Borderlands: Gunsight (9 page)

He covered the distance quickly, barely breathing hard as he reached his first goal: a low, ice-coated boulder that rose from the plain within about fifteen meters of the outer ramparts of Tumessa, some distance from the main gate. The
Bruisers were around the main gate—with luck he wouldn’t have to deal with them if he approached from the flank.

He threw himself flat behind the boulder—Bloodwing skillfully hopping off him as he did this—and crept up the boulder, on his belly, to scope out the rest of the approach. He could make out the silhouettes of sentries along a scaffoldlike structure just inside the razor wire. Was there really razor wire all around this thing? And acid moats, farther up the hill? This was paranoia as architecture.

No one seemed to have spotted him. He heard a machine-created humming sound, though, overhead. Nestling close, Bloodwing made that
errr
sound again. “Just a drone,” Mordecai whispered. He turned on his back—he could see the delta-shaped drone, about as big as a large rakk, silhouetted against the moonlight-silvered clouds. It didn’t seem to have spotted him—it moved on, without circling back, probably on a set course around and around Tumessa. He waited till it moved on, then said, “Bloodwing—fly on up to the top of that big fence pole there. If anyone takes a shot at you, then duck for cover, act like you’re wild.”

Bloodwing leapt into the air, flapped up, higher and higher, quickly moving away from him so she wouldn’t call attention to him if she were spotted.

Mordecai watched the sentries’ movements—and chose his moment, when they were turned away from him. He leapt up and sprinted to the wire, sniper rifle in his right hand, his left hand reaching over his shoulder, plucking the cutting tool from its loops on his pack.

He got to the fence—the sentries were tramping on wooden scaffolding, above the razor wire. Where he stood, it would be hard for them to see him—especially with the
auto-camo. He used the cutting tool, snipped the wire as quickly as he could, moved the wire aside with his gloved hands, pushed his rifle quietly through, and slithered in after it, replacing the tool in his pack.

He listened, heard the footsteps passing close overhead. They were unhurried—no one suspected him yet. He could hear two men bitching to one another as they passed in opposite directions.

“Cold as polar roadkill out here.”

“At least you go off duty pretty soon, Rotty. I’m out here two damn hours more. I got extra duty from Gromster. Never got clear on why.”

“He’s a dick, all right.”

“Don’t let him hear you say that.”

“That’s the nicest thing you could say about him . . .”

The other one laughed and the two sets of footsteps moved away from one another. Mordecai looked out from under the scaffolding toward the upslope of Tumessa. He couldn’t see much of the high, oblong hill from here, just a gravel road going past, between the guard posts and the escarpment of the fortification’s next level.

There were lights at the top of that escarpment, shining on the road that wove its way up this side of Tumessa. Above the lights was a row of buildings made of tin, steel, synthetics, and other scrap; some were block shaped, some igloolike humps of concrete; typical thrown-together Pandora housing.

There were guard towers up there, on that next level, and some light that looked like pink and blue neon—a bar maybe. He could just make out the shapes of sentries in those guard towers; their lights were shining on that open road between him and the escarpment. They might see him and raise the
alarm. Pretty easy to pitch them outside the fence once he’d taken them out. There was a ladder up the side of the scaffold, not far away.

He listened, waiting till the footsteps were close together again, the men passing one another on their patrol, muttering something. Then he drew the silenced machine pistol, stepped out into the road, sighting on the two men who were almost lined up—one of them saw him. “Sorry, Rotty,” Mordecai muttered, and squeezed the trigger four times, his weapon hissing four rounds through the two men. He hit the nearer one up angle, striking under the man’s jaw, blowing his brains out the top of his head; the other one, turning startled toward Mordecai, caught the rounds in the roof of his open mouth. Lost his brains the same way. Do it right and a man goes down silently.

Both guards collapsed like mannequins cut off at the ankles.

Mordecai holstered the pistol, put his sniper rifle’s strap over his right shoulder, and quickly climbed the ladder. He got off the rungs and into the dimness of the scaffolding as fast as he could.

Wasting no time on stripping bodies of valuables—as he might have, out in the wilderness—he simply rolled them both off the scaffolding so they fell outside the fence. He looked both ways—saw no other sentries yet. But there’d be more, farther along.

He remembered the drone. It occurred to him that it might read the heat signature off the sentries’ bodies, or spot them through remote camera if it was equipped to supply security monitoring direct to the fortress. Besides, the thing could change course—it could spot him . . . they often had infrared spotters. His suit didn’t do anything about his heat signature.

But it was a risk to take the drone down. If that were noticed, someone might raise an alarm. There was a way, though.

He gave a
scree
ing whistle through his front teeth, high-pitched and distinct. Bloodwing heard it and soon flapped down to him. “Good girl. Listen—that drone—that thing up there—” He pointed to the drone’s flight path. She knew what he meant—she was alert to everything in the sky. “See if you can take it down. Make it look like an irritable rakk did it maybe . . . Claw open the maintenance panel on the top . . .”

She gave a soft squawk and leapt into the air, flapped upward.

He mused again on how well she understood him. Had to be partly telepathic.

He stepped over a puddle of blood and brains and moved down the wooden platform of the scaffolding, looking for a better ingress into Tumessa. He came to a place where it cornered, and he paused there, peering carefully around the edge. Two more sentries, talking, down that way. Mordecai drew back, evaluating the situation.

Then he heard a crackling sound, the whistle of something heavy falling—and saw a sparking delta-shaped object spinning downward, crashing outside the fence about thirty meters out. Mordecai took his sniper rifle into his hands and focused its scope on the two sentries about ten meters ahead.

“What the dungheapin’ mama was that?” one of the sentries snarled. “Somepin’ crashed.”

His partner pointed. “There—see it? It’s that watch-drone they set up. There’s a bird or something flying up from it. Looks like a rakk took it down. Maybe I can get a shot at the damn thing . . .”

“You see it?”

“Naw, lost it . . . damn . . . Well, better call this in—I’m not sure that drone was on anybody’s—”

That’s all the sentry got out. Mordecai had put a single round through his head, and his partner went down the same way before he realized what had happened to his friend. The sniper rifle was a little louder, a kind of cough, but Mordecai’d had Ripper mod it for him, and it was as quiet as they could make it. He also had specified one-shot ammunition. A lot of Pandoran ammo was explosive, and the bullets would split into multiple smaller rounds to hit several people in a group—Mordecai had used that ordnance but he didn’t like it much. He was old school:
one shot, one kill
was the ideal. Of course, with shields so often in use on Pandora you couldn’t always do that. But the sentries hadn’t been equipped with shields so far. He could switch to explosive ammo if he needed to. And he was certain that time would come.

Mordecai jogged up to the bodies, rolled them off so they fell with double thumps outside the fence, then moved on down the scaffolding.

About thirty strides on, he came to a covered bridge that ran from the scaffolding, over the road, and over a moat, to the top of the escarpment. That’d be better than exposing himself on that road. He hurried across the bridge, keeping low—and heard a flapping as he went.

“Here!” he hissed.

Bloodwing rejoined him, flying up from behind and alighting on his right shoulder. She butted her head against his.

“Good girl. Keep low and quiet . . .”

“Errr . . .”

He heard a soft, sinister bubbling sound—and now he
could smell the acid in the moat, under the bridge. Rising fumes made him cough.

What he needed, before he went much farther, was information. He couldn’t just ask for it—he probably wouldn’t pass for one of the locals. He’d noticed the sentries had the look of Zaford Grunt Marauders; most of the mercenaries and hired thugs in this part of the country were more likely Marauders than the Psychos and Bandits found closer to Fyrestone. But higher up, closer to Reamus, he figured there’d be tougher Marauders—tougher everything. Badass Marauders would be equipped with armor and shields.

He got to the end of the bridge—and was surprised by a hulking Marauder with a big shotgun in his hands and old Crimson Lance armor, worn in a scrappy way around his gray outfit. The man stared—not making Mordecai out very well with the auto-camo. He probably saw a dark face rushing toward him. He brought the shotgun up but Bloodwing was already ripping at the man’s eyes. No shield on his head, it appeared, and the man screamed, blinded. Before the Tumessan thug could react, Mordecai managed to rush up to the Marauder and shove the muzzle of his sniper rifle through the man’s shield—it resisted, hard, sparks crackling, but he got it through and squeezed the trigger, blowing a hole in the man’s face, and out the back of his head—the shotgun fell, unused at their feet. The Marauder fell alongside it a moment later.

“Crap,” Mordecai muttered.

He had to get rid of this body.

Mordecai reached under the man’s arms and dragged the hulking, heavy corpse off the bridge, to the escarpment’s edge. He shoved the body so it rolled partway down, then got
stuck on a wooden strut that was part of the bridge’s underpinnings. “That’ll work,” he told Bloodwing. He hoped. It might well not be seen from the road, down there. He went back for the shotgun, tossed it after the body. Trouble was the blood on the floor of the bridge. That could be noticed. But then again, blood spilled in this place probably wasn’t all that uncommon in itself.

He hurried off behind the uneven, hulking structures that lined the next road up the hill. There was just room enough for him to move along here, and it was pretty good cover—he was in shadow, close to the backs of the buildings, where the lights weren’t reaching him, hidden fairly well from both the road and the guard towers.

Five structures down he heard a familiar din: the sound of men carousing at a bar. Off-duty Tumessan workers and soldiers were hooting, laughing, cursing, and drinking in a slightly leaning two-story shack just up ahead. He could see the neon glow from its front coming over the roof. The back was dark—until suddenly the darkness was split as a door opened. A big, potbellied man staggered out, slammed the door behind him, then went to the edge of the scarp and began to piss off it, humming to himself.

Mordecai touched Bloodwing’s beak with two fingers, a gentle pinch that meant,
Stay silent.

The man was scarcely done urinating, closing up his fly and muttering to himself about card cheats, when Mordecai struck him on the back of the head with the butt of his pistol. The drunk almost fell over the scarp but, grunting, Mordecai pulled him back and dragged him between the buildings.

S
leet, cold and wet, whipped across it. But since it was a robot, it couldn’t feel it. Much. Its indicators, however, were aware of worrisome seepage.

Extra, the Brave Little Claptrap, was making his way between the mining tailings of a played-out Eridium dig. Old synthawood shacks still stood, crookedly skewed, nearly pushed over by the winds of the Frostbite Highlands, and a rusting crane angled over the icy quarry. Shafts were sunk in the base of the quarry . . . perhaps that might be a place a small robot could take shelter. Its batteries were running down, and it could feel water in some of its parts. The water could freeze in there, and expand, which would probably destroy critical circuitry. It needed to get someplace to dry out. The shacks all seemed to be porous and flooded.

It paused on the edge of the quarry and scanned, visually and with other observational devices, looking for some sign of Mordecai. But there was no one about—the place seemed truly deserted. Extra’s algorithmic estimates and gleanings
from radio reports had brought it here—one especially intriguing report from Gunsight suggested Mordecai had passed through the settlement recently and come this way . . .

But there was as yet no sign of the object of Extra’s quest.

“You’re failing me, even as your parts are failing you,” said the internal voice. It was from the AI Adjunct chip, which it had many times tried to mute, without success. The voice was a woman’s; it was the voice of Professor Elenora Dufty, Superior Technician and Robotics Engineer.

Extra sighed and rolled down the stony zigzagging path to the bottom of the quarry. It paused there, listening. There were curious echoes rising from the mining tunnel up ahead. Were those distorted human voices from that stone throat? Perhaps just the wind singing through the opening, soughing in the shaft.