Borderlands: Unconquered (18 page)

S
martun climbed the metal steps to a corner watchtower overlooking the plains outside Bloodrust Corners. He felt a mixture of elation and disquiet. Would she be happy? Casualties had been surprisingly high. And there was that little debacle at the end. But still . . .

He reached the watchtower proper and looked out at the legion’s encampment. Bandits and Psychos, Gynella’s men, were milling about
the camp, some of them fighting, some drinking liquor cadged from the settlement. A great many others were looting the settlement, arguing over newly discovered caches of money and weapons and food. Skenk was having difficulty keeping more soldiers from rushing into the settlement. But there was no room for them—and there could be more traps . . .

It was time to make a report.

Smartun tapped
his ECHO comm, activating
its link to the device he had plugged into his ear, and heard the clicking of its decrypter. After a moment Gynella herself answered.

“Is that you, Smartun?”

He shivered with pleasure as her voice, the blessed voice of his living Goddess, reverberated within his ear, a kind of sonic intimacy . . .

“It is, my General Goddess. We have possession of Bloodrust Corners—we
took considerable casualties.”

“How many casualties?”

He told her. He thought she’d be angry, but she only chuckled. “We have reports that the mercenaries Roland and Mordecai entered Bloodrust Corners right before your attack. Does
that
account for the high casualties?”

“In part. The settlement had good defenses. Their kill-mechs took out quite a few of our best fighters. We used up a lot of
rocket-launcher ammo on the mechs and the front gate—we’ll need more, as soon as it can be supplied, as much as you can spare.”

“All in good time. Meanwhile you will scavenge weaponry as you find it. We’ll have to start expanding our range, and if you go to . . .” A crackle interrupted the transmission, and then her voice came back in. “Fyrestone, probably, soon. There are a lot of weapons in
and around Fyrestone we can use. The weapons dealer Marcus has a good
many tucked away around the settlement, I’m told.”

“As you wish, General Goddess.”

“But first, secure the area. How many prisoners did you take? We have need of work slaves. I have to shore up the new ramp off the Footstool. I’ll need a good many workmen . . .”

When they’d first come to the Devil’s Footstool, the only access
to the top had been to crane men and supplies up in the cumbersome shell of an old bus lifted creakingly up and lowered creakingly down. Gynella had ordered a ramp cut in a zigzag pattern down one face of the giant stone column, so her fighting forces could be moved out to a battlefield with less delay—and less vulnerability. A single good cannon shell could blow that old bus up en route, and
all the men inside.

“Ah, unfortunately there are no prisoners, my General. The few wounded who were left behind were killed by our front lines. You know how . . . impetuous they can be.”

“What? The settlers escaped?”

He winced. “The surviving settlers . . . essentially, yes, ma’am, they’ve escaped—so far. We hope to locate them.”

“But you were to have the place surrounded!”

“We did surround
it, my General, but there seems to be a hidden exit through one of the mines.

The mine appears to lead to a cavern, which could be traversed, we believe, to a hilly area in the—”

“And you didn’t
pursue
into the mine?” she interrupted, her voice harsh with impatience.

“A large contingent of our men rushed into the mine, to pursue—before I could stop them.”

“Why would you stop . . . oh. It was
a trap?”

“Yes, ma’am. The mine was wired with explosives. We lost about sixty men. Killed or buried alive when the mine collapsed.”

“Really! Then the settlers committed suicide in the mine, with explosives?”

“I don’t think so. While the other mines appear to be dead ends, ending in solid rock, this one seems to have had a back way out. We found a prisoner in one of their storerooms—one of our
people—he says that he heard a miner talking about a cavern, a back way out of a mine. I had heard other rumors of it when I first arrived, from a captured miner before he died under interrogation. I sent scouts to find this back entrance. But they never returned.” On Pandora, if someone went on a mission and didn’t return, they were invariably assumed to have been killed. “I will find the cave
entrance, I promise you!”

“The settlers will be well away from there by the time you find their little escape hatch!”

“Perhaps so, my General, but they will have left tracks. We’ll locate them!”

“Do it only if you can do it expediently, but don’t expend too much energy or manpower on it. We have to stay on schedule! Best to search for them with drones.”

“I do have two new drones, just in.
I’ll set them to it, my General Goddess.”

She said nothing for a moment. He imagined her clicking her nails as she took the news in. “So . . . we have the mines, anyway, and the glam gems?”

“Two of the mines are intact, and we found a large storeroom packed with gem ore.”

“Good! When I turn the gems into cash, I can hire a force of mercenaries from off-planet. They’ll be more trainable than
these lunatics we have now.”

He looked out onto the squalling, contentious, psychotic soldiers of the encampment. “Yes, that’ll be preferable to what we have to work with now. They’re getting more quarrelsome. Difficult to control.”

“They’re growing restless. Vialle warned me that they would need their conditioning reinforced. I’ll come out, fairly soon, and give them one of my special blessings.
How did your catapults work?”

“Ah—very well! We successfully propelled the Psycho Midgets inside. They created considerable havoc in the ranks of the defenders.”

“A very creative idea, on your part, using those little wretches as missiles.”

He glowed inside at the compliment. Then felt
an inner plunge, realizing that he must again mitigate his triumph with a failure. “Thank you, my Goddess—but
 . . .”

“Well? What now?”

“This man Roland did a sortie in an outrunner—he destroyed the catapults. We rocketed his outrunner, nearly nailed him. But Mordecai showed up, and then, ah . . .”

“And then they escaped into the settlement?” She made a
tsk
of disgust. “Let me guess. After that, he and Roland spearheaded the resistance against our forces?”

“Yes, that is essentially what, ah . . . yes,
ma’am.”

There was a crackling silence. Then Gynella said, in a cold voice, “Your successes are badly blemished, Smartun. Still, you’re new on the job. But I expect to see improvement. I demand it!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“If you find Roland, if you get a chance to communicate with him, take it. Try to recruit him. If you can’t get the offer across to him, if he won’t talk to you, simply kill him any
way you can. Don’t take any chances with him—clearly, he’s a great danger to our plans.” She sighed. “It’ll probably come to that, and it does seem like a waste. There are so few men of his kind on this planet. Very few indeed . . .”

•  •  •

Roland and Mordecai stood in the cool of dawn, gazing out from the top edge of the small plateau
that overlooked the badlands south of the settlement. They
were silent, standing with weapons in hand, keeping watch on the stony road up to the top of the plateau and the badlands. Bloodwing was perched on the rough point of a nearby boulder, dozing with its beak tucked under a wing. Beyond the rugged, still-dark maze of hills was the white blaze of the Salt Flats. Roland could just make out the distant smoke of what he supposed might be the encampment
fires of Gynella’s Knife Legion.

“So, do we move on soon, Roland?” Mordecai asked, at last. “I’m ready to harvest some Eridium. A lot of money and a little luxury sounds good to me right now. Between you and me, I don’t think I’m developing a taste for fighting entire armies.”

“I’m not a fan of it either,” Roland said. “Brick probably loves it, though. If he’s still alive.”

“I wouldn’t count
that big chunk of muscle out,” Mordecai said. He yawned. “I don’t much care for early-morning watches.”

“Yeah. Old Dakes just took it for granted we’d take a watch. Gave us our orders and went to bed.”

“But here we are.”

“We went to a lot of trouble, trying to keep some of these people alive. Wouldn’t like it to be for nothing.”

“If they’re going to expect something of us, they should pay
us. We’re pros, Roland.”

Roland shrugged. “Seems like most of their gems and money were left behind in Bloodrust Corners.”

“Great. So we’re . . . volunteers?” Mordecai made a face. “Hey, I risk my ass all the time. I don’t mind doing it. But not for free.”

“I figure we’ll get them settled in, make sure they’re pretty secure, and move on. Head for those crystalisk dens.”

“Sounds good.” Mordecai
paused, squinting at the sky. “Are those rakks?” he asked, pointing. “Wouldn’t be good if they decided to go for a settler’s kid.”

Roland looked up, shading his eyes, and saw two birdlike shapes, hard to see against the dim gray of first light, flying about a third of a kilometer away, not far above the altitude of the plateau top. They flew in a surprisingly neat circle, around and around. He
could make out their wings, their lean bodies. “Looks more like trash feeders.”

Mordecai went to the boulder and poked a finger at Bloodwing’s breast, waking the creature up. It made grouchy squawking sounds and then listened with its head cocked as he whispered to it. Bloodwing cawed in response, hopped a couple of times on the boulder, then sprang into the air. It flapped up and up, spiraling
higher and higher, then broke off to soar toward the trash feeders—if that was what they were.

Bloodwing seemed to approach the flyers as if it planned to pass above them, on its way somewhere else—then it suddenly dived. There was a flutter of close engagement, as the two figures became one, Bloodwing and the trash feeder thrashing in the air. Then one of them fell away, turning end over end
as it dropped. The other one flew swiftly back to Mordecai—Bloodwing, carrying something in its claws.

Bloodwing circled just overhead and dropped its burden at Mordecai’s feet.

He bent down and picked it up. “I thought there was something odd about the way those things were flying around and around in the same spot. Not a rakk or trash feeder motion, really.” He showed Roland the piece of the
flyer that Bloodwing had brought back. It was mechanical, a thing of metal and glass and synthetic skin designed to look like animal hide.

Roland stared. “A lens? A surveillance drone! Camouflaged as a trash feeder.”

Mordecai nodded. “And by now it’s transmitted back to whoever sent it here. They know just where we are.”

INTERLUDE

Marcus Tells a Tale, Part Two

“
. . . So Roland and Mordecai had a big decision to make,” Marcus said. He cleared his throat. His voice was giving out. He’d been talking for hours.

Marcus, the woman, and the Claptrap were in the back of his broken-down bus. They had a little light from a lantern sitting on the floor of the aisle. It was too dark to see the woman’s face. Darkness, broken
only by a few patches of moonlight, engulfed the world outside. “I need a drink before I can go on with the story. Getting hoarse.”

“Oh,
do
finish the story!” piped the Claptrap, suddenly sitting bolt upright up on the seat behind him. “Tell some more about that brave dancing Claptrap!”

“Shut up, or I’ll pry out your voice circuits,” Marcus growled.

The robot sagged back down on the seat.

“Near as I can tell,” the woman said, “there are only two of those bastards out there. We’re not as weaponed up as we ought to be. But . . . maybe if we take the fight to them now, we can catch them at their camp. I don’t like sitting here waiting for them to decide they’re going to use that rocket launcher on this heap of slag you drive.”

“This bus is no heap of slag. This is a finely tuned mechanism!
They shot the damn engine, remember? You want to go after them, I’m game. But then what? We’d still have to wait for Scooter. Too far to walk to Fyrestone in the dark. This is Pandora. It’s dangerous out there. Only place you’re anything like safe on this planet is in a locked room in a well-defended settlement. And maybe not even then.”

The woman shrugged—he still didn’t know her name, although
he’d been talking to her all night.

“You sure your buddy Scooter can be relied on?” she asked, peering out the window.

Marcus snorted. “He’s not my buddy. I don’t think he’s anyone’s buddy. But he’ll show up eventually. And he’ll bring some firepower with him.”

She looked at a chronometer in her thumbnail. “Just a couple of hours to go before the sun comes up. You could finish your story.”

“I’ll need a drink, a good long one,” Marcus said, looking toward the front of the bus. He got up and, crouched over, back aching from the odd
position, moved toward the front of the bus. He tried to scan the dark wasteland outside the windows, but he couldn’t see much, just the outlines of a few stark growths throwing shadows in the attenuated moonlight. He reached the front, his boots crunching
on broken glass, and squatted down to reach under the driver’s seat. His fingers groped and found the bottle. He tugged it out—and a muzzle flash flicked beyond the front window, just past the boulder. A rifle burst sizzled past his head, smashing through the back window.

He threw himself flat, cutting his hands on the broken glass. “Lady, you hit back there?”

“I’m fine!” the Claptrap robot
called. “Thanks for asking!”

Marcus gritted his teeth. “I said—”

“I’m not hit!” the woman called. “You’d better get back here. It’s better cover!”

He got up to a crouch and, carefully sheltering the bottle in his hands with his body, hurried back down the aisle, expecting to be shot in the back at any minute. But no shot came. Instead, a grizzled voice called to them from somewhere in front
of the bus.