by John Shirley
• • •
They were standing in front of the mine entrances in Bloodrust Corners—Roland, Mordecai, and Dakes—as the dusk gathered and the sky got slowly more gloomy. “That’s one of our kill-mechs,” Dakes said, pointing at a big tri-wheel robot trundling by, the mech shaped like a cylinder with arms. It was a little taller than Roland, and it had a ring of sensors all the way around its cylinder, near the top; from its upper sides extended long mechanical arms, one ending in a rifle that had been built seamlessly into its metal forearm, the other ending in a jackhammer. Behind it came a much smaller robot, a Claptrap, jigging as if dancing as it came, singing to itself in an artificial tenor,
“I gotta program that lets me sing
Everybody oughta try this thing
I gotta chip that lets me dance
Come on baby take a chance.”
Despite amusing itself with song and dance, the Claptrap seemed to be directing the mech in some way.
“Unit seven,” Dakes told the Claptrap. “See that mech gets charged and serviced quick as possible. We don’t know when the attack might come!”
“Gotcha, boss! Gotcha, I’m on it! I gotta program that lets me sing . . .” The robots trundled past.
“Glad that big mech’s on our side,” Mordecai said. “How many do you have?”
“Only three mechs programmed for fighting,” said a woman’s voice. Roland turned to see a young black woman striding confidently up to them, a look of amused curiosity on her face.
Dakes smiled, seeing her. “Ah, here’s my daughter. Roland, Mordecai, this is Glory.”
“Sure is,” Mordecai muttered. He winced when Roland gave him a shot in the ribs with his elbow.
But both he and Roland were staring at Glory, Dakes’s beautiful daughter, a shapely, poised, young woman, wavy dark hair tied back, eyes set off by white eyeliner. She wore shorts on her taut, muscular legs; a desert camouflage top tied off over her belly; on her hip was an Atlas pistol, and she wore large miner’s boots, but they somehow didn’t spoil the effect.
Glory was staring at Roland. “Hi,” she said. “You’re Roland, yeah?”
Roland was surprised. “Yeah. Your dad tell you?”
“Naw, it’s a . . . well, people talk about you.” She seemed a little embarrassed and turned to flash a smile at Mordecai. “You’d be Mordecai, I bet. I’ve heard about you too. Maybe you could teach some of us how to shoot better.”
“I’d give you lessons anytime,” Mordecai said. Then he quickly added, “In shooting.”
“You going to join our little town here?” she asked, looking back and forth between them—but her eyes lingered on Roland.
“I, uh . . .” Mordecai began. “Well, I could consider it, actually . . .” He tore his gaze from Glory and pointed at the mines. “So, these mine shafts all finish in dead ends? I mean, suppose you got to give up this outpost for a while? How do you retreat? That prisoner made it clear Gynella’s not letting anyone go. It’s either die or surrender to slavery. So if we can’t beat ’em, how do we get away from ’em?”
Roland looked at him, not sure what he meant. “What’s that got to do with the mine?”
But Dakes was nodding. He spoke in a low voice. “Yes. That center mine, there, connects with a cavern. And there is a way out to a canyon, a little farther south, through that cavern. But it’s a narrow way—and anyhow we don’t want to just give up what we’ve worked for here.”
Roland shrugged. “If it comes to that, this place could be retaken later, like Mordecai says. You’ve got money from all this. You could hire mercenaries.”
“Mercenaries,” said Glory, her face clouding, “are scum.”
Dakes put a protective arm around his daughter. “She had a bad encounter with a merc. But she waited her chance—he’s buried outside the walls.”
“Not all mercenaries are quite the same,” Roland said softly. “Anyhow, I think you ought to have a plan B, if this thing goes sour here.”
“You’re here now,” Glory said, looking at Roland. “Now I’ve got more hope.”
Mordecai rolled his eyes, and Bloodwing rolled its.
Voices drew their attention to the nearest mine entrance. Four tired-looking men shuffled out, talking wearily, all wearing miner’s coveralls, energy-charged mining jackhammers in their hands. They were followed by a cylindrical mech lacking the rifle arm, pushing a cart of gem-bearing ore.
One of the men, the youngest, a pale, dirt-smudged man with a thatch of brown hair, paused, seeing Glory, then hurried over to her, wiping dirt off his face with his free hand.
“Hi,” he said. “What’s going on?” He frowned, looking Roland and Mordecai over, taking in their weapons and their innate spring-coiled wariness.
“This is one of our engineers—we call him Lucky,” Dakes said, nodding at the young man. Roland could see by the warmth in Dakes’s eyes that Glory’s father liked Lucky. “He’s foreman of mine number one, there. Lucky, this is Roland and Mordecai. They broke through Gynella’s lines out there while you were down below. Did some real damage. Mordecai got something out of that prisoner.” Dakes looked at Roland. “Lucky here’s the one who caught the prisoner. He snuck out at night, and dragged him back. Almost got shot doing it.”
Lucky turned to Glory. “You guys sure these mercenary types are . . . trustworthy?”
He shot Roland and Mordecai a hard glance, as if daring them to take offense.
“Dad’s a good judge of character,” Glory said. Her eyes softened when she looked at Lucky. “You oughta go clean up, get something to eat.”
“Come over to our place,” Dakes said. “We’ll give you dinner, Lucky. We all need to eat. I’ve gotta feeling we’re going to need our strength.” He turned to Roland. “You both are invited too.”
Roland nodded. “Thanks.”
Dakes pointed at a hut. “That little place is empty. You can bunk there for now. We’ll talk at dinner. About . . . what Mordecai suggested. I don’t incline that way, but no reason to not have options.”
He nodded at them and walked off with Glory, his arm around her, the two of them talking in low tones. Roland could see how strong their relationship was in their relaxed body language.
Something in him ached. What would it be like to have children? To have a daughter like that?
He shook his head. Ridiculous.
“So, you two,” Lucky said, hefting his jackhammer. “Where’d you come from before here?”
Mordecai pointed. “That way.” He seemed annoyed by Lucky’s obvious mistrust.
But Roland didn’t blame the young miner. “We’re not sure we’re staying,” Roland said. “But we’re not going to do you any harm. We already cut down the odds against you people out there. We’ll do what we can—if we decide to stay here.”
“Don’t do us any favors,” Lucky said. “We’ll do all right without your type.” And he walked away.
Mordecai looked after him and snorted. “He doesn’t trust us. It’s jealousy, is what it is,” he whispered to Roland. “He’s into that girl, Glory. Big-time.”
“Is he? Real perceptive of you, Mordecai,” Roland said dryly. “Almost as hard to see as that goddamn beard on your chin that nearly puts people’s eyes out.”
“Very funny. Well, anyhow, it’s obvious what we have to do. Get out through that center mine, there. We’ll go out through the cavern, and we’ll have to steal an outrunner somewhere, or hire one, and then . . . what?” He lifted his goggles from his eyes and squinted at Roland. “No! You’re not really thinking of . . .”
“I don’t know. But it’s a little hard for me to leave these people without any backup at all. They’ve got kids running around in here. Actual—” He stared as a little boy and girl ran by, chasing a Claptrap. “Children.”
“Sure, well, that was their dumb mistake, bringing kids here. I mean, who does that? Kids on this planet?” He shook his head.
“It’s not unheard of. But I agree, it was foolish.” Roland sighed. “I
just don’t see how we can just walk off.”
“You don’t? You just watch me. I’m gonna eat, I’m gonna rest, then I’m getting out of here. With or without you.”
“Okay. But suppose General Gynella finds out about that cavern? Suppose while you’re using it to get out, she uses it to get in?”
Smartun was tired, aching from the long drive in the outrider. But in another way he felt good, driving along with the wind in his face, the engine growling defiance to the world, crossing the Salt Flats in the moonlight, two protective outriders flanking him. It felt good to be away from the Devil’s Footstool, roaming a world once more, on a mission for his mistress, his Goddess . . .
The feeling of renewed freedom whispered to him, suggesting that he could get away from those idiots Gynella had sent as his bodyguards. He could kill them when they weren’t expecting it, or give them the slip, and he could heave off in another direction entirely—maybe just head full blast to Fyrestone, and then the shabby little spaceport, and just get himself free of this planet entirely. He was sick of the sight and smell of the Psycho soldiers. He had some money tucked away in his coat for emergencies.
Pleasant to dream about. But he knew he could never do it.
He could never abandon Gynella. If he tried, he’d only come back on his knees, begging her to forgive him. She’d probably kill him for desertion, then and there, and he wouldn’t blame her at all.
He’d never desert her. Not really.
Smartun drove on and on, and soon he saw the campfires of the Knife Legion, burning against the horizon like the multiple red eyes of some nightmare predator.
• • •
The mine was well shored up; nothing was likely to fall down on him, but Mordecai felt anyway as if it was about to. The helmet light he’d cadged from the supply shed illuminated the down-slanting interior of the mine with a glaucous glow, the carven stone walls looking slick in the light, descending into shadow like the gullet of some giant saurian.
“I’m being swallowed here,” he muttered, making his way down.
Maybe the feeling of being trapped wasn’t from the outside. Maybe it was from the inside. Maybe he was bothered by something.
It did bother him that he’d left Roland back there. They were almost friends, sort of, kind of, in a way . . . and he was leaving him to fight the Knife Legion with a few confused miners. Sure, Roland and Mordecai had spent the afternoon giving shooting lessons to the settlement’s men and offering advice on how to deal with the Psycho soldiers.
“If you haven’t got a good kill shot, try to shoot out their knees before they get too close. Once they get close they’re deadly . . .”
But that wasn’t what the settlement needed. It needed backup. It needed as much firepower as it could get. More important, to Mordecai, Roland needed backup—from his sort of, kind of, friend. Closest thing he had to a friend lately. Roland . . .
Stop being a sap, he told himself, as he stepped over a hummock of loose rock and worked his way deeper into the mine.
Stupid, feeling sorry for the settlement. That kind of thinking would get you killed on this planet. Dakes’s settlers, especially, coming here to start a legit co-op business, bringing children.
Someone like him or Roland, why, they didn’t fit in anywhere but on a world where killing was the norm, where life balanced on a razor’s edge, where adrenaline and a good weapon were a man’s only salvation. But to bring your family? To bring children here? Why, it was practically suicide. Who was he to stand in the way of suicide? Mass suicide at that.
The hell with them. All of them. Even those damn kids, running and playing in the street, counting on the adults to keep them safe . . .
Damn kids.
His grim rumination was interrupted by a blast of chill air. He’d come to the end of the mine shaft. It widened there, and to one side were carts on rails. Up ahead, the way was blocked by a barrier made out of thin sheets of metal. The cold air came from a thin gap in the metal barricade.
“Crap,” Mordecai muttered. That must be the way to the cavern—blocked off.
Looking around, he found a pair of heavy gloves lying beside a cart and put them on, then began to pry at the metal sheets, slowly peeling them back.
• • •
Smartun was glad to see that the equipment he’d ordered had gotten there ahead of him. The two new catapults reared in dark skeletal shapes against the sky. It’d been relatively easy to have them built from scrap materials at the last settlement the army had razed.
Stretching his legs with a walk around the encampment, Smartun strode ahead of Skenk and Bulge. They followed loosely, still acting as bodyguards—and possibly as Gynella’s spies, to make sure he was doing what he was supposed to. He walked past tents and campfires, where men gambled and grumbled. A rank smell swept over him as he came upon a sewage ditch, a mix of running water and waste, in which one Psycho was, it seemed, drowning a smaller one; the big Psycho was holding the Midget’s head under sewage.
“Yes, you choke in that!” the big Psycho bandit snarled, as he held the thrashing Midget down. “You choke good!”
“Skenk, stop that waste of resources!” Smartun ordered.
Skenk went to the edge of the ditch, raised his auto shotgun, took careful aim to blow the bigger Psycho’s head off, so he could save the little guy from being drowned.
“No, dammit, Skenk, don’t kill that one either! They’re both resources. We need them both.”
Skenk turned him a puzzled look. It was hard for the Psycho soldiers to understand the “don’t kill him” order.
Then Skenk shrugged and fired the gun over the man’s head. Someone, somewhere in the background, yelled in pain.
Smartun sighed.
The gunshot got the attention of the bigger man in the ditch. He let go of the choking Psycho Midget and turned to gape at them. “What?”
“What you killing that one for?” Skenk asked, as the Midget sat up, sputtering.
“He tried ta steal something from me!” the bigger Psycho said. “I think. Maybe.”
“I did not!” the little guy said, and sank his teeth deeply into the calf of the big one’s leg.
The bigger Psycho howled and kicked the Psycho Midget loose.
It took another several minutes to get them separated and pacified.
Smartun had been joined by the subcommander of the Knife Legion, Bolkus, a difficult-to-control Badass Psycho. Now he pointed at the Midget Psycho. “Bolkus, take this one to the special munitions enclosure.”
“What’s that?”
“I sent instructions. Don’t you have the Midgets we captured in a corral? The special munitions enclosure?”
“Oh, that’s what you call the corral? But this one isn’t captured. He’s one of us.”
“Now he goes in the corral with the bunch you captured. See that they’re watched. I don’t want any of them getting away. We’ll need them.” Smartun looked toward the settlement of Bloodrust Corners. “We’ll need them fairly soon. Just before dawn.”
• • •
About a half hour before dawn Roland gave up trying to sleep. Some instinct seemed to insist he get up and look around the settlement.
Carrying a Tediore Genocide Stomper in one hand, his other hand on the pistol in his holster, Roland left the hut and stretched, then went to the watch fires glowing in pitted metal barrels. Several men stood in the circle of firelight. Dakes was up too, staring pensively into the flames; beside him were Lucky and a muscular, shirtless miner, Gong, a scarred man with filed teeth. A former nomad who’d changed his ways to marry a settlement girl, Gong rarely spoke, but he was the only one in the camp besides Dakes who hadn’t needed extra instruction with a weapon. Roland intended to keep Gong close to him when the fight came.
Dakes glanced up at him. “You’re up early. Where’s that little partner of yours?”
Roland suspected that Mordecai had slipped out the back way, as he’d said he would, but he didn’t know for sure, s
o he only shrugged. “Any movement from out there?”
“Some. They’ve been moving catapults into place—I think that’s what they are. They arrived a few hours ago.”
“No kidding? I’ve never seen a catapult on this planet. But it figures. Gynella’s always got to scrounge for ammo. Smart to use catapults. Stick a boulder in one of those, there’s your free ammo, lying right on the ground.”
Roland remembered how Brick had used a boulder as “ammo” and damaged the Scorpio turret. He wondered how Brick was doing—had he run into Gynella’s people? At some point, Brick would have to confront the Psycho soldiers again. The thought almost made him feel sorry for the Psychos. Almost.
Maybe he should’ve stuck with Brick, even if it meant keeping that dark little female killer with them. Brick sure would’ve been a help here . . .
“There’s extra ammo for that combat rifle,” Dakes said. “It’s in that stack just inside the gate.”
“Good, thanks. Right now I’m thinking about the possibility of a sortie. I might be able to—”
“You might be able to slip away and desert us?” Lucky interrupted, looking at him.
Dakes shot a glare at Lucky. “Dammit, shut up!”
Roland chuckled. “Kid—” He grinned at Lucky. “You really that worried I’m going to take your girl?”
Lucky ground his teeth together. “You saying she’d go anywhere near you, you Arid Lands bum?”
“Lucky,” Dakes hissed, “the man’s only got so much patience. You’re gonna get yourself killed!”
Roland shook his head. “Kid, the girl is too young for me. Not my style. Even if she throws herself at me, I’d have to disappoint her. So you can stop with the adolescent hostility—”
“Throws herself at you!” Lucky sputtered in disbelief. He balled his fists and rushed at Roland.
Roland simply stepped aside, extending his leg a little, so that Lucky tripped over it and fell facedown.
The other men laughed. Roland reached down and hauled Lucky to his feet by the collar. “Take it easy, kid. I was just ribbing you. I’m not going after your girl. We need to work together, all of us, if we’re going to stay alive. If you and that girl are gonna live to have your kids someday.”
