by John Shirley
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.
Sleet, 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.
The Claptrap thought it sensed sparks, and smoke in its innermost circuits—and it was afraid. It was quite capable of being afraid. Professor Elenora Dufty had made sure of that.
“That’s not true,” she said, in his mind—reading his electronic thoughts. “I just like to know where people stand. Find him—find Mordecai! His uncertainty, his fear, his regret, must begin, and soon . . .”
The Claptrap leaned forward and trundled onward, bumping over the rough ground, sliding over ice patches, till it reached the nearest rectangular entrance to a deserted mine shaft. It paused once more, listening. It heard nothing but the voice of the wind . . . so it rolled slowly into the tunnel. Extra switched on its sonar, finding its way in the dark, swerving around small tumbles of rock, till it came to a fairly dry spot. Here Extra turned on its internal heaters, hoping there was enough battery power to both dry out inwardly and to provide the energy to leave this place when the
sun rose.
“Go to sleep mode as soon as you’re dried out,” came Dufty’s piercing voice.
“Yes,” Extra said. “I will. I need peace now . . . peace and quiet . . .”
“You shall have peace and quiet when your assignment is completed!” she told it.
But she didn’t speak again that night. Extra heard little else—except, sometimes, barely heard whispers from the darkness deeper within the old mining shaft.
• • •
When Gergle woke, he found himself staring up into the face—minatory and wattled, beaked and beady eyed—of a big, monstrous birdlike creature that made hissing sounds warningly when he tried to move. It was squatting on his chest.
“Gahhhh!” Gergle said.
His head rang with pain where someone had cracked him on the back of the head, after he’d completed his piss behind the Sludge Packer Bar and Grill. Maybe he was hallucinating from that crack on the skull.
“Lay very still,” said the low voice, half whispered yet starkly clear. “Lay still or she’ll peck your eyes out. She likes a nice snack this time of night.”
Gergle froze.
He was lying on his back between the bar and the outrunner garage next door, smelling piss and feces and a strange rancid leather smell off the creature perched on his chest. He lay there shivering, and trying not to move—not wanting to provoke the creature. Was it a rakk? No. It had leather wings but it was more vulturelike, with a pallid face, red eyes, big yellow, sharp-looking beak; he could feel its talons dug into his chest.
“Now, what’s your name, friend?” the stranger asked.
“Gergle.”
“Listen, Gergle, I need some information. This creature here, sitting on your chest, has the psychic power to know when you’re lying or holding back. If you do either one, it’s going to start pecking at your eyes. You understand . . . Gergle?”
“I . . . yes!” Gergle glanced sideways at the stranger. He couldn’t see him clearly—it was like part of him vanished into the backdrop. But there was a kind of outline—Gergle got an impression of a compact, narrow-faced man with a small pointed beard. On the man’s head was a leather helmet of some kind. There was a gun in the man’s hand, a machine pistol. A rifle was slung over one shoulder. “Who . . . ?”
“Never mind who I am. All you need to know is, I’m the one who gives this hungry creature here its pecking orders. If you answer the questions honestly, maybe you get to live. And maybe you can keep your eyes. Now. First of all—what are they up to, here, in Tumessa? What’s the point of this place anyway?”
“The point? It’s Reamus’s factory stuff. He’s got Eridian mines. He makes stuff from it here, and sells it. Got a deal with Hyperion.”
“Uh huh. So far, you’re keeping your eyes. Where’s this factory at?”
“Underneath the Reamus House, up on top!”
“That where I find Reamus? Up on top of Tumessa—in that house? They call it Reamus House?”
“Yeah! If he’s home. I mean, it ain’t much of a house . . . it’s more like a fort. But that’s what he calls it.”
“What do you do here?”
“I been in food services, mostly. Factory cafeteria.”
“Mostly? What else?”
“Oh just . . . you know . . . security . . . kinda . . .”
The stranger nodded to the vulturelike creature—who pecked hard at Gergle, jabbing its beak into the skin near Gergle’s left eye socket. It tore out a piece of skin and ate it, gulping the flesh down right in front of him.
“Augh!” Gergle squealed. “It’s going after my eyes!”
“Don’t be such a baby. She only took a little skin that time. Just don’t move, Gergle, or you’ll lose your eyes for sure! And don’t lie! She pecked at you because you were holding something back. Now come clean!”
“Well I . . . Before I was in the cafeteria, I was on camera security, checking the monitors, for a while, at the Reamus House, but I fell asleep on the job and my supervisor caught me and fired me. I was lucky. If Reamus had caught me, he’da killed me, and killed me ugly.”
“So you know that house. There must be a way in. I mean—past the defenses.”
“Not that I know of . . .”
The stranger grunted and the creature on Gergle’s chest poised its head to peck at his eyes.
“No!” Gergle burst out. “Don’t! Don’t let it eat me!”
“Then stop lying!”
“I . . . there’s no definite way in, except through the front door and . . . maybe the roof! I mean, on the roof, there’s a blind spot, I remember from the cameras—right behind the center tower! And the back wall—they don’t keep those cameras in repair much. Because there’s something back there—a Bullymong! Big ’un! Reamus borrowed some of its DNA to shape himself . . . that’s why he’s got four arms . . .”
“Bullymong . . . Heard of ’em. Never seen one. Tough?”
“Real tough. Big. Tear your head off. Can I go now?”
“How do you get across those moats of acid?”
“The acid? First moat—you walk over the bridge. There’s two of ’em. Second moat, if you don’t have the right gear, the bridge it senses you’re an intruder and it opens up, dumps you right in the acid! Turn you to bare bones in seconds!”
“What ‘right gear’ you talking about?”
“A transmitter—they put it under your chin, stick it under the skin. It transmits to the control on the second bridge—”
“I see. How about those slug things . . .”
“SlagSlugs! Mutated people. Reamus, he used some process—turned ’em into the big slug critters. They’re controlled by whoever creates ’em—they can spit acid, they use it for mining. They dig holes for him, see—he’s gonna make a bunch of ’em and sell ’em to miners all over the galaxy! And they’re good for protecting the place! They’ll slobber all over you—and if it’s not the acid, it’s the glue slobber. It hardens, glues your arms to your body. Then they crunch you up and suck you down!”
“SlagSlugs—they got a vulnerability?”
“When their mouths open . . . shoot in at the roof of their mouth. But if you get that close they usually got your arms glued down. I don’t go near ’em! I stay at the cafeteria! You wanta hamburger? I can sneak you out a scythid burger! Maybe some skag-on-a-bun?”
“No thanks. What’s this place built on? I mean—flat land around here, suddenly Tumessa sticks out like a sore thumb. Shape of it makes me think it’s artificial.”
“Yeah—there’s something down there. He built something, covered it over, set up the factory and house level. But I don’t know what he’s got down there. Took him years to build it, I heard. While he was, you know, mutating. Changing. Into what he is now . . .”
“The patrols—you know their schedules? Or any passwords?”
“The patrols go by fast as they can walk. I never timed ’em. Passwords—there aren’t any!”
The stranger hesitated, and for a moment Gergle thought he was about to lose an eye. Then the man gestured at the creature on Gergle’s chest—and it hopped off with an air of disappointment.
“You’ll get a taste of someone else’s eyes before the night’s through,” the stranger told it. “As for you, Gergle—turn on your stomach and put your hands behind your back.”
Gergle obeyed—afraid of both that winged demon and the machine pistol. He felt wire twisted around his wrists. Then the stranger picked a rag up off the ground and stuffed the unspeakably filthy cloth into Gergle’s mouth.
“That should keep you quiet for a while,” the stranger said.
The winged creature squawked. The stranger growled to himself. “I don’t like shooting a man all tied up . . . I know I should just . . . but I figure he’ll lie still till the morning. We’ll be done by then.”
The creature made another squawking sound, resonating of discontent, which Gergle suspected was a sound of disapproval.
“Yeah, yeah, it’ll be all right, girl,” the str
anger said.
Was he talking to that hideous leather winged vulture? Calling it girl in that tone of affection? Disgusting.
“Mmmf,” Gergle said, trying unsuccessfully to speak around the rag stuffed in his mouth.
The stranger bent near him. “Lie still. It’s not all that long till the sun comes up. Someone will find you. Don’t you dare move or I’ll make you sorry you were born!”
Gergle nodded. The creature fluttered up into the air and the man walked away. After a few moments, Gergle was sure they were gone.
His wrists ached; his belly was cold. His face was bleeding. And there was a horrible taste from the rag in his mouth.
Should he really just obediently lie there?
It seemed to Gergle that he had a rare opportunity. A chance to make himself look good in Reamus’s eyes. Maybe get a reward.
He began to worm his way forward, almost like a SlagSlug, crawling on his belly, gradually slithering up between the buildings, toward the road.
• • •
Stepping out on the road beside the Sludge Packer Bar and Grill, Mordecai knew he’d probably made a mistake, leaving Gergle alive. Bloodwing was right. But he’d always had a hard time killing a man who was completely helpless. Sniping was one thing—but killing a man tied up, that way . . . not his style. Still—foolish.
He’d better get the job done quickly. But he couldn’t follow the road. He’d run into patrols, maybe SlagSlugs.
He crossed the road, saw a crooked stairway, winding up the next escarpment, to the back of a row of shacks. Looked like the best route.
Machine pistol in hand, rifle over his shoulder, he climbed the stairs rapidly, quietly as he could, though the wooden boards creaked under his boots. Still wondering if he should’ve killed Gergle.
He got to the top, slipped as carefully as he could through a rocky passage between the shacks—but then Bloodwing landed on his shoulder, hissing warningly in his ear, and Mordecai drew quickly back into the shadows. He looked out, revealing himself as little as he could. Saw that two Marauders were coming his way, down the street, side by side, heavily armed. Sentries. They didn’t seem to be looking for him—probably only his auto-camo had prevented them from spotting him.
