Bounty's Call

by Max Jager

  They had almost worked their way back through the loop when Jameson heard movement. He quickly ducked behind a corner, Arkus obediently behind him. Someone had walked through a doorway further up the corridor, around a bend in the tunnel. Jameson couldn't hear footsteps, but whoever they were, they couldn't keep the automatic doors from being totally silent.

  Jameson clicked his tongue, activating a proximity sensor on his HUD. It reached out, using a variety of motion detection, audio and electromagnetic analysis, and, when it could, environment input from local systems such as Arkus's home grid laid out through the tunnels. It didn't paint much of a picture, but it told Jameson that someone was close by, probably on the other side of the wall at the end of the corridor.

  No one else seemed to be nearby.

  "Wait here," Jameson whispered to Arkus.

  Arkus shook his head no, moving closer to Jameson.

  "I need to eliminate whoever is up ahead before we can keep moving."

  Arkus hesitated, still uncertain about which option was the safer of the two. Jameson moved forward, leaving the middle aged man in his confusion. Hopefully that would keep him quiet for the next little while.

  Jameson slipped up and around the next corner, pausing at a closed doorway. His proximity sensory had an eighty percent margin for error that one of the SpecOp soldiers was in the next chamber. The problem was that he couldn't get any actionable Intel on the chamber beyond; there weren't any systems or blueprints he could hack immediately.

  Slipping the door open a tad, Jameson peered inside to find a maze of crates dominating the scene.

  Then the distinct sound of a firearm cocking caught his ears and Jameson dove off to the side. As his body collided with the ground, the door blew apart from concentrated pulse-rifle bursts. Jameson quickly scrambled to his feet, ducking around the corner and drawing his own pulse rifle.

  As he retreated, a figure emerged, covered from head to toe in black tactical body gear and armor. It was thin, adhering skintight to the soldier's body, leaving them more room to move about and interact with their environment—unlike the bulky armor worn by most soldiers in the Fleet. It was also laced with the most advanced battlefield equipment that could be crammed onto such a small space. Jameson recognized it.

  It was common among Gibraltar Special Operations soldiers.

  Judging by the curvaceous figure of this particular SpecOps soldier, it was a woman, and she didn't waste any time tracking Jameson's retreat and opening fire.

  Jameson swore again, retreating further down the corridor. Only it was the wrong corridor. He wasn't headed back towards where he had left Arkus, but back up the loop towards the staircase down from the manor. Though as he frantically made his way forward, ducking behind walls and crates for cover, he was beginning to realize this was probably the best way to go.

  At least he was leading her away from Arkus.

  Jameson fired off several bursts of his own, but all of his shots went wild. Miss SpecOps was too quick and aggressive to give him the time needed to sight up better shots. She also had better weaponry, her pulse rifle not overheating as his would have if he kept firing it this long and concentrated.

  It was time to end this fight.

  Loosening a stun grenade from his arsenal, Jameson primed it and then set it offhandedly on a crate as he passed by. Then he ducked around a corner and killed his HUD exterior view. He winced as a powerful burst of sound and light flushed through the tunnel, some of it still managing to leak into his sealed helmet and faceplate.

  When it ended, he leapt up, his pulse rifle set to low stun, and laid down a wide spread. His opponent hadn't expected both tactics and was soon lying flat on her back in a daze.

  Jameson quickly kicked aside her rifle and cuffed her. Then he spun her around on her belly, pinning her sharply with one knee against the base of her skull. She wouldn't be dazed for long, but when she finally got her strength back, Jameson knew a move that would incapacitate her.

  But he needed some questions answered before it came time for that.

  It took a bit of work to remove her head gear. It wasn't a bulky true helmet like his own, but it was locked down tightly with the rest of her tactical suite. Getting it free, he grabbed her chin, forcing her to look up at him sideways. She was still wincing and groaning from the stun grenade.

  "What the hell is Gibraltar doing sending you grunts in after Arkus?!"

  Jameson saw something flash across her face briefly. She tried to cover it up by feigning disorientation from the stun. All it took was a little more pressure from Jameson's knee to get her to snap out of it.

  "The traitor was mine!" Jameson growled. "Why did the Fleet send you in to finish him?!"

  The woman set her jaw, glaring up at Jameson with one angry blue eye.

  "If you're Fleet, too," she began in a low tone, "then you're in for some serious repercussions, soldier."

  Jameson pushed his knee forward the rest of the way, knocking her unconscious. He didn't have time for her to play chain of command with him. Not when she had already done a fine job of distracting him from Arkus.

  Leaping to his feet, Jameson hurried back the way he had come, passing the burnt walls and destroyed crates from Miss SpecOps trying to kill him. By the time he passed the shattered doorway, he knew he was too late.

  A thick, oozing puddle of blood was creeping down the corridor from around the corner where Jameson had left Arkus. There wasn't a body waiting for him; just a whole lot more blood. He wasn't sure how, but Jameson had heard tells of how Gibraltar SpecOps could drain a man of all his blood in mere moments. It had always seemed a bit of a folklore tossed about for the sake of embellishing the SpecOps. But looking at the puddle now, Jameson wasn't sure it was embellishment.

  Wherever they had run off with Arkus, he definitely wasn't alive.

  "Oh my—" Madeira sounded sick on her end of the comm link.

  "They had to kill him," Mathison grumbled. "Oh…oh this is great. Sat imagery shows they're heading back for their pods."

  Jameson shook his head. "I wasn't even worth their trouble."

  Heading back up the loop and towards the manor, Jameson found that Miss SpecOps was gone as well. He had to give them credit; they were efficient and didn't waste time.

  "We should have listened to him," Madeira whispered, her tone making her sound pale through the comm. "He knew they were coming for him. We should have gotten him out of there."

  "It doesn't matter," Jameson grunted, making his way out from the manor and down to his shuttle. "Whether or not Arkus had any real dirt on Gibraltar is an issue for another time. We have to keep on after Axus."

  "Well,"Mathison began, "I hate to use the phrase dead men tell no tales, but we don't have any other leads at the moment."

  "We have one," Jameson said, climbing up and into the cockpit of his shuttle. A moment later the engines were whining to life, the navigation system already plotting a quick route back up to the Crimson.

  "And what is that?" said Madeira.

  The one place that Jameson hadn't considered visiting in the six years it had become such an important place.

  "Kraven."

  Axus

  Chapter 21

  Axus

  * * *

  The Expanse

  En Route to Kraven Star System

  * * *

  Jameson stood with folded arms, watching from across the gym.

  Stripped down to her pale white kadvair, Madeira swung and dipped around several holographic opponents. While she was getting the form down for Likuji, she wasn't putting enough strength behind her lunges. Still, she looked to be enjoying herself.

  Jameson contained a chuckle as she spun around in the air, delivering a swift kick to one of the holographic opponents. It was pre-programmed to respond to most movement, and, true to its nature, stumbled from the attack. But it didn't go down. Madeira spun around again, blinking at her still standing opponent. It limped forward, trying to regain its posture. Made
ira finally finished it off with a kill move to the neck.

  "Are you laughing at me?" she grunted, turning back to newly generated opponents.

  Jameson coughed, covering the laughter. "Of course not."

  Madeira glanced his way, smiling sarcastically. Then she returned to her fighting, sweat glistening down her face.

  For a mermaid, she was pretty agile on land legs.

  Jameson continued to watch her, suddenly aware of how contented he felt at the moment. It felt weird, now that he noticed it.

  He hadn't really felt this way in a long time.

  The last few weeks had reopened a lot of painful wounds for him. In a lot of ways, Jameson felt as if he was reliving the events at Peacemaker all over again. And in truth, it wasn't just what Axus had done to him that made the wounds so painful. It was remembering how happy he had been.

  Maybe that was why the contentment now felt so strange. He hadn't felt that way in the last four years he had spent hunting the Fleet traitors. Really, he had forgotten what it felt like to be this way. Part of him didn't like it; it reminded him too much of what he had lost.

  Part of him was relieved he could ever feel this way again.

  "Just got those updates you wanted," Mathison chimed in over the gymnasium stereo.

  "Can't it wait?" Madeira grunted between lunges.

  "Let me check it out on a monitor," Jameson said, glancing at a wall screen near where he stood.

  The files appeared; the imagery was eerily familiar.

  For nearly three years, Jameson and all of his friends in the Eighth Flotilla had studied Kraven extensively. Jameson could still remember the names of the outlying planets and dwarf planets in the Kraven Star System. He remembered the major population centers across Kraven, as well as the important Space Habitats. He remembered all of the planning and details they sought out about this single star system, all for the ultimate battle plan.

  In a lot of ways, Jameson felt as though he had long known Kraven before this day. He and his friends had studied it so intimately; had come to know the simple things like the climate in the main staging areas where they would probably work planetside. There was a major city there that had near perfect subtropical weather. A textbook paradise for a quick getaway if he ever got tired of operations in orbit. Jameson could have stated by memory at one time every supply line and ship position they had planned across this system.

  Now it looked like a completely foreign world.

  The Kraven Jameson had come to know was an academic place; somewhere they might have to go if the war turned hot. Somewhere that had specific dimension and depth to where every ship and weapon would be positioned in a battle situation. That's the only way Jameson had been trained to think of this star system; a strategic piece of space in a decisive war.

  That was a Kraven Jameson could never see again. Now all he saw was a world of mystery, with simple folks and possibly clues as to where Axus had gotten off to. Jameson couldn't help but remember Arkus's last words. Could insurgents from this planet have struck out against the Fleet to prevent war from crossing over into the Expanse?

  Madeira was suddenly up beside him, resting her arm long ways on Jameson's shoulder. She panted and huffed, staring at the imagery on the screen.

  "Looks like a quaint little back world." She paused, glancing up at Jameson. "Are you okay?"

  Jameson killed the screen. He leaned back against the wall, turning to face Madeira properly. She was staring up at him with worry in those pale blue eyes of hers. It made Jameson feel a little uncomfortable to have his face exposed; she shouldn't have to see the scars and cybernetics.

  "When I was in the Fleet," he began, "we had planned to use Kraven as our main staging area to attack Draconia. That was what my friends and I worked on; the whole battle plan to launch from Kraven."

  Madeira remained silent, listening patiently.

  "For the longest time…I only saw this planet as a strategic resource. Now I'm wondering if some of the Fleet traitors didn't kill my friends because of what we might have done to it."

  Understanding registered across Madeira's face. She had heard and reviewed Arkus's last words. Between them and Mathison, they had tried repeatedly to pick clues out of it during the last two weeks of travel from Gibraltar into the Expanse. She knew well by now his supposed reasoning for destroying the Peacemaker Station.

  "Jameson…you aren't a war monger. You have a right to defend yourself from Draconia."

  Jameson exhaled, nodding eventually. "Arkus was full of shit. Let's just see what nonsense he led us here to find."

  Of course that didn't stop the doubts. For the next few days, as the Crimson finally crossed the last empty space towards the Kraven system, Jameson couldn't help replay Arkus's words in his head over and over.

  "You need to know some things about your precious Gibraltar. There's some secrets that you need to know, Jameson. Things that might make you reconsider this little nationalistic crusade of yours."

  Yes, Jameson wanted vengeance for the friends Axus and his cronies had murdered. But he had taken the cause especially because Gibraltar had given him the assignment. His nation; the people and worlds he swore to protect.

  What twisted lies had Axus spun to Arkus? Would there be answers on Kraven?

  And what if they were uncomfortable answers?

  The day they finally dropped out of Faster-Than-Light travel, Jameson stared at their view screen in long silence. There it was: Kraven. The world he had planned and strategized over for years. He thought he had known this planet so thoroughly. But finally seeing it with his eyes for the first time, maybe he had never known it.

  "Jameson? You can't keep blanking out every time you see the damn planet."

  Jameson snapped out of his revere, glancing over at Madeira. "All right, I promise no more crazy episodes. Let's just get down there and see what this is all about."

  It didn't take much effort to get orbital parking permission. Jameson's bounty hunter ID was just as valid here as it was anywhere else in the Expanse. For some reason, he felt as if it should have been harder, even though it was just as it always was. With the Crimson in a stationary orbit, Jameson and Madeira boarded the skiff and headed down into the atmosphere.

  "Chino," Madeira read, glazing over one of their tablets; "a sub-tropical fruit farming community just inland from the west hemisphere sea. Originally a mining community, harvesting resources, metals, and other minerals from the ancient volcanic sites along the mountains and plains." She hummed thoughtfully. "Get this, Chino means toasted. I guess the original colonists called it that after seeing the burnt volcano grounds."

  "Seems like an odd place to send us," Jameson muttered.

  Madeira shrugged. "While Arkus could have been feeding us bull, I still think there's something here. It's the perfect place to hide away."

  Jameson nodded, tossing his head side to side as he considered the possibility. He had to change the way he thought about this planet. It was time to stop thinking about it in terms of strategic value and more along the lines of whatever Axus was planning.

  Fleet Security had kept battle plans like the Kraven Approach absolutely classified. But that didn't mean with Axus's Fleet infiltration that data hadn't slipped back to their planet. Maybe someone had hired Axus specifically because they didn't want the hassle of war coming to Kraven. Or maybe it was just lumped in with all other Expanse worlds that didn't want a war to break out between Draconia and Gibraltar; regardless of the aggressor.

  But Madeira was right; it was a back water world. Aside from its proximity to Draconian space, it was one of the farthest flung Expanse worlds. The next closest star system was nearly a four days journey, back into the heart of the Expanse. It was a solid week either way between Draconia and Gibraltar. Beyond that…there was nothing but empty space. Kraven was very isolated.

  It certainly was a convenient place to hide away whatever Axus was planning.

  As they cleared the cloud layer, Madeira sighed
as the surface took sight below. They were coming in from over the east ocean, low towards the beaches and surrounding plains. Less than a hundred kilometers inland, a chain of mountains and extinct volcanoes rose up over the land. In their shadow, expansive farmland spread out, nearly to the edge of the ocean.