Every part of my body produced a dull ache as the armor brought my torso upright. Even though I was being supported, I was still changing my orientation to the planet’s gravity and my chest began to hurt. It wasn’t as bad as my leg, but I was noticing that none of my muscles were comfortable being moved after days of inactivity. I started to feel a little sick.
As if she could tell what was going on—and with her scanners, that very well may have been the case—Cass dislodged the faceplate and my visor rose up and out of my face. For the first time in over a week I was no longer sealed in with my own breath and sweat. I’m sure at any other time I would have found the planet’s air heavy and uncomfortable, but at that moment it was like taking a first cool breath after being in a stiflingly hot room for hours. It was refreshing.
“Okay. Done for now, Burke. How do you feel?”
“I’ve been better. I’ve been worse, too.”
“Good. We’re going to walk to the wreckage of the base. You’re going to get tired but you can’t sleep. You need to be conscious so you don’t accidentally move against the suit.”
“Okay,” I was starting to feel like a burden than a bounty hunter. I was growing suspicious about how bad my leg really was.
“We need to bring something with us.”
I felt something pop down at my belt and knew that Cass had released the grappling hook. I had to remind myself not to look down at it in case she moved the armor at the same time. I could do some major damage to my neck.
“I think I can manage this part, if you don’t mind.”
She hesitated for a moment and then spoke: “Of course, Burke. Go ahead.”
She released control over my right arm and I slowly moved it down to the hook. I gripped it in my hand and felt that part of it had broken off in the fall. It had previously had four sharp claws that could latch onto whatever it was thrown at. Two of them had snapped cleanly from the base of the hook and a third felt weakened. Cass walked us over to the corpse of the animal I shot and knelt us down. She did her best to minimize the movement of my right leg but I still had to stifle another scream.
I stabbed the animal in the throat and caught part of its spine with the single remaining claw. I tugged at it to make sure it was secure and then let go. When Cass resumed out movement again, I could feel the added weight of the body being dragged behind us. It would provide a decent amount of food, and I had to agree with her decision to wake me up when she did.
I had no idea exactly how far we had landed from the thieves’s base, but it took hours for us to reach it. The sky grew brighter with each passing minute, and Cass had been right that I was tired enough to sleep. I made it a point to not have to rely on her to wake me up. I may have been damaged, maybe irreparably so, but I was determined to maintain control of whatever I could and keep my dignity. It was a long walk to that base.
The sky was a bright, wispy blue when we reached our destination. The fires had long been extinguished and I saw that some of the bodies had been picked at by animals or burned in the fires. Adam hadn’t spared any explosives and all three of the buildings were ruined.
Cass and I spent some time searching the ruins for any clear areas. One of the two smaller buildings had fared better than the others and had been fortunate enough not to endure a direct hit. The nearby explosives had still damaged it enough that not all of its walls were standing, but half of the roof was still intact. We dragged the body of the animal into one of the far corners of the room that blocked it from the sun, and then settled ourselves down in the opposite corner in direct sunlight.
“We need the light for power, Burke. I’ll try to keep you comfortable but it may get a little warm in here,” Cass explained.
I felt the faceplate rejoin itself to the rest of the helmet and the suit locked itself in place, supporting me even better than before. I felt like I was elevated in midair, as if I was laying down but still upright at the same time. A faint rush of cool air filled the inside of the suit. I heard Cass say one more thing but I was already too far gone, fast asleep, and more worn out than I had ever been in my entire life.
* * *
A few days passed in a blur. Days, at least, as I viewed them. I slept away dozens of hours and the sun was still in the sky and showed no signs of nearing the horizon. Time was without meaning for me during those days, and I moved awkwardly and slowly when Cass granted me limited control of the armor. My right leg was kept rigid the entire time and felt more like a crutch than a usable leg. She refused to allow me control of that limb and, even though I couldn’t blame her, it was still frustrating.
We discovered what parts of the suit were damaged over those first days. I had to laugh when I found that the blades that ran down the length of the armor’s forearms were broken in a different order than my actual arms. My left arm had a usable blade, while the right blade in my intact arm spilled out of its sheath in shattered pieces. I collected them and put them aside for later use. Something sharp would not be easily found alone on an uninhabited world.
The suit’s communication systems were broken, not that it would have mattered much on a planet as large as the one we were stranded on. I suspected that there must have been more than one base built here for other thieves and outcasts but they would be impossible to find without knowing where they were in advance.
Cass told me that the visor should stay operational despite the cracks. I almost told her that it didn’t matter if there was no combat in the future, but I stopped myself. Despite how bleak my situation looked I kept reminding myself to stay positive. For all I knew Adam assumed I was dead and I could ambush him if he came to claim my body. Maybe the thieves had a second group that shared the base.
On the worst days, when I couldn’t convince myself that there was hope, I pushed aside all thoughts and focused solely on survival.
We rounded up all of the bodies of the dead thieves after a few days of resting. We rifled through their pockets and made a small pile of everything useful. We found a little food and water, which Cass took it upon herself to ration out to me. I conceded to that since she could stretch it out as long as possible when used in tandem with whatever scarce supplies the suit still had.
Each thief had a weapon and a small stash of ammunition along with the occasional grenade. They were separated out into a different pile. Several had had communication devices that were rendered useless when the main base had been destroyed. Still, I knew that I could use them for salvage along with the other odd pieces of electronics I found on their bodies. Some had alcohol, which I had no practical use for but kept anyway despite Cass’s objections.
I was lucky enough to find a cooking plate on one of the men. Cass was confident that she could power it if we found a way to connect it to the suit’s power supply. With all of the electronics that I could potentially scavenge from I now had a way to prepare the meat that we had dragged to the base with us.
The men had been laying in their own filth for almost two weeks and had been gnawed at by whatever animals came out during the night. There weren’t many pieces of clothing that weren’t soiled from that time but I removed what I thought was useful. When I was finished I used the grappling hook to drag each corpse away from the base. I made a mental note to bury them when I felt strong enough to do so.
Back in our makeshift shelter I spent a few hours working on the largest piece of the broken blade that came out of my right arm. I scraped one end of the blade along a wall to roughen it to the extent that I could hold it with risking any damage to the armor. I then tore up one of the shirts I had taken from the thieves and wrapped the strips of cloth around the dulled edge to act as a handle.
I used my new tool to carve and gut the dead rat creature. There was not very much meat on its bones, and it was slow, awkward work with one of my arms broken and the other holding the blade. Cass only allowed me minimal movement of my bad arm and it was delegated to holding the body down while I cut into it.
The most intact pieces
of electronics that I had kept were broken open and I yanked the largest pieces of wires out of them that I could find. Cass guided me in connecting the wires with the cooking plate and the suit’s circuits, and we managed to get a current flowing into the device. She warned me that generating heat would be particularly draining on the suit’s power reserves and that we could probably only do this during the day.
The meat was cooked and Cass allowed me to eat as much of it as I wanted, as neither of us were sure how long it would keep before spoiling. She did remind me to eat it slowly, which was difficult after not actively consuming food for days. I barely tasted the meat, which was probably a blessing considering how bad it looked. I settled down to sleep with a full stomach and slightly raised spirits. It wasn’t the worst day I had had since being left on the planet.
Days passed until the sun was looking to finally set. The base was fully picked clean and I had nothing to do but heal and rest. I tried to move as much as possible and was gradually regaining my mobility and strength. I knew that it would be months before my bones would fully heal but I was already able to move my left arm without wanting to scream in pain.
“Night on this planet will be just as long as its day cycle, Burke. Almost a week of standard time,” Cass explained when we were in the last few hours of twilight. “I won’t be able to convert any more power without sunlight. We’ll have to conserve as much as possible but we still need to get you up and moving so you don’t lose the progress you’ve made healing. When we’re not doing that, you should try to sleep, or not to move.”
“I understand.”
“And Burke,” Cass added. “You may want to pick out the best handgun and keep it loaded. I don’t know how many of those creatures might come out looking for food.”
Night began and was initially without event. We got up and I stretched and exercised my body three times a day—as much as we could call it a day. It was lonely without Cass to talk to but it was a relief to finally be out of the blistering heat. The temperature built and fed into itself day after day without a sunset. I suspected the opposite would happen at night and it was only when the surface cooled enough that the animals ventured out.
In the stretches of time when Cass was powered down and I couldn’t sleep, I found myself bitterly going over the events that had led me here. I had trusted Adam with my life more times than I could count, and he had trusted me. It was a rare thing, I remembered being told, to find a bounty hunter that didn’t work alone. I found myself in a foul, dark mood when I reflected on that knowledge, and how I finally understood why that was the case.
On other days, I strained my memory and mind to think of possible reasons why Adam would turn on me. Each time I would start my thinking session hopeful that there must be something I was missing, or someone that was making Adam do things against his will. Maybe an old rival that we cut out on a bounty, or someone seeking revenge for a mark we killed, had forced Adam to turn on me. Each time I ended my thoughts with a pathetic laugh, knowing that it was unlikely and that I was being naive. It was too big of a coincidence that it happened during the highest paying job we’d ever had. He had turned on me for the money.
It was during the last stretch of night that I found myself the most depressed, certain that my life could not stoop any lower. That was when the crawlers came.
“Burke.”
I opened my eyes and saw that Cass had sealed the faceplate and activated the visor. I tried to look passed the cracks along the display and out at whatever had caused her to wake me. I was slumped down in the far corner of the room facing out of the broken wall that I was using for an entrance. Through the ruins I was able to count four of the animals, the same as the one I had killed before.
I felt for the handgun I had kept at my hip whenever I went to sleep. I knew better than to fire at them from this range, especially when I wasn’t sure if they had noticed me yet. They were probably drawn to this area due to whatever smells the bodies of the thieves were giving off, and I cursed my damaged body for not allowing me to bury them yet.
A screech came from the group of animals that made my skin crawl. One of them had fallen over dead but I couldn’t see what had caused it. Their scream was chillingly close to that of a human’s and it unsettled me. I gripped the gun more firmly.
“Cass, something is going on out there. Is the night vision still functional on the visor?”
“I think so, Burke. One moment.”
The screen flashed brightly, too brightly, and I was forced to close my eyes. I could see the glow through my eyelids as a dull red, the light becoming colored as it passed through the thin skin. When I saw that it dimmed, I opened my eyes again to find half of the visor displaying in the green tone of night vision. The other half, the side with the hole in the helmet, was the standard display.
“Sorry,” Cass said. “Half of it is broken.”
The animals looked more alien and frightening in the night vision. Their fur was a dark green, almost black, and their eyes shone eerily white. The three of them were crowded around the dead one in a protective circle, with their backs to the fallen animal. I saw something skitter quickly on the sand around them. Whatever it was, it was hard to see even with the low-light vision active.
A burst of sand suddenly spewed out of the surface. I saw movement amongst the spray of sand, and when it finally cleared I saw a cluster of what looked like spiders. They were about half the size of the rat animals they appeared to be hunting, and crawled rapidly over the sand on more legs than I could count. Far more than any spider I had ever seen.
Another shriek came from the group. I found myself afraid for one of the first times in my life. I had faced down alien infestations in my time as a soldier, fending off more waves of outnumbering masses on missions that I wasn’t even expected to survive. As a mercenary I had killed over a hundred marks without fear. As a bounty hunter I had been sent to retrieve the most prized parts of the most dangerous and exotic alien monsters known to the galaxy. And now, crippled and alone with only half of my body still working, I was scared. I had never felt more unprepared.
“Burke, you have that look on your face.”
“What look?”
“The look you get when you’re unsure of something. What are you thinking?”
“Get us upright.”
Cass responded as quickly as she could, considering how careful she had to be with my right leg. I kept my eyes fixated on the hunted animals outside of our shelter. Another one had fallen and the remaining two were backing away from the dozen or so crawlers, hissing and grunting as they did so. The crawlers seemed unperturbed, and kept on with a steady advance, shuffling over one another as they hunted as a collective.
When I was properly on my feet, Cass transferred control to me of everything except my legs. She steadied us and I stretched my upper body, moving everything I could except for my broken left arm. I could get some restricted movement out of it as long as I kept it straight, but nowhere near enough to operate a firearm. I raised the gun in my right hand and kept it as steady as I could considering I had only one arm to support it.
I’m still not sure if the crawlers heard me or saw me as I stood up, but it wasn’t long after I had my gun raised that they changed their target. At first I thought they were satisfied with two kills of the rat animals to feed on and moved back to the bodies. The two living creatures retreated out of sight, and I was left watching the crawlers writhe over to their prize; however, they did not feed and instead burrowed back into the sand.
A few tense moments passed during which I was unsure whether to back down and relax, or to stay vigilant for the remainder of the night now that it was cool enough for the aliens to come out. I knew that we were nearing the end of the planet’s night cycle, and it was a short enough time that I could stay awake.
I was about to ask Cass to set us down again when I heard something in the sand. The same kind of screech that I had heard earlier came first, and I was realized with a dea
thly chill that it was the crawlers that made that noise, not the rats. A mass of the crawlers erupted out of the sand near the entrance to our building and moved so smoothly toward me that it first appeared to be one single creature.
I raised my arm up and aimed into the middle of the crawlers. A single bullet pierced into the heart of the group and the combined mass of them scattered in all directions, torn apart like a shadow when shined on with a flashlight. On the ground where they had stood was the corpse of a single crawler that my bullet had hit, killed too abruptly to scream. A greenish yellow substance was leaking out of it and onto the floor.
I became immediately aware of the noises around me. The planet was usually spookily quiet, with very little wind or other natural sounds. The crawlers invaded now in that silence, and the sound of their legs was magnified. They moved along the concrete walls and floor, creating dozens of clicks and clacks, almost like a hard rain falling on a thin sheet of plastic or metal. It sounded like they were everywhere, all around me, and with a shudder I realized that it was because they were.
“I need the rear display on my visor, Cass,” I said quickly, while my eyes frantically darted around for a target.
“It was broken in the fall. Non-operational.”
“Fuck!”
I saw one of the crawlers out of the corner of my eye and twisted my right arm for the shot. The bullet cascaded through its body and it exploded in a green mess against the wall. I saw another to my left but it was gone by the time I turned with my gun. Without free use of my legs I was slow, and the contrast of the broken display in front of me wreaked havoc on my aim.
The sensation of something tapping its way up my left leg snapped at my attention like a thunder bolt. I turned my body rapidly to point my gun down at where I felt the crawler, and shot twice at it. The first shot missed, but the second hit it well enough to carry it cleanly off my leg and into the floor.
Bounty Hunter 1: The Bounty Hunter's Revenge Page 3
