Borderlands: The Fallen

by John Shirley

  That’s when Crannigan made his move, telegraphing it by snarling—Roland would have sidestepped him but he stumbled on the loose rocks. Crannigan rushed in, tried to slip past Roland’s knife, his own blade hooking up toward Roland’s ribs, left fist slamming into Roland’s body. Roland grunted, let Crannigan’s momentum carry him back—Crannigan tackling Roland, even as Roland twisted to avoid the knife. Roland fell onto his back and Crannigan struck, his blade slicing through Roland’s jacket, barely cutting his side, almost burying itself in the rocky soil with a chunk sound. Crannigan had Roland down, the arm with Roland’s knife hand pushed aside by Crannigan’s shoulder, so Roland couldn’t stab in at him.

  Crannigan gnashed his teeth at Roland’s throat. Roland could feel the merc’s spittle, his hot breath, heard the clack of the teeth not quite connecting, then he got his legs under him, used all his strength to tip Crannigan over …

  The two men were rolling, each one holding the other’s knife hand. This wasn’t working out as Roland had hoped. Roland found himself on the bottom again but he’d got his right knee up between them, forced Crannigan back—then shoved hard with his boot into the middle of Crannigan’s chest.

  “Shit!” Crannigan said, going over backward, and seeming surprised by Roland’s strength.

  Roland was up in a flash, feeling the killing rage in him, the warrior’s energy that seemed to make the world go into slow motion around him.

  Crannigan was up almost as quickly but Roland was already rushing in, grabbing Crannigan’s knife hand, using his own knife to slash blur-fast up, driving the blade in under Crannigan’s ribs. Roland could feel the tip push through skin, muscle, tissue—and he felt it when it pierced the hard muscle of Crannigan’s heart. Crannigan screamed—and Roland whispered in his ear, “That’s for McNee.”

  He twisted the knife, then shoved the collapsing Crannigan so that he was flung into Rans Veritas and Rosco, the two men knocked down by the spasming body.

  Roland was already turning, bounding past the elite in the red armor, grabbing the surprised Gorman around the waist. He kept going, swinging Gorman around, almost like a man with a woman in a dance move, and brought his knife blade, still bloody with Crannigan’s life, up under Gorman’s throat.

  “I told you, Gorman, they’re under my protection and they stay with me!” Roland bellowed. “Cal, get your mom on that platform!”

  The three armored elites—red, blue, and silver—were swinging their weapons toward Roland.

  “No, no, hold your fire, wait for your moment!” Gorman yelled. “You’ll hit me with those things!”

  Roland edged toward the scout platform. Cal and Marla were hurrying onto it.

  And then … Rans Veritas grabbed Crannigan’s fallen Eridian rifle …

  “No, Rans!” Rosco shouted.

  “Shut up,” Rans snarled, face twitching. “He’ll ruin everything; he’ll bring a thousand people here and they’ll take it all away from me!”

  He raised the rifle to his shoulder and Rosco said, “No, dammit, you’re gonna hit the boss!” Rosco tried to wrestle it away but got in the way of the muzzle. Rans pulled the trigger and Rosco was caught point-blank in the energy burst—turning to hot red ash, falling away.

  Rans pointed the Eridian rifle at the platform just as Roland dragged Gorman onto it beside Marla and Cal.

  “Stop him!” Gorman shrieked, staring at Rans. “Stop that idiot, he’ll kill me!”

  The armored red elite turned and fired his weapon at Rans—blasting him to shreds in one powerful multishot burst. But not before Rans fired again as Marla threw the switch to make the scout platform rise into the air. The flying vehicle rose up crookedly, wobbling under her inexpert control and the blast from the Eridian rifle caught the bottom of the scouter platform, but it was enough to shatter the pulsers, which gushed purple sparks and then went dark. The platform crashed down … then, its fuel banks exploded.

  “No!” Zac shouted, inside the alien. He’d watched the entire scene from the observation node, just ten meters from the platform. “They’re going to die, they’re—you’ve got to do something! Kill me but let them go!”

  “My decision is made,” said the alien. “I’ve seen that Hidden Thing of Interest in the man Roland, and in the boy, and to some extent in you. Observe the floor at your feet.”

  Zac felt the chair let go and he stood up, staring at an irising hole in the pearly floor of the chamber. From it emerged something that looked like a transparent football; it was only slightly smaller, and the same shape. In its center was a restless light, a kind of miniature star.

  “Pick it up. Then you will be picked up. You’ll be carried to the scene. You can use it to destroy the three men in armor, if you pick your time. But they are powerful—they cannot be easily killed. Strike the weapon hard with both hands, onto the ground, when you are ready. I will be departing within minutes. Good luck—as you dumbasses say.”

  Zac picked up the transparent, football-shaped object—it felt like hard plastic under his hands, and weighed about a kilogram. It seemed filled with a translucent, iridescent liquid that rippled with energy from the miniature star at its center.

  He felt something clasp him under the arms and lift him in the air. He looked up to see the monitor, flying upward toward the ceiling … which opened, a doorway where none had been before.

  Zac said nothing as he went. He did not feel like thanking the alien.

  Marla was kneeling next to Roland, on the ground next to the smoking, broken scouter platform. Roland lay on his back, eyes closed. Blood trickled from his nose. He’d stepped in front of her to catch the brunt of the explosion when the platform got hit.

  She lifted Roland’s heavy head into her lap. Blood trickled from his nose and the corner of his mouth. “Roland?” Was he alive? She wasn’t sure. He was a magnificent man. He’d done everything he could for Cal. She found herself doing something she didn’t believe in. Praying for him.

  Cal knelt on the other side. “Mom? Is he dead?”

  Shadows fell over them. She looked up to see Gorman brushing himself off, smoothing his hair, apparently unhurt. With him were the three men in their colored armor.

  “Oh I do hope he’s alive,” Gorman said. “I really am not going to be happy until I have taught him a lesson about manhandling me.”

  “Last lesson he’ll ever learn,” said the elite in red armor.

  Gorman turned toward his bodyguards. “You three aren’t much good. You should’ve kept an eye on him.”

  “Never saw anybody move that fast before,” the canned soldier in red admitted.

  “What about these two, the kid and the bitch,” the blue soldier said.

  “Oh, we’ll have to get rid of them, they’re just too problematic,” Gorman said, matter-of-factly. “First, let’s …”

  “What the hell is that?” the silver soldier said, pointing.

  They all looked. And saw the delta-shaped creature flying toward them, like a giant manta ray but with tentacles in front drooping down. And in its tentacles it carried a man.

  “Dad!” Cal shouted, jumping up.

  The monitor approached the dumbfounded onlookers, and lowered Zac to within a few steps of the armored elite and Gorman. Its tendrils released him, withdrew, and the delta-shaped creature backed away.

  “Shoot that thing down!” Gorman said. “And get that artifact!”

  The blue elite was aiming his rifle—he fired, an energy bullet streaked after the monitor, and glanced off it, doing no appreciable damage. It kept going—and within two seconds they lost sight of it, in the broken shell of the cinder cone.

  “Cal!” Zac said as the boy started toward him. “Stay back! Marla, hold him back for his own safety!”

  Marla stepped up behind Cal and dragged him back. “Cal—your dad knows what he’s doing …” She hoped.

  Zac looked at her sadly. “I’m sorry I got you into this, Marla. I’m sorry about all of it. I’m sorry we’ve fallen down here. I’m going
to make up for it.”

  The elite in blue aimed his weapon at Zac. “Put that artifact down and come over here,” he said.

  “I’ll bring it to you,” Zac said. “I’ll trade it for my family’s safety.” After a moment, as he started toward them, he added, quietly, “In a way.”

  He was near the three armored soldiers when Gorman suddenly said, “Wait—I don’t like this. Red, Blue—all of you. Get over there and take that thing away from him. Don’t damage it—it’s valuable. Take it and subdue him.”

  The blue, the silver, and the red stepped toward him.

  Zac yelled, “Cal?”

  “Yeah, Dad?”

  “I’m proud of you! Now you and your mother—get down!”

  Zac’s voice left no doubt. Cal grabbed Marla and both of them ducked behind the remains of the platform as Zac, with the elite soldiers closing in around him, smashed the football-shaped transparent artifact onto the stony ground, as the alien had told him …

  The artifact shattered, and the liquid inside it instantly vaporized, exposing the miniature star to the air—Marla looked up just in time to see a bubble of intense blue light splashing outward, expanding, turning the armored men and Zac into silhouettes … and consuming them.

  They didn’t even have time to scream. The air, riven by the powerful energy pulse, shrieked for them.

  Zac’s body was a standing, glowing coal in the shape of a man—and then it disintegrated, blown into phosphorescent dust.

  The armor on the three men was melting away—boiling the men inside as it went. But they were already dead …

  Gnarled, blackened outlines of the armor remained standing, with the bones of the men inside like perverse sculptures. Their skulls, eye sockets smoking, staring out where their helmets had been.

  Gorman was staggering, his hands over his eyes. He turned toward Marla—and she saw that his eyes had been melted from his head. “I … I can’t see …”

  He fell to his knees, hands over his face, and rocked there, moaning. “Help me!”

  “Dad?” Cal got up and walked toward the spot, right past Gorman. Marla went after him. Smoke stunned her eyes.

  Zac was gone.

  “He’s just … gone, Cal.” She could hardly believe it herself. Zac—snuffed out from existence in a second. “He died. Burned up. He had some kind of explosive from the ship. He sacrificed himself to save us …”

  Cal turned to her, weeping, and she held him close.

  After a few moments, Marla heard a deep-throated groan and turned to see Roland sitting up, one hand to his head. “Feel like I was kicked in the head by Skagzilla …”

  “Roland!” Cal blurted. He ran to him. “You’re okay?”

  “Wouldn’t go that far. Nothing a little Dr. Zed won’t fix. I’ll be right as rain if I …” He stared at the remains of the armored elite, and the blinded Atlas exec. “What the hell happened?”

  Marla shook her head. “Hard to explain. Zac was brought by … by something. Out of the alien crash site. He had a weapon. He got rid of the men in the armor. But we lost him. Gorman’s blind …” She looked toward Gorman, who was groaning, muttering, hugging himself. “And maybe out of his mind.”

  “Yeah? Sounds like your husband found an ally. Must’ve impressed somebody …”

  “He impressed me, anyhow,” said Berl, as he came out from behind a cluster of boulders on the edge of the gulch. He was shaking his shaggy head in dull amazement. “Zac and me had our differences, but he was a good man. I got here just in time to see him makin’ that big flash of light and then those canned soldiers getting cooked—”

  Suddenly the ground began to shake. The air shook with it; the volcanic cone, rising at the end of the gulch, quivered within itself. Then something floated out of the natural amphitheater formed by the shell. Something enormous that shone like molten silver as it came into the sunlight. It was shaped like a softly contoured hourglass, translucent and iridescent, glimmering inside with miniature stars. Sheathed in a violet energy field, it floated over the debris field … and suddenly the artifacts in the debris field flew upward, tumbling end over end, spinning as they went, and merged seamlessly with their gigantic progenitor.

  Marla, Cal, Berl, and Roland stared. Gorman only groaned and rocked on his knees, bloody hands over his eye sockets.

  Marla could make out the shape of the delta-like object that had carried Zac to them—it was limned into the side of the giant flying object, seemed to have melded with it. She could feel the regard of the creature, gazing down at her.

  An insight came to her, then. The frustrated exobiologist in her spoke up. “Oh—it’s not a spaceship. That’s … an animal. I mean—an organism. A creature! An intelligent being! It’s … its own spaceship!”

  “You could be right,” Roland said, getting up to stare at the thing.

  “Damn right she is!” Berl said. “Look at that—it’s alive!”

  It moved slowly toward them, humming, whispering without words, and hovered about three hundred meters overhead. They heard a voice in their heads say, “Try not to be such dumbasses. Have the courage to find your light.”

  Then it receded, into the sky, with no visible means of acceleration. It was as if it were falling—up. It fell upward, into the gray-blue heavens—and vanished in the mists of the upper atmosphere, beginning its long journey home.

  Marla felt strange, waiting for Roland in front of the orbiter, as dusk extended the shadows and cooled the air. She stood with her arms around Cal—who kept staring at the seared spot where his father had died. She wondered if she and Cal would ever completely get over this planet.

  “The orbiter’s ready, and the arrangements are made with Atlas,” Roland said, coming out of the metallic step pyramid of the shuttle. Berl shuffled about with his hands in his pockets, staring at his feet, looking uncomfortable. Nearby were several fresh graves, oblong mounds of piled up gravel. The melted outlines of the elite soldiers’ armor, inhabited only by bones, still stood where they’d burned, like a melancholy monument. “All you have to do is close the hatch, take your seats in the cabin, and it’ll do the rest. It’ll dock for you, right inside the starship’s shuttle hangar—the whole thing.”

  “Can we … trust them?” Marla asked. “Atlas?”

  “They made a deal with me. I’m—a former employee. I know the starship commander. Old friend of mine. I trust him. We bring them Gorman—and one of the two artifacts left, the ones Berl had. That’s the deal. And they give you a ride to your next stop. Xanthus. They’ll get you there.”

  “But they sabotaged the DropCraft,” Berl said suddenly. “Zac told me about it.”

  Roland shook his head. “Commander says no. Says there’s traces of some outside transmission. We think that was the alien—it was watching for crafts sending homing signals to its area. It transmitted over rides. Took over the security bots … Trying to keep people from interfering with it, when it was so close to leaving, I’d guess.”

  “Xanthus, huh?” Berl said. “Mostly water, that planet. Kinda pretty there, though. A lot of tropical islands on that planet and not much else. You might like it.”

  “Least we can do for Zac,” Marla said sadly. “It was his dream to resettle there.”

  Cal was gazing at Roland, his eyes moist. “You could go with us. There’s a lotta work there. We could be partners again.”

  Roland smiled sadly. “I’ll see you again, partner. But … I’m staying, for now. I’ve got a lot of missions to run on this big ball of confusion for a while yet …”

  Cal swallowed and looked toward the lander. “How’s … the ‘suit’?”

  “Gorman? He’s sedated. Bandaged up. I expect they’ll grow him some new eyes. But he’s maybe damaged in some other way they won’t be able to fix.”

  “Screw him,” Cal said, shrugging. “If he’d done things differently my dad wouldn’t have had to die.”

  Marla nodded. Cal was going to be a handful on Xanthus.

  “It’s rea
dy to go,” Roland said. “Just—head on into the shuttle, take your seats.”

  “Hey—Bizzy!” Berl yelled.

  They looked around to see the drifter stumping toward them down the gulch, swaying along, eyes glowing.

  “What is that?” Cal asked, aghast and fascinated both. “It looks like a giant daddy longlegs—but … its body is … huge!”

  Roland grabbed his Eridian rifle from its strap-down on his back, swung it toward Bizzy—but Berl stepped up and pushed his rifle down. “Hold your fire, there, pal. I think I might have my ol’ buddy back.” He strode confidently toward the drifter and whistled, chirped, murmured to it.

  It clicked happily back at him and bobbed assent on its stiltlike legs.

  “Ha!” Berl said, gleefully, as he turned to them. “You see that? That alien’s gone and Bizzy’s free now! He’s back with me! We’re pards again!”

  Roland chuckled. “That’s an, uh, imposing ally you have there …”

  “Could be yours too, pal!” Berl said, grinning at Roland. “I’ve had my eye on you! I’ve got a place out in the country I was fixing to show Zac—a kind of oasis, it is. Safe and green and pure. Make a fine home base. I’ll need a partner there. I’ve got a plan for finding Eridian treasure, tell you about it on the way.”

  Roland shrugged. “Sure. Why not. We’ll talk it over.”

  He turned to Cal, put out his big hand—and Cal shook it gravely. Marla felt her heart wrench. It was as if Cal was losing a second father.

  “I’ll see you again, partner, I promise,” Roland said.

  “Wait—Mom, I promised him a reward!”

  “Kid, forget it,” Roland said.

  “I was thinking about that,” Marla said. “There’s a lot of money, taken from Grunj—it’s buried under the floorboards of a shack on the Trash Coast.” She gave him directions. “It’s all yours. And Berl’s.”

  Roland nodded, looking steadily at her. “Thanks. Maybe I’ll use it to visit Xanthus sometime …”

  “Roland …” Marla wasn’t sure exactly how to express what she wanted to ask him. “Why do you have to stay on this planet? It’s so harsh.”