Borderlands: Gunsight (18 page)

“F
eena! How’d you get back here?” Mordecai demanded.

Still breathing hard, Feena walked up to the kneeling Brick and patted him on the head. “I like the way Brick growls. He’s a lot like a bulldog I used to have. He even smells the same.”

Brick growled. But almost smiled as she patted him on the head. He stood up. “How’d you get here, kid?”

“I jumped out the back of the truck, when Uncle Weeble wasn’t looking. I don’t think anyone saw me. They were too busy arguing about the best route and splitting up the food and all that. I brought a can of food for you, look!” She drew it from inside her jacket. “See! Can we go back to the camp? It’s cold out here. I’m tired.”

“But what are you
doing
here?” Mordecai asked. “Don’t you want to be with your family?”

“Uncle Weeble’s the only family I got left alive. He tries to put his hands in my pants sometimes. I don’t like it.”

Brick looked across the tundra. The truck was just a distant spot on the horizon but Mordecai could tell Brick was considering going after it, dragging Weeble out of the truck, and killing him. And Mordecai simply had no time for that.

Hastily, Mordecai said, “Okay, well, Feena—You can’t go with us, but . . .” He hooked a thumb at Tyno. “You said you liked Tyno here. And he’s gonna go meet his dad. You know, Feena—you might like being a Nomad, roaming around with those tough guys. They’d keep you safe. Teach you to kill stuff.”

Tyno nodded. “Me and Dad, we’re going back to the Nomads. And I got a girl, back there. We were thinking of getting married. I think you’d like her. She could take care of you.”

“Okay!” Then Feena looked at Brick. “But Brick’s coming, too, right?” She looked at Tyno imploringly.

A whole new facial expression flickered, briefly, across Brick’s face. Sadness, mingled with regret. And he sighed—which Mordecai had never heard him do before. “Kid, you be better off with the Nomads. Me and Mordecai got some stuff to do and . . . you’d probably get killed.” He brightened up a little, adding, “But after they teach you to kill stuff—why, you can help
me
kill stuff!”

She looked at him saucer-eyed. “Really? Then you’ll come and see me if I go with Tyno?”

“Sure I will.” He scratched his head, showing puzzlement. “But—” Brick looked at Tyno. “How do I find you?”

Tyno walked thoughtfully over to them. “Do you know where Krom’s Canyon is? Northeast of Rust Commons?” Tyno asked.

Brick nodded.

“Just come there, Brick, when you’re ready. Krom is dead, his men are dead—and the Nomads have taken the place over. My tribe is from that territory. That’s where my father will head—and we’ll take Feena there, if she wants to go.”

“Will you teach me to kill stuff, for real?” Feena asked him. “And—will you stay there till Brick comes?”

Mordecai stared at her. Did this little girl really need to “kill stuff for real”? But then—Pandora did things to people . . .

“Yes,” Tyno said. “And yes!”

“Then I guess I’ll come with you.” She gave Brick a hug—it must’ve been like hugging a boulder—and patted him on the head.

Then she went to Tyno and put her small hand in his.

•  •  •

Not quite noon. Mordecai and Brick were driving toward Tumessa in one of the two intact trucks left from the small convoy. Brick was driving, barely fitting behind the wheel. The Claptrap was riding in the back—something it had bitched about.

And so did the bitch
, Mordecai thought.

“You will keep me near to you at all times!”
Elenora had said, in that fingernails-on-glass voice of hers.

Too bad, you ride in back.

But suppose she got mad enough to activate that weapon of hers?

Mordecai shrugged. That probably wouldn’t fit in with her agenda, whatever it was. And he wasn’t cramming that irritating Claptrap in here, too.

Bloodwing stirred sleeping on his shoulder, and snored softly. Mordecai sat beside him. Mordecai looked at his pet. She was asleep, eyes closed and head drooping, having gorged
on the bodies of the men he and Brick had killed. As Bloodwing perched there, right next to his head—she passed gas.

“Dammit, Bloodwing—” He opened the window to blow the carrion reek away. He glanced at Brick. Icy wind coursed through the truck’s cab. “Sorry, Brick. She . . .” But Brick looked so wistful Mordecai couldn’t go on.

After a moment, Brick said, “You sure Tyno will get her there safe?”

“Sure, man. Sure he will.”

“Didn’t seem like much of a fighter.”

“They’ll probably be okay. Ripper’s good. They’re going to meet Ripper.”

“You sure of that, too?”

“I called Ripper, made a deal with him. And he told me he was going to meet him on the edge of Corpse Crevice. Just about ten clicks from Gunsight. Tell you what, I’ll confirm he’s on his way. See it’s going okay. If I can raise him . . .” Mordecai punched the truck’s dashboard ECHO on, adjusted it to the right frequency, and spoke into the grid.

“Ripper? Yo, Commander Ripper! It’s Mordecai. You reading me?”

There was a staticky hiatus and then Commander Ripper’s voice came clearly from the truck’s ECHO.

“Yeah, Mordecai . . . I read you . . .”

“You headed for the meeting?”

“I am already there, waiting for him. It’s only a quarter click, that little canyon—just a crack in Frostbite Highlands. Not someplace I could miss him. And I gave him precise coordinates.”

“Good! So—you got your son coming . . . what about my end?”

“I left that gift for her. Wasn’t easy. And I’m going to deliver the message you asked for, to the boss. I just hope this line is secure. Supposed to be. You never know. Let’s keep this short.”

“We’re all done—make sure you get him that message. Send it from Corpse Crevice—that’ll lend, uh, authenticity to the whole thing.”

“That’s the idea—hey! Outrunner coming! Looks like the one I gave you! Yeah, two in it! That’s the kid you told me about!” He chuckled.

“What?”

“Can’t believe I’m taking a little girl with me and my boy to Krom’s Canyon! But we got to raise kids, too, or there’s no more Nomads. She gets old enough, we’ll find a good Nomad for her to marry. Hey, Tyno!” Ripper’s voice was happier than Mordecai had ever heard it sound. “Over here! Okay, over and out, Mordecai, see you sometime!”

“Don’t forget to give Jasper that message!”

“You got it, Mordecai!”

With that, Tyno cut the connection.

Mordecai leaned back, chewing a lip. He hoped Jasper took the bait.

“Technicals driving outta Tumessa up ahead! Coming out that way!”

“Yeah, I’ve been expecting ’em.”

“Kill ’em?”

“No! We’re outgunned and . . . no, we gotta play this cool! Let me deal with it! Oh—and quick . . . slow down, stop, and put on your disguise! The goggles and the mask!”

“But they stink of Bruiser!”

“Gotta tough it out, pal! Just do it!”

Brick growled but he put the goggles and mask on.

Ten minutes later they were surrounded. Four technicals had pulled up, one in front, one behind them, two to each side.

“Whoa, that’s thorough,” Mordecai said. “Okay, let me deal with this.”

“You said that already.”

“Here they come . . .”

Two Reamers walked up to the driver’s side, aiming guns in the window.

“Don’t point those at me,” Brick growled.

Leaning toward them, Mordecai quickly said, “Hey, boys, glad you’re here—we didn’t know if we outdistanced the bastards.”

“Which bastards?” asked the taller of the two Reamers.

“The ones who hit the convoy! There were dozens of ’em! Jasper’s men! He found out we hit Jasper’s men, took their loot and their prisoners—sent a pack of the bastards over in outrunners.”

“How much did you save?”

“How much did we . . . ? Well. Nothing much. A Claptrap robot, and . . . we lost the rest of it.”

“You lost it? You ran—or you wouldn’t have gotten away alive.”

“We were way outnumbered!”

“Yeah? We’ll see what Reamus has to say about this. He’s gonna be pissed-off. And I think you know what that means.”

The Reamer turned to shout at the others. “We’re taking them into the fortress! Full cover!”

“Full cover,” Mordecai muttered, as the trucks escorted them through the gates of Tumessa. “How do we give these guys the slip?”

Brick shrugged. “You wanted to get close to Reamus. Here we are. Now we kill him, right?”

Mordecai looked around at the Reamer troops, the countless defenses—and mentally reviewed what he’d heard about Reamus. “Yeah. Right.”

P
ast the gate. Past a phalanx of Bruisers. Over the acid moat on the first bridge. Up the road, winding, winding . . .

Then—the second acid moat. The bridge. And their escort of Bandit technicals drew back.

“The Reamers don’t seem like they’re gonna cross this bridge with us,” Brick remarked, frowning.

Mordecai nodded. “Yeah, this bridge automatically dumps you in a moat of acid if you’re not one of them.”

Brick had already driven them on the bridge. He slowed the truck down, maybe thinking of throwing it in reverse—or high acceleration. Looking puzzled, he scratched his head with one hand, driving with the other. “Kind of late to tell me.”

“I should’ve mentioned it,” Mordecai admitted. “Well, see, I’ve got a chip I took off a body—it should identify me as one of them. So that’ll get us across. Probably.”

“Probably? I don’t like acid moats. You can’t kill them. Can’t find ’em. Can’t get out of ’em, neither.”

“We’re past the halfway point . . . almost.”

He glanced in the passenger-side mirror, saw that the technicals were indeed hanging back, waiting for Brick and Mordecai to cross the bridge. That seemed to indicate that maybe his disguise and his rap hadn’t been as convincing as he’d supposed. They were suspicious.

And if the chip didn’t work Mordecai and Brick would shortly get dumped in the moat of acid.

Funny, he thought, how a few seconds can seem to take a few minutes.

The trip across the bridge seemed to go on and on. But then they’d gotten to the far side, and Mordecai exhaled. “See?” He realized his voice was a bit squeaky with fear. He cleared his throat and made his voice gruffer. “The chip worked.”

Brick only grunted as they continued up the winding road to Reamus House.

•  •  •

Daphne now had
two
tentative plans.

Plan A was to use the machine pistol that Ripper had smuggled to her, blast her way through Jasper’s escort as they entered, before the armored door could close, slip through, and kill her way out of the building, appropriating better weapons as she went. Hopefully, she could kill Jasper in the process, and that would . . . just maybe . . . throw the place into leaderless confusion.

It probably wouldn’t work. And Plan B had an even smaller margin for success.

Daphne was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the staticky screen across from her. Boss Jasper had turned off the entertainment. Maybe to let her know time was running
short and she should surrender herself to him. But she knew that behind the screen was a camera . . . watching her. Endlessly watching her.

She glared back at it, thinking things over.

There hadn’t been any word from Mordecai lately, except for a few whispered words, a brief message conveyed by Ripper, as he’d pretended to come in on a security inspection. Ripper slipped a gun under her pillow as he blocked the view of the camera with his body, all the while loudly warning her not to try anything or there’d be the devil to pay.

The whispered words had been,
Says he’s coming, but just in case . . . Best I can do
.

Just in case . . . he didn’t come. Mordecai was worried he wouldn’t make it back. Maybe he was already dead. She didn’t think she could bear being cooped up under observation here anymore. And chances were, anyhow, Mordecai wasn’t coming back before the deadline that prick Jasper had given her. So . . .

She took a deep breath, stood up, and walked to the video screen across from the bed. “Jasper? Or whoever he’s got watching me. I want him here. I have made up my mind . . .”

Almost a minute passed, as she waited, staring into the digital maelstrom, listening to white noise . . .

Then the screen flicked and Jasper’s image appeared, smiling at her. “So—you’ve come around?”

“That’s right. Anyway I want to talk about it. In person.”

“Very well. I’ll come up there in a few minutes. With a heavily armed escort, of course.”

She shrugged. “Of course.”

His image vanished—replaced by a mildly erotic film shot
of two people floating in an orbital capsule, locked in a weightless embrace.

Daphne snorted and turned the screen off. Then she walked calmly over to the bed and sat down to wait, careful to sit within reach of the gun under the pillow.

Aware that she was probably still under surveillance, Daphne tried her best to look calm and collected. She hoped they weren’t monitoring her pulse rate. It was hard to just sit there, trying to look relaxed, when her heart rate was up so high.

Was she making a mistake? Should she wait for Mordecai? Maybe she should. Maybe . . .