Borderlands: Unconquered (25 page)

Harmus felt a mix of relief and frustration, seeing them go. At least he knew what direction they’d gone.

Another rakk squawked. Better get moving.

He forced himself to his knees, groaning with pain. He managed
to get to his feet, feeling dizzy, then turned toward the overturned outrider. Could he flip it back over? Not likely. He could scavenge a shotgun, maybe use the outrider’s ECHO to call for help. He heard a whooshing sound from above looked up to see a forager rakk diving right at him, its wings extended for the dive.

“No!” And he lurched quickly toward the
shotgun lying by the outrider. But
the rakk struck, the rasping fold of its weirdly pursed mouth snapping at him, slashing, and he felt a cruel blow to the side of his head; he spun and fell onto his right side.

He lay there shaking with pain; his broken arm seemed to scream from inside. He had to get up, get to the outrider. The rakk was calling to others, circling overhead. They were coming down at him now.

He forced himself
to stand, to stagger toward the shotgun.

But it was too late. Something moved between him and the weapon. A skag. And another. And two more.

He was caught between skags and rakks, as the local expression went, and he didn’t have long to live.

But it wasn’t in him to just lie down and die. He tried to run, but the skag’s long tongue whipped out, knocked his feet out from under him.

And then
it leapt upon him—and began feeding, tearing into him with great hungry snaps of its jaws.

•  •  •

“Man, I’m hungry!” Brick said, from the turret behind Roland. They were driving southwest, toward the Eridian Promontory. It rose suddenly beyond the rolling, ravine-slashed lowlands, a steep wall of crags capped in ice and snow, starting to take on the tint of sunset at their peaks.

“You’re always
hungry,” Roland said.

“It’s getting dark!”

“No kidding.”

“So we should camp!”

Roland ground his teeth. “Brick, we’ve got a big part of a continent to cross to get to the crystalisk den—wait, what’s that?” Roland slowed the outrunner. He’d noticed a sharp drop-off, up ahead, and the twinkle of lights beyond it.

He stopped the vehicle, and they got out; the outrider caught up with them, screeched
to a half-spin stop, dust billowing around it. Mordecai and Daphne got out, their movements in easy coordination with each other. They walked together over to the outrunner, and Roland thought they already looked like a couple.

“We run into a canyon?” Mordecai asked.

“We almost ran into it, anyhow,” Roland said. He and the others walked over to the cliff edge and—keeping back enough so they
wouldn’t be spotted—looked down at a wide canyon, not terribly deep, with a flat bottom. Purple shadows seemed to spread like slowly oozing oil to fill the canyon near the farther wall, about half a kilometer away. Nearer was a string of campfires, streamers of smoke, temporary huts and tents—and every fifty meters or so, raised up by poles, Gynella’s banners waved gently in the sluggish wind.

“Must be most of her Second Division,” Daphne said. “And about half her First.”

Mordecai pointed. “Look there—outriders, coming in from the south, and more going out. Lots of patrols.”

“Same up north,” Roland said, squinting in that direction.

“How far do we go to get past them?” Daphne asked. “If we go far enough south . . .”

Roland shook his head. “It becomes impassible too far down that
way. Too far north, there’s the Trash Coast. Dakes said Gynella’s army has overrun that whole area . . .”

Brick scratched his head in puzzlement. “Why go around them? We find a way down there, and then we kill our way through!”

Roland smiled. “That your solution to everything, Brick?”

Brick looked at him. “On this planet it is.”

Roland nodded. “Good point.”

Brick stared sullenly at the encampment
of Psycho soldiers. “I want to kill Gynella’s soldiers. They chained me. And they kicked me.” He sniffed and clasped the mummified dog paw around his neck. “They offended me.”

Mordecai pointed out to the east, back the way they’d come. “Looks like you’ll get your chance, sooner than you expected to, Brick.”

Roland looked east and saw two outriders coming straight toward them, full bore.

“If
we jumped outta the way, last minute, do
you think they’d keep going and fly off the cliff?” Mordecai suggested.

“Sadly, I do not,” Roland said. “They’re already slowing down. Let’s get to our guns.”

Brick was already trotting toward the turret on the outrunner. He vaulted up to it, swung it around to face the onrushing outriders, as Roland got to the vehicle and snatched up his combat rifle.
He leveled it at the oncoming outriders, guessing they were a patrol and wondering if they’d already alerted the army in the canyon bottom to their presence out there.

Mordecai had the sniper rifle in hand, was standing by his own outrider, Daphne beside him. He laid the sniper rifle across the big skag skull on the left front fender of the outrider, put his eye to the scope . . . and straightened
up just as Brick fired his first rounds.

“Don’t shoot!” Mordecai yelled. “It’s Dakes!”

Brick’s bullets hadn’t quite nailed the outrider, strafing the ground to one side of it. The outriders swerved—but Brick stepped away from the gun and waved his arms.

Dakes saw the greeting and swung around again, heading their way. Another twenty seconds, and the outriders were idling, engines chugging,
beside Roland’s outrunner. Gong had driven one of the outriders, with Lucky on the running board, holding on; Dakes drove the other. They shut off
the engines and climbed out, Dakes coughing in the dust of their passage, blowing past them.

“How’d you find us?” Roland asked.

Dakes grinned. “First of all, I’m the best tracker this rock has ever seen. Second—more important—you told us kinda generally
where you were going. I looked at some maps and worked out where you’d most likely be headed. We spotted a wreck you left back there. Then we hit your tracks again.”

“I’m glad you don’t work for Gynella. How about the other settlers—they okay?”

Dakes winced. “Couple more guys dead. A platoon of Gynellans came into Jawbone Ridge. They started searching through the place, looking for the ‘rebels’
from Bloodrust Corners. There was a short firefight when they found some of our guys—a bunch of us left to draw them away from our families. We managed to shake the platoon in the badlands, but we’re kinda worried if we go back, they’ll track us back to our people. Long as they’re out looking for us . . . well . . . our families are safe. Safe as anyone is, anyhow, in a place like Jawbone Ridge.”

“Where’s Glory?” Mordecai asked.

Lucky was eyeing Brick suspiciously, but at the mention of Glory he glared warningly at Mordecai. “Glory’s back there, looking after them. We’re in radio contact. That’s all you need to know.”

Mordecai chuckled. “Take it easy, kid.”

“I’m guessing, Dakes,” Roland said, “you figure we’ll rid you of that platoon?”

“We could do it ourselves, probably,” Dakes said.
“I’ve got another ten men waiting for us, about a kilometer back. We got some vehicles. Only, we’re low on ammo, and they’ve got us outgunned. And I should mention, we think they’re on our trail again. Thing is, they could be here in an hour.”

Roland sighed. “We don’t want to get in a fight right here if we don’t have to—it’ll bring that army over there down on us.”

Dakes swallowed. “What army?”

Roland hooked a thumb toward the canyon. “They’re down there. A lot of ’em. And they’re patrolling north and south. And there aren’t a lot of ways to get through to where we’re going. We were just trying to figure that out. Maybe we could help each other on this. We take care of that platoon, rearm you guys, and you help us create a little diversion to draw that army off, out of our way. Might
work for you too, make them think the real trouble is based out here.”

“Then they’ll follow us back to Jawbone!”

“No. I’ll see they don’t. Once we get past them, we’ll get their attention. They can follow us. But they won’t catch us. Not the way I’ve got it figured.”

“Okay,” Dakes said. “You’ve got a deal.”

Lucky shook his head. “I think it’s a crazy damn plan. And it’s liable to get us all
killed.”

Gong grunted in agreement. “Sure—but if it involves killing Gynella’s bunch, me, I’m for it.”

“You know, I think I’m gonna like this guy,” Brick said, nodding to Gong.

T
he moon was up, as if it were watching Smartun inspecting the troops. An inspection out in this canyon encampment mostly meant stepping over snoring drunks, edging past grumbling bloody Psychos squatting by campfires, and trying not to step on sleeping Midgets. He had only just arrived from the Devil’s Footstool, and few of the men knew he was commander there—he caught more than a few muttered invectives
as he pressed through. Luckily he had Skenk with him as an enforcer, carrying a large and highly effective Eridian energy rifle.

Smartun heard the rumble of an engine and turned to see Fwah Grass, alone on her outrider, tooling along the outskirts of the encampment. She made a kind of haphazard salute and pulled up, parked, and strode over to him. One of the few members of the women’s cadre left
alive, she was
an obese, cocoa-colored woman in black leather, with a triple white Mohawk, eyes outlined in silver eyeliner, mouth glimmering fluorescently—using a glowing lipstick of crushed Eridium crystals had made her mutate sharp tusks, which curved down from the sides of her mouth past her jawline. Smartun had once seen her sink those tusks into a man’s chest so deeply she was able to crunch
through the ribs and wrench his heart out, all in one motion. Still, she had more sophistication than many of the bandits—on her home planet she had been in law enforcement, till she’d been caught robbing narcojuice dealers. Like a lot of other prisoners, she had been sent to Pandora as part of a convict work detail, before the planet was mostly left to rot.

“Hail Gynella!” she called, stopping
in front of him, hands on her wide hips.

Smartun blinked.
Hail Gynella?
When had that started?

“You are supposed to say ‘Hail Gynella’ back, when so challenged,” Fwah said. She spoke slowly, with exacting care, each syllable sharply pronounced, because otherwise her tusks gave her a terrible lisp. “It’s a new rule.”

“Okay, hail Gynella,” Smartun said, nodding. “Really, it ought to be something
better than that. Perhaps I’ll suggest ‘All glory to Gynella.’ So, Fwah, you’re still acting as if you have a message.
You have something more to tell me about besides a new greeting?”

“Eight of the outriders sent to find Roland and the other rebels have failed. They are being ordered to report to you. Gynella wishes you to kill one man from each outrider, as an example. They may be fire-circled,
if you like. I do like a good fire-circling, myself. I’ll be happy to take charge of that. I’ve always enjoyed being a party planner.”

Smartun grimaced. He’d rather just shoot them and get it over with. A “fire circle” involved throwing a man into a bonfire with a circle of men around it pushing him back in every time he tried to run out. The screams were rough on Smartun’s nerves.

“Fine,” he
said. “You take charge of it. She could have radioed the command to me.”

“She’s maintaining as close to radio silence as possible—there’s someone in orbit, listening in. People she doesn’t want knowing anything about her activities.”

“I see.” Smartun guessed that would be the Dahl Corporation—specifically Mince Feldsrum and his men. She must be worried they were closing in on her. “Anything
else?”

“Yes. Drone surveillance suggests rebel bands moving to the east of here. More than one.”

Smartun rubbed his hands together. “Now
that
is information I can use. Those rebel bands just
might be linked up to Roland’s bunch. If we take care of those slinking scumbags, I’ll be freed up to swing the Hatchet Legion against New Haven. There’s a platoon out that way—I’ll radio them to find these
rebels and deal with them. They’ve got some Eridian weaponry with them—they should be able to deal with Roland.”

•  •  •

Roland drove the outrunner hard, leading the three other vehicles across the dusty plains, under a bright silvering of moonlight, and they got to the cold camp of the other fighting men from Bloodrust Corners just a few minutes ahead of Gynella’s search platoon.

The cold
camp was in the moon shadow of a landmark. The Jut was a fang-like spike of crystalline rock, thirty meters high, sixty around the base, pitted by weather and marred by dust, in the midst of a veldt-like plain. There were rumors of a great cavern underneath it, where fabulous Eridium deposits could be found, but no one had survived out there long enough to dig for it. A shadowy form could be seen
within it, a vague humanoid silhouette, like a man frozen in ice—but most people thought it was just a man-shaped flaw in the crystal. It did make viewers uneasy, especially when the moon shone, as tonight, and the shadowy shape seemed to shift a little, as if restless.