The Bounty Hunter: Soldier's Wrath Read online

  The Bounty Hunter – Soldier’s Wrath

  By Joseph Anderson

  The Bounty Hunter – Soldier’s Wrath

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright © 2013 by Joseph Anderson

  Contents

  Also by Joseph Anderson:

  Author’s Note:

  Soldier’s Wrath

  Also by Joseph Anderson:

  Also by Joseph Anderson:

  Interstellar Soldiers

  The Wizard and the Dragon

  Bounty Hunter Series

  The Bounty Hunter Series Two, Complete Set

  Resurrection

  Soldier’s Wrath

  AI’s Rage

  Smuggler’s Peril

  The Swarm Unleashed

  Suicide Mission

  The Bounty Hunter Series One, Complete Set

  Revenge

  Redemption

  Vampire

  Into The Swarm

  Reckoning

  Author’s Note:

  The Bounty Hunter stories are a series of novellas. Each story is intended to be self-contained, like an episode of a television series. Although some names and references are made to prior events, each story can be enjoyed on its own.

  If, however, you prefer to read things in order, the series begins with The Bounty Hunter Series One.

  Thank you for your time and I hope you enjoy the story.

  Soldier’s Wrath

  Adam Bancroft stood in the cargo hold of the ship and narrowed his eyes at his partner. Burke set the girl down on the floor. She was unresponsive—she stared blankly at the ceiling of the room and said nothing as the bounty hunters spoke.

  “We’ve done our job,” Adam said.

  “I’m not leaving all those people behind just because we weren’t hired to get them.”

  “Geoff asked us to save his daughter,” Adam spoke quickly. “There’s Kristen. We have her. We’re done.”

  Kristen curled up into a ball on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest. Burke looked down and saw that she had been beaten recently. Her face was a swollen mess. Patches of her clothes were blotchy with her own blood. Burke set his jaw forward.

  “We were one door away from the command room of the base,” he spat. “You’re going to leave them behind to get away with this?”

  “I only risk my life if I’m getting paid for it.”

  Burke looked like he had been struck. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, Adam had already set his rifle on the floor and was loosening the straps of his armored vest. Burke looked down at the equipment he was still wearing: bulletproof plates strapped to his arms, legs, and shoulders, along with the same kind of chest armor that Adam was removing. The protection was minimal but it was better than nothing. Burke looked back at the rear of ship and heard the distant rattle of gunfire from the slaver’s base. He wished he already had the advanced battle aegis he had been saving to purchase.

  “I’m going alone then,” he said finally.

  “You’ll die.”

  “Then leave me behind.”

  “I should!”

  Burke kneeled down and placed a hand on top of Kristen’s head. The girl flinched and he felt his chest tighten.

  “I’ll kill them all,” he whispered to her. “They won’t get away with what they’ve done.”

  The girl looked briefly at him and then resumed staring at the ceiling. He got up and turned to the rear doors of the ship. Adam shouted after him and he ignored the words as he stepped back into the base.

  The doors of the ship opened and the roar of the base rushed to meet him. The corridor in front of him was on fire and he couldn’t remember if it was started by one of his grenades or the slaver’s henchmen. He felt no sympathy for hired thugs that would blindly defend such despicable people as slavers. He raised his rifle and readied himself to shoot to kill. He would offer no mercy.

  The doors to the ship closed behind him. He heard the distant sound of gunfire from somewhere deeper into the base. The fire had caused the facility to erupt into chaos. It had been built on an isolated moon and the base would be lost if the fires weren’t brought under control. Burke hoped to use that panic to his advantage. He walked quickly down the corridor, darting between the fires as he moved.

  There was a connecting corridor at the end of the one he walked through. Two guards appeared at the end of it, visible only for a moment as they sprinted passed. He saw one of them glance at him and then heard a shout a second later. They turned back into the corridor but Burke was ready. He brought the mid-range scope of the rifle up to his face and fired six times, thrice for each guard. The shots landed before they could fire back, each of them tightly clustered around the guard’s chests.

  He lunged forward to the end of the hallway. He grabbed the guards by their legs and dragged them back and away from the connecting corridor. More gunfire shuddered through the base and he wondered at that as he put his back against the wall, not yet turning into the next hallway. He and Adam had been the only invaders into the base. He didn’t understand why he could still hear people firing their guns.

  Two more guards, a man and a woman, surged through the corridor and broke his thought. The woman must have seen Burke in the corner of her eye and turned to face him. He raised his weapon faster than her, firing another burst of shots into her and then into the man behind her. He stepped forward to once again drag the bodies into the first hallway. He saw that the man was dead but the woman was still breathing. A sickening rasp emitted from her throat each time her chest raised. She stared up at him. He thought of how Kristen had looked up at him moments before and raised the barrel of his rifle to the woman’s head. He squeezed the trigger once and then dragged her corpse to the others.

  He turned and looked back down the corridor as he reloaded his rifle. Over half of the weapon’s magazine had been fired and he had plenty to spare fastened on the lower part of his chest plate. He reminded himself of the route they had taken to find Kristen: turn left at the first fork, then head straight and turn right into the large central room. He remembered the large double doors they had seen as they carried Kristen out of that room. The fresh magazine slotted into the rifle with a satisfying crunch. He barely heard it as he took off down the hallway once again.

  There were more fires as he ran deeper into the base. Dead bodies that Adam and he had left behind in their initial assault, along with the trail of empty bullet casings on the floor. Burke didn’t slow down as he hopped over the bodies and dodged out of the way of the fire. When he came to the right hand turn in the hallway, he came to a complete stop and poked his head out for a fraction of a second. He saw a blur of at least five guards and the impromptu barricade they had erected to protect the room before he pulled back behind the wall. A clatter of gunshots smacked into the wall next to him a second later.

  One of the guards roared out a warning to the others. Burke switched the rifle to hold in his left hand and reached for the grenades strapped to the back portion of his chest plate. He had three grenades in total and yanked two of them free. He knelt down and set the rifle on the floor and held one explosive in each hand. Another wave of gunfire pummeled against the wall before he pulled the pin on the first grenade and released its lever. He threw the grenade immediately and didn’t pull the pin on the second until he heard one of the guards cry out in response. He cooked-off the second explosive for one second before he threw it.

  The two explosions were lost amongst each other. Burke held his hands over his ears and felt the vibrations of the blasts through the floor more than he heard them. He grabbed the rifle from the floor and whirled quickly around the wall then, springing from his cro
uch into a sprint down the corridor as he brought his weapon up to his face. The smoke of the grenade’s explosions was thick at the end of the corridor but he stayed focused, looking for any movement through the dark cloud.

  A muzzle flash flared from inside the smoke. He turned to it as the series of bullets collided into the armor plates on his left arm. He felt two shots deflect from the armor and then the third slice through his arm. He ignored the hot wave of pain from the bullet as he fired back, unloading the entire magazine into what little movement he could see amongst the smoke. He reloaded quickly and was ready to fire once again as the air cleared. He didn’t check his arm until he was certain all six of the guards were dead.

  The pain from his arm was worse than the wound deserved. He grimaced as he pulled back the straps on his arm to confirm that the bullet had carved cleanly through his flesh and hadn’t embedded itself into him. Blood leaked down his arm; another scar, he thought, as he stepped forward to the door behind the dead guards.

  The door was closed and the sound of gunfire grew louder as he neared it. He knew instantly then what was waiting for him behind the door, as it had been the room that they had found Kristen and the other captives that had been taken. The burning anger through his body dulled the pain from his arm as he placed a hand on the door and shoved it open. He raised his rifle and entered the room with the gun blazing.

  There were dozens of cages scattered around the large room. Some were tall enough to allow the occupants to stand but not all of them. There were crates stacked haphazardly throughout the room, full of horrible scraps of food that were given to the slaves when the guards remembered to feed them. Burke didn’t need to look at the cages to know what had happened. He moved with the rifle quickly instead, leading with it to the guards bunched around each of the cages and making the most of his time before they realized they were under attack.

  He killed seven of the thugs before he was forced to dive behind a crate and reload his rifle. He kept his head down as the barrage of return fire slammed into the crate and punched into its contents. The urge to dive away was strong as he felt some of the bullets pierce through the crate but he forced himself to remain still, knowing that it was better than being an open target. He grabbed his last grenade and threw it immediately after pulling the pin. He counted in his head and sprung around the crate as the explosion went off.

  There were ten guards remaining in the room. The grenade burst open and sent three of them to the floor. Burke moved efficiently through those that remained standing. He aimed for the head when he could and the chest when he couldn’t, firing in controlled bursts as he bobbed the rifle up and down between each target. He downed another four before he darted across the room and to another crate. The floor sparked and became alive around each of his steps as the guards fired back. He felt another bullet cut through him—his left leg, and he stumbled the final two steps to the next crate and fell behind cover.

  He reloaded the rifle and felt for his leg. He had little time and ran a finger around the wound: the bullet had sliced deeper than the first but seemed to have exited out the other side. The pain was worse but he knew he was lucky. He shifted onto his stomach and crawled to the side of the crate, poking out with the rifle and picking off one of the remaining guards. There were two still standing.

  A wave of shots came at the crate. He both felt and heard the splattering of foodstuff being shredded behind him. More than once he felt a bullet slap into the back portion of his chest armor, shuddering through his body as the bulletproof vest held and protected him. The feeling grated on his nerves, however, and he whipped around the crate before the guard’s assault was finished, unwilling to risk being shot while behind cover for any longer.

  They looked shocked at his sudden appearance, turning to him and firing as Burke fired back. He felt two shots rip passed his head and more bullets flattened themselves against his chest and shoulder armor. Each impact hurt even if the bullets couldn’t pierce the plating, leaving broken skin and bruises behind. The guards had no such armor and his shots sent them to the floor. He wasted no time in confirming the kills, and shot more than one guard in the head as they lay squirming on the floor. It was only when they were all dead that he gave pause to the room around him.

  Most of the cages had been full of slaves when he and Adam had been there earlier. Now they were full of corpses. There were no fires in the room but warnings still blared from the rest of the base. Burke didn’t know if the slaves had been executed out of fear that they would escape or simply for fun as the facility burned around them. He decided he didn’t care what the reason was, and turned away from the dead bodies. He knew the image would be one that stayed with him for the rest of his life and, selfishly, tried to minimize its impact. He had already seen four dead children amongst the bodies in the cages. He didn’t want to know if there were any more.

  He marched to the double doors at the end of the room. They opened after he crushed the panel next to the door. Unlike the cold, stark walls of the rest of the base, the room he saw behind the doors was lavishly decorated. The floor was carpeted in a rich red and contained a mahogany desk on a raised platform at the back of the room. The room was dimly lit compared to the larger room behind him. There were two guards near the desk. Both looked up at the tall screen that stretched across the far wall. A man’s face dominated the display.

  “The fires are out of control,” one of the guards said. “We need to evacuate.”

  The man on the screen nodded once and then shrugged.

  “I’m already in my vessel,” he replied. “Stay behind and see if you can solve this mess.”

  “Sir—”

  Burke shot both of the guards dead as he stepped into the room. He didn’t care what they had to say. The doors closed behind him and he reloaded as he walked toward the desk. The man on the screen looked down at him. Burke glanced to the only other door in the room and recognized it as a connecting corridor to a small ship. He walked over and found that the door was locked. He smashed the door’s panel, like he had done to the other door, but it still remained closed.

  “I’m perfectly safe,” the man said.

  Burke turned to the screen. He glared up at the man without raising his head.

  “You’re a fucking coward.”

  “Cowards live, so I suppose so,” the man said.

  “Do you know who I am?” Burke asked.

  “No. Should I?”

  “My name is Burke Monrow. And I will kill you some day. Remember my name.”

  “So dramatic,” the man sighed and, for the briefest moment, his lower lip trembled. “Oh well. I’ll indulge myself. My name is Isaac Paxton. You won’t have to remember my name because you won’t have time to. I’m setting the base to self-destruct as I leave it. Which will be right now. Goodbye, whatever your name was.”

  The man smiled but looked shaken. Burke unloaded the rifle’s magazine into the screen before he cut away. There was no warning of the base’s imminent destruction—no red lights or sirens sounded throughout the room. He felt the rumbling of a ship beginning to take off near the room and he turned around and started to run.

  The room with the cages seemed full of obstacles now that he ran through it. The floor was more slick with blood and his leg threatened to buckle out with each hard step he took. In the corridor, three guards ignored him and raced away instead, running in the direction of his ship. Burke chased after him, shooting at them between running around the dead bodies and the growing fires. He heard more gunfire as he neared the corridor that connected to his ship and saw the guards he had missed drop to the floor as they turned the corner.

  Burke called out before he turned into the hallway. Adam still fired one shot that tore through the air next to his head. Burke walked quickly down the hall as Adam held up the rifle as an apology for firing at him. He had an odd expression on his face as they stepped into the ship together.

  “I thought you were leaving?”

  “I should
have,” Adam muttered. “Maybe next time I will.”

  “The base is set to explode. We need to go. Now.”

  Adam nodded and walked to the front of the ship. Kristen was still on the floor in the cargo hold, in the same position as he had last seen her. He loosened the straps of his armor and let them drop to the floor as he stepped toward her. When he was close enough, he crouched down—feeling his leg split open anew as he did so. He winced back the pain and set a hand down near her head. He felt the ship’s engines come to life through the vibrations through the floor.

  “I killed them,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about them ever hurting you again.”

  The ship lurched as it left the moon. A bright flash of light came through the windows of the doors behind them. The moon base erupted in a spray of fire moments after they left the surface. Burke kept his eyes on Kristen.

  “All of them?” she asked, her voice firm despite how injured she looked.

  “All of them,” Burke lied, and felt no guilt as the girl closed her eyes.

  * * *

  Natalie Ambrose lay naked in the bed. She let the sheets hang loosely around her, not caring which parts of her body were covered and which were exposed. Burke was similarly naked next to her, laying on his back with one arm under her head. She ran her fingers over his chest, sometimes trailing with her fingertips, sometimes gently running the length of her fingers over his skin. He liked the sensation.

  “What about this one?” she asked softly.

  He looked down to see her index finger resting on a round scar on his chest.

  “Gunshot wound, like most of them,” he said. “After the war.”

  “You only have one on your face,” she said, her voice still low. She ran a fingertip under his eye.

  “I got that on Meidum. A crawler leg got through a hole in my armor.”