by John Shirley
“Yeah. So?”
“So that’s why I come over to parley. You can join us. Your little friend, too, if you come.”
“Me?” the robot chirped up. “Oh thank you kindly, why, it’s good to meet people with a sense of quality—”
“Not you, Claptrap, shut your jabberbox! I mean the skinny beardo there in the goggles. But it’s Brick we’re interested in—I’ve seen his work. I’ll give you a good split of what we got, and what we get. I figure we’ll start raiding down south . . .”
Mordecai turned to look at Brick. “You wanta join these dumb bastards, I’ll back off. I got to keep the outrunner, though.”
“What I want to join dead men for?” Brick said. “Dead men are boring. They just stare at you and smell bad.”
“Dead men?” the Marauder said. “What do you . . . Oh.”
He brought the rifle up but it was too late, Brick was already squeezing off a long burst from the turret on machine gun setting; the first bullets were stopped by the man’s shield but Brick kept firing till the staggering Marauder was cut in half.
Mordecai stared at the blood-gushing remains that steamed in the cold, and sighed. “Was that necessary?”
Brick was already lining up his turret’s crosshairs on the others. “I don’t like it when people talk mean to my partners,” he told Mordecai. “If I want to kill you, then I will, but I don’t like them to talk like that.”
Mordecai nodded, and found he was glad to get in a fight—anything to distract him from thinking about Daphne. Crushed to death in the stronghold because he hadn’t gotten back to her fast enough.
The other men were opening fire, and running for cover. Bullets cracked on the front of the outrunner.
Mordecai stood partly up, firing the corrosive SMG over the top of the outrunner—catching two men from behind, the explosive acid bullets making them fall screaming in writhing agony.
He gave Bloodwing a terse command, and she leapt into the air, flapped to come at the men obliquely, diving at their faces to interfere with their aim, then veering out of their line of sight.
Mordecai sprayed the rest of the burst at the others, hitting one man in the arm. But then the Marauders were under cover, firing at the outrunner. Mordecai felt a round smack into his right shoulder, a cold, hard blow that knocked him off his feet. He turned over, groaning, thinking he shouldn’t have been trying to save shield power. Should’ve worn a shield on full power, in a place like this . . .
Gritting his teeth with pain, he crawled to the back of the outrunner, climbed onto it, and yelled, “Claptrap back up and swing to put the buildings in the way of the—”
The robot was so eager to get out of there he made the vehicle squeal backward, almost dumping Mordecai off with the motion.
Mordecai was only saved by Brick, who reached down, caught him by the collar, and tossed him headlong into the outrunner.
“Ow,” Mordecai said as he and his shattered shoulder fell into the vehicle. “Um—thanks.”
The outrunner stopped, and so did the gunfire as they got out of range. Mordecai turned over, groaning with the grinding of bone ends in his shoulder; he fumbled in the crate for meds and slammed the hypo into him quick as possible. He felt better within seconds. The bullet evaporated out of the wound; the gash sealed shut, and the pain ebbed. He still felt dizzy, though, as he sat up, and tossed some Zed meds to Brick, who’d taken a bullet in the left arm and another in the right leg.
Repaired, but running short on meds, they climbed out of the outrunner and considered their position. The Marauders were out of sight but Mordecai knew they would be moving into firing position. He didn’t want to back off from a fight, not right now. That would mean having to think about Daphne. Besides, he suspected these guys had major loot hidden somewhere, and he wanted access to Krigg’s Komputers. “Cover me, Brick,” he said, taking a few bites from an energy bar. “I’m going to get on top of that corner building and snipe the bastards.”
Brick grunted assent. They got into the outrunner and, under Mordecai’s direction, Extra pulled it up close to the roof of the one-story building. “Brick, give me a hand up onto this roof . . .”
Brick came over to Mordecai . . . and tossed him up onto the slanted rooftop.
“Oof!” Mordecai gasped, as his breath was knocked out of him. When he got his breath back, he muttered, “Thanks again, Brick. Damn.” He turned and caught the sniper rifle that Brick tossed up to him.
Brick got up behind the turret, and the robot backed away from the building, drawing fire from a Marauder coming behind a bar and grill about three buildings back. Brick switched the turret to explosive rounds and fired at the man—who drew back quickly. It didn’t do the guy much good. Brick hammered on that corner of the building, blowing it apart. The building collapsed on the screaming Marauder.
Mordecai was firing short bursts at the others from the roof, putting round after round neatly into the top of their heads as they tried to sneak around the buildings.
It took hardly any time at all.
Almost disappointed, Mordecai slid off the roof, landing on his feet.
“Oh, hurray!” shouted the Claptrap, dancing about in his seat. “We triumphed!”
“I told you not to dance around,” Mordecai said. “Come on, help us search the buildings. See if anyone’s alive. And . . . look for valuable stuff. I don’t wanta spend much time at this . . .”
They searched the row of buildings, and found some food, two containers of Dr. Zed, some ammo, a few grenades, and several dead men who seemed to have been shot execution-style. They found no one still breathing. Mordecai had been hoping to find Daphne alive, tied up, maybe, in one of those buildings. He’d thought maybe the Marauder had been misdirecting him. But it didn’t seem likely. Chances were, she was dead.
Mordecai stood in front of the last intact building, and stared up into the gray sky, thinking about Daphne.
She’s dead. Give it up.
It was drizzling wet snow, he noticed vaguely.
“Here’s your share,” Brick said. “Should be half.”
Mordecai turned to him, saw he was carrying two large trash bags, one in each hand. “What?”
“The money. From that vault.”
“Oh. Thanks.” He’d been trying to find some sign of Daphne—he’d barely noticed the broken vault.
“They dragged it here from that smashed building of their boss’s, back there,” Brick said, handing him the bag. “And they cut it open—was full of money.”
“Ah.” He held the bag at his side. The snowfall was thickening a little now.
“You didn’t even look at the money. You get shot inna head?”
Maybe would’ve been better if I’d been shot in the head. “Nah, I’m okay . . . Come on. Let’s take Extra into the tech shop . . .”
He slung the bag of cash over his shoulder and they walked slowly back to the outrunner. Now and then they had to step over a body.
To be precise, Mordecai stepped over them. Brick didn’t bother.
• • •
The snow was fluttering wetly down on Daphne, too, pasting itself to the rocks of this Frostbite Highlands canyon—but she hardly noticed it. She was staring at the thing wriggling toward her across the canyon floor.
“That,” Daphne muttered, “is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen . . . on this planet, anyway.”
She was staring at the big human-flesh slug creature that was worming hungrily toward her, its moronic quasi-human face gawping, leaking drool. Some kind of Eridium mutant, she supposed.
Daphne shook her head in amazement. “Even uglier than Bigjaws. And why am I talking to myself?”
Maybe she was talking to herself, she thought, because of all that’d happened to her; because of the weighty feeling of isolation she was struggling with.
She wondered if her shotgun would kill the thing—she doubted if the weapon would get the job done fast enough. The mutant was too big. She decided to use up the last of her gre
nades on it.
She plucked the grenades from her belt, charged them, as the giant legless worming mutant reared over her, and tossed the grenades into its mouth. It swallowed them. Then it spat something at her—something repugnantly thick and gooey . . . before the grenades blew up in its stomach.
The creature bellowed and writhed, blood spurting from its shattered halves. She tried to back away from its death throes—and managed only a couple of steps before tottering over onto the frozen tundra. Her arms were glued to her sides, her legs partly glued together. The stuff the mutant had spewed on her had hardened into a kind of straitjacket.
She swore, and tried to fight free. But the creature’s sputum was as hard as concrete already.
“Hey, boys, look what we got here!”
She looked to her right, saw the man who’d spoken. She didn’t recognize the uniform. “Who do you work for?” she asked.
“Look at that! She kills our pets, and then she demands to know who we work for!” He was a portly man with piebald skin and a scarred bald head. “I’m a captain in Reamus’s guard, little lady, and you’re my prisoner now! Reamus needs living breeding stock!” He pointed at the mutant, now twitching in death. “See that? You going to have to make up for that! He’ll breed you with one of them things!”
“Yeah. Sure. My boyfriend’s Mordecai. You know—the Vault Hunter? Best shot on the planet? He’ll kill you. Or you can cut me out of this crap and he’ll give you a pile of money. Which one sounds better to you?”
He pretended to think about it. “You know—I think I’ll go with turning you over to Reamus for breeding purposes.”
She tried to get to her feet, and he laughed at her efforts. He walked over to her, dragged her to her feet by her collar. “You wanted to get up? You’re up. Hey, Scozzy!”
An outrider rolled around a boulder, with Scozzy, she supposed, at the wheel. “Who dat?”
“We got a present for Reamus! Let’s take her back to the Crusher.”
“You pick her up, Skerm, and put her in back! I gotta drive!”
“Lazy bastard . . .” Skerm tried to pick her up, turned her the wrong way—and she bit him, hard. “Ow, shit!”
He slugged Daphne viciously on the side of the head.
Mordecai was in the abandoned tech shop, fussing over a screen that hung down from an electronic crosspiece. He could see the flickering outline of the Claptrap in it. Brick was waiting outside, repairing his wounds, tidying up the outrunner, and putting a tarp over the weapons and ammo so they weren’t damaged by the sleety snowfall. Bloodwing was perched sleepily on Mordecai’s shoulder as he worked.
The back room of Krigg’s Komputers was lined with dusty electronic equipment, some of it half gutted and some old and rusty and some shiny. Mordecai didn’t know how to use most of it—but because he’d lived awhile with Elenora Dufty, he knew how to use one key device. The building was powered through solar storage, and its batteries were still charged, so the device should be functional.
“This is exciting!” Extra said. “I haven’t had an X-ray in months!”
“It’s not an X-ray,” Mordecai said, lining the analysis screen up on the robot. “It’s a digital hardware analysis scanner.”
“Oh, I know, but we Claptraps call them X-rays,” Extra said blithely. “When we get our rear batteries replaced, we call it a colonostomy.”
“Just hold still . . .”
“Your face,” Claptrap said. “It . . .”
“What?”
“You try to look so stoic. But microanalysis of split-second patterning indicates severe emotional stress. It makes me wonder if I can be of service in some way . . .”
“Turn a little to your right.”
“Very well. Nothing else I can do for you? To ease your suffering?”
“There is something.”
“Yes?”
“You can shut the hell up.”
“Right-o.”
Mordecai set the device to “search for Claptrap anomalies.” Then he hit SEARCH and waited. The device hummed—and quickly chimed. A red light flickered on the screen. And the words “Anomaly detected.”
“Well, well . . . ,” Mordecai muttered. “Extra, come around here and interpret this data.”
The robot trundled around the screen and scanned the scanner, looking at the digital readout, studying blueprint analyses. “Ah. I see. Interesting. Interesting . . . and . . . interesting. And that is . . . alarming.”
“What’s alarming?”
“Oh, this readout. And that indication, right there, on section four, designate five of the second quadrant. Very, very alarming. I don’t like this at all.”
“Extra—what?”
“The bomb I mean.”
“Oh. Wait. Did you say bomb?”
“Yes, I have a bomb inside me, it appears.”
“A bomb. Is it . . . on a timer?”
“Yes. It seems that Elenora put it in me when I was disconnected, at some point. I thought I recognized a strange weight differential. I did ask her about it but she said—”
“Extra! Focus! When is the bomb likely to go off!”
“In about . . . two minutes.”
“What?”
“That’s right, Mordecai,” came Elenora’s voice, from within the Claptrap. “One minute and forty-nine seconds now. One minute and . . .”
“Shut up, you crazy witch! Extra, shut the bomb off! Now! You must have a way to do it!”
“I’m . . . not sure I do.”
“Okay, well, I’m leaving the room. I’m going to drive a ways away. And if you don’t stop the bomb going off, I’ll know.”
“Very well. Good-bye. And good-bye, cruel world.”
He turned, stalked quickly toward the door, heard a whirring behind him—and turned to see Extra following. “Wait here, dammit!”
“Right. Wait here.”
He opened the door, started through—and felt a bump on his back. He turned and Extra was crowding through the door, against him.
“Extra, I order you to stay in here! Wait here! Don’t follow me out! Am I clear?”
“You’re clear—but I have no control over it! She’s set me up to follow you around when the bomb is near going off! And remember, I can jump into the outrunner and if you try to blow me up I’ll blow you up—it’s a very, very large bomb, with a small nuclear weapon in it . . .”
“A nuclear . . . ? It can’t be.”
“She was always very good at miniaturization.”
“Oh by the . . . Look, just . . . can you turn it off or not?”
“I’ve been working on it . . . time is almost up . . . working . . . time is getting short . . . working and . . . there.”
“There? ‘There’ what?”
“The bomb has been switched off. I’ve done it.”
Mordecai frowned. “How do you know? Maybe she’s tricked you.”
“Try walking away from me.”
Mordecai walked away from him, going hastily out to the outrunner. He turned and saw that the robot had waited for him inside. The seconds ticked by.
I ought to run . . .
But by now the thing would’ve gone off. Unless she was just playing with him. Which was always possible.
“Extra—you definitely disarmed? Are you confident of this?”
“Yes. You see, she made an error in the override system, and I found it. I overrode her override.”
Mordecai expelled a long, slow breath. He realized his pulse was pounding. “I need a drink. But I’ll settle for getting the hell out of here.”
“What about me?” the Claptrap asked.
“I’m afraid . . . you’re going to have to . . . to come along behind us.”
“I can’t take a vehicle without permission; that inhibition is programmed into me. But if you will assert that you own all the vehicles on the street by right of conquest, I can follow in an outrider.”
“Fine. You do that. Just don’t get too close. I don’t trust her.”
Mordecai climbed into the vehicle. “Come on, Brick. We’re going.”
“Where we going?”
“We’re going to follow some tracks. We’re going to find that damned land battleship. And we’re going to find a way to bring it down.”
Brick chuckled. “That sounds impossible! Let’s go!”
• • •
When Daphne woke, she found herself staring at a steel bulkhead. She looked around and saw she was in a small, metal-walled room, lying on her back, strapped down to a table. The slug glue was gone. Probably they had an enzyme solution that made it disintegrate. But she was still unable to move, arms clamped at her sides, legs clamped down. Her head was banging from the blow Skerm had given her.
She tried struggling with her bonds. All she got for her effort was a cruel surge of pain in her head.
The oblong gray metal door creaked and swung open, and a man dressed in a tight, florid red and yellow suit stepped in. His hair was twisted over his head into a flame-shaped coif; his cheeks were red, his eyebrows arching. “I am Fluron,” he said silkily. “And you are my prisoner—as I’ve been made head of the new breeding program.”
“Oh, hurray!” said Daphne, snarkily. “So you want me for breeding? Well, I think I have a concussion, so I might die from a blood clot. Hence you’d better give me a med hypo so I can recover. You don’t want to waste breeding stock.”
His eyebrows elevated so high they almost lofted over his forehead. “Ha! You’re a cunning little creature! We’ve done a facial scan on you, Daphne Kuller. We know who you are. I hear you’re quite dangerous, so I hesitate to fully restore you to health.”
“Sure, I’ll be very, very dangerous, surrounded by countless thugs, unarmed, and strapped to a table. Amazing how cowardly men can be sometimes.”
He chuckled. “Very well. You’ve earned a little comfort by giving me amusement.”
He reached into a pocket, took out a Dr. Zed hypo, and shot it into her neck.
Strength came to her limbs, and the headache ebbed away. “Thanks, Fluron. So—you like working for this Reamus? I hear he’s a . . . ballbuster.”
“I wouldn’t say that. But he’s terribly demanding. I need a med hypo myself, after an evening with him. One of these days he . . .” He shook his head, turning away.
