Borderlands: Unconquered (5 page)

She
also looked Roland over and made a contortion of her mouth, a twisting that was probably intended as a smile, baring filed yellow teeth. “Hey, sweet thing,” the big woman said.

“Uh . . . hi,” Roland said.

“That’s Broomy,” Mordecai muttered.

Roland gulped. He’d heard of Broomy. “Why they call her Broomy, anyway?” he asked in a whisper.

“You don’t wanna know. Her pal there, her name’s Cess.”

Broomy turned around and ordered a drink from someone Roland couldn’t see. “Gimme a KK!” she snarled, her voice grating. When she turned her back, he saw she wore a crude, badly stitched cape, with a skullish
G
and crossed guns on it.

“Yuh, yuh, a Kerosene Kooler, here ya go!” piped up the Claptrap robot bartender, reaching up from the other side of the bar to pass over a seething mug of green
fluid. Broomy grabbed the drink, splashing half of it on the bar, and drank thirstily.

“Come on back and have another bottle on us, Mordecai!” called Cess, laughing, waving a bottle of yellow liquor. “This time I’ll let you drink from it instead o’ bathin’ in it!”

Mordecai rubbed his head ruefully. “Good
thing I had my helmet on. Just stunned me. Then Broomy tossed me over here.”

“What’d you
do to piss her off?”

“It’s what I
wouldn’t
do.” He looked at Roland’s pistol. “Nice Invader autopistol. Modified with the scope and everything, huh? I had one, but a skag ate it. Almost took my arm with it.”

“I don’t see a weapon on you. You don’t look natural without a gun.”

“Got a static Cobra burstfire leaning over against that table right there. And a couple grenades. Anyway, Bloodwing’s
here. He’s got my back—
usually
.”

Mordecai looked up at the metal rafters and whistled. Something creaked and fluttered up there, then came flapping down to land on his shoulder. “Some use to me
you
were, pal,” he told the creature, “letting them blindside me like that.”

Bloodwing made a raspy sound and ducked its head, seeming to laugh. It was a vulturine, leather-winged animal, its head deathly
white, its eyes lurid red-orange, its beak the color of steel and almost as tough; it had enormous talons, which Roland had seen put to good use tearing the face off a bandit.

“Yeah, very funny, Bloodwing,” Mordecai said. Bloodwing took to preening itself on its master’s shoulder. Mordecai took a medical vial from a pocket, drank the solution off in one gulp to erase
the pain from the blows he’d
taken on the head, and turned to Roland again. “What’re you up to here?”

“Looking for Brick. Seen him?”

“Saw some broken walls and broken bodies that have his stamp on ’em, you might say. There’s a mine out east of the settlement; that’s where he hangs out, I’d guess. If he’s still guarding the mine from bandits.”

“East, huh? Due east?”

“Yeah, pretty much. But anything Brick can do I can do
better—and I need a job.”

“
Anything
he can do, Mordecai? Really? How about picking up an outrunner and throwing it at somebody?”

“Okay, not anything, but a lot. Did he really do that?”

“According to rumor. I guess you’d be a help on this mission. Come along, then. I’ll give you the lowdown later. A good long-range shot might be more useful than—”

“Are you nutless wonders going to come over
here and give us some action or
not
?” Broomy demanded, her voice so raucous it made Bloodwing’s sound melodious.

“Or
not
, I’d say,” Roland muttered, looking at Broomy and Cess.

“You guys are in my damn way,” said a woman’s voice behind him.

He turned to see a small but heavily armed
woman. She was black-eyed, pale, and unpretentiously pretty, with short, glossy jet-black hair. There was a combat
rifle slung across one shoulder, two knives in a V of sheaths worked into her tight-fitting skag-leather jumpsuit, and on each hip was a pistol. Her bare arms were spiraled with tattoos of words in a language he didn’t recognize. With her was a scar-faced, spiky-haired redhead in black leather, strapped with a dozen throwing knives plus a pistol on each side of her wide hips. The redhead returned
him stare for stare.

Roland stepped out of their way with a mock bow, and the two women sauntered to the bar.

“I kinda like the look of that black-haired one,” Mordecai murmured. “Never saw her before. The other one’s part of Gynella’s gang—her so-called army—like those two at the bar.”

“Gynella, huh? I’ve heard something about her . . . but what I don’t get is where all these women are coming
from. Four women in one room—on
this
planet? Most I’ve ever seen in one place.”

“Yeah, well, General Goddess has a cadre of fighting women, her special forces. Some of this bunch’re on leave, they tell me.”

Roland nodded. The way he’d heard it, the army of General Goddess was right in his way. It’d be good to find out more about them. “Come on. Let’s suss this out.”

He crossed to the bar, he
and Mordecai both stepping over a dead man he hadn’t seen before, half hidden in a pile of rubbish.

“Who’s the stiff?” Roland asked, almost whispering.

“Some miner. He said no to Broomy too,” Mordecai said out of the side of his mouth. “Only he wasn’t as nice about it.”

“Ladies, let’s have a drink,” Roland said as he stepped up to the bar. “This bottle’s on me. But not the way you put one on
Mordecai. I need my skull in one piece.” Broomy cawed laughter at that, and he tossed a small stack of paper money onto the rusty metal countertop. The Claptrap, barely visible behind the counter, snatched the money and rolled away to make drinks. “I’ll have whatever they’re having,” Roland added, although he didn’t plan to actually drink any of the swill they sold here.

Broomy was already swaying—she
closed her right eye as she peered at him with the left; then she closed her left eye and peered at him with the right. It was hot in the Steel Incisor, and the smell off Broomy, of rancid sweat, was hard to take. Roland edged away a little and glanced past her at the other two women, who were in close conversation with Cess.

“What makes you think you got what it takes to soldier up with General
Goddess?” Cess
demanded, looking at the pretty one with the short black hair with evident suspicion.

“Oh, Daphne’s okay, Cess,” the redhead said, eyeing Roland. “She’s changing over to our side. Ain’t working with that big lug at the mine anymore . . .”

“I didn’t ask you, Khunsuela,” Cess growled.

Khunsuela shrugged and swaggered over to Roland, who was pretending to drink his Kerosene Kooler.

So her name is Daphne,
he thought, looking at the compact woman in the tight skag-leather outfit.

He suspected she might be the notorious Daphne Kuller. He’d never run across Kuller the Killer himself, but rumor in New Haven said she was a small woman, lithe and quick, a feared hired assassin used by intergalactic criminal gangs against other intergalactic criminal gangs. The Daphne he was thinking
of had come to Pandora a couple of years back to hide out from some gangsters who’d taken it a little too personally when she killed their boss. If this was her, it seemed Daphne Kuller was looking to sign on with Gynella.

“I can handle myself, Cess,” Daphne said, shrugging. She sipped her drink and made a face at the mug. “What the fuck
is
that? It’d gag a trash feeder.” She put the mug down
and pushed it away.

“Say, uh, big guy,” Broomy said, sidling up to Roland, clacking her drink down on the bar. “Howzabout we—”

“Hey, Broomy, I was just about to make my move!” Khunsuela snapped, shoving herself in between Broomy and Roland. “Back off!” Khunsuela put her hand on Roland’s arm and spoke purringly to him. “Come on, let’s get in my outrider. I know a place where there’s decent drinks,
narcojuice, anything you want.”

“Easy, ladies,” Mordecai said, jeering. “There’s enough of him to go around. How about if you both take him on at once? One of you could straddle him while the other—”

“Mordecai?” Roland said. “Shut up.”

Khunsuela was running her fingers up Roland’s arm. “Nice muscle sculpturing there, big fella—”

She broke off, gasping, as Broomy’s enormous hands, coming from
behind, closed around her throat, squeezing.

“Bitch!” Broomy snarled into her ear.

Then she bit Khunsuela’s ear off and spat it out. Roland had to duck the bleeding ear as it flew by.

While he was ducked down, he noticed a minicom almost coming out of Broomy’s side pocket. The miniature computer and communicator might just have some data on Gynella’s movements, since Broomy was in Gynella’s
inner cadre . . .

Khunsuela shrieked, clasping the bloody rags of
her ear with one hand and with the other she pulled a knife and stabbed it deep into Broomy’s wrist.

Broomy roared, her back arching, her grip loosening so that Khunsuela was able to break free, gasping, spinning on her heel, and whipping out two throwing knives.

Distracted by pain, Broomy didn’t feel it when Roland tugged the
minicom from her pocket.

He got out of the way just in time to avoid being caught in the crossfire as Broomy pulled a small Maliwan Firehawk pistol from under a breast and opened up with it, firing repeatedly. A knife just missed Broomy’s head; another chunked into her left shoulder and stuck, but she didn’t seem to notice it—she was too busy shooting holes in Khunsuela’s throat. One of the shots
glanced off Khunsuela’s shield, making it sparkle with the impact, but the shield ended at her collarbone. Above that she was unprotected.

Khunsuela staggered back, choking on her own blood, and fell over a steel spool that was being used as a table. She thrashed on the floor, spitting out bloody phlegm.

Roland looked the dying redhead over, wondered if he could maybe get her some Dr. Zed, help
her out, but it was too late; her eyes were already glazing.

“Broomy, that’s gonna piss Gynella off,” Cess observed. “She just got that girl trained!”

“I don’t give a dirty damn!” Broomy hissed, jerking the knife out of her shoulder. She threw the knife at the spasming Khunsuela. Grunting with pain, Broomy pocketed her pistol and poured green liquor over the wound in her shoulder. “Ouch, shit!
Anyway, I
had
to shoot ’er. She was tryin’ to knife me when all I was doing was givin’ her a little warning choke. I wouldn’t’ve
killed
her. Prob’ly.”

“What about
her
?” Cess asked, nodding toward Daphne, who’d been coolly watching the fight.

Roland noticed that Mordecai was staring hungrily at Daphne.

“You know what?” Daphne said. “Forget it. I don’t join up with people who sneak up behind
their own crew, start in choking them over a
man.
”

She started for the door, walking casually, unhurried. Mordecai hurried after her, so quickly Bloodwing was startled into the air, to flap around over them in ragged circles.

“Daphne!” She turned to Mordecai, frowning, as he said, “Wait! How about if, uh, we offer you another job? Me and Roland. I mean, if you can use all those guns. We could
do some target practice, maybe have a little competition. See if you can shoot.”

But Broomy was seething, glaring at Daphne and Mordecai. “You, Mordecai! You don’t go near her! I decided I want both you and your big pal. And I don’t want that slick female around
here talking about how I’m sneaking up behind people.”

Daphne looked at Broomy, pretending mild surprise. “Grabbing somebody around
the neck from behind’s not sneaking? Looked kinda like tunnel rat bullshit to me.”

“Tunnel rat!”
Broomy howled. “You’re going down, you skuzzy, bad-mouthin’ little—”

Mordecai stepped between Broomy and Daphne, raising his hands palms outward toward the big woman. “Easy, Broomy, don’t make me have to—” He reached for the gun on his hip—and then realized he didn’t have one there. “Don’t make me
 . . . uhhh . . .”

Broomy started toward him, and so did Roland, taking bigger steps, passing her, just as Mordecai turned to Daphne, saying something about how maybe they should get out of there into the fresh air.

Broomy was jerking her pistol out again, aiming at Mordecai because he was in her way. Then Bloodwing dipped down and slashed at her face. Blood spattered. Broomy screeched and fired
at Bloodwing, missing. It hovered, jabbed at her, pecking a hole in her cheek, then lofted to fly into the shadows of the rafters.

Roland cracked Mordecai on the back of the head with his sidearm—and he did it expertly. Mordecai went down, out cold. Roland figured
that was the surest way, in the circumstances, to save Mordecai’s life—just get him out of the melee.

“I took him out for ya, Broomy!”
Roland shouted, reaching down and grabbing Mordecai by the collar. Following Daphne, he dragged Mordecai outside as Broomy swiped at Bloodwing, shouting imprecations.

A few moments later, relieved to be out in cleaner air, Roland eased Mordecai to the ground in the middle of the street. Bloodwing swooped out the open door and began flying around in tight, low circles overhead. Daphne looked up
at the creature in amusement.

“Is that thing his pet, or is he
its
pet?” she asked wryly. “Nasty-looking buzzardy object. Feathers around its neck but leather wings. Can’t make up its mind what it is.”

“A lot of us suffer from that,” Roland said distractedly, slapping Mordecai’s cheek. “Hey, man, enough loafing. Wake up!”

Then Broomy burst out the door, waving Mordecai’s rifle but blinded by
blood. Bloodwing had torn the flesh of her forehead, doing only superficial damage but releasing considerable blood flow.

“Where’s that bird thing? I’m gonna kill it!” She tried to swipe blood from her eye with one hand.

Bloodwing swooped past and shrieked mockingly at her. She fired in that direction, and a grazing round knocked a few feathers off the creature
but did no real harm. It dived
at her, raked her hand. She yelped, dropping the gun, and staggered back into the saloon, undone by her temporary blindness. She shouted over her shoulder, “When I get my eyes clear, I’ll catch that critter and wring its dirty damn neck!”