The Bounty Hunter

Book 1: Cade Korbin Chronicles

by Jasper T. Scott, Tom Edwards, Aaron Sikes

Genres: Space Exploration; Space Marines; Steampunk; Science Fiction; Military Sci-Fi

Synopsis

BY MILLION COPY-BESTSELLER JASPER T. SCOTT FROM OUTLAW TO BOUNTY HUNTER TO VIGILANTE: REVENGE IS JUST THE BEGINNING Cade Korbin became a bounty hunter because he knew what it was like to be hunted. What he didn’t know was who he’d end up hunting. When it suited the Coalition, Cade was a Paladin, a member of their elite special forces. He did their dirty work and cleaned up their messes. Until his dark ops went public, and Cade was drummed out of the service with a dishonorable discharge. As if he’d ever been doing anything but following orders. Forced to the fringes of society by his service record, Cade broke the law just to survive. Then the Enforcers caught him, and he served his time. Sick of the hypocrisy in the supposedly utopian Coalition, he crossed over to the other side and made a life among his former enemies in the Free Systems Alliance. Now he hunts the galaxy’s worst lowlifes, for a fee, and the only orders he takes are his own. But when his past catches up with him, Cade is forced to fight for more than just credits… This time, he’s in it for revenge.

Release date: December 30, 2020

Publisher: Anthem Press

Sample

PROLOGUE

The Year 532 UGC
Aquaria, Alliance Space
I’m lying fifty meters up, on the edge of a pillowy
canopy of glossy red and orange leaves. Dead ahead
lies an island community built entirely on stilts. Twin
suns, one small and red, the other yellow, beam down
from their mid-afternoon positions, turning ripples on
the water into shards of rubies and flecks of gold.
From outside the island paradise looking in, I see
lavish mansions ringed with reflective picture
windows, and restaurants with expansive outdoor
dining areas. Elevated walkways connect the
restaurants to touristy souvenir shops over a channel
of water. Hoveryachts sit motionless in docks all over
the island.
Behind it all, a soaring volcanic mountain is
carpeted with red, ocher, and black foliage. I can’t see
the beaches, but I remember seeing from the air that
the sand is clear and white. The natural beauty of the
islands of Aquaria, with all of their unique flora and
fauna, has been preserved by confining construction
to the shallow oceans around the islands. And even
then, only where coral doesn’t grow. Everything is
built on high stilts between the reefs, designed to
have a minimal impact on the environment.

Scott / TBH / 3
To my back and under my belly is a vast forest of
gravity-defying salt water trees that soar up from the
shallow ocean. They form an interlocking canopy of
branches, frilled with glossy red and orange leaves at
altitudes as high as sixty meters. These trees are an
ideal vantage point from which to surveil my target.
The canopy is actually strong enough for me to walk
on, not that I would risk it. I’d be too visible if I stood
up now.
I’m not even using the screen on my holoband to
keep my target in sight. The light from the holo
display, or the glint of metal on my forehead might
give me away. Instead, I’m doing this the old-
fashioned way, with my right eye lined up behind the
scope of my Lex&Coros G42 rifle. I have a
suppressor on the barrel, a guided round in the
chamber, and plenty of spares in the waterproof bag
beside me.
The target, Cristophe Zabelle, of Zabelle
Enterprises, is in full view, tanning himself on the back
of his hoveryacht. His wife, Nadine, and teenage
daughter, Bella, are beside him. A fleet of bots waits
on them hand and foot.
Cristophe looks like an easy target. Already
tanned to the tinge of burnt caramel; his black hair is
wet and slicked back. Eyes shut. Arms flat at his sides
while he inches down the color chart from burnt
caramel to charcoal. Lying out in the open like that
looks like an immense risk for someone in his
position, but it’s an illusion. The hoveryacht is
shielded, and if I shoot a round at him, it would only
disintegrate a dozen meters off the back of the yacht.
All that would do is expose my position. So today, I’m

Scott / TBH / 4
here strictly for surveillance. Unless the target slips
the noose. Then I might have to get up close and
personal. And I really don’t want to do that with four
cyborgs and two full-on bots providing security.
“The target is in sight.” I whisper into my comms.
“Copy that, Charlie Kilo.”
I frown at that. Not much of a call sign—CK. My
initials. That’s what you get in the military. Alphabet
soup for everything.
I roll my shoulders to work out some of the
tension. But Cristophe never leaves my sight. I watch
him without blinking, until my eyes burn. Nestled in
my hideout, with only my weapon’s muzzle sticking
out, I’m completely invisible up here. Only an air car
would have a chance at spotting me, but I’ve thought
about that too: I’m lying under a digital ghillie suit that
hides me from visuals as well as thermal scanning. As
far as anyone from the air can tell, I’m just a collection
of leaves. Unfortunately, that means the cloak must
be the same temperature as the leaves, so there’s no
power-cooled lining to keep me comfortable.
With two suns overhead, my back is drenched
with sweat, which trickles down to collect around my
waist, itching like hell. To top it off, there’s water,
water everywhere, and my mouth is dry as a desert.
Hurry up and wait. That’s the job of a Paladin. Not
as glamorous as they made it seem in the recruitment
vids and the holo posters. See the galaxy, they said.
Be a hero, they said. Protect and serve the Coalition.
Preserve our utopian ideals for generations to come.
They made it seem like I’d be grav surfing on shock
waves, and spraying lasers at the bad guys. And don’t
even get me started on all the promised attention from

Scott / TBH / 5
the ladies. Most of the time I don’t get to stop and
breathe, let alone speak long enough to use a pick-up
line.
They didn’t say anything about drowning in your
own sweat and dying of thirst while surveiling a target
either. Or worse, wearing a diaper because you’ve got
to sit in the same damn spot without moving for an
entire day. Sometimes two or three.
At least this job is supposed to be a relatively
quick one. I got here less than thirty minutes ago.
Swam over from Cirim, the neighboring town, in
nothing but my trunks, snorkel gear, and a belt with a
UV shield attached.
I found the bolter rifle dangling from a branch on
the designated tree along with some other gear that I
may or may not need. I’m hoping not.
Thirty minutes and counting before Christophe’s
meeting with the CEO of the Chronus Mining Guild.
It’s too far for him to take the yacht in that short of a
time. Besides, the CEO of Chronus is a rough
character, so Cristophe wouldn’t take his family to that
meeting. He’ll take the air car parked on the roof of
his yacht, and he’ll go alone, which means he’ll die
alone, and the company will be inherited by his wife.
The brains behind Zabelle Enterprises will vanish,
taking down the Alliance’s most promising line of
research into FTL Rifts—a possible means of FTL
travel which would be nearly instantaneous and
untraceable.
If the Alliance were ever to develop a safe,
reliable way of using the rifts, it would give them
deadly first strike capabilities against the Coalition,
and that would end the cold war overnight.

Scott / TBH / 6
We already stole Zabelle’s research data, and we
tried to get him to switch sides, but no joy. Christophe
has it in for the Coalition ever since they drove him
out with their antitrust lawsuits and high taxes.
Since then, Christophe and Zabelle Enterprises
became the primary supplier of the Alliance’s FTL
tech, and it’s now leagues ahead of what we have in
the Coalition. Their FTL drives are faster, harder to
track, and they have shorter spin-up and cool down
times. That already gives them an immense edge,
and the Coalition can’t let them to get any farther
ahead. Numbers only count for so much in a fight
before superior tech wins the day.
But if Christophe dies and his backup neuroscans
are all found to be riddled with a data-corrupting virus,
then the Alliance’s research into FTL Rifts will hit the
same wall as ours, and the Coalition will have a
chance to catch up to the Alliance in FTL tech.
So here I am, a Coalition Paladin, assigned to
sabotage Christophe Zabelle’s air car and then watch
from a distance to make sure he goes out with a
bang.
Is he a bad guy? Does he deserve it?
Maybe, maybe not. It’s not my job to know, and
this isn’t about him. It’s about the war that we’re trying
to prevent and the billions of lives that will save.
At least, that’s what I tell myself at night to keep
the ghosts in their closet. They shouldn’t call us
Paladins. It makes us sound heroic and noble. They
should call us what we are: assassins. Killers. Wraiths
that sneak up behind people in crowds and snap off
nanoblades in their backs.
A flicker of movement interrupts my thoughts.

Scott / TBH / 7

Christophe just sat up. Now he’s standing.
“Target is Oscar Mike,” I say into my comms.
“Copy.”
Christophe Zabelle drops a kiss on his wife’s lips.
She grabs his neck to make it last. He pulls away and
nods to his daughter. Says something. She sits up.
Says something back. I risk tuning my comms to the
nearest of the bugs that I planted on the yacht last
night.
“...with you where?” his daughter, Bella asks.
“To see Dekari.”
Who the hell is Dekari? I wonder.
“He’s there?”
“Of course, he’s there. You asked me to put in a
good word for him.”
“And Chronus hired him?”
“Do I look like a man who takes no for an
answer?”
“Sparks! Thanks, Dad!”
Christophe waves off his daughter’s gratitude, but
she leaps out of her chaise lounge and throws her
arms around his neck. A moment later she pulls back
with a beaming smile, and walks into the yacht
leaning on her father’s arm.
The shallori fish wrap that I had for lunch is busy
marinating in a roiling cauldron of acid. Sparks fly
down my arms to my fingers as adrenaline surges in
my system. This is not good.
“Charlie Kilo to Montauk Actual, target has flipped
the script, now has co-pilot. Please advise, over.”
A new voice gets on the line in my ear. It’s deeper
and grittier than my handler’s, but the hell if I know
who it is. Deep cover assignments like this one keep

Scott / TBH / 8
operators in the dark as much as possible. “Montauk
Actual speaking. Who is the co-pilot?”
“The daughter.”
A brief, buzzing pause hisses over the comms,
followed by—
“Proceed as planned, Charlie Kilo.”
I try to reply, but my mouth is suddenly too dry to
do more than hiss with exhalations of stale air.
“Charlie Kilo, do you copy?”
“Copy, Montauk.”
“Montauk out.”
A sigh builds like a balloon inside my chest, filling
my lungs to the point of exploding. I try to let it out, but
the air gets stuck behind a knot in my throat.
Twenty minutes later, I’m watching the air car lift
off. Mrs. Zabelle is waving from the back of the yacht,
smiling as her husband and their daughter fly away
from her for the last time.
Twenty-two minutes later the side of the car blows
open and it bursts into flames as one of the engines
explodes.
The car lists sharply to the side now gushing fire,
and goes into a whistling dive from five hundred
meters up.
Mrs. Zabelle is screaming, then snapping up a
holoband and calling her husband.
“Eject! ... Then fire the brakes! What do you mean
it’s not working? Don’t you dare leave me alone! ...
Resurrection! Christophe!” She’s sobbing now.
Muffling her words. “...won’t be... same. Don’t you—”
I mute the audio from the yacht and struggle to
swallow past that knot in my throat. Nadine Zabelle,
wife and mother, clutches the ship railing with white-

Scott / TBH / 9
knuckled hands as the car with her husband and
daughter screams into the gold and ruby-shimmering
embrace of the ocean. The car hits at the speed of
sound and explodes into a thousand glittering
fragments. Through my scope I see tears racing down
Mrs. Zabelle’s cheeks. She hammers the railing with
her palms, screaming and raging against what she
probably thinks was just a freak accident; fate; or
maybe Karma.
Bots rally around her. Lifeless machines with no
real sense of empathy. The only one who truly feels
her pain is the one on the other side of this scope, the
man who killed her family.
Mrs. Zabelle’s only hope is to bring them back.
Resurrect them from their latest neuroscans, but like
she said, it won’t be the same. Should work for the
daughter, because we didn’t have any reason to
corrupt her scans. But Christophe is permadead.
Nothing left to resurrect.
A stale breath rattles past my lips, carrying with it
a familiar phrase, “Target neutralized.”
“Good work, Charlie Kilo. Proceed to extraction
point.”
“Copy.”
There’ll be no keeping the ghosts in their closet
tonight.

Scott / TBH / 10

PART 1: A HUNTER'S CODE

Scott / TBH / 11

CHAPTER 1

Twenty-five Years Later...
The Year 557 UGC
Terra Novus, Alliance Space
I’m standing in an abandoned packing center on
a glacial ridge outside Liberty City, the stim-harvesting
capital city of Terra Novus. A creeping chill makes it
through to my skin, prickling my neck and arms with
goosebumps. It’s freezing in here, even below my
heated clothes and thermal shield.
Terra Novus is a mostly glacial world with a
narrow band of temperate regions around the
equator. The atmosphere, gravity, and overall
habitability are about as close to Earth as a planet
can be, but it’s still a frozen wasteland as far as I’m
concerned. Back when it was first colonized, people
thought it was an exotic paradise. Finding euphoria-
inducing stims in the glacial rifts was a driving force
for colonization, and it soon became the most
populous world beyond Earth.
It’s also where the civil war began, and after its
independence was officially recognized, Terra Novus
became the capital planet of the Free Systems
Alliance.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a den of

Scott / TBH / 12

accumulated human filth.
The dirty floor of the packing center is covered
with a dusting of fresh snow blown in from a wall of
broken windows. From there, I can see the gleaming
blue, green, and purple lights of Liberty City’s
hundred-story towers. Cold wavelengths of light to
match the cold of the glacial rift in which the city was
founded. The only other light besides that distant
neon glow is from the hovering drone bulb that my
partner Rex Brogan deployed when we got here.
“Not talking, huh?” Rex asks. “Okay.”
An inhuman shriek draws my eyes to the subject
sitting tied with shockcuffs to a chair beneath the
drone light: Omar Trevos, an average-sized man with
curly black hair, brown eyes wrinkled at the corners,
and a naturally tan face. At the moment, that face is
streaked with tears and blood. One eye is swollen
partially-shut, and his lips are split and bloodied. He’s
wearing a black uniform with reflective silver piping
and a matching silver emblem on his left shoulder.
The octagon-shaped badge of Liberty PD. Two silver
bars on each sleeve speak to his rank. Lieutenant.
There is a black device clutching Omar’s skull that
looks vaguely like a metal spider with six legs. That’s
actually the colloquial name for it. A brain spider.
Officially, it’s an NSP-16, a bot designed to interact
directly with a subject’s gray matter and neural
implants in order to read memories and thoughts, or
as it’s currently being used, to directly activate
specific regions. Right now the spider has a hair-thin
wire embedded directly into Omar’s dorsal posterior
insula, otherwise known as the brain’s pain center.
Imagine the agony of being burned alive—an NSP-16

Scott / TBH / 13
can simulate it without any of the mess or subsequent
permanence of death.
This interrogation could have been as easy as
using the spider to pull the information we need
directly from Omar’s memories, but he was smart
enough to scrub himself and dump the info in the bio-
encrypted storage of his neuralink. The encryption
keys are entangled with some random bundle of
neurons, so that only Omar’s neuralink can access
them. If someone else tries to crack in, they’ll destroy
the data. That type of encryption only works for very
specific types of information. Memories. Secrets. It
was a smart move, except now we have to extract his
secrets the old-fashioned way.
I frown and roll my shoulders, as if Omar’s
horrendous screams are having no effect on me. As if
this is just another Monday evening. As if torturing the
one clean cop left on Terra Novus is a tedious
assignment that I can’t wait to be done with.
But I can tell that Rex is getting off on it. He has
this blissed-out grin on his lumpy face, like a stim
addict who’s just had his first taste of Glo.
Sadism is a job requirement when you’re working
for Rajesh Mohinari. Worth over a trillion credits, he’s
the richest man in this system, and one of the richest
in the galaxy. And since money is power, that also
makes him one of the most dangerous men in the
galaxy.
And he’s my target.
“Ready to talk yet, scrigface?” Rex asks in a
dulcet voice.
Omar mumbles something, his head slumping to
his chest.

Scott / TBH / 14
“What was that?” Rex demands, cupping a hand
to one of his spiked ears.
Who the hell puts a ring of titanium spikes through
their outer ear? Apparently, Rex doesn’t just get off on
other people’s pain.
“You’re gonna have to speak up, Omar. Or I’m
gonna have to push this button again...”
Rex hefts the remote for the spider, flaunting his
power in Omar’s face. Rex doesn’t need a remote. He
could control the spider directly through his neuralink,
but then Omar wouldn’t be able to watch Rex’s
grubby thumb poised over that big red button. He
wouldn’t be able to sweat blood and piss himself as
Rex’s finger inches toward it yet again.
We’re only on round two of big red button-
mashing, and Omar already looks like he’s about to
pass out. But there is another button for that. The blue
one. That’ll send a signal to stimulate his adrenals
and wake him up with a jolt of white-hot terror.
“Where did you hide the evidence?” Rex asks,
sounding far too reasonable.
Another mumble. A whistling rasp. “Water.”
“Sorry, scrigg. No can do. First the evidence.
Then you get a reward.” Rex reaches into a pocket
and produces a holonet terminal in his left palm. It’s a
small, flat, silver disc with a black eye in the center,
from which a bluish-white screen materializes. It’s
blank but for a blinking cursor and a search bar.
Omar can interact with that screen mentally to
find the files we need in the cloud and then delete
them while we watch. Of course, it would be one
gentleman’s word to another as to whether or not he
actually deleted all of the copies. He could have

Scott / TBH / 15
others squirreled away in the cloud, or stored offline.
That would be smart—and stupid, depending how you
look at it.
With that in mind, I’m starting to wonder what the
point of this charade is. Maybe it’s intended as a
visceral warning, a reminder that there are fates
worse than death. Or maybe it’s to get him to reveal
whoever he gave the hard copy to. I’m assuming that
Omar was smart enough to give the evidence to
someone and tell them to make it public if anything
happened to him.
But it’s also possible that he couldn’t find anyone
suicidal enough to hold a physical copy of damning
evidence against Rajesh Mohinari.
“Just kill me,” Omar whispers. His eyes flick up to
mine, bloodshot, tear-streaked, and pleading. He’s
identified me as the weak link. Is it because I’m not
the one pushing the buttons? Or has he noticed the
muscle twitching in my cheek? Maybe he has a black
market add-on for his neuralink and he can read my
thoughts directly. If so, then he’s seen me picturing all
of the different ways that I can murder Rex. But, I
have a few black market modifications of my own, and
my thoughts cannot be read that easily.
“Kill you?” Rex glances back at me with one
eyebrow raised above his lumpy cheek. I offer the
requisite sneer to show my solidarity. Rex looks back
to Omar. “I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to kill
your little girl. What’s her name? Sienna, right? And
then your pretty wife, Damaris. But I’ll have some fun
with her first, oh yes. You can be sure of that.”
Another muscle starts twitching, this time in my
left eye as I imagine delivering an elbow like a

Scott / TBH / 16
hammer to the back of Rex’s neck. Snap. I could say
it was an accident. He tripped down the stairs outside
the warehouse where we are currently torturing Omar.
But I know Rajesh has both myself and Rex
monitored 24/7 via our neuralinks. The imagery from
our optic nerves is being recorded and uploaded to
the holonet in real time, so there is no way I can lie
about anything after the fact. I’m deep undercover for
this job, and to intervene now would mean breaking
that cover wide open.
I’m a professional. I’m not supposed to act on
impulses. The job comes first. The problem is, I’m
also bound by a code. My code. Most hunters have a
personal code they follow that lets them sleep at
night. Some won’t take kill contracts. They think that
absolves them of whatever happens to a live target
after they deliver it to their employer. As for me, I
decided to keep it simple. I swore just two things to
myself:
One, I would only ever go after people who
deserved it.
And two, I would never turn a blind eye to
injustice.
I had enough of that shit for dinner while serving
as a Paladin for the Coalition. And this right here,
standing by while an innocent cop gets tortured and
threatened for trying to uphold the law, that’s the
worst kind of shit sandwich.
If the honest cops have to fear for their lives, then
they’ll be too scared to do their jobs, and all that will
be left are the scumbags. That’s pretty much already
what we’re dealing with in the Alliance, but guys like
Omar are the exception that proves the rule.

Scott / TBH / 17
“Please.” Omar makes a visible effort to work
some moisture into his mouth. Must be like a desert in
there. He’s lost a good four liters of water between
sweat and urine over the past half an hour, which is
impressive considering how cold it is out here. But
given enough pain you can sweat even when you’re
ice cold. The puddles on the floor are testament to
that. And yet, this poor scrigg is still holding out.
Why?
Sure, he’s an honest cop, taking his stand. Good
for him. But that’s not reason enough. Not after Rex
threatened his family. A guy like this, noble, decent,
trying to hold the line against corruption, seems to me
like he’d be the family type, so threatening his wife
and kid ought to make him crumble.
Unless...
Oh Deus. He really is a scrigg. He gave the hard
copies to his wife. This is going to end badly. Really
fucking badly.

Scott / TBH / 18

CHAPTER 2

“One last chance, Omar...” Rex says. “You give
me what I need and all of this goes away. You go
back home to your wife and tell her all about your
shitty day, and how you pissed yourself because
some kook pulled a plasma lancer on you, and you
thought he was going to blow off your itty-bitty dick. In
that story, you look like the pissant you are, but
everyone still wins, and you get to live happily ever
after. So just tell me where you have the files, and we
can wrap this up.”
Omar cracks a wincing smile. His lips are split
from where Rex smashed his face when we picked
him off the street in a blind alley on 42nd between the
old Requiem Center and the new Holoplex. A cold
gleam enters Omar’s eyes with that smile, and I
realize that he’s been holding some of his cards in
reserve until now.
“If you kill me, or even get within a hundred feet of
my family, the logs with your boss in them go live on
fourteen different news feeds, including CHN. And
then Mohinari won’t just be on trial for bribery and
domestic violence here in the Alliance. He’ll be on trial
in the Coalition for black market arms dealing and

Scott / TBH / 19

stim smuggling.”
Rex’s blotchy face grows a shade or two paler
than I’m used to seeing it, and his forehead furrows
into fat, worm-like ridges. He takes a step back,
glances at me, then once again at the cop.
It’s an interesting threat, but I wonder if it’s true.
It’s one thing to threaten to leak damning evidence
against Rajesh to Alliance news networks. It is quite
another to leak it to networks like CHN in the
Coalition. Coalition news nets are harder to get to and
harder to threaten into silence. That, and Coalition
brats see themselves as the champions of all things
goodness and light, so they might actually risk life and
limb to expose Rajesh.
“You’re bluffing,” Rex decides.
That’s my bet, too. It would be hard to get a
journalist to sit on scandalous evidence and not do
anything with it, especially a Coalition journalist, who
would see it as their moral duty to expose a criminal
like Mohinari. And that means that the news networks
don’t have the evidence. Not yet. Someone still needs
to send it to them. Which brings me back to Omar’s
wife as the next link in this chain of misery.
“I’m not bluffing. It’s all ready to go. All it takes is
one whisper of a thought from me, and your boss
goes down,” Omar says.
“So why haven’t you pulled the trigger yet?” Rex
asks.
“You’re jamming my access to the net.”
“And you’re the only one with access to the logs?”
“Yes.”
I don’t believe that for a second. His wife must
have them, too. If something happens to Omar, he’d

Scott / TBH / 20

want her to have them. And vice versa.
Omar goes on, “I’ve scheduled hypercomms to
send the evidence to all of the right people. If I die, or
anything happens to my family, those comms get sent
as scheduled. If I’m alive and well, I can still cancel
them and reschedule for tomorrow, or some other
future date.”
“You leak so much as a frame of those logs, and
we’ll make you wish for something as peaceful as
death.”
“And then your boss goes to prison for
reconditioning. Nobody wins.”
Rex’s jaw zigzags for a few seconds, as if he’s
literally chewing on Omar’s words. I can see that he’s
getting frustrated. His tiny little brain is overheating.
This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. He’s
supposed to torture and threaten Omar, and then
Omar gives in. Easy job. Maybe even fun. But Omar
isn’t backing down.
A smile quirks onto my lips. I can’t help it. I’m
starting to like this guy.
“Talk to your boss. Get him to plead out to the
domestic violence charges, and I’ll make sure the rest
of it goes away—until something happens to me or
my family, in which case everything gets blown all
over the net.”
Brilliant. Don’t go for the jugular, just kick him in
the balls and keep the knife at his throat for
insurance. Maybe Omar isn’t a scrigg, after all. There
is just one problem. Mohinari isn’t the kind of guy you
threaten. He’s the kind you kill. Or else.
“If he pleads to domestic battery, he’ll lose
custody of his daughter,” Rex argues. “He’ll never go

Scott / TBH / 21

for that.”
“He doesn’t have a choice. It’s that, or he goes to
prison for all of his other more grievous crimes.”
“You got guts, Trevos. I’ll give you that. Give me a
second.”
Rex stalks by me with a scowl and plunks the
remote for the torture spider in my hand. “Roman, if
he so much as twitches, give him a zap, yeah?”
“You got it,” I say with a matching scowl. Roman
is my cover name. I take a step toward Omar and he
croaks at me, “Water. Please.”
“Yeah, okay.”
I stride over to an old, dusty wooden table and
pluck one of the designated rewards off the counter.
Water. Food. Stimsticks. Omar’s holoband. These are
a few of the incentives we have to get him to
cooperate. I’m breaking the rules by giving him a
reward for bad behavior, but in my book, he’s earned
it.
“Here you go.” His hands are bound with
shockcuffs, so I hold the bottle to his lips. He gulps
water, spilling at least half of it from split and swollen
lips.
“Thank you,” Omar whispers.
I step back with a nod.
He regards me steadily. His eyes are clearer and
less heavily laden now. “You don’t approve of this,” he
whispers. It’s not a question. “You can stop him.”
“Which him?” I counter quietly. “Rex or Rajesh?”
It’s an honest question. If I stop Rex, I can’t stop
Rajesh, and Rex is just one small cog in a much
bigger machine. I could stop this torture session, sure,
at the expense of my actual mission, but the next

Scott / TBH / 22
goon that Rajesh sends to deal with Omar might skip
straight to his wife or his daughter. “You need to give
them what they want,” I say. “This is going to end
badly.”
“I’m holding all the cards,” Omar argues. “They
can’t touch me.”
“Maybe. For now. But what happens when they
find a way to circumvent your little setup?”
Omar shrugs as much as he can without
triggering a shock from the cuffs around his wrists.
“The same thing that will happen to me if I give them
all of the evidence now. Rajesh will kill me and my
family. Our only hope for safety is to hold onto it as
long as we can.”
“Then why push your luck?” I ask. “You’re trying
to get him to plead guilty to a lesser charge and lose
his daughter in a custody battle. Rex is right; he won’t
do that.” I know, because I was hired by Mohinari’s
wife to kill him, and she’s paying me handsomely to
get it done. She knows her husband well enough by
now to realize that she can’t simply threaten him and
call it a day. Men like Rajesh never lose, and even if
they do, they make sure you lose far more than them.
If Rajesh gives in to Omar’s demands now, it will
be because he’s stalling for time while he finds a way
around Omar’s digital dead-man’s switch.
Rex comes striding back over to us, smirking, the
plasma lancer from the holster on his hip now in his
hand. My gut gives a sickening twist at the sight of
that. I can imagine how the conversation with Rajesh
went, and for it to end with a weapon drawn means
Omar miscalculated. Badly.
My prediction of how this was going to end is

Scott / TBH / 23

about to come true.
“It looks like you’re out of time, scriggface. Boss
says it’s time to wrap this up.”
“What?” Omar looks genuinely shocked. “Does he
realize what I’m going to do to him?”
“You won’t do anything. It turns out, we managed
to solve the problem without you.”
Omar’s face is a horrified blank. He doesn’t know
what to make of that. “How?”
“We cracked your password.”
“How...? It’s twenty-seven characters and
requires a biometric scan to confirm.”
“A stream logger installed by one of your buddies
at the precinct. After you told me how you planned to
distribute the logs, we found the e-mails you
scheduled and deleted them all.”
“But you still don’t know where the logs are,”
Omar insists. “I could send them later.”
“You won’t be around later.”
“My wife—”
“Wouldn’t be that stupid after she finds out what
happened to you. Not with your daughter’s life in the
balance.” Rex makes a show of checking the charge
on his lancer. “Any last words you want me to give to
them when I pop by to give my condolences?”
Is he threatening Omar’s family again? I can’t tell.
There is no need for it anymore, but a sadist like Rex
doesn’t need a reason to be a twisted fuck.
Omar’s brave facade crumbled. “Please, just
leave them out of it. You have what you wanted. It’s
over. You win.”
“Omar! Buddy! That’s not how this works.” Rex
puts on a convincing show of remorse. “I’m sorry.

Scott / TBH / 24
Really am. I thought for a second you had us. Really
did. Turns out the boss was one step ahead. He
usually is. Guess that’s what it takes to be on top.
Last words?”
Omar is shaking all over, but I can’t tell if it’s from
rage or fear.
“No?” Rex shrugs. “All right. I’ll say goodbye to
them for ya, don’t worry.”
That’s it. I’m done.
“Hey, Rex. Hang on a sec.”
He looks at me, his forehead wrinkling into worms
again.
My fist snaps into his throat with an audible
crunch, and he staggers back a step, clutching his
collapsed windpipe and wheezing for air. His weapon
swings shakily into line with me, but I take a long step
toward him, bat it casually aside before he can pull
the trigger. The plasma lancer goes skittering across
the dusty floor, and then I deliver a kick. Straight to
the groin. He doubles over. Still can’t breathe.
With his head in easy reach, I grab a fistful of his
sweaty black hair to hold his head, then smash my
knee into his face. His nose goes smush, and I feel a
few teeth give way. Blood sprays everywhere, making
a mess. Leaving evidence on my clothes. I’ll deal with
it later.
Rex is gurgling now. He drops to his knees. Looks
up at me. Confusion is written all over his bloody,
lumpy face. He thought we were buddies. Like-
minded fucks.
“You have any family?” I ask him.
A gurgle for a reply. He’s just about to be lights
out from hypoxia. Won’t be long after that.

Scott / TBH / 25
“Well, I’ll find them if you do. Don’t worry, I’ll say
goodbye for you.”
Rex falls over, face-first, with a thud. Not wasting
any time, I shove a hand into my pocket to hit the
release button on the remote for the spider that’s still
wrapped around Omar’s head. I turn to him just as it’s
clambering off and down from his chair. The legs fold
up, leaving a compact black cylinder beside his feet.
Omar is staring in horror at the brutal result of the
attacks that just saved his life.
“You killed him,” Omar mumbles.
“He had it coming,” I say, then use my neuralink
to unlock the shockcuffs that tie his hands to the back
of the chair. The cuffs fall with a metallic thunk, and
Omar stands up slowly, looking dazed. I grab him
roughly by the arm and start dragging him toward the
exit, moving fast.
“We need to hurry. It won’t be long before this
place is teeming with Mohinari’s goons.”
Omar just nods stiffly. He’s lucky he’s still
conscious after all the pain he’s been through.
I snag Omar’s holoband on the way out and hand
it to him. “You might need this,” I say.
“Thanks,” he replies as he slips it over his
forehead.

Scott / TBH / 26

CHAPTER 3

Before I set foot out of the packing center, I
activate my holoband. A holoscreen shimmers to life
in front of my face, projected directly from the band
around my forehead. The faded edges of the display
contain icons for various functions, a minimap in the
top right with friend-foe-coded blips. Red for enemy.
Green for friendly. Yellow for neutral. There is just one
yellow blip at the moment—Omar—with a green one
in the center to indicate my own position. Not that I
expect the limited AI and sensors in my band to be
able to see one of Mohinari’s goons coming and
accurately code them as red.
Omar and I fly out the door and down the external
staircase from the abandoned building. I use the
cameras in the rim of my holoband to keep my eyes
everywhere without having to turn my head. Our
boots clang resoundingly on the metal stairs. An icy,
whistling wind whips across the glacier, cutting
through the thermal shield on my belt and searing my
exposed skin.
As I lead the way down the stairs, I’m busy
activating one of the black-market add-ons to my
neuralink. It disables third-party monitoring even after

Scott / TBH / 27
I’ve legally bound myself to such an arrangement.
Technically, Roman Arovitch is bound to that
agreement, not Cade Korbin, so my employment
contract is a sham, anyway. But most things I sign
are. I never use my real name. Too much baggage.
Too much risk.
We hit the bottom of the stairs. Snow flies away
from my boots as I sprint across the glacier to my air
car. One of Mohinari’s company cars, actually—a
sleek, gleaming black Cavalier Courier with tinted,
blast-shielded windows, four sliding doors, and a
golden M on the front. Rajesh monograms all of his
stuff, branding it like cattle from Earth in one of those
ancient holovids about the wild west. This car can be
tracked, which is a problem, but I have ways around
that.
I reach the driver’s side, mentally trigger the door
to slide open, and drop into a pristine, quilted black
arak leather seat behind the controls. Omar slides into
the matching passenger’s seat beside me. A festering
stench comes in with him that lifts my upper lip and
makes my nose twitch. Sweat, blood, and piss. The
smell of fear. I know it well. The Paladins aren’t
exactly the nicest branch of the Coalition’s Spec Ops.
And my job in particular was filthy as hell. Probably
why the bastards burned me and pinned me with all
the shit they ordered me to do. Can’t have the
Coalition’s holier-than-thou reputation sullied by the
nastiness of consequentialism.
I turn the car on with a thought, and bend down to
rummage around under the pilot’s seat for the signal
jammer I attached there in case I ever needed this car
for a getaway. After executing Rajesh, for example.

Scott / TBH / 28
So much for that. Now I’m going to need a whole
new plan to get close to him. Four months of prep
work down the scrigging drain. I glance at Omar as I
flick the physical switch to turn the jammer on. No
sense leaving a digital trace to connect me to the
illegal device. I can scrub the bio memories of this
Deus-forsaken mess later.
Speaking of digital traces. I need his in case we
get separated. I send a silent request to exchange
comm numbers and location data with his holoband.
He accepts without asking me why. Smart man. At
this point trusting me is all he’s got.
“Where are we going?” Omar asks as I take the
M-shaped control yoke in both hands and slide it
straight up to lift off from the ice field. The car goes
whirring into the air, buoyed up by its grav lifts.
I feel my spine compress with the sudden upward
acceleration. That reminds me to dial up the inertial
dampeners so I can keep the G-forces within tolerable
limits. “To your house, where else?” I ask as I push
the throttle all the way up to the max.
Omar looks uneasy with that statement. “You
know where I live? Why are we going there?”
I send him a bland look, but don’t reply.
Within seconds we’re whistling along at over 500
klicks per hour, heading straight for the gleaming,
crystal spires of Liberty City. The appearance of it is
like a decorative glass sculpture with the city lights
glowing in green, blue, and purple, and reflecting in
colorful swirls off the surrounding ridges of glacial ice.
An alert flashes on the main holo display, the
airspeed is flashing to get my attention—502 KPH.
The limit is 350, but as long as I’m flying in one of

Scott / TBH / 29
Mohinari’s cars, the police wouldn’t dare to pull me
over.
“If we’re going to my house, I have a right to know
why,” Omar insists. His voice sounding stern, like he
thinks maybe he can intimidate me. Maybe he thinks
I’m soft, because I saved his ass. If he only knew who
I am, he wouldn’t think that. He’s just lucky he’s not a
dirty cop—notwithstanding the smell of an arak’s ass
that’s radiating from him in noxious waves.
“We’re going to pick up your family. If you don’t
get them out of Liberty City before Mohinari realizes
what just happened, he’s going to feed them to his pet
Wraiths.”
Omar grows suddenly still and serious. Nods
once. “What about you? You’re the one who killed
that guy, not me.”
“Yeah, that was me. But it wasn’t me, because I’m
someone else. My name isn’t Roman, and I don’t
have wavy black hair or dimples in my cheeks, and I
sure as hell don’t have this damned baby face,” I add,
sparing a hand from the controls to indicate my
hideously-hologenic mug with a thumb.
“Then who are you?”
I spare a second of my attention from the grid
lines of air traffic that I’m illegally skirting by flying
below the designated altitude of one thousand
meters.
“I’m the guy people call when calling guys like you
doesn’t work.”

* * *

The air car comes to a gliding stop in front of the
docking port that extends from the balcony of Omar’s
apartment. He’s up on the fiftieth floor of a modestly

Scott / TBH / 30
appointed-building that glows blue and green in a
checkered pattern as the light from within is filtered
through its tinted windows. The apartment has no
view except of the towers across the street and the
criss-crossing snarl of pedestrian tunnels on the
commercial floors above and below this one.
“I’ll be right back,” Omar says as the privacy
frosting of the glass doors behind the thermal-
shielded balcony clears to reveal a pretty young
woman with dark hair, and a miniature version of her.
The daughter has her face and hands pressed to the
glass.
“Make it fast.”
“Can I shower?”
“Fuck no.”
“Okay.”
Omar’s door slides open, and I fold my hands
calmly in my lap while I wait. My eyes are
everywhere, scanning the skies, and the displays in
the dash showing feeds from the external cameras.
Air cars flit around, whirring softly as they go.
Dipping down, docking briefly, then jetting off. It
reminds me of this documentary I saw once. Weaver
birds on Earth. They use grass to build these huge
communal nests that hang from the branches of trees
in southern Africa. Like apartment buildings for birds.
The male weavers can be seen flitting about, hovering
briefly outside to leave food for their kids and mates,
and then they go flitting off again. Just like these cars.
Of course, we’ve got our women doing it, too.
Birds need to catch up. Such a sexist species. A grin
parts my lips. Then collapses in a scowl.
Where the hell is Omar?

Scott / TBH / 31
The glass doors and windows along the balcony
are back to frosted. Nothing but a fussy glow leaking
out to tell me that they’re still home. Deus, I hope
they’re not making a run for it. Not trusting me right
now would be the last mistake they’ll ever make.
My eyes dip to check the car’s sensor display for
the requisite number of life signs inside.
Three green dots. On the move. Headed toward
my location.
Smart man.
The glass door slides open, three people come
bustling out, their arms draped with luggage.
That was fast.
Too fast. Must have already had those bags
packed. Again, I’m subtly impressed with Omar.
His family hurries across the short docking bridge
to the side of the Cavalier. Both doors on the
passenger side slide open as Omar triggers them with
his implant, and they come sliding in. Another noxious
cloud fills my nostrils. This one cloying and sweet.
“You trying to choke me to death with flowers?”
Omar snorts a grim laugh as the doors slide shut.
“Let’s go.”
I feed the car with a new destination: The Rikard
Spaceport, and it undocks from the apartment with a
clunk. A moment later, the car goes drifting up,
slotting into the snailing lanes of traffic between two
commercial levels. We’re barely doing sixty KPH. Too
damn slow. A frown graces my lips. All cars have to
be on autopilot inside the city limits, no way around
that without bringing every police cruiser on the planet
crashing down on us. Maybe even a few FSA
Interceptors to boot. Gotta protect those bird nests.

Scott / TBH / 32
“Where are we going?” a small voice asks.
A glance at the holofeed from the ceiling cam
reveals a cherubic face, innocent blue eyes, cheeks
pink from the cold.
“Shhh,” her mother says.
I look away. The less the kid knows the better. I
can’t guarantee that they’re going to make it. I’ll get
them off world, but after that, they’re on their own. I
glance at Omar. He’s wearing a fresh set of civilian
clothes, not another uniform. Good. That choking
flowers smell is coming from him. No time to shower,
so he emptied a bottle of his wife’s perfume to mask
his filth. His gunbelt is gone, replaced by a civilian belt
with a thermal shield built in.
There is a hint of a bulge in the inside right pocket
of his creased, brown arak leather jacket.
A gun? Looks big enough to be a compact laser
pistol. Omar probably has a permit for concealed
carry. Good. He’s going to need it. ...