by John Shirley
Inside the building, several men screamed like frightened little girls as the rampaging Bullymong tore the sentries apart.
“Come on, Bloodwing!” Mordecai shouted. She lit on his shoulder and he ran inside.
The Bullymong was ripping into the guards as if they were soft figures of clay. Brick was no longer on the Bullymong’s back—Mordecai turned to see him scooping up the big Eridian rifle from the Reamer’s body.
Two more sentries came around another corner, close to the Bullymong, to see what the commotion was. They shouted in horror, and turned—too slowly. Pain maddened, in a blind rage, it rushed them—and Mordecai flinched back from the sight. He turned away, hearing other voices shouting commands, around the corner to his left. Reamus’s men were trying to put the Bullymong down before it could do any more damage.
“Get down!” Brick yelled. Mordecai threw himself down, and the Eridian rifle fired, three times quickly.
Mordecai wanted to tell him, No, you’ll just make it mad!
But luck has its own timing, and two rounds from two rocket launchers were fired, at the same moment, from around the corner—at the Bullymong. The shells struck it in the front, one hitting it right between its narrow jaws, the other in the chest, at the same moment as the powerful Eridian blasts struck it in the back and side.
The Bullymong roared—and pitched over backward, twitching.
“Come on!” Brick said, triumphantly. His face was a mask of blood, his arms soaked in it. And most of the blood was his, but he seemed gleeful.
Mordecai ran to catch up with him as he ran away from the still-twitching Bullymong. “Now where?”
But the answer came on its own—the third door Brick tried opened onto an outdoor platform where a Buzzard was warming up. Two men were sitting in the Buzzard—two startled Reamers who died quickly as Brick rushed to them and instantly smashed their heads together. He tossed the raglike corpses aside, and he and Mordecai got into the Buzzard.
“Did you see that, Mordecai?” Brick asked as they took off. “I told you I could beat him.”
Mordecai didn’t remind him of Bloodwing’s part in it—and didn’t tell him about the rocket shells hitting the Bullymong at the same moment.
“You sure did, Brick. We wouldn’t be here right now it if wasn’t for you, buddy.”
A back stairs. Down, down to a dimly lit basement. Shadowy furnaces and huffing pipes. A turgid warmth. The smell of the burning animal fat that Jasper used to power his furnaces. Grim, this basement, all naked machinery and concrete. Smelling of industry and dust.
Daphne kind of liked it here. It was quiet and felt safe.
This, for the moment, was her realm. They were looking for her outside, all across Gunsight. She’d smashed a window, dropped a twined power cord through it so it looked like she’d went out that way. “She must’ve climbed down on this cord. She’s got to be somewhere nearby, she can’t have gotten far . . .”
Idiots.
She had the auto shotgun, the knife, and she’d picked up a machine pistol from the body of the panicky janitor she’d had to kill on the back stairs. She’d hidden his body behind the furnace. The corpse would start to smell, soon.
But she was warm here, in the darkness. She had the stolen food, a bottle of water. She had weapons. She had time to think.
To wonder why Mordecai hadn’t come back.
Maybe, she thought, as she paced slowly back and forth in the darkness, maybe he’d simply faced facts.
You lived on Pandora, you learned to keep it real. And the reality was, he wasn’t likely to rescue her.
She’d wait a little more. Then she’d decide. Might be she should take this thing by the throat: Go back up and hunt Jasper down. Get him alone. Treat him rough. Make him tell where his vault was, how to get in . . . Kill him and loot the vault. But how would she get the stuff out with her?
Or she could try to disguise herself, slip out through Gunsight, make for Frostbite Highlands. Eventually, to Sanctuary.
Rescue yourself! No more waiting.
Or maybe . . .
Maybe wait just a little longer.
• • •
“At least we’re rid of that Claptrap,” Mordecai said. He stood in the cold gray light at the mine’s trapezoidal entrance, gazing out on the bleak prospect of the rock quarry. Bloodwing had gone out to find some carrion. There was always carrion not too far away on Pandora.
It was a little after dawn. They’d had a cold night camping in the old mines, eating a little food cadged from the Buzzard’s freight box. They’d gotten back to Mordecai’s outrunner—he had most of his weapons back. They used the last of the med hypos—but thanks to Zed meds, Brick was all healed now. He’d had cracked ribs and a concussion from that fight with the Bullymong. Not that a concussion seemed to affect Brick much.
“But what we do now?” Brick asked as he zipped up his trousers. His pee dripped freshly down the raw stone wall.
“We find out if Reamus has taken the bait—if he and Jasper are at each other’s throats. Only I figure he’d just now be getting his assault rolling. He has a lot of men and vehicles to organize. If he has, we go in after Daphne . . . Jasper won’t be around to give any orders. We’ll get her out . . .”
“Sure. I like Daphne. One time . . .”
“I know, one time she made you something to eat.”
“Maybe they’re out searching for us.”
“Sure, he sent some guys out to hunt us down. But mostly he’s looking toward Jasper.”
“If you figured it right. Anyway, I slept, I ate, and now I’m bored. Let’s find the guys hunting us and kill them.”
“They’ll probably find us.”
“What about Feena?” Brick asked, as he stepped up to the doorway, Eridian rifle in his hands.
Mordecai looked at Brick in surprise. He was still worrying about that urchin. “What about her?”
“When we going to that Krom’s Canyon, see if she’s okay?”
“When the mission’s over. You can go anytime you want. But you’ll miss the biggest mission of your life . . .”
“We stick together for now.” Brick squinted up at the sky. “Here’s your bird.”
“She’s not a bird,” Mordecai said, not for the first time, as Bloodwing flapped down to him.
“Let’s do this then. But there better be good money and a lot of killing and smashing.”
“I absolutely promise killing and smashing.”
Brick strode out into the rubble, and Mordecai, picking up his backpack, followed him to the path that led to the rim, Bloodwing hunched on his shoulder. When they got to the outrunner . . .
The Claptrap was sitting in it. “Hi, fellas. I’ve been waiting for more than an hour.”
Mordecai stared. “Extra? How’d you get here?”
“They took me out of the truck, assigned me to street cleaning. I pretended to clean streets all the way to the gate. A truck was going out—I jumped in. And then out again, later. I went back to the outrunner.”
“And followed the tracks here. Seems like there’s no getting away from you . . .”
“No, there’s no getting away from me,” came the voice of Elenora Dufty. “I told you that before.”
“I’m sorry,” Extra said. “I turned her volume down, but she just—”
“Right. Never mind. Just . . . get in the back.”
“Okay!” The little robot bounced up, flipped, landed in back.
“But after this, robot, see if you can find a way to be useful. Because so far—you haven’t been.”
“Oh yes! Very useful! I shall be like a pocketknife with five thousand blades! I shall be like—”
“And shut up when you don’t need to talk,” Brick suggested, as he settled into the seat beside Mordecai.
“I shall be quiet, I shall be ever so very, very quiet, I shall be mute, like an empty cave! I shall be so quiet that . . .”
Mordecai started the outrunner and gunned the engine hard to drown out
the robot’s voice.
• • •
Just a half hour into the trip to Corpse Crevice, Mordecai thought they should be coming into sight of Tumessa. He didn’t intend to go into Tumessa itself, but he had to skirt the area.
Only, he didn’t see Tumessa. Instead . . .
Mordecai pulled the outrunner up sharply. He and Brick and Bloodwing and the Claptrap stared at the huge gray-brown thing coming at them.
Roiling dust clouds were approaching like a charging army of mad djinn, boiling across the tundra with a thundering sound, the storm’s nearer front about half a kilometer off and getting noticeably closer and more ominous by the second.
“That’s funny, never woulda thought there’d be a dust storm around here,” Brick remarked, scratching his head.
“An astute observation,” said the robot. “The tundra is frozen in place. Dust would have to be exploded upward to create such a display in this place. My opinion is that that is not a dust storm . . .”
The dust clouds seemed to agree—not far away, they began to slow, to settle, and through them a shape emerged, something sharp-edged and hulkingly gigantic, rumbling as it came.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Mordecai gasped.
He was seeing Tumessa—only Reamus’s base was transfiguring, and erupting. It was curiously methodical, like a gigantic robotic birthing: the great mound of the settlement had broken open at its peak, and Reamus House was shrugging itself from the mound, lifting up, throwing off a coating of dirt, mud, stone around its base, spewing dust like the cloud around the base of an old-fashioned launching rocket ship, the whole structure rising, its towers and battlements and cornices swiveling, shifting, reordering, transforming in a preprogrammed sequence, reshaped into something Mordecai had seen once on a visit to the homeworld—the superstructure of a preserved battleship from centuries gone by . . .
The ground shook under the outrunner as the artificial earthquake continued. Bloodwing squawked uneasily on Mordecai’s shoulder.
Mordecai drove slowly, carefully closer, to get a better look as the dust settled.
“Who built that thing?” he wondered aloud. “Who paid for it? And why?”
They could hear distant screams fluttering from the slopes of the mound below Reamus House, the mournful cries almost lost in the rumbling of the transformation. Reamus was apparently indifferent to the suffering of his followers and employees as the hillside collapsed on them, and the up-ended acid moats were dumped over the shacks and buildings and everyone who hadn’t been sent out on his expedition to take down Jasper.
And that was the bottom line for Reamus, Mordecai supposed. His soldiers were likely out of the town, except for the ones inside this refolding structure—the rest of them were people he’d have had to pay for work they’d done in his factory. He was neatly dispensing with that “obligation.” No one was going to be annoyingly demanding their paychecks—this way he didn’t have to waste a bullet on them.
Something moved, in the wreckage of Tumessa; something shouldered into view; something thrust itself glinting into the light.
It was a battleship, made of steel and some unknown alloy. But instead of jetting along on water, it used a series of gigantic tank treads, each one whirring with giant steel wheels, each steel wheel about twelve meters high. Many times taller than a man.
“Skag crap—that thing’s big!” Brick blurted. Mordecai had never before heard that kind of surprised expostulation from him.
“It is a remarkable construction,” the Claptrap said. “I have no record of such a thing in existence.”
“How big is that thing?” Mordecai asked the Claptrap.
“In length—one hundred and thirty meters. More than four hundred feet.”
“It’s got feet?” Brick asked, perplexed. “It looks like it’s got treads.”
“ ‘Feet’ is an old unit of measurement,” Mordecai said, slowing the outrunner. He didn’t want to get any closer to the skyscraper-sized vehicle—or the weapons he could see bristling on its deck. “Looks like it’s about a hundred meters from the treads to the top.”
“I would estimate it weighing about seventy-thousand tons,” Extra went on. “But—there are many imponderables. It could weigh much more. The treads seem to be constructed of some special alloy, to be capable of supporting all that weight. But of course it’s probably never been test-driven before—so it might collapse at any moment.”
But it rolled ponderously on, grinding deep marks into the tundra with its gigantic treads. The ground trembled with its passing—clearly, it was heading stolidly in the general direction of Corpse Crevice and Gunsight.
The land battleship was a boat shape topped with a brutally functional superstructure, supplied front and back with cannons jutting over the deck. Its tallest “mast,” atop the multi-tier superstructure, looked like some sort of combination transmission and sensory tower. Below was a series of enigmatic metal towers jutting from the bridge, the center of operations, Mordecai supposed. He doubted it was the only one—this enormous armored vehicle was so elaborate there was probably a secondary attack center somewhere inside.
“Somewhere inside that thing,” Mordecai said, “Reamus is directing it.” He glanced up at the moon, still visible not far over the horizon; it was dim in the daylight, etched by the intervening space station; the H of Hyperion and Handsome Jack. “Someone had to help with the construction, the cost—could be he’s partnered with Hyperion. He uses it to conquer anything that isn’t buckling under to Handsome Jack—maybe gets a big part of the planet to control as his reward. His own little fiefdom. Must be Jasper got Handsome Jack pissed-off at him along with Reamus . . .”
“Fair guesswork,” said Extra. “You may well be correct. If so he will not stop with Jasper . . .”
“Oh . . . no.” Mordecai’s mouth was suddenly bone dry as he angled the outrunner to follow the gigantic battle vehicle at what he hoped was a safe distance.
“You have a sudden concern?” the Claptrap asked.
“He might stop at Corpse Crevice,” Mordecai mused, scratching thoughtfully under Bloodwing’s beak. “But—chances are he won’t bother. He’ll send some troops to kill-or-contain Jasper there. And he’ll go on—to Gunsight! He’ll blow the place up and crush anything left under those treads!”
“Ah, and you feel a moral responsibility?” came the taunting voice of Elenora Dufty, issuing tinnily from the robot. “You provoked him—and now all those people will die! Good and bad alike! How very typical of you, Mordecai!” she sneered.
“He’d have gone after Gunsight anyway, dammit!” Mordecai said, thinking aloud. “And the trouble is . . . Daphne’s there.”
“Your woman is there!” Elenora jeered triumphantly. “She is there now—and that great monster ship will crush her along with Gunsight! Oh, well done, Mordecai.”
And she emitted a long, repellent peal of laughter.
Mordecai slammed on the brakes.
“Shut her up,” Mordecai told the Claptrap. “Right now. Or I’ll toss you out of the outrunner.”
“Yes, sir! I’m . . . trying . . .”
“No!” Elenora squalled. “I will tell him exactly what I—”
“There,” said Extra. “I think I’ve got her quieted for a time. She’ll find a way around the firewall eventually . . .”
“You want to go to Gunsight now,” Brick said, shrugging his massive shoulders. “Okay with me. Plenty of bastards to kill there. We can go faster than that big thing Reamus is driving.”
“Yeah—Jasper should be out of Gunsight now,” Mordecai said, accelerating to pass the land battleship. “And a lot of his men with him. No easy job—but this’d be the time to get in and rescue Daphne.”
“There is, however, a problem with that plan, if I may be so bold,” Extra said.
“And what problem is that?” Moredecai growled.
“You see, coming through the dusty fantail after the battle vehicle . . . I count ten, twenty, thirty—and more . . .
And behind them I believe I see several of those great nasty worm creatures.”
Mordecai saw them then, through the plume of dust—Reamers and SlagSlugs. They were coming right at him.
Chances were, they were hunting Mordecai and Brick.
“There’s more than thirty of them,” Mordecai said. “Must be—at least a hundred.”
The Reamers were coming at them in Bandit technicals and outriders. The SlagSlugs humped along eagerly behind them. And they were going to cut Mordecai’s outrunner off before he could get past them.
“I suggest we run,” said the robot.
“Shut up,” Brick said. “I suggest we kill them all.”
Mordecai knew that Brick would throw himself into a fight with this small army of Reamers—and Brick might even survive. Almost anything was possible with Brick. But Mordecai figured he himself would get killed, or captured, and his outrunner destroyed. And that would keep him from getting to Daphne at all.
“We’ll have plenty of killing to do in Gunsight, Brick,” Mordecai said. “We’re going to have to shake these sons of rakk hives. I am not ready to get my only transportation blown out from under me.”
Bloodwing made a questioning errr? sound close to Mordecai’s ear. “No, just stay where you are; hold on. We all need to stay close together for now . . .”
“Pull up,” Brick said. “I’ll get on the big gun and blow ’em to pieces as they chase us.”
“You got it. Make it fast.”
Mordecai pulled up, Brick climbed out, jumped up in back, readied the weapon, swiveling the big rocket-launcher turret toward the oncoming enemy and their giant pink pet worms. The Reamers were coming in a U-shaped assault grouping, trying to catch the outrunner between the arms of the U. Behind them humped the SlagSlugs.
Mordecai accelerated the moment Brick got a grip on the turret and headed off in the only direction open to him. He ground his teeth in frustration. He was heading off at right angles from the route to Gunsight.
“There is a possible temporary sanctuary,” the Claptrap called from the back. “An arena! The woman known as Moxxi has a prefabricated arena she sets up along trade routes—like a circus tent. She’s put it up about five kilometers on, in this direction! I saw it when I was looking for you!”