The Bounty Hunter: Soldier's Wrath (8 page)

“Who are you and what have you done
with my Burke?” Cass said teasingly.

“Very funny,” he muttered. “If this
goes wrong it’s your fault.”

“I’ll take that deal,” she replied.
“If it goes right then it’s my success, too.”

Burke and Natalie remained on the
Brisbane. They enjoyed having the ship to themselves during the hours that
Rylan was gone each day. They spent most of their time in Burke’s quarters.
Cass focused on planning the next steps in reconstructing Lumen.

When Burke and Natalie ventured out
of his room, they went into the armory or the kitchen. Burke prepared the most
elaborate meals he had learned for Natalie, and the two ate together while they
looked over the video feeds Cass had maintained on Frey. They spoke often about
how to best contact Kristen when they reached the planet.  At the end of each
day, Burke called Geoff and tried to soothe the old man. He grew more restless
and agitated with each call, his mood worsening as his wounds healed. By the
time the jump carrier landed in the Tali system, he had removed the healing
wrap from the right side of his face. His flesh was still swollen but he looked
more like his usual self.

“Don’t let them take her Burke,”
Geoff said at the end of every call.

Frey was a few hours away from
where the jump gate was located in Tali. Burke became restless as they approached
the planet. He either paced around the armory, fussed over his guns, or stared
at the video feed on Natalie’s laptop. Nothing had happened to Kristen yet. She
had entered and left her apartment multiple times while they were traveling in
the jump carrier. He knew that whoever Paxton hired should have reached the
planet before they did. He had to admit that Geoff must have been right. It was
looking more likely that it was a trap intended to lure him out. It made him
feel even worse that Kristen was the bait.

An hour away from Frey, Burke began
putting on his aegis. Natalie helped him with the arm potions and then the
helmet. She guided him through the new interface options on the interior side
of the visor that displayed the status of the shield system. He twisted both of
his forearms and triggered the right arm’s blade and the left arm’s shield.
Something about the advanced versions of basic armaments appealed to him. He
liked that they didn’t rely on bullets or ammunition. Even if he lost his gun,
he would still be able to fight better than most.

“I installed the tracking launcher
two nights ago,” Natalie explained. “Cass can control that. The shield is all
yours, though. Do you like it?”

He raised his left arm and gave the
shield a few swings through the air. Despite being weightless, the shield still
caught the air in its path and he felt its resistance. The assisted strength of
the armor would give the shield enough force to knock someone over but likely
wouldn’t kill them. Tens of other uses quickly came to his mind and he grinned.

“I do. Thank you, Natalie.”

“Do you use everything else the
armor has?” she asked.

“We use the jump often,” he said.
“The blades, too. We don’t use the grapple line much. I use it to tie people up
more than anything else.”

“Oh really?” Natalie’s eyes widened
for a moment. Then she arched an eyebrow and smirked.

Burke laughed. He unsealed the
helmet’s face plate. He twisted his arms and retracted the shield and blades.
Then, carefully, he put his arms around Natalie and leaned down to kiss her—the
armor made him significantly taller than he would have been otherwise. She
looked at him strangely after the kiss.

“You’ve been fretting the past few
days and now, when you’re about to go down and fight, you’re suddenly calm,”
she said. “You don’t always make sense Mister Monrow.”

“This is the part I’m good at,” he
said. “On the way here I’m helpless. On the planet, I can actually do
something.”

When they reached Frey, Burke
looked down at the planet at the helm of the ship. From orbit, the surface of
the world was completely blue. It was his first time visiting the planet. It
reminded him of Earth.

“Is there anything I should know
before we go down there?” he asked.

Rylan shrugged. Cass hovered above
the podium in the room, prepared to recite anything she could find about the
planet in the encyclopedias she had access to. Natalie spoke first.

“Frey is an ocean world. There are
only rare, narrow strips of land above sea level where the planet’s tectonic
plates have pressed up against each other for long enough. On another planet
they might have been mountain ranges. Here, they’re the only land significant
enough to colonize.”

“Geoff mentioned three floating
cities. Are they stations in orbit?”

“No,” Natalie said. “They’re on the
water. Frey is one of the largest centres of scientific research outside of
ACU. The cities are highly advanced and are capable of moving slowly over the
ocean. There used to be a fourth city but it has since been submerged.”

“Submerged?” Burke asked.

“They lowered it to the ocean
floor. I think it anchors one of the other cities now. They’re linked and the
people travel between them. The cities aren’t very big.”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing I can think of. Cass?”
Natalie turned to the podium.

“The planet’s atmosphere is denser
than most others of its size. Less storms than you would think but those that
do form are very violent. Average temperature of thirty degrees Celsius in the
populated areas. There’s more moisture in the air but that’s to be expected.
It’s close to Earth’s gravity. We should be fine, Burke.”

He nodded.

“Take us down to Stheno, Rylan.
We’ll circle around the city once and then I’ll contact Kristen to tell her
we’re coming.”

“Still no movement around her
apartment,” Cass said. “I can’t tell if anyone else is watching it.”

“They are,” Burke said grimly. “I
guarantee it.”

Rylan brought the Brisbane slowly
into Frey’s atmosphere. He took more direct control of the vessel when they
were closer to the planet, compensating for the moment when the planet’s
gravity overpowered the ship’s artificial generators. Burke watched with
interest at the water below them. The ocean seemed to stretch out forever in
every direction. It reminded him of his flights over the Atlantic and Indian
oceans on Earth. It was strange, he thought, that an alien world could look so
similar to his home world.

They saw no signs of the natural land
formations that Natalie mentioned. Rylan flew them quickly toward Stheno and
made no detours to see anything else on the planet. The city was larger than
Burke expected for something that wasn’t constructed in space. From a distance,
it looked like a city that had been grown on a Petri dish on top of the water:
the white exterior of the city rose high around the rim of it, erecting a
barrier to stop water from flooding into the streets. Almost every building
stretched dozens of floors into the air—the highest of the lot clustered in the
middle of the city—but there was a tremendous amount of greenery and vegetation
that had been planted throughout every street. To Burke, the city had found a
unique balance between nature and industry, as if the settlement had been grown
on the water instead of built. He liked it.

The faceplate of his aegis was
still open. He looked at the ship’s main screen as Cass highlighted the
building that Kristen lived in. It was one of the tallest buildings in the
center of the city, well over a hundred storeys. They circled it from a
distance.

“We’ll go in from the roof,” Burke
said. “If all goes well, you can hover over the building while me and Cass go
down. We’ll bring Kristen back up with us. If things go badly, well,” the word
dragged out of him and ended in a sigh. “We’ll have to change things as we go.”

Cass zoomed in part of the screen
on Kristen’s apartment, half of the way up the building. Burke turned to the
other screens around the room as the video feeds were transmitted to them,
leaving Rylan to still have the main window to focus on flying the ship. Burke
couldn’t see any mercenaries waiting for him and knew that was a bad sign. If
Paxton had put as much time into his plan as Natalie suspected, it meant the
mercenaries he hired were very good at their jobs.

“Call Kristen,” Burke said. “Rylan,
get ready to fly us over the building as soon as she picks up. Remember, we’re
stepping into a trap.”

Burke walked to the terminal on the
left side of the room, usually reserved for the ship’s weapon systems. The
central screen changed from blue to black, then to the prompt that an outgoing
call was currently being transferred. He felt at the rifle magnetized to the
back of his armor as he waited for Kristen to answer. He knew that if the
mercenaries were monitoring the building that he’d only have a few minutes to
get to her.

Her face appeared on the screen.
She didn’t recognize him at first. When she did, her eyes widened happily. They
were as bright and blue as the ocean around the city. She smiled.

“Burke!”

Then, she frowned.

“What’s happened?” she asked.

“I’m going to be outside your door
in less than three minutes. I need you to be ready when I get there.”

“Is it dad? Is he dead?”

“No, he’s fine,” Burke said
quickly. “I’m here to make sure you are too.”

She had more questions. He watched
as they played out over her features. She turned away from her computer instead
of voicing them, knowing that she had little time. She had always been
intelligent, he remembered. Smarter than Geoff and that was saying something.

Burke turned to look through
Rylan’s screen. The ship was nearly over the building. He turned back when
Kristen returned. She had a loaded handgun in her hands.

“Should I meet you somewhere?” she
asked.

“No. I’ll come to you,” Burke said.
“Keep this channel open. Talk to me until I get down there.”

“Okay.”

“Burke,” Cass warned.

He turned to the podium. Cass’s
expression said all he needed to know. Natalie looked equally serious next to
her. He reached up and closed the faceplate. Cass transferred the call with
Kristen into a corner of the visor while she displayed the other video feeds.
There was a group of men and women, all armed, that had just entered the main
foyer of the building. Burke stepped quickly out of the room and to the back of
the ship.

* * *

The front doors of the Brisbane
opened before the vessel came to a complete stop. Burke ran the final few
meters and jumped onto the roof of the building below them. He looked back and
saw Rylan carefully adjusting the ship to be as close to the roof as possible
for when they returned. Burke looked at the video feeds on the inside on the
visor and saw that the group of mercenaries had split: Cass displayed half of
them in one of the elevators and the other half rushing up the stairs of the
building.

He stepped forward and felt the
bullet strike into his head before he heard it. The sound of the explosion came
later, barreling from one of the nearby buildings and where the sniper was
hiding. The bullet collided into the side of his helmet and streaked through
the outer layer of armor. The visor changed to a scarlet red, hissing a warning
of damage that he had sustained. He dived quickly forward as another shot
narrowly missed him. He didn’t waste time checking to see if the door on the
roof was unlocked or not. He jumped, put all of his weight into the door, and
broke through it as if it had been made of a paper.

“Are we hurt?” Burke asked. Cass
displayed an overview of the armor. She had softened the blow with a kinetic
barrier but not enough to prevent all damage.

“Burke?” Kristen answered. The call
was still active. He wanted to kick himself.

“I’m on my way. As fast as I can,”
he said.

He jumped down each flight of
stairs, not bothering to take individual steps. Kristen looked worried for a
moment and then composed herself. She checked the handgun she held and then
turned to face the door.

“These are the same people that
took me last time, aren’t they?” she asked.

“They are,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

He expected her to look afraid, or
to at least be angry with him. Instead, she looked suddenly wild and fierce at
the door. He admired her determination; it made him feel even worse for lying
to her. He hoped he would have been as brave if he was in her place.

Cass displayed another warning when
they were half way to Kristen’s floor. Two other groups had entered the
building. One stayed in the foyer while another was already in a second
elevator. The squad in the first elevator had ascended passed Kristen’s floor.
The group in the stairwell were closer to the girl than he was.

The elevator stopped on the floor
below Burke’s position. Cass changed his view to the camera in the corridor
below them as they rushed to the stairs. He reached back for his rifle in one
smooth, quick motion and wasted no time in waiting for them. He charged through
the door and ambushed the ambushers, firing indiscriminately at first to put
the group on the defensive. He aimed more carefully after they scrambled out of
his fire. There were only five of them and he killed four of them before his
first magazine ran out of bullets. He refused to waste any time reloading for
only one target. He marched forward, stomping over the bodies and triggered the
blade in his right arm. He took the bullets the last man standing fired at him,
ignoring the minor damage that he sustained as he kept on advancing. He stabbed
the man in the chest, twisted the blade to both ensure the kill and retract the
weapon.