The Bounty Hunter: Into The Swarm (7 page)

Viscard, Burke thought. He had seen him a few times during his years
fighting on Earth but never interacted with the man. The name gnawed at him
still, another connection in his memory that he was forgetting. It was Cass
that reminded him of it.

“We had a contract with you,” she said, her voice filling the room
and transmitting as Burke’s did. “A few months ago. You wanted Frank Copper.”

“I also wanted him alive,” Viscard said with distaste. “But you saw
to that, didn’t you?”

“He killed himself after we captured him out of fear of being
delivered to you,” Burke said. “It’s not like we did it on purpose.”

“Of course,” Viscard let out a short, dry laugh. “An entirely
plausible story that I should believe from a man with a fake name and ties to
ACU, the organization I had Copper investigating before he went rogue? Please.”

Burke straightened in his chair. He had let the conversation
continue out of respect for a man he once fought with, even if remotely. Now he
was getting angry.

“I fought here too,” Burke snapped. “I saw as many soldiers die as
you did, probably more since I was down on the surface nearly dying with them.
I may not be Jack Porter but I bled as much as those who fought with him. If I
could tell you my real name I wouldn’t be sporting the fake one, but I was down
there. I fought when the dross breached Boston and Toronto. I was there for
both the massacre of Geneva and Warsaw, and their following bombardments into
dust as part of the latest strategy that fucks like you developed.

“I saw Tehran burn and collapse when we forced the dross
underground. The city fell so quickly that we couldn’t evacuate anyone. Should
we reminisce about the fall of Busan and Daegu? Should we talk about the
stunning success of collapsing the dross tunnel networks in northern China,
with strategically placed bombs that merely drove them further inland for the
low, low cost of ten thousand soldiers? Nothing worked. Nothing stopped them. I
bled and I fought and you can save your sanctimonious bullshit about my name
for someone who gives a fuck.”

Viscard’s forehead was creased as he stared at Burke with surprise.
The older man’s face was worn and weathered but he looked like he was trying to
solve some problem or puzzle in front of him.

“Did you message me just to gloat?” Burke spat. “What do you want?”

Viscard shook his head. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you since you
delivered Copper’s body. Now you’re at Earth and, judging by how your signal
was gone for a few days, I’m going to guess you’re here for something for ACU.
I want a copy of whatever it is they’ve sent you here for.”

“Why? What do you want with it?”

“Maybe nothing. I don’t even know why they sent you,” Viscard leaned
back in his chair. “I’m not following any orders from the military. This is my
own investigation. I can’t offer you anything in return for it except that I’d
owe you a favor.”

Burke closed his eyes. Natalie had wanted to speak to him about ACU,
something that she couldn’t talk about in a recording. Havard was being vague
about the drone’s purpose and the new weapon he showed seemed too good to be
true. He wished he had a moment to speak with Cass about it all. He wasn’t
certain if his doubts were justified. He opened his eyes and looked at Viscard.

“I’ll review the information myself when I get back from the planet.
I’ll decide then if I’ll give you a copy.”

“Really?”Viscard said, again with his forehead creased. “That’s not
the answer I expected.”

“Really.”

“Hm. I’ll wait for your return then,
Jack
,” he said with a
tight smile. “And in case you’re lying about your time in the war, don’t land
during the day.”

The screen went blank as he cut the connection and returned to
displaying Earth below them. Burke shifted in his seat and found that he had
been tensing his shoulders. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly before
resealing the faceplate of his armor.

“What did he mean by that?” Cass asked. “Don’t land during the day?”

“You’ll see,” he said as he lowered the ship down toward the planet.

* * *

Cass had located the drone in what had previously been eastern
Europe. Burke brought the ship down over the remains of Germany and wondered if
those names meant anything anymore. Even if the planet was retaken one day,
would those distinctions and imaginary lines drawn on the maps be lost forever?
He didn’t like the thought but it was better than the view of the planet below
him.

The dross covered the surface like a fungus. From a kilometer up,
they looked like a mess of yellow and green grass. Most of them were
stationary, absorbing the sunlight during the day and then burrowing
underground at night. Other groups moved like great herds of animals over the
ruined landscape, swarming over derelict cities and demolished forests like
they were one and the same. Some groups fought with each other. After fighting
in the war, it seemed like insanity to Burke for the same species to quarrel
over land they could share.

The closer they got to the drone, the darker it got outside and the
alien numbers lessened below them. Their target had crashed in a city that he
had never visited in his time fighting, and he didn’t ask Cass for its name.
The land was littered with the wreckage of ships and tanks, shattered pieces of
concrete from orbital bombardments that all meshed together like they were all
part of one big battle, rather than isolated fights around major cities. To
Burke, that’s what Earth was to him now: a massive, infested graveyard with too
many dead names to care about learning a new one. He pressed the ship forward
without asking any questions.

“Where did the dross come from?” Cass asked as they neared the
drone’s signal.

“There are other planets that have been discovered with them on it,
but no signs of how they moved between them. They’re like animals. They can’t
reason or communicate. ACU was quiet about their existence until Earth was
infested. No one knows how they got here. All it took was one crashed ship to
lose Mars during the war. Maybe that’s what happened here.”

“Where did you live on Earth?”

“Many places. I moved a lot. I was born in the United States and it
was one of the first places they took.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Me too.”

Burke settled the ship directly over the drone’s signal and Cass
displayed a feed from below them. There was no sign of the drone and the ground
was intact. They flew around the surrounding area and found several dross tunnels
near the signal, sloping downward in its location. He had been hoping that Cass
could have steadied the ship while he quickly hopped down to the drone and then
back up again without a fight. Now that hope seemed naive. Havard had said that
he had sent others before him who never returned.

They flew deeper into the devastated city and looked for the nearest
intact building to the drone. It was early into the night and already the
streets had been emptied of most of the aliens. There were a rare few lingering
in the dark, immobile and appearing to be sleeping. Burke didn’t trust what he
saw and wouldn’t risk landing on the ground directly. He landed on an apartment
building. It was only a few storeys but it was wide enough to fit the ship’s
size. He waited a few minutes with the engines ready to thrust if the building
collapsed under the ship’s weight.

He went down to the armory for an assault rifle and Cass magnetized
it on the back of their armor. He put extra ammunition into the compartment on
his left hip and then walked to the ship’s exit. The doors parted from a
command from Cass and it was only when the fresh air from the planet wafted
into the ship that it really hit Burke that he was back on Earth. He released
his faceplate and inhaled the air deeply.

He walked to the end of the building’s roof before he turned around
to look at the ship. There were no lights in any direction and he could barely
make out the ship in front of him, save for the dim lights coming through the
open doorway. The air was cold and felt like it grazed his throat with each
breath but he kept the faceplate off until Cass was finished testing her remote
connection to the ship. She started and then stopped the ship’s engines,
flickered the lights on and off, and then closed the door so nothing could get
in while they were away.

“Make sure you’re ready to lift off if the building gives way,” he
said as he stamped his foot on the roof.

“I will. Are you okay?”

“Of course,” he murmured and sealed the faceplate into the helmet.
The filtered air of the aegis felt soothing in his lungs but he missed the bite
of the planet’s, as if he deserved it. Cass similarly filtered the visor’s
display, adjusting to the low light around them until he could see his
surroundings in a dull, dark green. He walked to the edge of the building and
looked down.

Three target reticules immediately popped up in front of his eyes.
Cass was quick to pick the dross out in the darkness and marked each of them
for him. Each were separated in the wrecked street below. The road was bloated
and broken as if it had died in an earthquake. Parts jutted awkwardly up into
the air and then dropped abruptly like a cliff. There was no pattern or logic
to the destruction, and he saw at least two places from the roof where a mortar
round had cratered part of the city. One of the dross was sleeping in the
center of one of the craters.

Burke reached for the rifle on his back but stopped himself. The
aliens were sleeping and the sound of gunfire might wake them up or, worse,
wake up the dozens that were undoubtedly below ground. He couldn’t see any of
their tunnels nearby but he knew that wouldn’t stop them from digging directly
up if they heard a threat. He kept the rifle on his back and then stepped off
the building.

He landed smoothly on both feet and stayed hunched on the ground
from the fall. He raised his head to see if anything moved from the sound of
his landing. Cass marked two new targets from their new perspective on the
street: two dross that were amongst the rubble of the collapsed building across
from them. Neither of them moved.

From orbit he thought the planet looked dead. As he walked the
streets now, he felt like he was disturbing a mass grave. None of the buildings
had fared well in the battle. No windows had survived the fighting and every
room he saw had been torn to pieces, most likely from dross scraping their way inside
to feast on the people hiding behind closed doors. He saw no bodies or remains,
not even bones. The aliens ate everything, even the corpses of each other, and
he was the invader now. Despite what humans had left behind he couldn’t shake
the feeling that the planet now belonged to the dross.

He stopped at the end of each building that he passed and leaned his
head around the corners. They had flown nine kilometers from the drone’s signal
before finding a landing spot but Burke still took it slowly when he could be
potentially blindsided. Each time he would stop and wait, sometimes pointing
out dross that Cass missed, other times surprised at the ones she could find
that he wouldn’t have noticed. The only movement they saw were around the
entrances to the alien’s tunnel network. They gave those a wide berth, even if
it meant backtracking and going around a collapsed building. Burke didn’t want
to risk being caught while climbing over rubble.

They were on the outskirts of the city when he had to kill one. They
were three kilometers from the drone and he looked around the corner of a
relatively intact house to see a dross propped up against the wall. He knew
that the sound of his armor walking had been too loud for the alien to remain
asleep and he whipped around the corner and twisted his right forearm quickly,
ejecting the blade and stabbing it into the creature.

The dross let out a low hiss and its bunched tails began to writhe.
He jerked the blade out and then punched both fists into the alien’s head. He
twisted his arms the opposite way, triggering the new direction of the blades.
Both pierced cleanly into its head and it twitched for a few seconds before
stopping for good. He twisted his arms once more and the bloodied blades
retracted back into the armor.

“This one was small,” Burke whispered despite the helmet blocking
his voice.

“They’re smaller than you remember?”

“No,” he said. “This one looks like a runt. Maybe they force the
smaller ones to sleep outside at night. I don’t know. There wasn’t much time
for studies of the fucking things.”

“Maybe that’s what the drone was for?” she offered.

“Maybe. Something isn’t sitting right with me about this.”

He pushed on, growing more tense as the density of tunnel entrances
increased as he walked further out of the city. Less than a kilometer from the
drone, he stopped at a sudden drop in the street. The road must have been built
on a hill and the alien’s tunnelling had disturbed enough of the ground below
it to cause a collapse. He leaned over and saw a descending slope of concrete chunks,
rebar mesh, and upheaved earth. There was a row of holes where the ground levelled
off and he couldn’t tell how many were occupied by the dross.