by John Shirley
She sighed and stood up, tried to see through the crack. She could make out just a little sky up there.
She pried at the ceiling with her fingers, broke some of it—but there was synthawood she didn’t think she could break through anytime soon. If she fired the shotgun at it, probably a lot of the pellets would ricochet back on her.
She looked around in the closet—and noticed an automated grinder for polishing stone floors. It was about the size and shape of a vacuum cleaner but with a circular scraping face on the bottom.
Daphne took its handle grip in her hands—and a light switched on just below her fingers.
“Yes?” asked the grinder, in a chirpy artificial voice, more or less like a Claptrap’s. “Can I be of service?”
“Uh—you’re a robotic polishing . . . thingy?”
“I am in actual fact a grinding and polishing unit. ‘Thingy’ is not in my vocabulary list.”
“If I lift you up to the ceiling, can you grind, you know, upside down?”
“I am sometimes used for ceilings. My lightness makes me ideal. Relative to other models, I—”
“Right, fine.” She lifted the grinder up, pushed it against the crack in the ceiling. “Get to grinding. Full power!”
“Full power! That is usually not recommended! I’ve never been set on full power before!”
“You are now! Get to it before my arms give out!”
“This is quite exciting!” The grinder’s sandpaper-like surface began to spin, biting into the ceiling with a high-pitched screeeee.
Daphne squinted against the spray of dust, and gritted her teeth at the effort to hold it in place over her head. It was as awkward as dating a eunuch, but she kept the grinder in place, turning it this way and that to widen the gap.
“You know,” the grinder remarked, its voice difficult to hear over the keening, grinding sound, “pretty soon you’ll use up my battery charge. You may have to take me to the shop.”
“Don’t think I’ll be able to find a shop where everyone isn’t dead, around here . . .”
“What’s that you say?”
“Nothing. Keep grinding!”
“I’m . . . running . . . out . . . of . . . pow . . . er . . . if you don’t . . .” Its grinder stopped, and its light went out.
Daphne lowered the grinder, wiped dust from her eyes with one hand, then used the grinder to smash at the widened crack—a considerable piece broke out of the ceiling. She leaned the grinder against the wall, picked up her shotgun, then used the grinder as a clumsy stepladder, jumping up to grab the edge of the opening with one hand. She held on, tossed the weapon up and through, and crawled out after it.
She was in a pile of debris where the rooms over the basement had been. To one side, like the opening to a sea cave, was the broken-open wall through which the light was coming.
Beyond it—smoke, fire, and mystery.
They were sitting around a small table in a cluttered little kitchen in the upstairs of the prefab arena. Brick barely fit into his side of the little room. There were cabinets, a stove, all compactly ordered like furnishings in a recreational vehicle. Every counter surface was stacked with canned food and med hypos.
“I’ve got a desperate mission in Gunsight, Moxxi,” Mordecai told her, as Brick finished his fourth pot of skag chili. “I’ve got to get there, and soon.”
“Where does he put all that chili?” she mused, watching Brick eat. Here in the kitchen, with a couple of glasses of Red Dr. Zed wine in her, she let her natural accent emerge, a kind of soft drawl. “I’d hate to sit behind him in an outrunner.”
“Oh you don’t know the half of it. But listen—”
“How are you going to ever leave me, my darling dear,” she interrupted, offering him another drink from the ruby-colored flagon, “with hundreds of enemies waiting outside?”
Mordecai waved the drink away. He was already slightly drunk. “Moxxi, my beautiful friend, may I point out that soon Reamus will find the time to check the report from the men he sent out to catch us or kill us? And he’ll tell them to stop holding off and break into the arena, no matter what it takes. That’s his style.”
“He wouldn’t dare.”
Brick looked up at her. “He would dare. He crunched most of his people when that thing came out.”
“Yes, what was that thing?” she asked, tilting her hat back on her head with one ornate fingernail.
“It was a . . . battleship.”
She frowned. Her lips were very, very sexy when she frowned. Mordecai had to look away. He would not be tempted. “Battleship? But isn’t that a kind of seagoing vessel, from ancient times, Mordecai?”
“I don’t know how else to describe it. Reamus has built a gigantic . . . vehicle. An armored tank that’s bigger than a lot of settlements, higher than any hill around here, and weaponed up like a bastard.”
“And you want to go where you’ll be on the wrong side of that thing? I like watching a good, uneven, unfair fight, but that’s just silly.”
“I hope to find some way around dealing with it directly.”
“What’s this mission you have?” She gave him a sharp look with narrowed eyes.
“Ah, as to that, well, I’ve gotta kill Reamus. That’s my mission. And Jasper.”
“Both? For who?”
“For—each one of ’em.”
“You mean you got them to hire you to kill each other?”
“Close enough,” he said.
“That’s my Mordecai!”
“And there’s the girl, too, don’t forget,” said Brick cluelessly, belching.
Mordecai flinched.
Moxxi glared. “Thought so. Using me to get back with another woman, are you? I’ve got a good mind to call my killbots and have you tossed in the arena. I’ll keep Brick here with me, and we can have a good time watching you fight off ten or eleven Reamers with, maybe, an electric toothbrush.”
“Ha, my beautiful sweet darling, you know that you’re the love of my life. But—I have an obligation to rescue someone who saved my life many times. She’s an admirable person. You’d love her.”
“I’d love her in my arena, fighting one of those SlagSlugs, maybe. Make that four SlagSlugs . . . You’re talking about that Daphne Kuller, I’ll bet. She’s gotten pretty notorious, after kicking Gynella’s ass. I had a guy here tell me about that fight. He’s dead now, of course, but he described it quite vividly. She’s pretty badass, I’ll admit that much.”
“Tell you what, let me get her out of Jasper’s clutches and I’ll bring her here, we’ll fight a good long arena battle for you. Regular rates and whatever else.”
“Hmmm, well . . .”
Mordecai knew Moxxi all too well and he could guess what was going through her mind: Get the bitch here, sabotage her in the arena, she’ll die and I’ve got Mordecai to myself.
“Okay, Mordecai, tell you what! I’m gonna set it up so you’ve got a good chance of shooting your way out past those Reamers out there, and going on your merry way. I can always film it and syndicate it. It means letting you have some extra-lovely guns and ammo, for a while, and another of my corrosive SMG specials but . . .”
• • •
The cameras were hovering overhead, watching as Brick and Mordecai walked past the outrunner, now parked just inside the gate. Bloodwing flew up to perch on Mordecai’s right shoulder.
“Hel-loooo, what about meeee,” called the Claptrap. “I’m bored sitting in the backseat and just waiiii-ting!”
Mordecai paused and said, “Finally—I thought of a way you could be useful. Besides as a paperweight, I mean. I assume you’re programmed to drive an outrunner if needed.”
“Yes! I have lower extenders that can reach the accelerator! I haven’t had access to a vehicle but I know I can do it. I wish I’d had one; it was such a long, slow roll finding you.”
“Never mind, just get in front of the outrunner and start the vehicle. Prepare to drive. When we jump in, and that gate opens . . . slam on the
accelerator and head out like the devil is nipping at your tail. And don’t say you don’t have a tail, I know that.”
“Right you are, Boss!”
Mordecai climbed the stairs to rejoin Brick on the defense platform just inside the top of the front wall. When we jump in, and that gate opens . . .
But suppose she didn’t open the gate? Could he really trust Moxxi to let him go?
Brick was sorting through an overpacked box of weapons and ammo. He already had a bandolier of grenades over one shoulder.
“Ah, now I like this Moxxi girl!” Brick said, picking up a particularly powerful rocket launcher. It was the orange-painted Torque Creamer. “She knows the way to a man’s heart! She has a lot of this killing gear? Maybe I will marry this Moxxi girl!”
“You do that. Sooner the better, once we get the mission done with.”
Mordecai selected the Hail combat rifle. It fired both rifle bullets and mortarlike rounds and he knew it to be lethally efficient.
An explosion boomed just outside the wall—which shook in the blast. “They’re tired of waiting for us,” Mordecai said, grinning at Brick.
“Then we’ll give them what they’re waiting for,” said Brick. He wasn’t smiling. Not at all.
Brick walked to the wall, which at this place came up to his shoulders, and looked down at the enemy.
Mordecai joined him, checking that the rifle was fully loaded.
He looked cautiously over the wall. Smoke rose from the attempt to breach the gate. So far it was a failed attempt. But if they kept pounding it—or the walls—eventually Moxxi’s shields would fall.
The Reamers were deployed about fifty meters back from the wall, roughly in two rings facing the gate. Coming up behind them were the SlagSlugs, who just might be able to penetrate the gate. A technical fired another shell at the wall, and a machine gunner, catching sight of Mordecai, sprayed bullets his way. Mordecai ducked back, and the rounds ricocheted from the wall.
Brick stood back from the wall enough to be hard to hit, but just close enough that he could still aim over the battlement. He fired the rocket launcher; the technical took the blast on its shield and survived, but the shield was warping, and Brick had already fired again—even as return fire cracked at him from the vehicle . . .
The technical exploded. But others were raining a hail of fire on their position, so that Mordecai shrank back from the wall and looked for another firing position. Bloodwing flapped uncomfortably with his sudden motion. “Bloodwing—go on down to the outrunner and poop on that robot or something. I don’t want you flying around in this much gunfire.”
Bloodwing squawked in complaint.
“You’ll get your chance to help—now go on.”
She made a clucking sound of discontent, then flew down to the outrunner.
“Here come those worm things,” Brick said, carefully peering over the wall. “I’d like to get down there and smash ’em. They’re disgustin’. Don’t like ’em.”
“Don’t do it, Brick,” Mordecai said as he tossed a couple of grenades over the wall. “Those slugs spew acid and a glue out their mouths. They’d fry you or glue you into a ball and swallow you. Shoot ’em through the roof of the mouth if you get a chance. I’m gonna see if I can get a better shooting angle.”
Mordecai found a spot farther down where a narrow triangle piece of wall had been shot away by some errant blast from the arena. He knelt near the wall, slid his rifle barrel out, and edged a little closer.
Another two thuds shook the arena as the gate was hammered by shells from technicals; Mordecai could feel the support structure of the wall shivering under him. It wasn’t going to hold forever.
He could see a group of three Reamers on foot, weapons in their hands, just within the semicircle of the besieging enemy; he fitted the rifle butt against his shoulder, adjusted the scope, then let his hands settle the crosshairs on a target with the fine-tuning micro-adjustments that had become second nature to him. And he squeezed the trigger. A Reamer’s head exploded—an incomplete shield—and before the target’s body had even slumped Mordecai was aiming and firing at the man beside him, who was just turning to look at the first Reamer . . . and the second man went down, shot through the bridge of his nose. The third man was turning to run, and he had no shield on his back at all—he went down easily.
Brick was hurling insults and challenges at the Reamers, maybe trying to keep their attention on him so that Mordecai could aim. Mordecai took down two more men, then was stopped by a good shield on the third. He switched the rifle’s fire over to the small mortar-style rounds, and popped out four, in quick succession along the line of the enemy, then he lobbed two more into the technical that was even now lining a shot up on the gate. The blasts rocked the vehicle but its shields held, until a rocket from Brick hit it, followed by a grenade. The vehicle exploded like fireworks, spraying green and blue flame in every direction.
They pulled that coordinated punch off a couple more times, almost by instinct—Mordecai slamming outriders and technicals with his rifle’s explosive rounds, weakening the shields, Brick taking it to the next step, weakening the shield further and then detonating the target.
White-hot fragments of armor hissed through the air, followed by body parts with contrails of blood.
“Ha, you squirming skag puppies!” Brick shouted. “Come and get some! Come on, get some more, eat it up!”
And he threw four hand grenades at once, two prepped grenades in each hand, first one hand then the other, in the midst of the largest concentration of Reamers. Men screamed; bodies flew to pieces that spun from the fireballs, trailing smoke.
Bullets screamed just over Mordecai’s head, from withering return fire; more clattered into the wall, cracked into metal and smacked into synthawood. Splinters whizzed by.
“We’ve punched a hole through their lines!” Mordecai shouted. “Maybe we should make our move, Brick!”
When Brick didn’t answer, he looked over and saw that the big Vault Hunter’s face was coursing with blood. He’d taken a deep gouge from a bullet to the side of his head.
“Oh shit. Brick, don’t do the berserker thing now, man, we can’t afford to just . . .”
But it was too late for that. Brick was swelling up, his face contorting, mouth drawn back into a mad grimace.
“Oh shit . . . Brick, could you just—oh no.”
Brick was vaulting over the wall using his left hand, the right carrying the rocket launcher.
“YEAHHHH!” he bellowed as he leapt down into his enemies. “BRICK’S HERE! BRINGING THE PAIN!”
A spray of bullets made Mordecai jerk back from the wall—and he saw a severed human head fly up, higher than the edge of the wall, the still-living brain self-aware as it came cannonballing into the arena, the eyes alight with horror . . .
Mordecai had to duck to keep from getting a faceful . . . of face.
He heard Brick shouting—something about “This is for Priscilla, you scum!” He looked over the wall in time to see Brick, in full-on raging berserker form, wading into a group of Reamers, throwing them to the right and left like rag dolls, smashing one into another—but a SlagSlug was rearing over the big Vault Hunter, its mouth open, spewing acid.
Some instinct warned Brick, or maybe the thing’s rancid breath, and he grabbed a big man by the throat and held him up as a human shield. The acid hit the man’s torso; he screamed horridly and flailed . . . and melted away. Brick dropped what was left of him and turned to another man swinging an axe at his head. He plucked the axe from the surprised Bruiser’s hand, broke it over a knee, then ducked under the Reamer’s swing, lifted him up, and stuffed him headlong down into the rearing SlagSlug’s mouth—just as it was starting to spew its glue . . .
The glue formed around the jammed Bruiser—and along with the body it clogged the creature’s throat. The SlagSlug writhed, choking to death.
The second SlagSlug was rearing over Brick, who snatched a rifle out of the hands of a man rushing towar
d him, brained the onrushing Reamer with the butt of the gun, then, in the blink of an eye, turned and fired a full burst into the SlagSlug’s maw, the bullets ripping up through the roof of its mouth and into its brain. He stepped back as it collapsed at his feet.
Mordecai emptied his click firing to cover Brick’s back, then turned to shout at Extra, waiting in the outrunner. “Get ready! We’re going through the gate!”
He ran to the weapon box and grabbed a green submachine gun with a red ribbon tied around the muzzle. There was a tag on the ribbon that read, A MOXXI SPECIAL FOR MORDECAI.
“Isn’t that sweet,” he said, snatching up a box of ammo.
Screams and gunfire came from outside the gate—and it shuddered with another explosive impact.
“Moxxi!” Mordecai yelled. “Open the gate! Quick!”
He leapt down to the arena’s fighting ground, grimaced at the impact, but kept his footing. Encumbered with weapons he ran clumsily to the outrunner, tossed them in the back—except for the submachine gun—and jumped into the front passenger seat, shouting, “Go, robot, go now dammit!” as the gate rolled open. Bloodwing flapped to her place on his shoulder and the robot accelerated through the gate, out into the open.
There, outside the gate, was Brick, still standing but covered with blood, squeezing necks so that heads popped off shoulders, throwing the bodies at the men charging him.
“Oh hell,” Mordecai muttered. Then he shouted, “Brick! Jump aboard!” as the outrunner accelerated to him, skidded to a stop.
Brick vaulted into the back, splashing Mordecai with Reamer blood and some of his own.
“This is all very unwise!” the robot yelled, slamming the accelerator to the floor. They peeled off, weaving between gunmen, bullets and shells whining close overhead. An explosion rocked the outrunner but it kept going—and then Brick was up on the turret, snapping off explosive rounds at the enemy behind as they plowed through the ragged ranks of the Reamers.
Mordecai turned in his seat and fired at an outrider swerving up beside them, shooting the Reamers clinging to its running boards with the green SMG’s acid rounds. The men squealed in agony and melted apart. The outrider spun away and was quickly left behind.
