The Bounty Hunter: Soldier's Wrath (9 page)

“Six mercs about to get to
Kristen’s level,” Cass said.

Burke turned back to the stairwell
and broke into a run. He instructed Kristen before he tried to reload his
rifle.

“They’re going to get to you before
I can,” he said. “I need you to hold them from getting through your front door
until I can get there. Do you understand?”

Kristen nodded. Her face tensed
afterwards. She tightened her grip on the gun.

“Fire quickly at the door. Leave
only a second between each shot. Aim for the chest, not the head.”

“My dad taught me how to shoot.”

“I only need another minute to get
to you,” he said.

He dived down another flight of
stairs. He decided he was moving too fast to risk reloading his weapon. Cass
magnetized it to his chest plate and he moved faster down the stairs instead.
She displayed the other group in the elevator. They came to a stop more than
ten floors below Kristen’s level. Burke wondered at that as something like an
explosion came through the call in her apartment. He heard three shots before
the video feed abruptly cut off. A second later, Cass lost connection with the
rest of the cameras and the lights in the stairwell went dark.

“They cut power to the building,”
Cass said.

Burke stayed calm. He was less than
twenty seconds away from reaching the apartment. Cass changed the visor to
accommodate for the low level of light in the stairwell. He moved just as
quickly in the darkness. When he burst through the door onto Kristen’s level,
the light from the scattered corridor windows made it easier to see.

He hadn’t heard anyone come into
the stairwell below him. He knew that meant they were either still in her
apartment or had taken her to the other stairway on the other side of the
building. He saw three bodies in a heap on the floor outside Kristen’s
apartment. He stepped over them quickly and saw a fourth corpse in the living
room. She had managed to take four down before they got to her but she was
gone. Her gun was on the floor.

“Cass, we need eyes on the outside
of the building,” Burke rambled.

“I’m on it.”

He leaped over the other corpses
and raced to the other stairwell. He shouldered his way through the door and
heard footsteps far below him. Kristen wasn’t calling out; either she was gagged
or unconscious, he was confident they wouldn’t kill her. Not yet at least, he
thought, and gritted his teeth.

He dived down each set of stairs.
He placed a hand on the nearest wall after each fall, pressing himself off of
it with enough force that he left cracks in the concrete after he moved on. He
was gaining ground on the group below him and could hear the sounds of their
footsteps more clearly after he descended nine levels. At the next exit,
however, the door suddenly opened and the other group flooded into the
stairwell. They opened fire immediately and the barrage of bullets forced him
to stop and back away.

“Damage?” he barked. He wanted to
curse that the other squad was getting away.

“Minor. Armor piercing bullets but
low quality.”

“Can I engage?”

“Yes.”

Burke didn’t need to be told twice.
He turned and felt another wave of bullets smack into his armor. He jumped down
into the group and took no pleasure in the look of shock on their faces. He
triggered both the shield and the blade at the same time expecting his old
features of a blade in each arm. He used the shield as a weapon as much as he
did the blade, carving and smashing his way through the mercenaries. He stabbed
the blade through the chest of one woman and then turned, leading with the shield
and knocking a man cleanly off his feet and into the wall behind him. He
crashed head first into the solid wall and Burke didn’t stop to confirm the
kill. He turned and finished what remained of the group. There were trails of
smoke in front of his visor from the bullets that had landed on the chest of
the aegis.

“How far up are we?” he asked
quickly.

Cass quartered out the visor and
displayed the outside of the building. The two men that remained of the first
squad met with the other group and carried Kristen out onto the street. He
could see her struggling in their arms. There was a jet bike nearby and they
were strapping her to it. He had less than a minute.

“A little over fifty storeys,” Cass
answered.

“Can we take that fall?”

“Barely,” she said. “Yes,” she
said, more firmly.

Burke stepped away from the stairs
and into the floor of the building. He had missed one of the mercenaries—a
woman that had been hiding around the far corner. She opened fire at him as he
stepped into the hallway. He ignored her, keeping his shield out in front of
him as started into a slow run. He built up speed with long strides down the
hallway and to the far window. Half way there, he moved his legs faster until
he was hurtling himself down the hallway. A spray of bullets obliterated
themselves on the back of his armor as he broke through the window, leading
with the shield, and exited the building in a free fall.

For the first moment as he hung in
the air, he thought of his fall on Meidum. Then, the ground seemed to rocket up
to meet him faster than he thought was possible. He saw the cluster of
mercenaries around the base of the building. The greenery that had been so
pervasive throughout the city was seen in only a few trees near Kristen’s building.
He watched as he fell toward one of them, clipping through a few outer branches
before he slammed into the street under them. A wave of force shot out from his
armor as the kinetic barriers Cass had made released their energy. Dozens of
fault lines and fissures streaked out on the ground at his feet.

He stood up slowly, half expecting
to have another broken leg. He stepped forward and felt pain shoot up from his
left leg but not enough to be broken. He stepped again toward the mercenaries.
None had opened fire at him yet. They stared at him in disbelief. One recovered
faster than the others and began to shoot. The others followed his lead. Burke
raised the shield and charged into the group of them.

“Minor fractures in your leg,” Cass
explained, as if Burke wasn’t in the midst of a battle.

“Call Rylan. Tell him to follow the
bike.”

“Already done,” Cass answered.

Burke triggered the blade as he
punched forward into a man’s face. The blade shot through his head. He twisted
his arm again, reversing the direction of the blade so it projected from the
back of his elbow. He stabbed backward at another mercenary behind him. He
bashed another woman with the blunt end of the shield and then led against the
one behind her, jabbing out with the edge of the shield like it was another
blade. He moved forward toward the jet bike with each mercenary he sent to the
floor. He was a few steps from Kristen—he could see her clearly shifting in her
confines on the back of the bike—just when the vehicle took off into the air
and sped away down the street.

Sirens shrieked around the building
as the city’s authorities finally responded to the firefight that had broken
out. As if it was with them, Burke saw the Brisbane appear overhead and roar
passed them in the same direction as the jet bike. Cass changed part of Burke’s
view to interface with the ship. He saw Natalie and Rylan in the helm of the
Brisbane. He took off into another run, ignoring the pain in his left leg. He
needed to close the distance between him and the ship if they ever caught up
with the bike.

“Natalie, do you know how to
operate a ship’s weapon system?” he asked.

“Probably better than you do,” she
answered.

Behind him, he heard more sounds of
fighting as the police met what remained of the mercenaries. A few scattered
bullets came in his direction—some even hit and bounced harmlessly off his
armor. He kept running as fast as he could through the clean, bright streets of
Stheno. As long as he could see the Brisbane in the air above him, he kept
pressing himself to move faster.

“Don’t fire at them. You might hit
Kristen. They must be going for a ship. Look out for it. If you can disable
their ship before they reach it then we’ll have a good chance,” Burke said,
panting as he ran.

“Roger that,” Natalie said.

“You were in the military once?” Burke
asked.

“No,” she answered, too quickly.
Burke was too focused to notice.

He looked through his ship’s
visuals more than his own. The jet bike weaved between the streets, keeping low
to the ground and turning often as it made its way to the edge of the city.
Rylan twisted the ship effortlessly between buildings and never lost sight of
the bike for more than a second. More than once the bike turned abruptly and
the pilot banked the ship just as quickly to follow them. When they neared the
edge of the city, he put the ship into a dive as the jet bike ascended over the
rim that protected the city from the ocean waves around it. It was then that
Cass understood what was about to happen.

“Their ship is in the water,” she
said.

The small vessel broke through the
waves as if summoned by Cass’s words. Natalie fired a broad spread over the
ship from the Brisbane’s forward guns. The bullets erupted in a series of small
fires over the outer hull of the mercenary ship. More water sprayed and gushed
from the ocean from the bullets that missed their target. The vessel opened its
back door and the jet bike entered. Natalie readied another wave and locked a
missile on the ship.

“Only bullets!” Burke said quickly.
“If you blow it out of the air Kristen will go down with them. Rylan, are we
faster than that ship?”

“We are, Captain,” Rylan said
directly.

“Turn around and get me,” Burke
said. “If they get too far away then turn around and leave me.”

“They won’t,” Natalie said.

The ship turned around as Burke
neared the edge of the city. His leg was throbbing. He saw through the
Brisbane’s visuals as Natalie launched a missile at the mercenary vessel. He
was ready to cry out when the projectile flew over the other ship and exploded
above it, knocking it in place and down into the water as it was about to
ascend. She readied another one as Rylan lowered the ship down into Stheno and
blocked her line of sight. He whipped the vessel around and opened the front
doors as Burke readied the jump mechanism in his legs. He wanted to scream out
in pain as they released. He landed with a stifled groan instead on the floor
of the cargo hold. He stumbled forward and grasped uselessly at his injured
leg.

The doors closed behind him and the
ship turned back around. The mercenary ship had recovered and begun its ascent.
Rylan didn’t waste time compensating for the sudden lurch that came when he
activated Brisbane’s main thrusters. Burke stumbled again as they rocketed in
pursuit of the other ship. They were close behind them when they broke out of Frey’s
atmosphere.

* * *

Burke entered the helm. He tried to
keep his left leg straight.

“Geoff is calling you,” Cass said.

He looked ahead at the main screen.
The mercenary ship was still ahead of them. The glow of the planet from behind
them was fading as they flew away from it. A warning appeared on the screen:
large letters indicating a missile had been locked onto them. Burke barely saw
it before it was right in front of them and marveled at how quickly Rylan rolled
the ship out of the way, never once losing interior gravity.

“Fucking thing!” Rylan roared out.

Burke changed abruptly from
impressed to stunned. He had never heard the man curse so loudly. It seemed the
pilot lost his usual stoic calm when he was under pressure.

“Cass can you disable this fucking
warning?” Rylan called out.

“They go off for a reason,” Cass
replied.

A second warning covered the
screen, partially blocking the ship. Natalie sent a wide spray of fire in the
missile’s direction. The projectile exploded twenty meters in front of them.
The Brisbane cut right passed it and toward the enemy ship.

“I don’t need them! They get in my
way!” Rylan countered.

A third warning blared out. The
letters ceased half way through. Only the noise in the helm remained. Rylan
twisted the ship out of the way and surged forward, closing in on the other
vessel.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Geoff,” Cass repeated.

“Cut off communication,” Burke
said. “No need to worry the man.”

Cass nodded. Burke stepped forward
behind Natalie and looked over the weapon’s terminal. He was suddenly both restless
and furious, hit with every niggling doubt and worry he had been able to push
aside while down on the planet. On the ship, he was helpless and idle. He
pressed down on his injured leg, coaxing a fresh wave of pain from the damage
he had sustained. The stabbing pain emanated up through his thigh and then
settled into a burning sensation. He gritted his teeth.

“What do you want me to do?”
Natalie asked.

“Shooting at them is too risky now
that we’re in space. Their ship is too small and we don’t know what we’ll hit,”
Burke said.