by John Shirley
“All in good time,” Gynella said absently, clicking her long nails together. She looked positively inscrutable at that moment, as she gazed down on the scene of devastation. “And you think he set that truck up to explode, on purpose, in that way?
“I suspect it.”
She shook her head and smiled thinly. “He is quite a tactician. But then, he simply took advantage of one of our consistent weaknesses. We’re poor on defense. You should have had men posted up here, overlooking the camp, watching these plains.”
“I did have outriders patrolling up here. And I called in a platoon to come back this way—they were tracking some rebels anyway, and . . . well, they killed the platoon. And took the truck from them.”
“But no sentries up here. In the obvious place.”
Smartun swallowed. He hoped she’d kill him herself. That would almost be a pleasure, to be killed by the love of his life, the person who was all meaning in his life. “I did ask someone . . .” He shrugged. He’d asked Skenk to post sentries there but had failed to make certain he’d done so. Skenk had a tendency to wander off, find some narcojuice, and forget his orders. “I won’t make excuses by blaming it on someone else. Do as you will. I have failed you.” He knelt before her. “You would honor me if you would execute me yourself. I don’t deserve it, but if I have served you well at all . . . up to now . . . perhaps, then, my . . .” His voice was hoarse. He had let her down. “My General . . . my Goddess . . .”
She made an imperious little hmph sound. “Enough! Get up. On your feet.”
He stood up, thinking she meant to allow him to be killed standing up. He ducked his head, waiting for the death blow. At least it was by her beautiful hands . . .
She sighed, and when he looked up at her she was rolling her eyes. “As for killing you for your failure, I’ll take the matter into consideration. You may have a chance to redeem yourself. If you can repair this problem with our defenses and bring this man Roland to me. The others—kill them. But Roland I want alive.”
Smartun blinked. “Him? Alive? Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ll give you access to the tools you’ll need. One thing you should know is that I set one of our spies in Fyrestone to see what he could find out about Roland’s activities there. It seems that before heading out this way Roland made some kind of deal with a former Dahl mining engineer name of Skelton Dabbits. This Dabbits was spending a lot of money on narcojuice, stoned out of his head, and babbling about how a man could get rich on crystalisks out past the Eridian Promontory, if he only knew just where to go. It could be that’s exactly where Roland and his rebel scum are headed. So here is what I propose . . .”
• • •
They gathered at the Jut, ate a sparse breakfast of canned supplies, and looked out across the desert to the west. Roland was restless—he wanted to send these men back to Jawbone quickly. From there they could make plans to retake Bloodrust Corners—when the right time came to retake it. He hoped they didn’t jump the gun.
He planned to take his own crew and head south and then west across the canyon. With luck Gynella’s army would now be gathering its remaining strength farther north, thinking to retaliate against a band of organized rebels that didn’t really exist anymore. It ought to be possible to get across the canyon.
“Why don’t you come with us?” Gong suggested, striding up to Roland. “Lucky went to spy on Bloodrust Corners, a few days before we came out. There’s only a skeleton force there. Maybe forty men. We could take them by surprise.”
Roland shook his head. “Gynella would only send more forces to retake it, and you’d be in the same spot you were in before. No, what needs to happen is to get rid of her . . . and her little mind-control system.”
“What mind-control system?”
“Just something I heard about. But I’ve gone too far off mission already. If I get a chance . . .” He shrugged. “You need to head back to Jawbone, and we’ll keep Gynella’s attention on us while you do that.”
“You sure got a one-track mind. You could make more money helping us mine glam gems. But—” Gong stuck out his hand. “It’s been interesting. Thanks.” They shook hands, and Gong went to round up the others. “All right, let’s move out! Gynella’ll send some of those bums out after us right quick! Let’s go!”
Mordecai, Brick, and Daphne strolled over to Roland. Bloodwing flapped down from somewhere above and settled on Mordecai’s shoulder. Roland noticed Mordecai looked freshly shaven, his small beard perfectly clipped. He never missed a chance to spruce up. Roland was a little envious—he was feeling grubby. He’d kind of have liked to go to New Haven and sit in a hot bath for a few hours himself.
He shook his head. Getting soft.
“Okay. Let’s head out, south and west. We’re burning daylight, standing around here.”
• • •
They found a place, a few kilometers south, where the canyon wall had collapsed in a landslide. It was steep, but Roland drove the outrunner down the scree, a natural ramp down to the canyon floor, the outrider coming close behind. To the north, they could make out one of Gynella’s outriders, parked beside Gynella’s banner. Three sentries, rifles in their hands, stood close to the outrider, looking their way. That was the outer southern perimeter of Gynella’s encampment, probably swelling with reinforcements about now.
Good. Let them see him—that’d turn their attention his way and away from the Bloodrust men, who were heading east. By the time the Psychos got orders to pursue, he’d have plenty of head start, and he could disappear into the Eridian Promontory, back on mission to hunt down those Eridium-rich crystalisks.
A stream flowed into the canyon across the way, its ravine heading due west. They drove up the shallow stream, the wheels of the two vehicles spraying water as they went. They passed a small troupe of skags and had to shoot a couple of too-inquisitive rakks swooping near them but encountered no other trouble, not all that day. Late that afternoon they emerged from a gulley, on the north side, that led up to the rolling hills below the promontory; they drove through the hills on an old mining road, seeing no one, nothing but a few scythids. The peacefulness of the trip seemed unnatural, even eerie, to Roland.
That night they camped in the mouth of a shallow cave in the side of a boulder-strewn hill, their only companions the bones of men long dead, piled at the back, much marked by the teeth of animals. Sitting by the fire, across from the snoring Brick—Bloodwing had chosen to roost on Brick’s upraised knee, as if it were a bird perch—and waiting for Daphne and Mordecai to finish their watch outside, Roland wondered who they’d been, what the dead men had hoped to find on this sere, ferocious world. And Roland suspected someone would wonder the same about him, some day, when they found his bones, desiccated in the wastelands of Pandora.
• • •
The next morning they drove west through the rugged hills hugging the serrated crags of the Eridian Promontory.
They came to an old dirt road, half overgrown with shrubbery, crossing their path, and Roland signaled to Mordecai to slow up and draw back.
The outrider and the outrunner slowed and backed up. They stopped, and Mordecai got out and walked over to him, Bloodwing on his shoulder. “What’s up?”
Roland said, “Way down that road, to the right—I saw someone coming around a bend. Looked like some kind of truck. You guys take the vehicles out of sight behind those rocks there. I’m gonna check it out. Might be useful, at least to know about. Could be Gynella’s dumbasses looking for us.”
As they moved the vehicles, Roland took his combat rifle and ran up into a crotch between two hills, then headed due west, over the top of a low hill on which grew a thicket of blue and red cactus-like growths. He slipped between the man-high flora and, hunkering down under cover, looked out over the road. The truck had stopped, just short of the trail Roland had been following in the outrunner; three confused-looking bandits, none of them wearing Gynellan livery, were standing around the hood of the truck’s engine,
staring at the smoking grille, arguing about how to fix it.
Chained down onto the long flatbed of the truck was a big shipping container; the metal container had a rust hole in the side, and through the rust hole he could see Eridium crystals. It looked like a whole shipping container of Eridium crystals.
Pretty tempting. If he took out these asshole bandits, there might be enough Eridium in that container to make it unnecessary to go after the crystalisks. And if he took that truck, he’d have the stuff already loaded, solving the problem that had been nagging at the back of his mind: how to get the Eridium back to Fyrestone. Plus he would be able to look in on the Bloodrust settlers. It bothered him, leaving them to their own devices back there.
It did occur to him that this truck stopping here was a little too handy, a little too enticing, a little too coincidental . . .
But what did paranoia get you on this planet? Well, sure, it got you a longer life, maybe—but you lived cowering in a hole. A man had to take some chances.
He glanced up at the sky, looking for one of those camouflaged drones of Gynella’s. He did see a couple of rakks off to the east. But you always saw those somewhere in the Pandoran sky.
He ought to get Brick and the others over there. But Brick might do something rash and wreck the truck, which might end up with the Eridium blown to flinders. Hell, there were just three bandits down there. Two of them didn’t even have their guns in their hands.
When had he needed help taking down three clueless bandits?
“Fuck it,” he muttered. He slipped down the hillside toward the truck, quietly as he could, using outcroppings of red stone as cover, keeping his head down. He got near the bottom of the hill, crouched behind an outcropping. He jumped up, looking for a target—the bandits were gone. But he heard a whirring above him, looked up to see a rakk, hovering with rapidly flapping wings. Only it wasn’t a rakk; it was a machine camouflaged as a rakk, with a glittering camera eye instead of a mouth, and it was firing two small missiles at him from its undercarriage. He turned to run, but the missiles weren’t aimed directly at him. They struck the ground at his feet, stuck there like arrows in the dirt, and spewed a green smoke that swirled chokingly around him.
He tried to hold his breath—a second too late. He’d already inhaled, just once. And once was enough.
• • •
Mordecai shook his head. “I don’t like this. He’s been gone too long by half, man. Something’s off.”
On his shoulder Bloodwing squawked in agreement.
Brick shrugged. “Maybe had to pee or something.”
“I gotta pee myself,” Daphne muttered.
Mordecai muttered an order to Bloodwing, and the creature lofted into the air, flapping up, circling around, spying out the situation. Mordecai noticed a rakk, gleaming oddly at its snout, flying overhead, coming from the direction Roland had gone.
“Uh-oh.”
Bloodwing flapped down, alighting, and made the rough, low, warbling distinct sound in his throat that meant enemies near.
“Angel fire!” Mordecai ran back to the outrider, where Daphne waited. He shouted at Brick at the turret of the outrunner. “Brick—shitheads are coming! Let’s get under cover till I can locate Roland. I think Gynella’s set us up for a trap! Go!”
“So let’s hit ’em head-on and kill ’em! I was getting bored anyway!”
Mordecai stared at him. “Brick, the word is trap, man! They’ll be prepared for that, dammit! Come on—get in that driver’s seat and follow me. Just trust me!”
Grumbling, Brick climbed into the outrunner driver’s seat as Mordecai jumped in beside Daphne. He started the outrider and did a three-point turn, headed back east on the trail.
Almost immediately, Mordecai whipped the outrider to the right, between two low hills, driving along the side of the hill with his left wheels higher than his right, afraid they might flip over. Brick came along close behind, still bellowing that they should turn around and fight.
Mordecai heard the deep cough of a rocket launcher and accelerated, risking losing control at this awkward angle on the hillside, so that the two vehicles—with Brick accelerating to keep up—just barely outran the rocket fired from a hilltop somewhere behind them.
The explosion just behind Brick sent broken rocks pattering down on him, but he got through intact, following Mordecai so close he bumped the outrider a couple of times.
They got through to a little gulley and bumped over rocky ground to the west. Mordecai was planning to hide the vehicles and sneak overland to try to help Roland.
He spotted something up ahead—a triangle-shaped opening of a cave, and in front of it were two moderately large skags. To the right of the cave was a large boulder.
The entrance of the cave, which was doing service as a skag den, was just big enough. He hoped Brick was willing to follow his lead.
He stopped the outrider. Brick rear-ended them, but not badly, just whiplashing the vehicle a little as he skidded to a stop close behind.
Mordecai spoke a command to Bloodwing, which leapt into the air. It rose up, and up, and then headed for the rakk drone, to knock it down.
Mordecai just hoped they could get under cover before the soldiers following them had a clue what was going on.
He squinted at the sky and saw the fake rakk falling, spiraling down, knocked out of commission by Bloodwing. He whistled for Bloodwing, and as the creature flapped down to the outrunner, Mordecai shouted, “Brick! This way!”
And he drove right into the skag den. Brick drove into the cave behind them, scowling. “Phew! This place smells like old skag droppings. Lots of them.”
“Mordecai!” Daphne gasped. “What the hell!”
“Get on that turret gun!” he shouted as they came to a stop in the stinking recess.
She climbed quickly up, got on the turret in time to blast a snarling mama skag, charging at them from the back of the cave, and two yipping whelps.
Mordecai climbed out and crawled over the two parked vehicles to join Brick, who was happily smashing the skull of a large skag at the mouth of the reeking cave. “Brick, that big rock, can you roll it over to block the entrance, shut us up in here?”
“You want to hide in a stinking hidey-hole?”
“Just for a few minutes! It’s tactics, man!”
Brick growled and shook his head, but he went to the boulder, found two hand-holds, and rolled it to the left, the boulder making a grinding sound as it came as if complaining of being shifted. But it worked—the boulder mostly covered the entrance.
They were left in stinking near-darkness.
Mordecai lay down on his belly and peered out through the small opening left by the boulder covering the entrance. He was just in time to see an outrider drive by—and another. And two more. And then three more. And another two outriders, each with three Psycho soldiers on it. “Oh, by the Angel’s backside—eight outriders. There’s a big force around here, and they’re looking for us.”
But they’d gone right by. The skag cave had worked—for now. But . . . how was he going to get to Roland?
When Roland woke, his mouth tasted like rot, and his head rang like a cracked bell tumbling down a flight of stairs. He was lying on a metal slope.
He was chained flat on his back, faceup, on the trailer of the flatbed truck. The sky was darkening overhead; a cold, dry wind lashed his face. He had a sense of height, and, wincing with pain, he turned his head and saw they were high over the plains, going up a narrow road cut into the side of a cliff or maybe some kind of butte. He looked for landmarks in the misty distance, picked out a few, and worked out that he was probably on some access road going up onto the Devil’s Footstool.
He tried his bonds, found there was very little slack, no real leverage possible. He couldn’t break loose, not yet.
He turned his head and saw the rust hole in the side of the container—he could see, up close, that the hole had been cut in and the “rust” painted on. And that the Eridium visible in it
was just a few crystals. He could see past it from there. The container was empty. A lure in a trap.
He laughed out loud. At himself. “You idiot. You deserve this.”
Really, he’d gotten into this because he wanted to go back and rejoin the Bloodrust miners. He’d been a fool, gotten himself emotionally caught up in their hopeless cause.
“Idiot,” he said again. He closed his eyes and tried to rest. He had to wait for his chance.
They had taken him nonlethally, planned it that way, and they could have cut his throat while he was unconscious. They didn’t intend to kill him—not yet. And that gave him time. Sure, he was chained down and about to be surrounded by hundreds of enemies.
But there was always a chance.
• • •
If you took armpit squeezings and fermented them, that, Roland figured, would approximate how this guy smelled.
Arms chained behind him, Roland was being shoved by a huge, reeking Badass Psycho whose name, he gathered, was Spung. The Psycho was clomping along behind Roland, giving him an unnecessary shove every so often, as they crossed the parade ground between the Psycho soldiers’ barracks and Gynella’s headquarters.
At the door to the headquarters stood two people. One was an unremarkable-looking medium-sized man in Gynellan livery, brown leather, with improvised epaulets on his shoulders made out of tire tread and screws—some kind of army commander. He was one of the few men Roland had seen in Gynella’s army without a vault mask. Roland guessed the guy wasn’t a Psycho at all.
The other one at the door was a tall, obese, dark-skinned woman in tight-fitting black leather, a shotgun in her hands; on her otherwise bald head were three white Mohawk fins. She wore no vault mask—it wouldn’t have fit over the tusks that curved from her upper jaw down past her chin. She had on flaring red and blue eye makeup and seemed to have a coating of crystalline dust glued to her heavy lips.
