Borderlands: Unconquered (33 page)

Brick was up, dusting himself off, ignoring the blood coming out of his nose, and walking over to a boulder about three times the size of his head. He picked it up, hefted it, and waited till an outrider swung into view, the bandit racing toward him. He tossed the big rock from
hand to hand, then sent it flying, underhand, right toward the cannon turret on the outrider, striking its muzzle just as it fired. The cannon blew the boulder up at point-blank range, turning it into shrapnel and turning the blast back on the outrider, which spun, crunching into the side of the outcropping, the sudden stop sending a Midget flying from it as if propelled from one of their catapults.
The Midget flew straight at the surprised Brick, smashing into him so that he was knocked onto his rear. The
bloodied Midget scratched at Brick’s face. Swelling with rage, Brick twisted the small Psycho’s head, snapping its neck. He tossed the body angrily aside. He was trembling, Roland saw, going into his berserker state.

Brick stood up, howled like a rabid beast, and ran thunderingly around
the outcropping, out of Roland’s line of sight. Almost immediately, Gynellan soldiers began to shriek in fear.

Roland shook his head, unslung the rifle, and fired it at an approaching outrider; he blew off a wheel so that it spun out and stopped against a thicket of the cactus-like growths. Then the three Psychos jumped out of the immobilized outrider and charged toward Roland, howling the usual
threats. “You gonna squeal before we cook ya? Nobody shoots my buddies but me!”

Two of them were waving hatchets over their head; one was readying hand grenades.

Roland dropped to one knee, aimed carefully, and fired, hitting the hand grenades in the Psycho’s hand. They exploded, and so did the Psycho; the other two went down, one popped by a head shot from Roland, the other shot by Mordecai
from his perch on the rock.

Roland decided he’d better back Brick up. Crouching, gun in hand, he jogged around the big outcropping—and stopped dead. Brick was standing up to his waist in a pile of crimson-splashed dead
men, frowning. The dead Psychos were twisted like wrung-out rags; some had their faces punched in all the way to the backs of their skulls. And Brick’s arms were red, past the
elbows, with gore.

“Is that all there is?” Brick muttered, disappointed. “All done?”

Roland looked around. “Seems like. Might be more coming down from the—wait, where’s Gynella?” He removed the vault mask—a failed disguise anyway.

“Here!” She stepped out from behind the burning wreckage of an overturned outrider. She had a shotgun in her hands. “You still don’t have a shield, Roland,” she said,
smiling nastily, raising the gun.

Brick started toward her—and tripped on cadavers, falling on his face in the ravaged bodies, cursing, badly entangled.

Last Roland knew, Mordecai was on the other side of the outcropping of rock, without a shot at Gynella. Roland was wondering which way to jump, when an outrider gunned into the clearing, pulled up, and Daphne climbed out.

Gynella stared at
her. “You!”

Daphne kept the outrider between her and Gynella. “You put down that shotgun, I’ll take you on blade-to-blade, you megalomaniacal skank! I’m tired of looking over my shoulder for you.”

Smartun stepped into view, behind Gynella. “Don’t do it, my Goddess. Please . . .”

“Shut up,” Gynella said harshly. She dropped the shotgun and her shield. “You drop your weapon, Smartun. I don’t
want you interfering. I want to slice this bitch apart.”

She flourished her “meat cutter”; it hummed hungrily.

Daphne had no shield. She drew a long dagger from her boot and flicked it between her fingers, from one to the next and back, so it twinkled in the sunlight. Then she smiled crookedly and said, “Bring it!”

Brick was up now, watching. Roland moved a little closer, thinking to take out
Smartun if he had to. From there he could see Mordecai up on the rock. But Mordecai had lowered his gun. He knew Daphne wouldn’t forgive him if he interfered.

The instant Daphne came around to the other side of the outrider, Gynella rushed her—head down, arms extended, blade gleaming. The woman was fast, all right, Roland thought; her arm was a blur as she whipped the knife at Daphne’s face.

Daphne just ducked, and her body seemed to ripple, in a move Roland had never seen before, as if she were sidling to her right in a dance move, but faster than the eye could follow, and as she went she drew her blade across Gynella’s left jawbone, cutting it deeply.

She could have cut her throat if she’d wanted to, Roland realized.

Gynella yelled in hurt and fury, spun around, her knife flashing
toward Daphne—but Daphne wasn’t there, making that rippling motion with her body again, the blade cutting a bit of her leather jacket but not reaching the skin.

She stepped back, grinned mockingly, and crooked her finger at Gynella.

The General Goddess’s eyes narrowed. She put one shaking hand to her face and drew it back, looked at the blood on her fingertips. “You bitch. You fucking
bitch
!”

And Gynella charged her. Daphne ducked easily under the knife slash and body-slammed Gynella’s legs. She rolled clear as Gynella fell heavily facedown and made a gasping sound. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. She’d fallen on her own knife, which protruded from her back. It had bisected her spine.

Roland heard someone give a heartfelt, piteous cry, and he looked at Smartun, saw him
covering his eyes, weeping.

“No . . . no . . .” Smartun sobbed.

Gynella rolled over and pulled the knife free—it had cut right through her breastbone, cut deep. She tried to get up, but her legs didn’t work anymore.

She coughed. Blood spattered over her lips.

Roland had to look away. His feelings were more mixed than he’d thought. He had been kissing those lips just last night.

“Finish her!”
Mordecai shouted. “Get it done, Daphne!”

Daphne was shaking her head. “I didn’t know whose old man I was killing that night. If I had, I might have said no to the job. You deserve respect. You’re crazy as any one of your soldiers. But you deserve respect.”

“No . . . a loser . . .” Gynella coughed blood. “Gets no . . .” She choked.

Smartun stumbled over to her, weeping, fell to the ground beside
her. “I’ve been saving something for us, my darling,” he said huskily, taking a large red grenade from his coat. A Marcus-brand fire greanade. “In case. So that we could be together. My love . . .”

Roland stepped back, out of the blast zone.

Smartun pulled the pin. The grenade exploded, splashing them both in liquid fire, creating a pyre, where they burned, writhing, dying, Smartun clutching
at his Goddess . . .

T
hey had just reached the road that led west, to the mountains. Roland in the outrunner with Brick and Mordecai and Daphne in the outrider turned onto the road, and then Brick signaled for a stop. Roland pulled up, and the outrider pulled up beside them.

“What’s going on now?” Daphne asked impatiently.

Brick climbed down from the turret. “There’s a truck coming,” he said, pointing to the west.
“I’m going to see if I can make ’em give me a ride. I’m going back to Jawbone. All this time, talk of riches, nothing turns up—lotta bullshit. I’m sick of you pussies. Going my own way.”

He turned toward the oncoming truck, then turned suddenly back to Roland. “Wait—I just remembered. I haven’t killed you yet. You screwed up my fight. Took away my kill.”

Roland sighed. “Oh, yeah, right. True,
you haven’t. You overlooked that. Um, look, you sure you have to do it now? I’m going to come back to Jawbone on the way to Fyrestone. Or . . . someplace. You’ll see me. Can’t you kill me then? I mean, Daphne here’s your friend, right? You want her to be able to get rich with me, right? I’ve got to take her there.”

Brick rubbed his chin. “Well . . . I guess I can kill you later. Sure. Okay. But
remind me when I see you, okay?”

“Hm? Oh, sure, sure. I’ll do that.”

The truck rumbled up and slowed, because the outrunner and outrider were in its way. Roland squinted at it, rubbed his eyes, and looked closer. Was it?

It was. The wizened little man sitting in the passenger side of the self-driving truck was Skelton Dabbits.

“Who’s that?” Mordecai asked.

“The guy who sold me the map to
the crystalisks.”

The truck pulled up. “Please remove the obstructing vehicles from the road,” said the robotic truck in a pleasant male voice.

“Hold on, truck,” Roland said, walking around to the passenger side of the truck cab. “Dabbits! What the hell? You said you were going off-planet. What’re you doing here?”

Roland already had a suspicion.

“Oh, well, fancy meeting you here!” said Dabbits
reedily. “Ah, are you on your way to . . . ?”

“I was! What’s in the back of that truck?”

“Oh, that truck? Back there? Well. Crystalisks. And Eridium crystals. I gotta couple of live crystalisks. They roll in a ball, see, and if you know what to do, with a steel-mesh net, why then . . . Is something wrong?”

“You little weasel. You sold me the map, and then you went ahead of me to get the stuff
yourself!”

“It’s not my fault you dawdled all over the planet. I heard stories. I figured Gynella would kill you. And, uh, I met a partner in Fyrestone, had a truck it fixed up itself from a junk pile—”

“Itself?”

“Yeah, it’s a Claptrap. It’s riding in the back. Anyway, I heard that Gynella had some kinda bad reversal in a canyon, withdrew her forces to the Footstool, so we figured we’d head
on out to the mountains, since the way was clear.”

“Cleared by me!”

“Ah, yes. And thank you for that! Well. Word was you were a goner, so off we went, and there’s an old mining road, goes real smooth to the caves. Once you know the trick, not that hard to catch crystalisks . . .”

Roland shook his head. “How many are left up there?”

“There? Well. Not many. That is to say . . . none. There.
That I know of. We got a ton of Eridium out of their den and more from the dead ones I blasted with my—Say, have a look, see for yourself!”

Roland walked glumly to the back of the truck, climbed up onto the open trailer, and lifted the canvas covering. Inside he saw at least a ton of piled-up Eridium and two crystalisks, strange tripod creatures, on three legs, semireptilian things covered in
crystals, rolled up into balls within steel mesh. Between them, humming to itself, was a Claptrap.

“Hi!” said the Claptrap. “Wanna buy some Eridium? Give you a good price!”

“Shut the hell up,” Roland told it. He jumped down off the back and walked up to the trucks’s cab. “What about the money I paid you, Dabbits?”

“That map was good! You can’t blame me if you ran all over the west, getting
involved in ridiculous fights that had nothing to do with your mission!”

“He’s got a point!” Daphne called.

Roland winced. He really ought to kill the little guy, take the booty. But . . . he couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Oh, just get the hell out of here. I got another payday coming anyhow.”

“Please remove the obstructing vehicles.”

“All right, truck, all right, you shut the hell up too.”

He stalked over to the outrunner, and the
vehicles were soon moved out of the way. “You may as well ride with us, Brick,” Roland said, as the truck rumbled away and down the road to the west. “If you want to. We’ll get there faster. And you can kill me faster.”

“No hurry on that,” Brick said, yawning. “You drive, I’m gonna take a nap.”

“Something else I gotta do.”

He hadn’t wanted to contact
Feldsrum—he didn’t trust him. He preferred finishing his mission. But now there was no mission, and this was the only payday he was going to get this trip.

He took the contact box from his pocket and pressed the stud. “Feldsrum, you there?”

A crackling hesitation, and then, “Have you got it done?”

“She’s dead. Maybe two hours ago. You didn’t see it?”

“Hard to see what was going on, so much
smoke. But we had a report that she was dead. The army’s disbanding, I heard, now that she’s dead. Couple of them survived, called it in to somebody named Skenk. I guess they’re fighting for the headquarters up there, or wandering off . . .”

“So, there’s your proof. You want to go down and look at her body, have at it. But there’s not much left. Burned to a crisp.”

“That fits with the call we
intercepted. And Vialle?”

“Dead. Really, thoroughly dead.”

“Good job! You’re a reliable man. Stay where you are . . . we’re coming to you.”

“That’s the Dahl Corporation, coming down here?” Daphne asked. “If they recognize me . . .”

“Even if they don’t,” Mordecai said, “I don’t trust them, Roland. Feldsrum was trying to keep this whole thing quiet. When Dahl security wants to keep something
quiet, you know how they do it, right?”

Roland nodded. “Yeah. It’s . . . risky. But he owes us money. I’ll share with all of you. Brick too. Maybe with the four of us they won’t make a move.”

Daphne shook her head. “Their security orbiters have a big cannon, comes out of the underside. Wait—give me that contact box. I know that model. I’ve got an idea . . .”