Bounty Hunter 1: The Bounty Hunter's Revenge by Joseph Anderson Read Free Book Online

She sounded sad a lot lately.
    “This base must have had some way of
sustaining itself between supply runs. A moisture condenser? Or was it built
over an underground water source?”
    “I don’t know.”
    I let out a frustrated growl and began
to pace around the room. Cass had recently given me full control of the armor
except for the knee joint on my right leg. It was kept rigidly straight and
shifted awkwardly with each step. I must have looked ridiculous, like a
hobbling, injured robot.
    “Show me the map you formulated of the
base when I attacked it with Adam,” I uttered his name in a growl.
    She lowered the visor and displayed the
map of the surrounding area. The buildings were shown as they were before the
base had been bombed.
    “Now,” I continued. “Place a marker in
the same place you did before. The entrance that led to the underground portion
of the base.”
    The largest building of the three was
highlighted and I made my way to it immediately. Once there, I stepped into the
ruins and took a closer look than I had before. The structure was small, and
only large when compared to the buildings on either side of it. It was probably
built mainly as an entrance to the basement section. There was hardly anything
left standing of the above ground section, and the ceiling had collapsed into
itself and filled in the stairs.
    “You can barely make out where the floor
was with all of this debris. Where are the stairs under all of this?” I asked
Cass.
    The map blinked out on the visor and was
replaced with a similar target reticule that was used for enemies during
combat. Several large pieces of rubble were marked in red, circling a larger
area that marked where the stairs would be.
    “Burke, you’re not ready for this.
Another few weeks at least before you can start using your left arm for light
tasks.”
    “Another few weeks and we’ll be out of
water, if we even survive the next night.”
    Cass was silent. I couldn’t kneel down
with my broken leg and had to resort to gradually lowering myself down while
supporting myself against a wall. Once on the ground I was able to roll onto my
stomach and pull myself toward the blocked stairway. I was already pulling out
some of the smaller, looser chunks of concrete when she finally answered.
    “Very well.”
    I smiled to myself, but it was a crazy
smile. Cass had her own personality, thoughts, and feelings like any human
consciousness, but she was firmly grounded in the logic and reason that served
as a foundation to her programming. To hear her agree with me that the
situation required drastic measures, even though I already knew I was correct,
made my insides squirm.
    I continued to excavate until I fell
asleep from exhaustion, and continued immediately when I woke up again. It was
slow, frustrating work, and I often hit sections of rock that I could have
easily moved if I had both of my hands to work with. Although the suit’s
assisted movement allowed me to grip and lift things with one hand that no man
would have been able to otherwise, I couldn’t help but bitterly reflect on how
much easier I could have worked with more standard tools.
    There were times that I begged for Cass
to let me use both arms, injuries be damned, if only for a few minutes. To her
credit, she never wavered in her resolve to keep me healing and acted on my
best interests. She kept my left arm locked and mending.
    I had about twenty-four hours of
sunlight left when I ran out of places that I could move with one hand. I had
dug out enough of the blockage to see a few of the steps but the weight and the
pressure of the falling concrete had pressed things more tightly together the
lower I went down. When I finally admitted that I could pull out no more with
my fingers, I turned myself around and began to slam my left foot into the pile
as hard as possible. Even with the strength of the power armor with me, it wasn’t
enough to shift anything.
    I knew that I had done all I could