Free Bounty Hunter 1: The Bounty Hunter's Revenge by Joseph Anderson Page A

When I saw no
sign of them I walked carefully out onto the sand.
    My right leg was throbbing from the
exertion of fighting but I gave it no rest as I marched back into the base. I
walked through the blood in the entrance to my room without a thought and
grasped the remaining section of the suit. I slid it over my right arm and
locked it into the torso’s socket and finally felt whole again.
    Back on the surface I stood and waited.
I could have left with the ship and been half way back into space by now, but I
needed information. I was so certain that these thugs were connected to Adam
somehow, and one of them had to know something. It was probable that they were
using the same type of communication devices that their captain and pilot, but
even if they knew they were walking back into an ambush they couldn’t survive
in the desert on their own. They had to come back eventually.
    I settled down on my stomach and kept my
head low to the ground, alternating between looking through the scope and then
glancing behind me. I had no way of telling which direction they would return.
It wasn’t the first time since being stranded that I wished the rear view
camera in my helmet hadn’t broken in the fall.
    Hours went by without any sign of them
and I was beginning to lose my patience. After so many years the ship next to
me was almost like a taunt, a tease, of returning to my old life. Cass had said
that there were no logs on the computer’s database but I could always visit
some of my old contacts to track down Adam.
    We often used the same handlers for many
clients. The one we most commonly dealt with was an older man named Geoffrey.
He owned a bar on a space station between a number of heavily populated
systems. It served as a hub for trade and passengers looking to move between
worlds. It would be a good place to start.
    After a few more hours I decided to
simply leave the two behind rather than waste any more time stuck on the
planet. When I rose to my feet the shot crackled at me like the sound of a
thunderbolt and ricocheted off the shoulder plate on my right arm. The bullet
had hit me with such a force that it erupted in a spray of hot sparks when it
collided with the metal, hitting it hard enough to knock me clean off my feet.
    I landed on my back and immediately
rolled over and crawled to the nearest piece of cover I could find. There was a
large chunk of the building that had once been part of its wall nestled into
the sand nearby, and I put it between me and the direction of the shot.
    I checked my shoulder where I had taken
the hit and saw that the metal plate had a fresh dent. If the bullet had been
capable of that, a lucky shot would be capable of piercing right through me.
Lucky. I recalled the captain’s gun that had went off when it hit the floor.
    “One of them must be a sniper, Burke. I
didn’t see him when you stood up. Hold the rifle out.”
    I extended one arm out with the rifle in
my hand, and kept my eyes on the visor window that displayed what the scope
saw. The two men were small shapes on the horizon. One had a very large rifle
while the other seemed to be unarmed from what I could see. They didn’t seem to
notice the rifle looking at them and, from that distance, they’d probably have
to know it was there in order to see it.
    They began to move forward for roughly a
dozen paces and then stopped, crouching down to search for me again. They’d
repeat this every few minutes and moved slowly closer. Eventually they were
close enough that I could make out their faces and see their movements more
clearly. The unarmed one seemed to be having an argument with the sniper. He
kept waving his hands in dismissive, angry motions. It looked like he was tired
of their slow pace.
    “Patience, Burke. Don’t make the same
mistake that he is.”
    “With a gun like that they may think I’m
dead. I’m impressed he made that shot.”
    “He’s even closer now, so be careful.”
    I continued to wait them out. They