Read Online The Bounty Hunter: Into The Swarm by Joseph Anderson - Free Book Online Page B

in his leg as he did so and launching the
alien through the air.
     He knew it wouldn’t be enough to kill the creature and he didn’t
stop once he was back on his feet. He started running toward the alien instead
of waiting for it to jump again. He lunged forward with his right arm,
thrusting the blade into the alien’s head as it went to bite him. The blade
punctured its skull smoothly and killed it instantly. The body fell over when
Burke twisted his arms, its tails spasming for a few moments as if they didn’t
realize the rest of the body had died.
    “You’re good at killing these,” Cass said.
    “I wish I’d had this armor in the war,” he commented as he looked
around to see if any others had heard the fighting. “We still need to be
careful. Their strength was always in their numbers. We’ve avoided that problem
so far.”
    He left the corpses behind and pressed on toward the drone. Cass
manipulated the marker she had been using to display its location, shrinking it
as they drew closer to it. There were more tunnels and wrecked vehicles outside
of the city, and they were slowed down while carefully maneuvering between
them, meticulously checking the corners of each one before stepping out. The
ruined war machines were the most charred pieces in the wreckage. Some had
broken apart in the years that they had sat exposed on the planet, crumbling
away like old bones. Some of the tunnels had opened up under the heavy armored
tanks and swallowed them up, effectively sealing the tunnel away. The dross’s
strength were in their numbers, Burke reminded himself once again, not in their
intelligence, but the display of such stupidity from the enemy that took over
his home made him angry.
    He stopped when they reached the drone’s location. He stood on a
patch of solid ground and stared down at the earth and the marker that Cass was
displaying over it. He shook his head.
    “It didn’t crash here,” he said. “Somewhere close by and the dross
must have dragged it underground.”
    “Yes,” Cass agreed. “The signal is still active but there’s no way
to know which tunnel leads directly to it. I suggest finding the closest one
and exploring.”
    “I’ve never gone into one of their tunnels before,” Burke clenched
his jaw. “I understand why Havard’s first teams never came back.”
    “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you,” Cass said cheerfully.
    He turned and walked to the last tunnel he remembered passing. He
stood and stared down into the darkness below him and took a deep breath before
stepping into it. The tunnel floor was angled sharply downward, but not steep
enough that Burke couldn’t keep upright. He balanced himself as he slid down,
alternating his eyes between the drone’s signal marker and the ground at his
feet.
    Cass intensified the light sensitivity of the visor and the tunnel
was visible in a washed out green hue as they descended deeper into the earth.
The drone’s signal whipped above them as they slid down under it and passed it.
Burke cursed as they continued to move farther away from it. When they finally
reached the bottom, with the armor’s boots slamming with a thud into the flat
ground, the signal loomed high above them.
    “I think we picked the wrong entrance,” he whispered.
    Cass didn’t answer. She was busy producing an impromptu map of the
tunnel network, estimating the size of it by the length of the drop they just
travelled and the amount of holes on the surface. She displayed it in the
corner of the visor’s display as Burke began to walk; with each step the map
updated a new portion of the tunnel that became visible. When they reached
turns and alternating paths, she continued to add to the map with markers to
highlight unexplored paths, in case the ones they initially chose led them
further away from the drone.
    They were underground for hours. They turned back often when
reaching dead-ends, or reaching sections of tunnels that abruptly sloped
downwards to where