Star Bounty: Revolution: (A Military Sci-Fi Series) by Rick Partlow

Author:Rick Partlow [Partlow, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2022-08-08T16:00:00+00:00

12

“You’re making a mistake,” Krit Thakral mumbled. Talking was hard for him with his lips swollen and his nose broken, and he couldn’t have been too comfortable with his hands secured behind him and a face that looked like raw hamburger.

He was seated on a bunk built into the bulkhead of the prisoner compartment, his ankles secured by unbreakable cables and he looked pitiful even in his expensive, silk robes with their intricate hand-woven patterns. I regarded him in silence, still scrolling through the entries on the folding tablet I’d brought in from the cockpit. When I hit the entry I was looking for, I tapped it and pulled up a video recorder application. An image of the battered Danuvian appeared on the screen.

“Say your name,” I told him.

He tried to sneer but it came out more like a grimace.

“What? You putting my profile up on a dating service?” he asked.

I touched the pause button on the screen, then kicked him in the chest with the flat of my foot. He flopped backwards, wheezing and coughing, eyes already blackened from his broken nose squeezing shut against the pain. He seemed content to stay on his back, but I grabbed him by the front of his robes and yanked him back up.

“You fucker,” he moaned. “You’re going to die slow, you fucking bastard….”

I pushed the record button again.

“Say your name,” I repeated, keeping my voice steady, my tone neutral.

“We know who you are, asshole!” he said, spitting at me but coming up short because of a lack of breath. “Grant fucking Masterson, bounty hunter! We know who your friends are! Maybe you think your ex-wife and your kid are untouchable because they’re all the way back on Earth, but you haven’t dealt with us before! When I get my hands on your boy, Luke, I’m going to….”

He didn’t finish the threat because I hit pause again, then slammed my fist into his ribs. Twice, three times, carefully measured because I didn’t want to break his ribs and send the jagged ends into his lungs, then waste hours while the auto-doc fixed him up. I didn’t let myself become involved emotionally. This was a lesson, not revenge.

He threw up and I got out of the way and let him. The robe was dark, but I thought he might have urinated on himself.

“Let me make something clear to you,” I told him, voice still steady and quiet. “If you are of use to me in getting back Commander Miller, then you’ll stay alive and you might even get to go back to your half-brother and keep on committing your atrocities and killing innocent people to try to get revenge for the war you lost.”

Now, I let just a tiny bit of the hatred I felt for the man show in my eyes.

“But. But, if you’re no use to me, if you don’t cooperate, well then, you’re nothing but a liability, a waste of my time. Right now, your brother and your friends in the DLO don’t know I was behind this.

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