Borderlands: Unconquered (23 page)

She set
herself to make a move, thinking she’d try to reach through a rent in the Goliath’s torn pants, tear one of the monster’s testicles off. Something, anything, to go down fighting.

But the Goliath stopped before reaching her. It was after something else. The giant red hands clamped on the wooden post and pushed at it, pulled at it, finally cracking the wood, tearing the pole loose. It left a short
snag sticking out of the ground, and the post, in the Goliath’s hands, was now a crude spear, its lower end splintered to a rough point.

The Goliath started back toward the still-supine Brick, who was just then trying to get up. And Daphne was dragged along by the chain, which was still fixed in the post. She yelled and dragged her feet, trying to hold it back, although she knew the metal collar
on her neck might pop her head right off her shoulders.

The Goliath made a burbling grunt of irritation and turned, seeing that the woman was still snagged to its chain.

The crowd was howling, cheering, laughing—Gynella was shouting something at the Goliath, but she couldn’t be heard over the tumultuous crowd hubbub.

The Goliath set the post on the ground, yanked at the chain attaching Daphne
to it, pulling the connecting pin out of the wood. The mutant dropped the chain and pointed at her, the skull’s exposed jaws moved, and it managed to say something like “You die next!” Only, the words came out more like “Yoofdy nescht.”

Then the red behemoth, carrying the post, stalked to Brick, who was just then sitting up, shaking his head to clear it—but still on the ground. The Goliath lifted
the post over its head, prepared to slam its rough point down like a giant spear, aiming it to stab through Brick’s belly.

Daphne was gathering up the chain in her hands, hoping to use it to trip up the Goliath—

Then there was a
zing
sound. Twice. High enough to penetrate the crowd noise.

And the Goliath’s cranium exploded, shot through with two rounds right through the brain. It swayed.

Daphne turned toward the source of the sound, a clifftop overlooking the coliseum, saw a glint
along what might be the barrel of a sniper rifle. And was that a sniper lying on the edge of the bluff? Hard to tell—it was just a silhouette against the darkening sky.

She turned toward the Goliath; the mutant still hadn’t fallen. The Goliath seemed to wobble, and still it just stood there, not quite
completely dead, holding that post tremblingly over Brick.

Brick stood up, stared a moment, then walked around behind the Goliath. “Who did this?” Brick demanded, scowling. “Someone shot him! Dammit! I was going to kill him myself with nobody’s help!”

He grabbed the post, jerked it from the Goliath’s grip. The Goliath dropped his big red arms down to his sides, twitching. Brick shifted the broken-off
post in his hands and swung it like a bat, cracking into what was left of the Goliath’s head. The mutant’s skull snapped off the waving spine and went spinning like a home run into the bleachers.

The Psychos in the bleachers yelled in mad glee and began to bounce the skull back and forth among them, as if it were a balloon at a concert.

And the Goliath’s dying body fell forward, crashing to
the ground in a gush of spurting blood.

Daphne heard Gynella shouting orders and turned to see Runch firing the rocket launcher.

Brick ran to Daphne and threw her onto the
ground, shielded her with his body, as the rocket shell exploded just a half-dozen paces away. Shrapnel screamed over them, and dirt pattered down.

And Daphne thought,
Now we die. She’ll send her whole army down onto the field to tear us apart. At least we’ll die fast.

“Y
ou sure you know what you’re doing, Roland?” Mordecai shouted over the noise of the outrunner’s engine, as Roland drove them down the bluff. They were headed south, toward the only place that looked like a close entry to the unnamed valley where Gynella’s coliseum had been built.

Roland turned his head partway to shout over his shoulder at Mordecai, who stood at the machine-gun turret with Bloodwing
clinging to his shoulder. “No, of course I’m not sure! If I was sure, it’d be boring, and if I was into stuff like being sure, what would I be doing on Pandora anyway?”

Mordecai started to reply but cut it short as he grabbed for a better hold on the turret as Roland jerked the outrunner into a hard right, down an old erosion cut into the shallow valley. They bumped jarringly down, Roland risking
the axles,
and both of them felt their teeth clack as the outrunner hit the valley floor.

Then Roland jerked the wheel again, bringing the outrunner around to the north, heading for the coliseum.

“Yeah, Roland, I like action, you know I do, but there must be
two hundred
of those fuckers in that coliseum!”

“You like action, and I like to give you what you want, Mordecai! Now hammer that gate
up there with the machine gun!” He slowed the outrunner so he could pull a couple of grenades from an ordnance box and have time to chuck them ahead of the outrunner.

•  •  •

“Brick!” Daphne yelled as bullets cut the air nearby. “Gynella wants to kill me more than she wants to kill you! Maybe you could join her and live, or maybe—”

“Woman, shut up and prepare to kill the enemy or be killed!”
Brick growled. “We’re going to take the fight to them, and we’re gonna kick some Psycho ass!”

She was running along beside Brick as machine-gun bullets slashed the air and thunked into the ground near them. Broomy and Presta were toying with her, laughing as they fired the submachine guns. But Brick was running at the enemy—right at Runch.

A rocket shell whooshed past, missing Brick’s left shoulder
by a whisker, and then he was upon Runch. He slammed him hard in the chest, straight-arming him, and Runch crashed backward into the thin metal wall. He gasped for breath and went to his knees, looking more like a fish than ever, with his mouth open, sucking for air.

Daphne ran up to Runch—she’d seen the remote control for the shackles on his belt. She snatched it off, held it to her neck, pressed
the button, and her steel collar fell off. For a moment she and Brick were beneath the shooting angle of Gynella and Presta, and no one dared shoot at them from behind—they were too close to Gynella.

Daphne tossed the remote aside as Gynella screamed furious orders. Brick was about to finish Runch off, but Daphne said, “Brick—pick me up, throw me at ’em! That’ll distract ’em, and you can—”

Brick scratched his head. “Throw you?”

She didn’t get the rest of it out, because several things happened just then. First there were two quick explosions behind them, from the gate. Gynella and her retinue were distracted by the blasts, looking toward the gate. Runch was getting up, and, responding to a shout from Gynella, he aimed the launcher at the gate. He fired, as Brick grabbed Daphne,
in a way she thought was a bit
indelicate—crotch and chest—and threw her underhand, up toward Gynella’s coliseum box.

Daphne felt herself catapulted through the air by Brick’s powerful arms, rocketed over Runch and over the wall, straight at Gynella, who jumped aside, swinging a sword of some kind. The sword missed as Daphne flew past.

Suddenly Broomy’s astounded, gape-mouthed face loomed up,
and Daphne laughed and thrust out her hands in an assassin’s move she’d learned in her training on the Black Asteroid. Her hands were fanned to either side of Broomy’s face as she flew at her, her thumbs stabbing toward two targets, Broom’s eyes.

And Daphne struck, her thumbs driving deeply into Broomy’s eye sockets, her palms striking the bone on either side of Broomy’s head, knocking her backward,
even as she dug her thumbs in deeply, through the eyes, through the thin layer of bone behind them, into the brain—all while catapulting through the air.

Then there was a crash. Broomy had fallen over onto her back, on the wooden floor of the back of Gynella’s coliseum box, and Daphne was skidding over her, yanking her hands free of the gouting sockets, rolling to take up the impact.

She’d turned
enough so that she took the impact on her right shoulder and slammed into the back wall, grunting, hearing a crunch and hoping it was
wood and not bone. She lay a moment, gasping for breath, stunned.

She looked up to see Gynella standing over her with a blade—but then Gynella dived flat as machine-gun bullets peppered the coliseum box above Daphne.

Daphne was tempted to take Gynella on, then
and there, but she didn’t want to waste an opportunity for escape when there were hundreds of Psychos about to charge down and tear her to pieces if she gave them a chance. She forced herself to jump up, ignoring the pain in her shoulder, and leapt over the slashing blade from the prostrate Gynella. Daphne saw that Presta was shot dead, lying cozily beside Broomy. A glance at Broomy made it clear—she
was stone dead.

“Told you so, slime-bag!” Daphne said, jumping over the bodies and then vaulting the wall.

Brick was slamming his fists into Runch’s rib cage, when Daphne came down beside him. Runch’s rocket launcher lay on the ground broken; there was blood on it, and Runch’s head had been cracked open—it appeared that Brick had torn the launcher from Runch’s grasp and smashed it over his head.

Two berserk punches, and Runch’s ribs cracked like thin slats under a steel mallet, stabbing into his lungs. Runch fell, choking on blood, dying.

Gynella was shouting orders, up above, and
Psychos were beginning to pour down onto the field to “eliminate these disrespectful scum!” as Gynella put it.

Again Daphne thought she was done for—then she saw the outrunner racing up to them, Roland driving
and Mordecai in the back firing machine-gun rounds at the Psychos. There was a shield on the outrunner, taking gunshots from the soldiers, but it wouldn’t last long.

The outrunner slowed, and Mordecai yelled, “Jump on! Any place you can!”

She and Brick both jumped on, Daphne close to Roland, Brick clinging at the back, and the outrunner gunned toward the gates—which were broken, wisping smoke,
blasted from outside by machine-gun rounds and Roland’s grenades.

Bullets zinged into their shields, and a line of four beefy, vault-masked Psychos ran to block their way out of the coliseum, all of them armed with combat rifles.

Daphne heard a screech, looked up to see Bloodwing flying above the outrunner, darting down at the Psycho soldiers, clawing at their eyes, distracting them, then flapping
up out of the firing line as Mordecai unloosed a whole belt of machine-gun slugs, hitting the middle two soldiers squarely, killing one, knocking down another. A third was hit glancingly by the outrunner, sent spinning bloodily as Roland accelerated through
their broken ranks and out the gate, onto the barren valley floor. Bullets slashed the air above them and hissed into their failing shield.
Then Roland cut left, and right, and left again, around a curve in the valley and out of range.

•  •  •

“Roland,” Brick said, his voice grating, “I’m feeling kind of sad.”

“Why, Brick?”

“Because I think I have to kill you.”

“Yeah? Why you got to kill me, Brick?” They were seated on flat rocks around a fire, far out in the wastelands, southwest of the coliseum, in an old nomad’s camp atop
a hill.

“Because,” Brick explained, “you shot that Goliath with that sniper gun.” He shook his head in hurt disbelief. “But I could’ve killed that idiot Goliath
easy
!”

“Really? Even though you were stunned and still suffering from a concussion and lying on the ground, and he was about to spear you with a big sharp post?”

“That stuff? That’s nothing! I was just about to jump up and grab that
thing and shove it up his ass!”

Roland nodded gravely. “You know, I should’ve realized that. I was thinking about the girl, see. Mordecai’s kind of sweet on her. I had to slow that guy down, give you a chance to protect Daphne till
we could get in there. I’m sorry I messed up your action, Brick.”

Brick scratched his head. “Well. I guess you were trying to help. But . . . I think I’m still gonna
have to kill you. Sometime.”

“Can it wait till later? Right now we should probably stick together, you know?”

Brick jabbed an accusing finger at him. “You didn’t say
stick together
when you ran out on us! And sabotaged my outrunner!”

“Oh, that. Well. That was ill-advised. Another bad decision. Dumb. I shouldn’t’ve done it.”

“See, that’s another reason. Got to kill you.”

“Okay, but, like I
say . . . a little later on?”

Brick scratched his chin this time. “I guess so. I’m tired now anyhow. Gonna take a nap.”

Brick turned away, yawned and stretched, then lay down by the fire, head pillowed on an arm, and was snoring before his eyes had quite closed. His snores made the flames in the fire flap back and forth.

Roland turned to look for Mordecai, who was supposed to be standing watch.
There he was, on the edge of the camp, standing between two monolithic boulders with Daphne. The two of them were gazing out at the rugged land spread below, talking in low voices.