The Bounty Hunter (Cade Korbin Chronicles Book 1)

by Jasper T. Scott

  In here are four VR pods, arranged in a cross, lying flat and mag-clamped to the deck, as well as an old dusty bed with a neuroscanner attached.

  Neuroscanners put people to sleep and then take a full scan of their brain to extract digital neural data, or in the case of bots, it just jacks in and copies the neural data directly in a matter of seconds. For meatbags that process is much more time consuming and requires sedation.

  But that’s not why we’re here. We’re here to check if Aurora’s VRRO pods still work.

  I’m stooped over one of them to operate the physical control panel and run a diagnostic.

  Rama looks on from the center of the circular room, arms crossed over her chest, looking unimpressed.

  “This is your big plan? Remote pilot our way into Mohinari’s place?”

  “Why not?” I counter. “He’s expecting Aurora, and she’s a bot, so I can use her and one of these pods to walk right in through the front doors.”

  “They could just jam the signal. Then what, genius?”

  “Why would they? They’ll think it’s her, and they’ll have no reason to believe otherwise.”

  “I think they’ll figure it out when you pull a gun on Mohinari. Besides, I’m not a bot, and if you try to sub one in for me, they’ll detect it immediately.”

  The diagnostics on this pod check out, and the physical control panel still works, which is a good sign, so I move on to check the next one. “I’ll be using one of the pods. You will be walking in as the meatbag you are. With shockcuffs on your wrists, of course.”

  “What?” Rama uncrosses her arms. “Nuh-uh. Fuck it. You’re going to get me killed.”

  I turn away from the pod to regard my daughter. My daughter. She’s right, risking her life is unacceptable. But she’s not the target. I am. “He’s using you as bait to get at me. Killing you would be a scrigg move. There’d be no way to get at me after that.”

  “He could still take me down to whatever dungeon he has and get to work torturing me.”

  This pod checks out, too. Good. At least we have two that are working. “Relax. He won’t get that far. I’m going to have the place surrounded.”

  “With your army of mercs. Where are they, anyway?”

  “We’re on our way to the rendezvous right now.”

  “Hmmm. ETA on that?”

  “Ten hours and twelve minutes. And after that, we’ll have to make a short hop to reach the RV coordinates.”

  “Then if you don’t mind, I’m going to get some sleep.”

  It’s only just after four in the afternoon IST, which is the time zone that I’m still running on, but we flushed Rama and Eristof out of their villa in the middle of the night, so it makes sense that she’s tired.

  “Go for it,” I say.

  Rama turns to leave, and I watch her go via the rear cameras in my holoband.

  * * *

  I’m back in the cockpit with Bry, watching the bright, mesmerizing swirl of FTL space. Different-colored stars, galaxies, and nebulae have turned to a tunnel smeared with blurry streaks of light in all the colors of the rainbow.

  The cockpit door is locked and disabled behind me. By this point, I’m pretty sure I can trust Rama, but it’s still not a good idea to let my guard down.

  Bry’s looking at me like she’s hungry, but this time her tongue darts to the water bottle sitting in the drink holder beside me.

  “Thirsty this time, huh?” I unscrew the cap and place the bottle in the cup holder of the co-pilot’s chair. Bry laps the water out with her tongue, thoroughly contaminating it with whatever alien germs she has. I should have brought two bottles.

  I’ll have to go back down to the mess hall later.

  Reclining the pilot’s seat, I lean back and fold my hands over my chest for a nap. Just as I’m dozing off, Bry hops down and waddles over to the cockpit doors. She scratches at the doors with one of her tiny hands.

  “What do you need?”

  Chirr!

  Another scratch.

  I turn my chair and open the doors. She waddles out, going for the head. A frown creases my lips. She’d better not be planning to lay more eggs in the toilet.

  I wait a few minutes for her to return. Just as I’m about to get up and check on her, she comes waddling back, looking about half her normal size. I really hope that’s because she’s finally used the facilities for their intended purpose.

  As soon as she comes back in, I shut the cockpit and seal us in, and then turn back to the view. This time sleep comes quickly, but it’s a troubled one, full of haunted memories of what could have been between Vera and I.

  I wake up, rubbing sleep from my eyes and scowling into the rainbow swirl of FTL space. Why didn’t Vera try to contact me and tell me about Rama?

  Maybe she did, and then she learned that I was in ARCmax on Mars. What would have been the point in telling a convicted felon that he has a daughter?

  And then after I got out ten years later, it was long past too late. Rama’s father was the guy Vera married. Whoever he was. I never even bothered to remember his name.

  Hours pass like that with me staring into a whirling pool of my own regrets.

  Eventually I get up, go to the mess hall for food and drink. Bry follows me. I share some of the food with her.

  We go watch a holovid in the rec hall. Then I start to detect a whiff of something revolting in the air. I follow it to the head and discover that Bry did use the facilities the way they were intended.

  But she forgot to flush.

  “Shit!” I mutter to myself, staggering sideways into the nearest bulkhead as if the stench is alive and physically choking me. I battle back to the toilet and flush it out into space.

  A few hours after that, we’re back in the cockpit, waiting for the timer to run down. Rama emerges from her room, looking sleepy. Her nose wrinkles up.

  “Ugh, what the hell is that smell?” I hear her ask over the ship’s security system.

  “You don’t want to know,” I reply over the intercom.

  She looks up at the nearest holocam. “Where are you?”

  “Cockpit. We’re just about to drop out of FTL.”

  “I’m going to get some breakfast,” Rama says, heading down the access corridor to the ramp and the mess hall below.

  “Better make it quick. After this, it’s just a short hop to my rendezvous.”

  “So?”

  “So, they’re a secret bunch. I’m going to have to lock you in your room while I meet with them.”

  Rama stops and glares at another camera. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you don’t trust me.”

  “I do, but they don’t trust anyone.”

  “Fine. Let me know when I have to go to my room, Dad.”

  The way she says it makes it clear that she’s not happy about the situation, but she doesn’t have much choice.

  The jump timer on my holoband starts flashing and the swirling tunnel of multicolored light vanishes in a blank white flash of light.

  The stars are back to static points of light. The Seraph cruises out of a jump gate around Nomra in the Neutral Zone. It was the closest I could get from Aquaria’s jump gate.

  As soon as I’m far enough from the gate, I take back control of the Seraph, and turn it toward the coordinates Captain Thorn gave me. I set the autopilot to plot a jump to those coordinates, and then settle in to wait while the FTL drive finishes cooling down. While I’m waiting, I keep an eye on the sensor grid, and dial up the power to the Seraph’s shields to max them out.

  The Neutral Zone is no place to fly around blithely.

  While I’m waiting for the drive to cool down and then spin up, I notice the comms icon on my holoband flash as I receive a message.

  Focusing on the envelope icon, I check the message. It’s from Dreana on Arkania. Pre-recorded. She must have finished with that favor I asked her for.

  I set the message to play. Her face pops up, she’s somewhere else this time: sitting in the relative darkness o
f what might be an office or a living room. She takes a deep breath before speaking, as if to compose herself or settle her nerves.

  A frown touches my lips, and I lean back in my chair to listen to what she has to say.

  It hits me like a grav sled full of neutronium ore.

  This isn’t the good news that I’d been hoping for.

  Chapter 50

  By the time the Seraph drops out of FTL again, Rama is safely locked in her room to keep her out of Captain Thorn’s hair, and I’m standing in the cargo bay, right outside the airlock where I left Aurora. I sent her up to the cockpit to avoid having to answer any awkward questions from Thorn. After all, taking control of someone else’s bot is highly illegal.

  Not that this little rendezvous isn’t.

  The cargo airlock hisses as it sterilizes the occupants, though I’d bet this side of the airlock is anything but sterile thanks to Bry.

  The airlock doors open, and I take a quick step back. My hand automatically drops to my sidearm. I was expecting to see a team of Coalition soldiers in exosuits, or maybe four remote-operated Marine bots.

  Instead, it’s the army I asked for, crammed in shoulder to shoulder. There must be two dozen heavily-armed A-MAWs inside that airlock. The name stands for Autonomous Marine Assault Units.

  They come marching toward me in lockstep, covered in gleaming blue-white terantium armor. Six black eyes face front of their boxy heads, two with faintly-glowing red centers and protruding barrels for telescopic lenses. Peripheral cameras line the sides and backs of their heads, along with a dome-shaped bump on top with antennae sticking out for sensors and long-range comms.

  The A-MAWs stop in front of me and stand preternaturally still. Unlike human soldiers and remote units, they have four arms with integrated weapons. Still only two legs, but they can get down on all sixes and scuttle around like spiders on the battlefield.

  Standing just shy of five feet tall, they’re remarkably compact as well, which probably helped Thorn stuff them into the airlock like that.

  I notice suspiciously clean squares of metal on their shoulders where the Coalition’s rising Phoenix emblem would normally be. They’ve been stripped of any identifying marks that could be used to later tie them to the Coalition.

  These bots aren’t driven by remote pilots, but rather by self-contained advanced combat AIs. And they’re heavily shielded to make sure that EMPs don’t get through to knock them out the easy way.

  They’ll be perfect for my purposes.

  But after hearing what Dreana had to say, I’ve hit a snag in my operation, and now I need something else from Captain Thorn. I’m cringing inwardly as I wonder how in the galaxy I’m going to convince her to help me out—again. Committing this many military assets to my care is a big enough favor as it is.

  An incoming comms call pops up on my holoband. The ID isn’t specified, but that’s not surprising. At this point, Thorn will be trying to distance herself from me as much as possible—just in case I fail. I answer the call, and a generic female voice comes through the speakers in my holoband.

  “That should cover my end of things. Now it’s your turn.”

  One of the bots steps out of line and holds out a gleaming black box the size of my thumb. It’s a neuro box, colloquially known as a casket. They’re used to securely store a person’s neuroscan data. It’s a lot bigger than the wafer I used to take a copy of Aurora’s neural data because of all the security involved. Caskets are quantum-locked so that only the person who owns them can delve into their contents.

  “What’s that for?” I ask.

  “Your latest neuroscan. If you don’t have one handy, we can scan you on board.”

  “You didn’t mention this when we spoke earlier.”

  “You didn’t ask. I told you I’d be cashing in on the favor sooner than you thought. Consider this payment.”

  With that request, a thousand different questions spring to mind, and suspicions start worming around in my guts, making me feel sick. “What are you going to use it for?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes. Making copies of someone who’s still alive is illegal.”

  “So is handing over military assets to a civilian, and a bounty hunter no less. But don’t worry, I’m not planning to make synthetic copies of you with this. Call it insurance, to make sure you repay me, if you do get yourself killed.”

  “Then getting the scan isn’t payment. It’s insurance for the payment.”

  “Let’s put it this way. You’re not leaving here with those bots until you give me your scan.”

  But I’m not ready to give in just yet. “If I give you this, you’ll know everything that I know. None of it will be private. My past, the jobs I’ve done, the missions I executed for the Paladins. All of it will be yours to peruse and use. That’s a hell of a price to pay for a few dozen jarhead bots.”

  “You have a better offer from someone else?”

  My hesitation is all the answer Thorn needs.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  This is an ugly turn, but it does give me some leverage, and I’m going to need it.

  “If I agree to this, I’m going to need something more from you.”

  “Absolutely not. This is the deal. Take it or leave it.”

  “Just hear me out.”

  A hiss of static comes over my end of the call as Thorn sighs. “Speak. You have one minute.”

  “I’m going to need two more bots, spec ops units.”

  “No deal. One of them is worth five A-MAWs, and it would be a lot harder to explain how they found their way into Alliance territory.”

  “I’ll be discreet. You have my word.”

  Thorn shakes her head. “You and I both know you can’t promise that this won’t go south.”

  “Then no deal. Take the A-MAWs and that casket, and go. I’ll figure something else out.”

  She might think I’m bluffing, but I’m not. My plan won’t work without the Spec Ops units, and I’m getting really close to pulling up stakes on this whole operation and cutting my losses.

  Another crackle of static comes over the comms. “You’ll have to wait while we scrub the IDs. They’ll be older models.”

  “How old?”

  “Four years. Should still get you past casual scans. I assume that’s what you’re after?”

  “It is.”

  “Okay then. Now get me that neuroscan.”

  “Pleasure doing business with you,” I say as I snatch the black rectangle from the bot and go stalking back through the Seraph to the ROC.

  A few seconds later, I’m slotting the casket into the back of the neuroscanner in the remote ops center.

  Booting up the scanner via my neuralink, I lie down on that dusty old bed and line up my head inside the helmet-shaped scanner.

  There comes a whirr and a clicking of tiny robotic arms, followed by the sharp prick of a needle injecting a fast-acting sedative to put me under for the scan.

  The sedative sends a familiar spreading warmth through my veins that reminds me of some of the stims I had to take while undercover on Terra Novus pretending to work for Mohinari. But that euphoric feeling doesn’t last. My unease crowds it out.

  I can’t help wondering if I’ve just sold my soul back to the Coalition, and if I have, what in the galaxy are they planning to do with it?

  But that’s my last conscious thought before the sedatives pull me down into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 51

  After the rendezvous with Captain Thorn, I left the A-MAWs in the hold and went back to the cockpit to plot a short jump to Nomra.

  I’ll use the Nomra gate to jump to Terra Novus. It’ll be faster and more efficient for the Seraph’s dwindling fuel supply. ETA is fourteen hours and change, even at the gate’s faster travel speed of 0.8 light years per hour. But it’s going to take at least twenty minutes to get through the jump queue.

  While I’m waiting, this might be a good time to contact Mohinari. As far as
he knows, Aurora and I are still working together to bring Rama in.

  Leaving Aurora by herself in the pilot’s seat, I go below decks and sit in one of the reclining chairs in the rec hall, then connect to Aurora remotely through my neuralink and holoband.

  The familiar surroundings of the cockpit swirl to life around me in augmented reality. The controls are projected in such a way that it looks like I can reach out and touch them, which is exactly what I’m going to do. Syncing my movements to Aurora’s, I physically reach for the comms panel to go hunting through the logs for the anonymous conversation that Aurora had with Mohinari through the Syndicate’s servers.

  Rather than send a message, I decide to risk a live holo call. The anonymous routing adds some delay to the process, but after about ten seconds, I hear the comms begin to ring.

  Moments after that, a deep, distorted voice answers. No visual and no location data attached, but the distorted voice sounds a lot like the one that keeps taunting me through anonymous calls—most recently, by answering Omar’s comms for him.

  “You have an update for me?” Mohinari asks.

  I’m transmitting a visual, but not my location—just in case.

  Putting on a smile, I nod Aurora’s head. “I do. The target is captured and subdued, and we are just about to jump to Terra Novus. We’ll be there in fourteen hours.”

  “And your partner in crime?”

  “Safely unaware. Below decks on my ship.” That last part is true at least.

  “Good,” Mohinari replies.

  “He’s planning to watch delivery remotely.”

  “Of course, he is,” Mohinari says. “That’s fine, but do make sure he’s watching, and that you don’t lose track of him.”

  “He won’t miss a thing, and he’ll be waiting for his half of the credits, so I’ll know exactly where to find him.”

  “Excellent.”

  Now for the tricky part of this call. “Where do we meet?” I ask.

  If they’ve pre-arranged a meeting place, then I’ve just given myself away.