Borderlands_Gunsight

by John Shirley

  He then made the necessary move.

  Nothing. He held still, and he waited for them to go by.

  He had two choices, here, basically: let them go—or kill them. If he let them go, that was smooth and easy, and he could slip behind them. He couldn’t kill every man on this artificial mountain. But he’d noticed that the sentry communication wasn’t all that tight on Tumessa. After all, he’d killed five of them already. There clearly was no general alarm going on. If he took out the sentries in his pathway up—that might ease his pathway back down, if he left the way he’d come. Only, he had to be sure to do a good job of hiding the bodies . . .

  Okay. He’d made up his mind. He holstered the pistol and drew his knives.

  The guards were about five strides past him when he stepped out behind them, thinking, Maybe the knives are not such a good idea.

  He was good up close with knives, but he wasn’t near enough for stabbing—he’d chosen throwing knives when his expertise was with guns.

  Too late—one of them heard his boot tip nudge a piece of broken glass, and was turning—Bloodwing leapt up into the air—Mordecai was hard to see in the auto-camo but this close, and in the light, not invisible. The sentry raised his gun—

  Mordecai threw the knife—and it penetrated the man’s throat. But the Marauder had partial cover from a weak shield and the knife didn’t go in very well, and besides, Mordecai’s throw hadn’t been quite as straight as he’d wanted. The knife was well balanced, the throw was professional—but not enough.

  The knife fell without sticking and the guard raised his shotgun.

  Then Bloodwing was there, in the guard’s face, hovering, clawing, pecking.

  Mordecai threw the other knife with his left hand while with the right he drew his pistol and fired at the second guard who was sidestepping, raising a submachine gun—

  Mordecai blew the guy’s teeth up through his brains and he went down, while the other knife stuck just under the lower edge of the first guard’s shield . . . deeply in his crotch. The man shrieked in pain, firing the shotgun wildly, blowing out the window of a shack.

  Bloodwing got out of the way—as she was trained to do—and Mordecai took out the first guard.

  “Noisy and messy,” Mordecai muttered, as Bloodwing returned to him.

  He grabbed the bodies quick as he could and dragged them by the collars between the shacks.

  But there was already someone shouting from the shack where the windows had been shot out. There was always someone else he had to kill around here. It was a pain in the ass.

  Mordecai turned to the shack, saw a pop-eyed man gaping at him, raising a rifle with shaking hands—Mordecai fired the machine pistol, knocked the guy back into his shack.

  Then he started up the hill . . . and saw something coming at him, writhing its way down the hill. It was a disgusting mottled pink color and it was about the heft of a very fat man, though somewhat elongated—and there was something like a chinless man’s face on the front end. It was big-eyed, imbecilic, with a wide mouth seeming far too big for the rest of the face. The thing rippled along toward him, its movements all but boneless. It opened its mouth wide and sprayed a long jet of drool toward him—the pearly gunk fell short, a meter from him, but he saw the stuff immediately harden, as if turning to hard plastic, and remembered what Gergle had said.

  The thing must be a SlagSlug—a man mutated by Eridium slag into a sluglike creature, body stretched out to twice a man’s height. It was vicious and ready to kill anyone who didn’t belong in Tumessa.

  If it hit him with that spew, he’d be bound up in a straitjacket of biological adhesive.

  “Keep away from that thing!” he yelled as Bloodwing flapped toward it, his faithful pet trying to distract the SlagSlug.

  And then Mordecai turned and ran.

  He headed down the road, Bloodwing swooping close overhead. Mordecai was looking for a good place to dart between the shacks, reloading his machine pistol as he went.

  Suddenly a large vehicle roared toward him from downhill—it was a Bandit technical, basically an armored truck with a machine gun mounted on the roof. Manning the machine gun was a guard with a fin of black hair on an otherwise bald head, and beside the gunner stood Gergle, gleefully pointing at Mordecai and shouting, “There he is, I told ya so!”

  Mordecai sighed. He was between a SlagSlug and an armored car and he suspected his auto-camo had stopped working. “I really messed this up.” Bloodwing, alighting on his shoulder, squawked in agreement. Should’ve killed Gergle; should have cut into the skin under Gergle’s neck to get that transmitter out, too.

  Mordecai sprinted to the left, just barely keeping ahead of the machine gun, which was now strafing a line of rounds up the street behind him, a split second from hammering rounds into his back.

  Should’ve brought a shield. But he’d wanted to operate completely in the dark and the shield would interfere with the auto-camo and—he felt a round big as a knife slice along his ribs, on his right side, grazing him as he leapt between the buildings.

  “Shit!” he hissed, and tossed a smoke grenade behind him.

  The bomb gushed almost immediately into a thick plume of dark gray smoke, hiding him as he ducked behind the shack, ran along the rim of the escarpment—and saw an old oil barrel standing behind the shack. An idea came to him.

  He climbed onto the barrel, jumped up from there to grab the edge of the roof, and did a pull-up. In seconds he was on the roof, running back toward the road he’d just escaped—and as he’d hoped, the technical was doing a U-turn, knocking a small shack off the hill because of the tight turn radius. Someone howled in protest as the shack tumbled down the hill. Then the armored truck was roaring up close beneath Mordecai, as the machine gunner hadn’t seen him on the roof; he was squinting at the space between buildings, hoping to get another shot at him. So he didn’t see Mordecai leaping down on him, firing the machine pistol as he came. Gergle looked up in time to see Mordecai coming—and that was the last thing he saw as bullets took out his eyes and knocked him backward, dead before he hit the bed of the truck. The same burst hit the machine gunner but the man’s shield held up, sparking purple with the rounds. Still, the gunner was staggered backward, losing his grip on his weapon.

  Mordecai saw all this in the second it took him to complete his leap. He landed in the back of the speeding truck, pitched hard to the left by its motion. He rolled, came up firing the machine pistol. Again the shield held and this time the machine gunner was reaching for a shotgun clipped to the back of the technical’s cab. Mordecai rushed him, used all his strength and momentum to jab the gun through the shield. He fired, tearing up the gunner’s chest. The Marauder jerked with the shots and went down.

  The technical screeched to a halt. “What’s goin’ on back there?” the driver demanded.

  Mordecai plucked another smoke grenade, leaned over the cab, and tossed it through an open window. Smoke gushed and the driver climbed out, coughing—only to be shot through the top of his head by the last few rounds left in the machine pistol.

  Mordecai heard a slobbering sound, turned to see the SlagSlug rearing up behind the technical. The SlagSlug opened its big red mouth—and it spewed.

  Just ahead of the creature, Mordecai vaulted over the machine gun, coming down hard next to the driver’s body. He absorbed the shock with bent knees, then jumped into the cab, squinting as the smoke swirled past him. He put the vehicle in reverse and slammed the accelerator. The technical backed up, hard, into the SlagSlug—there was a nasty crunch, a squeal of pain.

  “Oughta slow the ugly bastard down,” Mordecai said as Bloodwing swept into the smoky vehicle’s cab with him.

  He changed gears and accelerated down the road, which curved sharply as it descended. Mordecai drove with his left hand, with his right switching the machine gun to driver control.

  A group of four guards on foot were rushing up the hill toward him—he knocked three of them down with the machine gun, their shields s
parking. He hit the fourth one head-on with the armored truck, splashing blood on the windshield and crushing the man under his front wheels. Mordecai bumped over the other three sentries—he winced at the sound of it—and then jerked the wheel hard to take him around the tight curve. The sharp turn took the technical up on two wheels, and it almost flipped over. But then it fell back on all four wheels with a joint-jarring thump, and he was roaring down to another curve. The curvy road snaked down the hill, more tight turns than straight stretches, and Mordecai had to work hard to keep the vehicle from turning over.

  Another curve—and then machine gun bullets crashed into his windshield. They missed him but flying glass slashed the right side of his face. The technical that had fired the machine gun was turned sideways to block him—he wasn’t going to be able to get past it. It was either jump free, crash into the technical, or . . .

  He took the third option, and turned sharply, driving the vehicle right through the middle of the Sludge Packer Bar and Grill.

  He smashed through the front of the building, so that splintered panels flew past, and one sharp timber stabbed through his broken window, jabbing into the seat between him and Bloodwing.

  She huddled under the dashboard as the vehicle crushed and crashed its way through the bar, running over several drunken Marauders, driving right through a booth where four startled men were throwing down their playing cards and diving aside—and continuing explosively out through the back wall of the Sludge Packer.

  Behind the bar, he remembered, was just a cliff—a short escarpment, really . . .

  The technical was flying headlong down the escarpment now, in a jagged-edged cloud of broken synthawood and shattered glass and several body parts. There was just enough of a slope for his wheels to find some purchase, and the vehicle didn’t nose over onto its back, as he’d feared . . . it bounced, parts of it flying off, and then crashed onto the roof of a shack. Someone inside screamed. The Bandit technical.

  Stalled.

  The vehicle was stuck, smoking, in the wreckage of the shack. And the wreckage of the shack was lying across the first acid moat. He could hear the acid seething, bubbling, eating at the bottom of the flattened shack; acrid chemical fumes rose up around him. In moments it would burn its way through, and he’d be dumped into the bubbling corrosive fluid.

  Mordecai cursed as he tried to restart the technical with his right hand, while with his left he controlled the machine gun, blasting the sentries running toward him up the lower road.

  Then the technical started, and he put it in top gear, gunned it hard. The wheels spun but then took hold in the wreckage, fishtailing before straightening out on the lower road. He let out a long, relieved breath as he left the acid moat behind and managed to get the armored truck turned—but not before shearing into the support timbers of a guard tower; the tower fell, the guard howling with fear as it came down, crashing back into the acid moat. The man shrieked piteously as he fell into the flesh-eating fluid.

  Mordecai veered around the snapped-off supports of the fallen guard tower, then drove headlong down another slope—and straight toward the nearest gate.

  Only, the gate was closed. It looked heavy, too. And there were two SlagSlugs worming toward the gate, ahead, one from each side.

  He jerked the wheel hard right, angling toward the place he’d come in, past a SlagSlug, then cut hard left and jammed through a scaffolding and a fence, thumping out onto the tundra, past the wreckage of the drone, straight toward the ravine where he’d left the outrunner. The technical was slowing down, jittering, and he seemed to be followed by something that clinked and whined close behind. He looked in the rearview mirror, saw he’d brought a length of fence wire with him, along with half a dozen posts and one sentry tangled up in the wire, being dragged, the wire skinning him alive.

  “Whoa, glad I’m not that guy,” said Mordecai, wincing.

  He knew there’d be pursuit within a minute or two, maybe cannon firing at him, and the technical was slowed by all the debris. But he’d almost reached the hidden outrunner.

  There—he could just make out the ravine in the moonlight, up ahead.

  Mordecai pulled up near the ravine, keeping the vehicle idling. As Bloodwing flapped out past him to wait at the outrunner, Mordecai got out and ran back to the man he’d accidentally dragged behind the truck. The man was moaning, semiconscious—Mordecai shot him through the heart to put him out of his misery and then, grimacing, searched the raggedly bloody body and found what he was looking for—a transmitter, under the torn skin of the man’s chin. He stuck the transmitter in a pocket.

  He turned away, gagging, wiping blood on his pants—the guy had truly become an exposed anatomical specimen—and he hurried back to the cab of the technical. He picked up a large rock from the steppes and jammed it on the accelerator, put the vehicle in drive, then leapt clear.

  The technical roared away, not at full speed but fast enough, weaving randomly across the tundra, away from the ravine.

  Then Mordecai sprinted down the steep slope into the ravine, climbed into the outrunner, and started it. But he kept it in park, waiting—and listening. Bloodwing alighted on his shoulder and bent her head, listening with him.

  Soon they heard the sound of a column of technicals grinding across the tundra, following the tracks of the one he’d abandoned . . . following the driverless vehicle out into the wilderness.

  Mordecai made himself wait three minutes before driving out of the ravine.

  And then he headed straight for Gunsight.

  “That was cunning of you, and resourceful, too,” Jasper admitted. “But I don’t see that you fulfilled your mission. Maybe half of it.”

  “What!” Mordecai was pretty good at pretending to be outraged. “I found out his secret! He’s got a huge facility hidden under that hill—it’s an artificial hill and he’s got labs down there. A factory. He’s making mutants—those slugs, so they can mine Eridium for him. They bore holes right through the rock. And they kill people for him, too. He’s planning to sell them all over the galaxy.”

  “That’s no secret—we knew that,” Jasper said, waving a hand dismissively.

  They were standing in Daphne’s circular “bedroom.” The floor was tinted dark, at the moment. Somewhere below, Bigjaws stalked about, snapping and licking its giant choppers.

  Daphne was sitting on the edge of the bed, legs crossed, listening impassively. But Mordecai knew her mind was working away on all the possibilities for escape.

  There weren’t a lot of possibilities right now. Jasper had six heavily armed men with him, two of them covering Daphne, the others pointing their weapons at Mordecai’s head.

  Mordecai and Jasper stood in the center of the room, glowering at one another.

  Mordecai had used some med hypos to heal his wounds, but he still wore his camo. At some point the auto-camo had stopped working on the mission—probably when he’d been shot in the side. The nano-digitalization had shorted out. Cheap off-world junk.

  Mordecai growled to himself and said, “Far as I found out, that’s all that’s going on under Reamus House. I figured that was what you wanted to know about—so I came back!”

  Jasper shook his head. “Naw, there’s something else. Some kind of weapon. Something big, something really secret. Plus, I also sent you to find out how to kill Reamus . . .”

  “Fine. I got this . . .” Mordecai drew the transmitter from his pocket—not much more than a computer chip with an antenna on it. “It’ll get you past the second bridge—that one’ll dump you in the acid if you don’t have one of these. Maybe it protects against the SlagSlugs, too, I dunno. And, I know a way in—there’s a blind spot around back, surveillance is weak, because he figures the Bigass Bullymong’ll protect it.”

  “Got a pet Bullymong back there, does he? They can be tough all right . . . Well, you’ll just have to kill the thing, get in the back way, and kill Reamus.”

  Mordecai jabbed a finger at Jasper and took a step toward him. �
�Now waitaminnut, I held up my end of the bargain, Jasper. I want my woman and I want my money!”

  “That’s Boss Jasper to you.”

  And as Jasper spoke, Mordecai felt the cold kiss of a gun muzzle pressed into his right ear. “You’re standing too close to the boss,” said Commander Ripper, through clenched teeth. He was the one pressing the gun muzzle against Mordecai’s ear. “And you shouldn’t point your finger at him. Not even that.”

  Mordecai shrugged and stepped back, and the Nomad coolly lowered the gun.

  “You know,” Daphne said, “if you want the job done right, you should send me along with Mordecai, Jasper. Me and him, with just a little help—we took down Gynella. I’m at least as good on a mission as he is.”

  Mordecai cocked his head ruefully. “Yeah, it’s true. She’s probably better than me. Specially at hand-to-hand. She’s more of a pro than I am, really, you want somebody killed. How about I take her there. I keep the Bullymong busy, she goes in and kills this Reamus, does a little research, and we get out of there?”

  “And why,” Jasper asked, “would you two come back to report?”

  “For the money,” said Daphne and Mordecai, both at once.

  They looked at each other and grinned.

  The grins faded when Jasper shook his head. “No. She stays here. I’ve got my reasons. You go back, Mordecai. You get the job done. Then you get what I promised. And more. Ripper, escort this slacker back to his outrunner. See he’s outfitted. And send him back to Tumessa.”

  Mordecai came within a whisper of turning, grabbing Ripper’s gun, and shooting Jasper with it. But there were all those other guys with guns—one of them would probably shoot Daphne. And there were people watching on hidden cameras. And they’d trigger that floor . . .

  So Mordecai turned around and followed Ripper to the door—and stopped. He turned toward Daphne and said, voice taut, controlled, “Back soon as I can.”