The Bounty Hunter: Soldier's Wrath (6 page)

“I missed you,” she whispered
softly, barely loud enough for him to hear.

She held him for a while, silently
running a hand through his hair, until he fell asleep.

* * *

Natalie walked across the bedroom
as quietly as she could. She turned back when she reached the door. There he
was, she thought, someone who used to be one of the most famous bounty hunters
in the galaxy, curled up on the bed and looking the most vulnerable she had
ever seen him. It felt like an ache in her chest to see him in such a state;
both for how much he had changed, and for how earnestly he has was trying to
better himself. She had only been told briefly what Jess Richmond had said to
him. Whatever it was, Natalie was thankful.

She turned the lights off and
opened the door in one quick, smooth motion so it didn’t make any noise. She
closed it similarly behind her and then stood in the main corridor of the ship.
Her hand felt instinctively for her tablet in her pocket and she felt a sudden
pang of guilt at the act. She pressed it aside.

The moving parts of the ship’s
engine were visible through the far doors to her right. The command room of the
ship was visible to her left. Rylan was no longer seated at the front chair and
she wondered at that. She had many things to do, installing the new hardware to
the Phalanx Ti Battle Aegis chief among them. She remembered well her first
meeting with Burke and teaching him how to use the armor, urging him to be
careful until the suit adapted to how he moved. Her thoughts were about to
drift back to that day when she felt her stomach growl. She couldn’t remember
when she last ate.

The ship’s kitchen was more robust than
the one in her apartment at ACU. She wanted to laugh at that: Burke and Cass
had only had the ship for a short time but it already felt homely and lived in.
In her home, she ate mostly dried packets of food that resulted in the minimal
amount of mess to clean up. On the Brisbane, she rummaged through a full
freezer and then fridge, finding more raw ingredients—meats, fruits, and
vegetables—than precooked meals. The food was packed tightly together in
separate boxes, ensuring that nothing would ever shift around and smash
together if the ship either lost gravity or took a direct hit from something.

She decided against cooking
something from base materials and chose one of the rare microwavable meals
hiding at the bottom of the freezer. She poured herself a glass of apple juice
from a large, resealable carton in the fridge.  When her meal was heated up,
she stabbed through the dull looking meat and vegetables with a fork and, when
she was satisfied with how hot it was, emptied the food onto a plate and
carried it into the meeting area adjacent to the kitchen.

Rylan was sitting alone at the
extended table. There was a wide screen display on the wall that was usually
set to current news and reports. The display was turned off, however, and Rylan
was sitting in the room in silence. She took the chair across from him. He
looked at her, opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He closed his eyes
and she watched them shift about in thought under his eyelids. When he opened
them again, he spoke quickly.

“What happens to me now?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

The pilot angled his head toward
her, looking impatient at her apparent stupidity. She thought his reaction was
funny but kept her face expressionless. She skewered a piece of soggy broccoli
with her fork and put it into her mouth. The vegetable was full of moisture
that was far hotter than she expected. It burned her tongue. She kept her face
plain, not reacting to the pain as she stared at him.

“When is Burke going to kill me?”
he asked.

“That depends,” she said.

“On what?”

“Well, he’ll only kill you if you
give him a reason to. It would have to be a good reason, too. Do you plan on
doing that any time soon?”

“No, but—”

“But nothing,” she said curtly.
“That man has hunted and arrested serial killers, giving them over to the
authorities instead of killing them. He gave the justice system its chance to
punish them. If it failed, which it sometimes did, he hunted them again and
kill them before they can hurt another person. Are you a serial killer, Rylan?”

“No, but—”

“Then I wouldn’t be too worried.”

The screen on the wall came to life
seemingly by itself. The screen was a uniform blue for a few seconds before it
switched to black. Cass appeared on the screen as a copy of her holographic
form over the podium in the command room. Despite the two-dimensional screen’s
capabilities at rendering her as more human, she retained her artificial look
and features. She looked like a human woman that was out of phase with her
surroundings, part of the light passing through her and adopting the shifting
colors of her skin. Parts of her face were purple and blue. Her eyes were
green, then black, then green again.

“We were going to tell you
eventually,” Cass said, knowing they’d accept she had been listening. She was
always monitoring the common areas of the ship. She restricted herself from the
private bedrooms unless it was a necessary interruption.

Rylan inhaled deeply and then let
the breath go in a loud huff. He raised a hand up to his head and held it
there.

“I’ve heard of Burke Monrow,” he
said finally.

Cass looked surprised. Natalie
forked another piece of broccoli.

“It was on the news. A lot,” he
continued. “Fought through a space station by himself and killed its owner.
Foras station, in Prime. Was that true?”

“He wasn’t by himself,” Cass raised
her chin. “But yes.”

“Did the man deserve it?”

“Yes,” Cass repeated.

Rylan set his hands down on the
table. Natalie thought he was an odd man. His voice was rarely raised or
lowered. He pronounced words in a peculiar way, often emphasizing each syllable
of longer words like they were a chain of smaller words. She couldn’t gauge how
intelligent he was just yet, but he was clearly uncomfortable dealing with
people. It made sense, she thought. He was a pilot that agreed to live on the
job flying a starship for months at a time. He must enjoy the seclusion.

“What choice do I have?” he asked
finally.

“None,” Natalie replied
practically. “You should believe us that Burke won’t hurt you without a reason.
Give him your trust and, eventually, you’ll get his in return. If he is going
to kill you—which he isn’t—then there’s no way you’re getting off this ship
before he does. Why not put your faith in him?”

Rylan’s eyes widened at her
example. She thought, for a moment, that she could judge his intelligence after
all and prepared herself for a follow-up explanation to calm him down. His eyes
softened, however, and he gave a quick nod. He drummed his fingers on the table
and seemed to understand despite still looking meek.

“I’m sorry you found out this way,”
Cass said.

Natalie finished her meal. She
carried her plate and glass into the kitchen and loaded them into the
dishwasher. Rylan walked through the room as she did so, wordlessly stepping
back into the corridor and toward the front of the ship. She walked in the
opposite direction, turning into the armory and looking over the battle aegis
for a moment. Then, she closed the door and looked for the crate of tools she
had left in the room when she first boarded the ship.

“Thank you for helping with Rylan,”
Cass said, only her voice entering the room. There was no screen in the armory.

“He’ll be okay,” Natalie said with
a smile. “Can you help me while I do this? Then I’ll go down to the engine room
and help you with Lumen.”

“Do you think we still should?”

“I think it’s worth a try. We have
time before we reach the jump gate. I’ll bring down my laptop and take over
watching Kristen. We’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Cass said.

Natalie opened the crate and pulled
out more than a dozen tools and devices. She cleared away one of the counters
of Burke’s handguns and rifles, and laid her tools out in a row in their place.
She dislodged the pieces of the aegis carefully: helmet and arms first, and
then the two halves of the chest piece. She left the leg standing in the middle
of the room.

There was a deceptively small
device that she used to connect to the left arm of the armor. It was the main
piece that she was installing new hardware on, and then some minor alterations
to the chest piece in order to sufficiently power the new shielding system. The
small device opened like a briefcase, revealing two sets of neatly coiled wires
inside. She unraveled both of the cords and attached them into matching sockets
on the interior of the arm. A small amount of power was sent into the arm piece
and she confirmed that it was working when the fingers and hands began to move
on their own, triggered by the device.

Satisfied that she had connected
everything properly, she sent a more complicated command through the device and
watched as the arm shifted in place on the floor. The interlocking plates of
the armor snapped out and away from each other, revealing three more layers of
protective metal and carbon that similarly unlocked from each other. Beneath
the fourth layer of armor plating, the initial circuitry of the suit was
exposed. She parted the wires and checked on the segmented pieces of the blade
in the arm. A charge was run through the blade when it was about to be used:
the different pieces would fuse together temporarily as they were projected out
of the armor. She cut through the wires and began removing them. When the way
was clear, she reached in with small clamps and tightened one around each part
of the blade.

“Looks more like surgery,” Cass
said.

Natalie nodded in agreement. She
left the clamps around the parts of the blades and went back to the counter.
She brushed her hair away from her face and saw that her hands had already
somehow been blackened by the grease around the arm’s blade. She set a few
tools down around the exposed arm: two retractors, and a hooked needle.

She worked with the hooked tool
first, sliding the thin piece of metal under the blade and then twisting it to
the side so that the hook caught on the underside of it. The tool was delicate
and could break easily. She used gentle movements in order to see if the blade
was loose enough to be wiggled out of place and then removed with the clamps.
The pieces that were more rigidly set in place required the retractors. She
slid them under the blade pieces and, with one hand on them and another on the
clamp, moved them in tandem until she had all of the blade sections free.

“Do you remember when you first
helped Burke with the armor?” Cass asked.

“Of course. I was flirting with him
and he was more interested in the aegis than with me. I had to fix that.”

Cass laughed. “I remember, you
didn’t tell him about me and I started talking to him when the suit sealed him
in. I guided him through moving slowly so he didn’t break anything. He thought
I was you! And that my voice just sounded different through the speakers.”

“He was very confused,” Natalie
nodded.

“And then I got to leave ACU,” Cass
said slowly. “When he removed my restrictions, I lost most of my memories until
that point. I’m glad I still remember when I first met him.”

Natalie braced herself for
questions that she knew were coming. There were a few minutes of silence. She
guessed Cass was thinking of how to voice them. She focused on the inner
workings of the arm. Some of the ejecting mechanisms for the blade could be
used for the shield prongs but not all of them. She started to remove them.

“Did you know that Havard offered
to buy me back?” Cass asked.

There it was, Natalie thought. She
stared into the arm, pretending to focus on it like some part of it was
puzzling her. She wanted to be honest with the AI but she knew she had to be
careful. For Cass’s sake more than anyone’s.

“Yes,” she said.

“He suddenly stopped. It bothers
me. He was so adamant about getting me back. Did something change?”

“Yes,” Natalie said.

“Did they fix the problem? Are
there more AIs like me now?”

Now there was a loaded question,
Natalie thought. She was knelt over the arm on the floor. She straightened her
back and looked up at the wall. She recognized where one of the ship’s cameras
was embedded. She wanted Cass to be able to see her clearly as she spoke.

“In a way,” Natalie said. The words
sounded hollow even to her. She continued: “ACU is a very strange place at the
moment. I only know some of what Havard is doing. I can’t tell you everything
Cass, but you’ll know more soon. I promise.”

“Should I be worried?”

“Not yet,” Natalie tried to smile
and couldn’t. “Not yet.”

She turned back to the arm on the
floor. She had a lot of work to do and she wanted to be finished before Burke
woke up. More than an hour passed before she had removed all of the excess
pieces from the arm. She retrieved the power pack from the crate of hardware
she brought: it was a long cylinder that had been designed to snugly fit into
the same chamber that the blade had occupied. Once installed, she sealed half
of the arm back up again. She triggered the device to lock the armor plates
back up closest to the elbow of the unit. The section next to the wrist was
still exposed.