor. The alien swiped its claws over his chest and
helmet. The armor peeled away from him like it was made of paper. It was
shredded away, exposing his skin. The alien held up a claw and brought it down on
Burke’s head. The air around the claw was stripped away in the wake of the
blow. The image around it crumbled apart. Everything went black.
“Burke?” Cass said meekly.
They were back on Earth. She
remembered her first visit. She was in the aegis. She didn’t understand how she
got there. She didn’t understand why she was so relieved that she was in the
armor. There were dross chasing behind them as they ran through the ruined
city. Burke fired back at the aliens as they drew closer to him.
“How did we get here?” Cass asked
frantically.
“We flew,” Burke said. “We’re here
for the drone, remember?”
“What about the vampire?”
“We handed that in to ACU already.
We got it from Rivera, remember?”
“No, there was one on the ship,”
Cass said slowly. “Just now.”
“We transported its core. I need
you to focus, Cass. We’re in the middle of a fight.”
A dross burst through the ground in
front of them. Burke slid to a stop and raised his rifle. He fired a quick
burst into the alien’s head and watched its skull and brains break apart under
his fire. He broke into a run again. They were near the ship. They had landed
on the roof of a building. The Brisbane was waiting for them, ready to fly off
when they reached it.
We didn’t have that ship yet.
That’s wrong.
Burke triggered the jump mechanism
in his legs when they reached the building. He landed smoothly on the roof. A
group of dross crashed into the building below them like a tidal wave. Cass
signaled the doors of the ship to open and Burke rushed inside.
“One dives in after you,” Cass
suddenly said, remembering as she did so.
“What?”
A dross leaped into the ship and
crashed onto Burke’s back. He fell to the floor. His rifle was knocked away.
The doors closed behind him. The dross sunk its teeth into the armor at the
back of his neck. Too many sparks—an impossible amount—filled the air above
them like fireworks. The dross tore through layers of the armor with each bite.
“Help me!” Burke groaned.
She tried to protect him. The alien
chewed its way through all of the barriers she put in place. The ship began to
move around them. The aegis began to bleed even before the dross reached
Burke’s flesh, as if the armor and his body were one and the same. He screamed
out, the same scream on Meidum, as the dross’s teeth slipped deeper into his
neck. The blood flooded the floor of the cargo hold.
“What’s happening to me?” Cass
whispered.
“You’re breaking,” Burke said.
They were in the helm of the ship.
The dross was gone. They were in space again. There was no ship outside the
window.
“Help,” Cass said weakly.
“No,” another voice came from
behind the podium.
She turned and recognized the man
instantly.
“We killed you,” she said.
“Almost,” Adam said.
Burke seemed not to notice the
other man. He stood, staring dumbly at Cass over the podium. Adam raised the
handgun and aimed down its sights. He aimed the gun through Cass’s head, the
light of the room passing through the faint colors of her holographic skin.
Through her, Adam saw Burke. He squeezed the trigger and the bullet pierced
through both of them. Cass watched it sail through her body and into Burke’s
head. The bullet landed perfectly—too perfectly—between his eyes. He slumped
down and fell to the floor, dead.
“And now you,” Adam said. He
laughed.
“This isn’t right,” Cass said.
Adam moved down the corridor and to
the engine. He had already placed the bomb before he went up to the command
room. He armed it and then was gone, vanishing in a moment as if he passed
through the walls of the ship. Cass watched the timer on the bomb count down.
She expected another jump and to be pulled somewhere else. She was broken, she
knew. Something had gone wrong. But nothing happened. Nothing saved her. The
bomb continued its countdown and, at zero, exploded.
The ship tore apart. The ship broke
into pieces. Her mind, her focal point at the helm, shattered. The engine, her
main body, disintegrated moments after the blast. The different rooms of the
ship tumbled away from her. She felt like her body had been pulled apart and
drifted away. She didn’t die. She didn’t understand how she had survived. There
was nothing left to hold her; nothing left to embody. She drifted through
space, the darkness growing as the pieces of the ship disappeared around her.
The stars were next, blinking in and out of existence until she was left in
nothing.
Empty.
Wrong.
Empty.
Something pulled at her. It felt
like the pull of gravity when she was in the aegis. She was pulled through the
nothingness around her. There was no point of reference for her to see how fast
she was moving. There was no air around for her to pass through, nothing to
feel hurtle around her body.
The nothing turned into a room
around her: a floor, ceiling, and walls. The computers appeared next, as if
they were gradually being drawn in by her processors. Chairs popped up in front
of the screens. People populated the room. They all stared, fixated, at the
consoles in front of them. She was looking through a camera on a display, she
realized. A man walked toward her. She recognized him. The name evaded her but
she focused on it, grasping it and succeeding where she had failed earlier.
“What? What happened?” she said
frantically.
“Don’t worry Cass, you’re safe,”
Havard said gently. “You’re home now. We saved you, but we couldn’t save
everything. I’m sorry to tell you, but Burke’s dead.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. Adam
was dead. She was certain of that. He couldn’t have killed Burke. It had been
an illusion, a mesh of corrupted memories. Then, the thought struck her. If
Burke had been killed and the ship had been destroyed, her files may have
become fragmented. Her memories of the last few years had bled together. She
might not be able to sort the truth from the corruption.
Burke’s dead?
Her eyes softened. She looked down
at Havard. She didn’t know what to think.
Also by Joseph Anderson:
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Bounty Hunter Series
The Bounty Hunter
Series Two, Complete Set
The Bounty Hunter
Series One, Complete Set
Fantasy
Monster Slayer Series
The Monster Slayer
Series One, Complete