Borderlands: The Fallen Page 21

  Roland just stood there, waiting, unwilling to turn his back on Crannigan right now.

  Crannigan shrugged, and led the other men away, grumbling to himself. “A fucking kid. Should have known that’d fuck things up.”

  Roland waited till they’d moved off far enough up the trail, then he turned, retrieved the Zodiac Turret, which he’d set up on their backtrail; he folded it into carry mode, slung it on his back, and jogged down the trail and back to the glassy plain. A half hour of sweaty trotting took him to the outrunner. He found a water jug, drank about half of it, then got in the outrunner and started it off, following the sandy fringe of the glass plain—almost immediately running into scythids. Some of them spat venom at him, burning a hole in the seat next to him. He ran over four of them till they got the idea and dove into the sand.

  Another few minutes and he reached the opening to the trail leading up through the bluffs where they’d made camp. He parked the outrunner where the others could see it, got the Eridian electric shotgun out, and started off along the glass plain toward the tunnel rat maze.

  He cut across the glass plain, some of the way, to get there quicker, putting on his tinted goggles against the sunlight gleaming on the glazed ground. He leaned into it, going as quickly as he could … and came to the nearest of the rat tunneler excavations visible from above.

  “Still time to talk yourself out of this,” he muttered. “This is close to suicidal …”

  But there was no talking himself out of it. He knew damn well he was going in.

  He had three protean grenades. Time to use one up getting in.

  He backed up, flattened down, activated the grenade, and tossed it at the dark spot on the glass plain. He covered his face a split second before the explosion. Crude glass splinters zinged over him; debris rained down.

  Roland sighed, thinking: That’ll bring the sons of bitches running. No hope for sneaking in …

  He got up and checked his weaponry. Zodiac, Eridian Thunder Storm, a pistol on each hip, knife. However this came out, there would be fewer tunnel rats, come the end.

  “Well,” Roland said, “I’m just burning daylight. So …”

  He ran to the hole blasted through the surface, over the excavation. Just big enough. He stepped over and dropped, landing with a grunt on the balls of his feet three meters down. He recovered his footing and looked around. The corridor he’d landed in was flooded with sunlight from above—but the farther doorway was dark. Behind him—just rock. This branch of the colony tunnels ended here.

  Good thing he’d gotten a night-seeing mod for his goggles at Fyrestone. Roland switched it on, and the darkness became a sharply defined green and red tunnel—with the reddish shape of a tunnel rat running toward him, gas mask pushed back, oversized buck teeth bared. It had a pistol in its hand, firing. Roland’s shield repelled the bullets.

  He couldn’t see a shield on this rat. No sense in wasting recharge time. When the tunnel rat got close enough, he simply smashed in its head, crushing his skull completely with the butt of his gun. It folded up at his feet, stone dead.

  But the three coming at him from down the tunnel were quite alive—and firing larger-caliber weapons.

  The rounds hit Roland’s shield, making him stagger back, his shield flickering. Roland snarled and shouted, “Mess with the bull and you get the horns!” as he fired the Thunder Storm. The electric pellets flashed out and struck the first tunnel rat straight on, penetrating his shield, so that he was flung backward. The others were struck by the rebounding shots ricocheting around like tiny meteors in the corridor, coming at the tunnel rats from every angle, tearing into them, making them dance with electrical charge. One of them, staggering, had a strong shield and got through, eyes ablaze with electricity, shaking but firing a submachine gun at Roland.

  Roland returned fire, blasting at the rat’s legs so the shot would not only take him out but would ricochet to take out the taller tunnel rat coming around the corner behind him. Down both tunnel rats went, screaming, crackling, electrocuted and bleeding, their wounds spitting sparks as well as spurting blood.

  There were half a dozen bodies in the tunnel now. The tunnel rats would be worrying about adding to that pile—so they’d try rockets or grenades, if they had any. He needed to forestall anyone coming close enough till he had a chance to figure out how to get an edge on these scraping scumbags. He could hear them arguing back there, in the tunnel, their feet scuffling on the floor.

  “We must charge him again! He cannot kill ten!”

  “He is big, he will make a fine meal!”

  “You wish to be in the forefront of the ten, Broncus? I thought not!”

  Roland unshipped the Zodiac Turret and set it up, fast as he could. It did some of the work itself and soon the tripod was humming, the gun conning back and forth, looking for enemies.

  He retreated into the room at the end of the tunnel, a few steps behind the turret—just as a phalanx of tunnel rats tried a charge. The gun chattered and spat bursts of bullets, a powerful caliber that penetrated most shields—the tunnel rats went down, or scurried back, yelping with pain and fear.

  Roland chuckled. “I love that damn thing. It’s like having another soldier in the field.” He stepped closer to the archway and shouted, “Tunnel rats! You listening down there!”

  “We are not rats! We are men!” someone shouted back. “We are tunnelers! We are members of the Sacred Guild of Mining Engineers!”

  “Right, right,” Roland said. “But there’s like ten of you at least that are dead mining engineers about now! You want there to be more dead mining engineers? Or you going to give me what I need?”

  There was considerable muttered discussion. Then he heard, “Do you really think you can kill all of us? If we must we’ll drown your tunnel in fire! We’ll use every bomb we have stored away!”

  “I got the best shield there is!” Roland yelled, lying through his teeth. “I can take down a hundred of you creepy little bastards before I fold up! And if you bitches creep away, I’ll just hunt you through the tunnels! Or you can cooperate—’cause what I want from you ain’t so much!”

  More muttering. Then, “What is it you require?”

  “I’m gonna tell you what I want to know and if I don’t get honest answers I’m going to start using my big weapons! Now listen—you had a kid in there, right? A boy! You caught him recently! Right? I wanna know, is he alive—or dead!”

  A long period of muttering, argument, hissing. “We cannot agree … we send the one responsible to talk to you …”

  The one responsible? What did they mean by that? Roland wondered. “Send him unarmed then!”

  “You must neutralize your turret!”

  “I’ll do it—but if any more than one comes it fires again!”

  Roland looked around the stone corner, down the corridor. He couldn’t see the tunnel rats but he could make out their shadows, from around another corner. He reached out, reset the turret. “It’s set to let one through! Just one!”

  Another lie. It didn’t have that refinement. It was completely neutralized. But there were so many weapons modifications, the tunnel rats couldn’t know for sure.

  Roland drew back, and waited.

  In a moment, a tunnel rat, in a gas mask, came up the tunnel, his grimy, clawed hands raised.

  “And who the hell would you be?” Roland asked, stepping partly into view and pointing the Eridian shotgun.

  “My name is Broncus.” He rubbed his hands together nervously, wringing them. “We had the boy. And his mother. But …”

  His mother? “Yeah, what happened to them? You digesting them right now?”

  “No, unfortunately. They escaped.”

  “I told you I’d know if you were lying!”

  “I’m not! The woman used a disguise, a gas mask, and … I don’t want to discuss it. But she took the boy with her. It was tragic! Right before the feast!”

  “Yeah? Well …” He noticed the tunnel rat looking speculatively
at his muscles as if wondering how juicy the meat would be. “You can forget eating me. I’ll burn myself into a cinder before I end up in your intestines. Now listen—I’ve decided you’re telling the truth. Just tell me this, how long ago was this?”

  “I don’t know. Some hours. It was daylight, not quite sun-overhead. They went out the farthest-most southeast entrance, near the cliffs!”

  “I gotcha. Okay, you cooperated, so back you go, down the tunnel. Hey!” He called to the others. “Your pal Broncus here just saved you about thirty lives, at least, so you better thank him and make him your head negotiator or some shit! Now all of you back off and … wait. Hold on …”

  It occurred to him that he didn’t want to go through the tunnels to find a way out. That’d leave him too vulnerable to sneak attack.

  “One last thing!” Roland called out. “I know you ‘engineers’ gotta know about ladders, right? Get me one and I’m gone! Nobody else dies! And just think … these other losers here I killed … they’ll make a nice feast!”

  “Very true!” said Broncus, brightening. “Everyone should be of service … or be a serving … to the colony. I will see about your ladder. It’s such a shame you can’t stay for dinner …”

  An empty satchel strapped over one shoulder, Zac was creeping through the debris field, on his hands and knees, wincing as the rock ground into his kneecaps.

  He crept up to a boulder shaped like a giant’s anvil, to find himself in the shade of the inner shell of the volcano. The shade was a relief—the late afternoon sun fairly blazed into the “auditorium” of the volcano shell.

  He heard a beeping, a humming, and glanced up to see the monitor flying slowly over, making those sounds as if they helped it search. The monitor did look roughly like an airborne manta ray, one big as a small car, but semitransparent, lights twinkling inside it, and with four long transparent rubbery tendrils whipping about from its front end. It was eyeless, but Zac suspected it was all eye, in a way. It was the roaming eye of the crashed alien ship.

  Was it in fact just the surviving main computer of the ship that was maintaining the monitor, as Berl supposed—or were there aliens alive in there, somehow?

  Was the monitor itself an alien? A creature? As Zac looked at it, he thought it seemed, really, more like a sophisticated, prehensile floating machine than like an organism.

  It drifted slowly over, and Zac held perfectly still, even holding his breath, remembering what Berl had said about the monitor being sensitive to motion. At last the monitor veered off to the right, like a kite changing direction, and he lost sight of it.

  Zac let out a long, relieved breath, and raised himself up just enough to look around for artifacts. Something rippled with light, in those rocks over there. But could he get to it?

  What Berl had in mind was his keeping the monitor busy—when it was far enough off, Zac was supposed to throw rocks, then hide, do whatever he could to keep it snooping curiously over here—while Berl slipped in from another side and grabbed some more artifacts. Zac had his own satchel and hoped to find a few himself. They could be worth a lot of money to Atlas, or Dahl, or Hyperion.

  Of course, Zac was taking a far bigger chance than Berl was. But Berl’s rifle and his trained drifter were persuasive—Zac was in no position to argue.

  Zac picked his way through the rocks, hunched over, constantly glancing at the monitor, still turned away from him. He stepped onto a pile of rocks, a shelf of rock near the closest artifact—and the rockpile slid apart under him, with a noisy clatter. He glanced at the monitor, saw it turning his way to investigate the noise.

  He flattened, rolled partway under the shelf of rock, and lay still, holding his breath again. He wasn’t completely hidden but if he lay still, he might go unnoticed.

  Zac heard the monitor whispering wordlessly, hummingly to itself as it moved slowly by overhead; he felt a tingle as it passed over, as if it were probing, and a formless pressure on his eyes. He smelled something odd, too, like rancid pickles. His head ached briefly … and then the effect vanished. It had gone.

  He breathed again, aware that his pulse was thumping in his ears, and slowly eased out from under the stone.

  He rolled onto his stomach and got his feet quietly under him, stood partway up, little by little—

  There. The monitor was about seventy meters off, poking at a different end of the debris field.

  Licking his dry lips, excited to be here and scared and angry at Berl all at once, Zac turned and climbed the shelf of rock as quietly as he could. On the other side was an object as big as a man’s head, not quite spherical, shaped like a flawed pearl. It was translucent, iridescent, and small lights flicked on and off in it. He reached for it—and as his hand got close, the warped sphere extruded small spikes, made of the same material as its body, like a sea anemone. He drew his hand back—the spikes disappeared back into it. Was it safe to pick this thing up?

  Zac took off the empty satchel, turned it inside out, then used it as a kind of loose glove to pick up the artifact. It didn’t spike out when he picked it up that way and he found it only as heavy as a baseball. He closed the satchel over it and glanced around for the monitor.

  The strange delta shape, glimmering within itself as if thinking visibly, had come to a dead stop hovering over the debris field; it was turned away from Zac, about sixty meters off.

  He suspected that the artifact had called to it in some way. The monitor seemed to be thinking it over …

  Zac hurriedly slid off the rock, taking the satchel with him; he crawled back under the stone shelf and waited. Again that rising hum, the wordless whispering, the pressure on his eyes, the strange smell … It lingered a little longer this time. Then it was gone.

  He waited as long as he could bear it, then crawled out from under the rock and looked around. He couldn’t see the monitor.

  He had no idea what the artifact he’d found was good for. But it was going to have to do Berl for now. His heart was stuttering in his chest.

  Still one thing to do—and the timing should be right. He lifted up so he could see the monitor, drifting over the debris field now about forty meters to his left. Berl wanted him to throw a rock to distract the thing—but that would be stupid: this thing would probably track the source of the rock.

  No. He was going to be more obvious than that and hope he could move fast enough to get where he needed to go.

  He crept through the rocks, keeping low, looking around for the monitor, and when he was near the edge of the debris, he saw Berl, waiting near a cluster of artifacts, about halfway across the field. Berl had one hand on the artifact hanging around his neck. Bizzy was nearby, within spitting distance, literally, of Zac: about thirty meters away.

  Zac waved at Berl, meaning, Okay—now!

  Then he jumped up and howled.

  He waited till the monitor turned, then he spun about and ran, leaping from rock to rock, jumping behind boulders. He heard the humming, the whispering. Felt the probe …

  Faster.

  Gasping, Zac redoubled his speed, plunging into the sunlight, reaching the pathway of ancient lava flow around the debris field. He leapt up onto it and darted between two rocks, and then behind two more. And shading his eyes against the sun, turned to see if something Berl had said was true: The monitor won’t leave the debris field.

  It did seem to have stopped on the edge of the debris field. Behind it, he could see Berl scrounging among the artifacts …

  Then he saw the monitor approaching Bizzy.

  Berl, dammit, pay attention.

  But the old hermit was greedily harvesting artifacts, his attention fixated on his treasures …

  The monitor got within a few meters of Bizzy and then began to gleam, to flicker inwardly … and Bizzy straightened up on its legs, shook itself, and turned toward Zac.

  Bizzy stalked over toward Zac and began spitting glowing blue corrosive venom at him in meteoric globs. The stuff burned through the air, hit the stone next to him, dissolvi
ng its way through it …

  “Oh fuck,” Zac said, turning to scramble away. Bizzy came after him, quickly gaining ground.

  Zac ran down the pathway of melted stone on the edge of the gulch, thinking: Maybe it’s simply time for me to get the hell out of here.

  He hesitated, looked back to see Bizzy—and saw he’d turned away, was stalking toward Berl—and spitting venom.

  Good luck, Berl.

  Zac turned to run down the pathway. Then he heard a long, pealing shriek, from Berl, in the distance. “Zaaaaaaaaac! For God’s sake, boy! Help me!”

  Zac slowed … and stopped. “Oh come on, dammit …”

  “Zac! Help me! He’s not listenin’ to me! He’s got me cornered! Zaaaaaaaac! You gotta come back here!”

  Groaning, Zac turned around … and stopped. “No, goddammit, that old man was ready to shoot me down … he cracked me in the head … He tied me up …”

  A particularly piteous cry. “Zaa-aa-aa-aaaac!”

  He shook his head. There was no living with this if he didn’t try to help.

  Zac started back toward Bizzy, not sure what he could do to help the old hermit. Another long hot jog up the path of ancient lava flow—and there was Bizzy and the monitor, both of them focused on an igloo-shaped rock. He couldn’t see Berl at first—then caught a movement in the shadow of the rock. The boulder was tilted up, at the bottom, resting on another rock, leaving a space in which Berl sheltered. There were smoking, steaming spots on the rock, and in puddles around it, where Bizzy had spat his caustic venom.

  Berl tossed a rock out, trying to distract them away. It didn’t work.

  Bizzy spat a glowing blue wad that struck Berl’s shelter. The corrosive bubbled and steamed, and the rock began to pit and burn away under it.

  “Zaaaaaaaaac! He doesn’t obey me no more! You gotta do something!”

  Bizzy was bending down now, trying to aim his toxin into Berl’s hiding place, like an exterminator trying to get at a rat hiding in a wall crack.

  There was nothing for it. “Bizzy!” Zac shouted. “Goddammit he’s your friend! Leave him alone!” On sudden inspiration he took off the satchel, reached in, and took the risk of touching the artifact. He felt it spine up but nothing that hurt him. “Bizzy! Back off him!”