Borderlands: Unconquered Read online

  “Naw—looked like some kind of flying craft, maybe an orbiter!”

  Roland hit the brakes, and they squealed to a stop. Dust swirled around them. Mordecai coughed.

  Roland turned to him. “When were you gonna tell me this?”

  “I wasn’t exactly sure of what I saw,” Mordecai said, shrugging, glancing at the sky. “There was some cloud cover, and it just dipped down and seemed like it was pacing us, and then it was gone. But we were hitting a lotta bumps, and I was trying to hold on, and . . . I couldn’t be sure.”

  “When was this?”

  “It was—” Mordecai stared and pointed at the sky up ahead. “Right now.”

  Roland looked the way Mordecai was pointing and saw a three-strutted orbiter, like a salt shaker on a tripod, burning its way down, down, retros slowing the vessel as it approached the desert sands about fifty paces ahead.

  “Roland, could it be Gynella? She’s from off-planet—maybe she brought that with her.”

  “I don’t think so. Markings on it . . . Dahl Corporation!”

  They could see the Dahl insignia clearly now, as the vapor cleared away around the orbiter. And they saw a hatch open, in the side of the gray metal cylindrical vessel, and a ramp lowering from the open hatch . . .

  They didn’t have to wait long. Three men came out. Two of them were heavily armed, probably protecting the smaller one in the spray-on suit. An exec type. He waved at them, real friendly.

  “We oughta either kill ’em or steer clear of them,” Mordecai said.

  Roland nodded. “Yeah, we should just back off and go around.” But instinct changed his mind for him. “No. We need information. We’ll get it from this slick son of a skag—a guy like that likes to talk. They’re here for a reason . . . Just keep steady on that machine gun, Mordecai. But don’t get jumpy.”

  He accelerated the outrunner slowly, eased it toward the orbiter, and stopped a few steps from the ramp. He left the outrunner in idle, grabbed his new Hyperion assault rifle as he climbed out. Roland was careful not to seem as if he was going to shoot at anyone right away, holding the gun casually—but also in plain sight to let them know he was not going to go down easily.

  He walked toward the man in the suit, a black-haired man with a sculpted beard, piercing dark eyes, flashing white teeth when he smiled. Behind him were two red-armored Dahl specialists, highly trained killers who’d almost forgotten they’d once been human. Both men were cyborgian, their eyes replaced by whirring scopes that focused on Roland, with precise digital irising.

  Each specialist carried a big, smoothly contoured weapon Roland didn’t recognize—some new Dahl armament, maybe a form of Eridian rifle.

  Roland didn’t want to find out what those rifles could do unless he had to.

  “I believe you’d be the one they call Roland,” said the dark-eyed man unctuously.

  “You believe that’s who I am?” Roland asked. “Or you know?”

  The man chuckled. “Very astute. Yes, I know who you both are. We’ve been observing Gynella’s army, from suborbit. And you. We did a facial-recognition scan, ran it through our files. We noticed your work at that settlement. You were effective, you and your friend. Gynella’s quite surprisingly elusive. I’m interested in people who cause her difficulty. That would be you.”

  “And you are?”

  “My name’s Mince Feldsrum. Dahl security specialist, assigned to Homeworld Security.”

  Roland shrugged. “What do you want with us?”

  “May I ask what, ah, goal you have set for yourself, at the moment? Are you planning to join Gynella? Maybe kill her?”

  “Neither one. First one, I can’t imagine it. Second one, too much trouble. Way off mission.”

  “Ah-ha! And what is your mission?”

  “That’s our business. We’re . . . prospecting. A long ways . . .” Roland pointed past them. “In that direction.”

  “Suppose I offered you more money than you’d make on your mission. I’ll double it. Good cash to kill Gynella for me. To take her on directly—with our help.”

  “Why? What do you care what she does here?”

  “She’s stolen something from us. Haven’t you wondered how she controls her men? Considering that they’re all Psychos.”

  “I’ve wondered.”

  “She took a mind-control drug from us. And my company is not yet aware I let it get it taken. I can’t summon our full firepower without letting them know what it’s for. It’s all rather embarrassing. But you seem capable of doing the job. I could help you, provide you with a fast flyer; you could take them from the air. Kill her, and Dr. Vialle. Kill as many of her followers as you can—destroying her supply of the drug in the process.”

  “Why don’t you do it, with your two boyfriends there?” Mordecai asked, from the outrunner, pointing at the specialists.

  Something dangerous flickered in Feldsrum’s eyes. But he made a careless, dismissive gesture and said, “Gynella is well defended. And it would take too much explaining, in all the wrong places, if I had to go after her directly. Let’s leave it at that. Do you want the job or not?”

  Roland turned to look at Mordecai, who shook his head, once. Roland turned back to Feldsrum. “Nope. You’re hiding things from Dahl—so I figure you’d kill us after we got the job done, to make sure we don’t talk about it. And anyhow, I don’t like to go off mission.”

  Feldsrum sighed. Then he unclipped a small silvery metal box from his belt and tossed it to Roland, who caught it neatly in his left hand. “If you change your mind, call me on that.”

  He turned and walked between his guardians and up the ramp. The specialists backed up, keeping their electronically enhanced eyes on Roland—then they turned and followed Feldsrum into the spacecraft. The ramp withdrew into the vessel, and its hatch clanked shut.

  Roland climbed back into the outrunner and backed it up, just in time to avoid the burning backwash of the orbiter’s energy pulsers.

  He and Mordecai watched the vessel lift into the sky.

  Mordecai sighed. “You get any of that useful information you were hoping for?”

  “Maybe. I got a line on how Gynella controls her men. Could be useful, down the line.”

  “I got mixed feelings about the offer. Might’ve been faster to take the job, collect the paycheck, than to do what we were going to. But on the other hand . . .”

  Roland nodded. “On the other hand they’d probably have killed us to keep us quiet, later on, first time we turned our backs.”

  “I was thinking that too. Well, let’s hit the road.”

  They resumed their journey. The evening crept toward them across the plains. The sky shifted from dark blue to the color of lead.

  After another half-hour they drove up onto a bluff and saw lights up ahead, shining from below—the ground rose to a cliff edge overlooking a valley. Roland pulled up, and they stared at the lights, coming on, in the coliseum down below.

  “Looks like somebody’s got a show planned,” Roland said softly.

  Brick was standing up now but chained to a block of stone flush with the ground, in the center of the coliseum’s field. Unbreakable shackles were locked around his neck, wrists, and ankles. He glared at gathering Psychos, in the seats overlooking the gladiatorial arena, and every so often he shook his chains and bellowed at them in defiance. “You wanna take me on? Come on, let’s dance!”

  The crowd of Psychos responded with jeers and catcalls.

  Brick pulled at the chains, trying to rip them from the stone they were pinned to, all the time howling at the audience: “Come on down here, chickenshits! You’re looking at my fists? Then take off the chains and get a better look! Whatcha waitin’ for!”

  Gazing at Brick, Daphne was feeling increasingly desperate, like an animal trapped in a cage—and maybe that’s what she was. She turned away from the darkening field, the glare of the lights, the roar of the crowd—a crowd of Psychos, bandits, thugs lining up on the risers to watch the coming fight between
Brick and the Goliath.

  Each step clanking with her shackles, she walked over to the locked gate at the rear of the cage. That was the only weak point of this little prison. That gate. There was a lock on it—but locks could be broken.

  Only she couldn’t reach the gate. Her hands were free, but her ankles were locked into a long chain attached to an iron pole in the middle of her cage. She’d tried the chains over and over, never got any give in them.

  Cursing in frustration, she turned away from the gate, walked back to the fence. There was no way under the fence—the links extended under her too, beneath a covering of dirt. And there was no way over it.

  She had one hope, which was chained up on that slab of stone out there.

  • • •

  Roland had moved the outrunner back from the edge of the bluff, and now he and Mordecai lay flat on the verge, peering out over the shallow valley and the small, open-air, oblong coliseum almost directly below. The ramshackle arena was so close that if Roland were to back up, take a run and a long jump, he might be able to jump onto the top of its curved outer wall.

  Mordecai stared at the arena, roughly built of random slabs of thin metal, with wooden posts at intervals, wooden bleachers. “Looks like they went to the Rust Commons, scavenged some junk, and built that piece-of-crap coliseum in no time.”

  “Using mostly slave labor—yeah. You think that’s Brick down there?” Roland asked. There was a good deal of dust blowing by, and he wasn’t quite sure. But it looked like his old “friend” Brick, chained up in the middle of the killing ground.

  “Looks like him,” Mordecai said. “And that’s gotta be Gynella’s little pets yelling at him from the cheap seats. I can smell ’em from here. And there’s her banner. And—hey! Is that Daphne?”

  There was a small dark woman in a sort of cage, half hidden by the nearer wall of the coliseum—shadow draped her, making it hard to be certain. “Might be her. I’m not sure. Wait—Gumble had a sniper rifle in the outrunner. It’s got a scope on it.”

  He got up, trotted to the outrunner, got the sniper rifle, a loaded Atlas GGN350 Long Cyclops, and brought it back to the cliff. He lay down, got the rifle in position, and looked through the scope.

  At just that moment, the shackles around Brick’s neck, unlocked by a remote-control device controlled by Runch, fell away, clanking to the ground. And Brick was free . . . free to die.

  But to die fighting—that was a beautiful thing.

  • • •

  Gynella’s pavilion had been removed from the coliseum’s killing field, and a wooden post stood in its place. Daphne didn’t like the look of that post.

  She turned at a clattering sound and saw a bald, hunchbacked woman in dirty gray armor and bullet-scarred leggings unlocking the back gate of the cage. The hunchback’s name was Pestra, Daphne knew—part of Gynella’s women’s retinue. Instead of hair and eyebrows, Pestra had tattoos representing permed hair and arching eyebrows, the appearance of hair tattooed on her head.

  She walked slowly toward Daphne, her steel boots thumping the ground.

  Maybe this was the moment. Pestra would have to unlock her shackles—she had that pistol in her hand, but it wasn’t pointed at Daphne . . .

  “I can see it in your eyes, what you’re thinking,” Pestra said, in a low, dull voice. She made a low sound, hur, hur, hur, and after a moment Daphne decided it was this woman’s version of laughter. “I see you’re gonna try’n jump me. But see . . .” She stopped just out of reach and aimed the pistol. “Not going to happen.”

  She fired, and the pistol hissed. Daphne felt a small, fierce, stinging pain just over her sternum, and she looked down to see a dart sticking there. She plucked it out, but the drug was already in her.

  Was it the drug that Gynella used on her men? Would it work on her? Would Gynella turn her inside out?

  A tide of sickly greenness washed over Daphne, thick and cold, and she fell to her knees. She could see her own hands spasmodically clutching the air in front of her—they looked green. Everything looked green.

  She tried to lift her arms—they were too heavy to lift.

  The hunchbacked woman unlocked the shackles at Daphne’s ankles, but Daphne couldn’t make a move against her. She could barely keep on breathing.

  Pestra took Daphne by the neck and dragged her to the door of the cage. Daphne was distantly aware of the Psychos in the audience clapping, hooting, demanding they be given their chance at her.

  A green blur, a change of position, then Daphne saw the darkening sky, starting to show a few stars overhead, as she was dragged by the neck across the ground. She had difficulty breathing, but it didn’t seem to matter.

  Harder to breathe; harder yet. Time slipped into green ooze, and she must’ve lost consciousness for a few minutes. She wallowed in a toxic green sea . . . until suddenly light stabbed through. Her eyes popped open, and she gasped, sucking in air. She was awake and found she was lying on her back in the middle of the coliseum. She struggled to move and managed to sit up. The paralysis drug was wearing off; the greenness was draining away, and true colors were slowly returning. She looked behind her—the motion hurt a little, because of a tight metal shackle around her neck. It was attached to a chain that reached two meters before connecting with a steel pin in a wooden post.

  Head throbbing, Daphne turned to look at Brick and was surprised to see he didn’t have his shackles on anymore. He was standing on that flat stone, staring past her, at something beyond.

  The crowd roared—and Daphne knew.

  She looked anyway and saw the Goliath come through a wide rusty metal gate opening at the other end of the arena.

  The Goliath was big, towering over any ordinary man, and must have outweighed Brick, she guessed, by about double. The Goliath had once been an ex-con, brought to this planet like so many others to work in penal servitude, then abandoned by the Dahl Corporation. Now he’d mutated, twisted by Eridium radiation and experimental steroids, into this obscenely muscular, oversized hulk with a swag belly and arms like tree trunks and a strangely small head. The Goliath’s head was quite disproportionately small compared with his body, the entire skull encased in a crude gray metal, flat-topped helmet completely concealing his face. He wore a vest that was too small for the enormous barrel of his torso, brown leather trousers on rather squat legs, big rubbery boots. He didn’t seem to be wearing a shield—probably usually didn’t need one. Most bullets would be like mosquito bites to a Goliath, so long as that head was armored.

  She could feel the ground shaking with each of the Goliath’s thumping steps as it stumped toward Brick.

  The Goliath shook his massive fists at Brick, rumbly voice coming muffled but audible through the helmet: “Get ready for . . . HURT!”—and the crowd went wild with sadistic delight.

  “Brick!” Daphne hissed, as Brick stalked toward the Goliath. “Brick—how about if you just smash down that wooden post, set me free, carry me out of here! You can dodge past the Goliath! Bash the gate down! Let’s just get outta here!”

  Brick looked at her, eyebrows bobbing in surprise at her suggestion. “Run? Me?”

  “Brick—you’ve been injured, weakened, and he’s . . . big. Very, very big. And I’ve heard those things can change and get bigger.”

  “I will set you free,” Brick said, nodding. “As soon as I kill this big slob over here.”

  Daphne groaned. Brick marched past her, toward the Goliath.

  The Goliath threw his head back, pounded his fists on his chest, and roared, “ALWAYS KILL! GET READY FOR HURT!”

  Not particularly articulate, is he? thought Daphne torpidly.

  Brick responded with his own bellowed declaration of destruction as he leaned forward and rushed toward the Goliath. “You . . . better . . . RUN!”

  Then Brick was upon the Goliath, ducking under the swing of the mutant’s enormous right fist, slamming his own gloved, studded fists hard into the Goliath’s belly, a left and a right blur-fast, deep into that swag
belly.

  The Goliath roared and took one staggering step back. “Ouch!” he yelled. “A little hurt!”

  A wave of laughter swept over the crowd.

  Brick kept coming with freight-train force, hitting the Goliath with a tackle around the knees, and the huge mutant fell over, facedown, his helmet ringing on the ground like a badly made bell.

  The Psychos came to their feet in the bleachers, jumping up and down in outraged excitement.

  Brick squirmed free of the Goliath’s legs, was up, turning and jumping, body-slamming on the Goliath just as the mutant got to his hands and knees.

  The Goliath grunted as Brick knocked him flat again.

  Daphne grinned, thinking maybe Brick was going to win after all. Feeling the paralysis dissipate a little more with each passing second, she looked around for Gynella and spotted the General Goddess in a special, decorated viewing box, with her banner hanging in front of it, in the lowest row of the coliseum. She saw Presta standing protectively behind Gynella on one side, Broomy on another. Runch was standing on the field, just beside his Goddess’s coliseum box, in case anyone should rush her. He had the rocket launcher in his hand and seemed impatient to use it.

  Daphne heard an oof and a grunt of pain from Brick, turned to see the Goliath had turned the tables on Brick, slammed him to the ground, was now getting up and looming over him. Brick looked as if he was wheezing, breath knocked out of him.

  Oh shit, Daphne thought.

  She stood up, took a deep breath, and yelled, at the top of her lungs, “Hey, Goliath! Hey, dumbass! Hey, bucket head! Over here!”

  The Goliath lifted his head and turned to see who was shouting at him.

  He stared at Daphne. She blew him a kiss.

  The crowd roared at that.

  But in distracting the mutant she’d given Brick a chance to get to his feet, and when the Goliath turned back around, he was met by Brick jumping up and smashing his mailed fist hard into the giant’s crotch.

  The Goliath howled in pain and bent double—and Brick cracked him with an uppercut to the chin.

  The Goliath staggered back, three steps. Then got his feet under him and rushed at Brick, shouting, “Deathtastic! And DIE!”