Borderlands: The Fallen (35 page)

Rosco and Rans Veritas were behind Crannigan, backed up a few strides.
Keep the fight circling,
Roland thought. He’d take down Crannigan first, then he’d rush past him, grab Gorman. With luck.

Crannigan feinted at him—the knife blade slashed at Roland’s face. He evaded it easily, stepped back, then feinted in return to keep Crannigan from rushing him.

“What is this barbaric idiocy?” Marla demanded, watching with disbelief as the two men circled one another.

“You’ve already explained it,” Gorman said, amused. “Barbaric idiocy. But it
is
entertaining …”

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.