Borderlands: Unconquered (2 page)

Marcus’s expert eye automatically evaluated the Psychos’ weapons. The Bruiser, on the right, had an Eridian blaster rifle, alien tech that fired energy balls; the other four, right to left, respectively carried a GPR330 Painful Death shotgun, a Dahl
Punishing Pounder combat rifle, a Tediore Genocide Guardian, and a Hyperion Sentinel combat rifle. He made the mental catalogue in a few seconds.
“Shit! Just the bastards I was planning to not run into.”

“You
oughta
run into them!” the woman snapped. “Run ’em over, and let’s get on down the road!”

Marcus had been considering doing just that, but her contemptuous tone almost made him put the bus in reverse instead. Then he saw the Bruiser raise his blaster and point it his way—no way he could let that murderous lunatic get a bead on him
while he was backing up.

He slammed his boot hard down on the accelerator.

The bus roared forward right at the Psychos, and almost instantly a big piece of his windshield vanished from its frame to his right, the glass and broken louvers coming into the bus in spinning fragments, some of them cutting Marcus’s cheek, nicking an earlobe. Other rounds slammed into the engine, and then the Psychos
scattered, all of them getting out of the way in time except for the smallest one in the middle.

The bus’s front wheels crunched over the littlest Psycho, squeezing one long and piteous scream from him.

Psycho roadkill for the trash feeders,
Marcus thought, grinning to himself.

Smoke was rising from the engine, and it was making a
chucka-chucka
sound it had never made before. But they kept
moving—

—until the bus shuddered as an Eridian blaster impact struck it, and he heard a back tire blow. The hulking vehicle swerved sickeningly as he struggled with the wheel; then a hummock of shrubs and rock seemed to rush up at him till they came to a jolting stop, Marcus clutching at the wheel to keep from going through the windshield.

Dust and smoke billowed around them, swirled chokingly
through the shattered windshield.

Grimacing with pain in his back, Marcus straightened up and looked at the engine lights, then out the windshield.

The engine was dead, steaming, smoking, the front end dented. But the engine didn’t look totaled from there.

He tried restarting. It said
chucka-chucka-chuck
and nothing else.

He got up, grabbed the weapon he kept racked to the left of the driver’s
seat. It was a Vladof ZX10/V3 Detonating Hammer assault shotgun. He’d thought of bringing a rocket launcher along, but they made some of the temporary visitors to Fyrestone nervous. What the hell did they expect? This planet had the rep of being the most dangerous world with breathable atmosphere in the galaxy. He should have brought the big guns—and an
extra shield. The only energy shield he
had on the bus had burned out on the way to the spaceport. Cheap off-brand gear . . .

Marcus opened the door, glancing over to see if his passengers were dead.

Good, they were shaken but alive. He hated swabbing blood and guts from his bus. But he rarely had to do it. No more than a few times a year.

The Claptrap robot in back was jumping up and down in excitement. “This is not part of the
itinerary, hellooooooo!”

The young tattooed adventurer was licking his lips, looking nervously out the dusty windows, peering between the metal louvers. “Where—where are they? You killed one, maybe, but . . .”

“They’re out there, and they’re not far behind,” Marcus said, climbing out of the bus.

“Then you oughta close that door!”

“How am I gonna figure out if we can drive outta here otherwise,
ya dumb son of a mama skag?” Marcus called out as he stepped onto the stony ground.

Checking the shotgun’s readiness as he went, Marcus hurried, coughing in the dust and smoke, to the engine. He could see sparks crackling, but it looked more or less intact. Salvageable once he got it to a shop. But he was going to need help getting it there.

Shotgun at the ready, Marcus scanned the area,
looking
down the highway, which was about ten meters from the back of the bus. He didn’t see the Psychos. He knew damn well they were out there, and they’d be back soon, when they’d worked out their tactics. Smarter than some Psychos—a lot of them would run at you screaming. The Bruiser knew there’d be weapons on the bus, and they’d be coming, soon enough, probably at a flanking angle.

Marcus checked
his ECHO communicator. Still no response from Fyrestone. Not that anyone there was reliable at the best of times.

Swearing to himself, Marcus climbed back up onto the bus, closed the door, and sat in the driver’s seat, hurriedly flipping on the bus’s transmitter. It had a little more reach than his ECHO comm. He tapped it and, wincing with pain, leaned over to speak into the grid. “Anybody there?
Fyrestone?”

The only response was a crackle from the speakers.

He shifted the bus’s transmitter to aim at T-Bone Junction. Last he’d heard, Scooter was working out there. He was the best man on the planet for automotive emergencies. When he was sober.

“Scooter! This is Marcus, you picking up? You out there?”

Another crackle. Then, “Hey, Marcus, you old gut humper!” came Scooter’s voice on
the ECHO, thick with an unplaceable bumpkin accent. “You done got your bus in a skizz hole again?”

“Ran into some Psychos. Squished one, but there’s four of ’em left, and I can’t raise anybody from Fyrestone. Link’s down. You’re the only one I can raise!”

“Well, catch a ride, boy!”

“I’m nowhere near none of your ride stations, dammit! We can’t walk to one without getting my passengers killed.
Spaceport frowns on that!”

“Well, hellfire in a honey box! I’m a gonna have to get you some help. See what I can scare up. Take me some time, now. You’re gonna have to hunker down and kill you some Psychos and whatnot. And probably some skags, could be some of them fire skags out there between the town and that spaceport. And maybe some tarantellas, then ag’in, now, could be some skrappies, maybe
a nice ’n’ smelly rakk or two, not to mention them hungry ol’ crabworms—”

“They’re coming!” the kid shouted, his voice hoarse with fear. “The Psychos! They’re out to the left side of the bus there!”

“Scooter!” Marcus said. “Listen up! You got to send help and a repair crew!”

“Like I said, I’ll do ’er, but it’s going to take a while to get ’em there, pardner. We’ll make it quick as we can, quick
as a greased-up—”

A rifle round sped between armor louvers and shattered a side window.

“Scooter! Can you trace my coordinates from this signal?”

“Yep, I got your location, just hold ’em off there,
old son—we’ll see what we can do. Won’t be real quick, but if you can hold out, why, I’m gonna charge you a big stack of cash for this’n—”

Marcus switched off the transmitter and ducked down, not
a split second too quickly.

The window next to the driver’s seat exploded inward, blasted by an energy ball that singed the top of his head as it went past to detonate on his right. Shrapnel from a shattered window louver zinged past.

“Anybody dead yet?” he yelled, looking over the back of his seat at his passengers.

“We
will
be if we don’t take the fight to the enemy!” the woman yelled fiercely.
“I say we get out and rush ’em! With me around, you might actually get somewhere!” She was hunched between seats, but he saw her goggled face bob up long enough to fire her pistol four times out a shattered window. “Crap! I think I missed the bastard . . . No! I got him! I got that Bruiser . . . Oh, wait, he’s up. I just wounded him.” She ducked back down as half a dozen bullets slammed into
the armored side of the bus.

“You got any shields, lady?” Marcus asked her.

“Naw, I was gonna buy one from you!”

“And I got plenty for you to buy, but they’re over in Fyrestone. Only one I had on the bus crapped out on me when I drove out to the spaceport.”

Jakus was flattened on the floor as three more
energized bullets sizzled screaming into the bus. Another tire blew. “What we gonna
do
?” Jakus called. “Driver? Yo! You got any ideas?”

“Listen, amateur—” the woman began, turning to Jakus.

“I’m not an amateur!”

“Okay, prove it! Get out there and head ’em off! If you’re going to survive on this planet, you’ve got to be able to take out a handful of Psycho bandits on your own! You’ve got the rifle! All I have with me’s a pistol!”

“Yeah, well, uh . . . How about sending the robot
out first?”

“That would
not
be a recommended use of my hardware!” the robot protested shrilly. “My guarantee has expired! Helllooooooo!”

Marcus shook his head impatiently. “The robots, they aren’t fighters, kid. That’s not what they’re for.”

“Look,
Jakus
,” the woman went on, “you want to give me the rifle,
I’ll
do it. But you better head back to the spaceport after. You’re not going to survive
out here without the guts to fight!”

Marcus looked at Jakus, saw him chewing his lower lip. Then the amateur nodded, prepped his rifle, got up, and headed to the door. His voice was hoarse as he said, “I’m
goin’
.”

“Might do just as well to fight from the bus, kid,” Marcus pointed out.

“I . . . I’m gonna see if I can sneak up on them, maybe if I nail the big one . . .”

Marcus shrugged and opened
the door. It would keep the Psychos busy, anyway.

Jakus stepped outside the bus, looking around, face twitching. Then he headed off around the hummock, hunched over, rifle at the ready to fire from the hip.

Marcus lost sight of him. A few seconds passed. Then he heard a thud, saw a flash of light . . . and something flew over the hummock, falling like a soggy cannonball on the hood of the bus.

It was Jakus’s head, blasted from his neck, rolling to stare sightlessly right at Marcus.

“That’s not what I meant by ‘head them off,’” the woman said dryly. “Damn amateurs.”

Marcus sighed. “Dumb kid! Well, anyhow, we know where some of ’em are.”

“Dammit, I should’ve taken his rifle,” the woman grumbled, shaking her head in disgust. “How about giving me that shotgun? I’ll trade you the pistol.
Give you the Vladof back later.”

So she knew her weapons. Who the hell
was
she? “And if you get killed? The Psychos gonna give it back to me later? I don’t think so, lady. Not a chance.”

“Okay, fine. But if we just sit around in here, they’re gonna blow this bus up with us in it.” She started for the door. “I’m not waiting to be fried
in this hunk of junk. While you’re enjoying your break, I’m
gonna see if I can take a couple out, discourage the scum from getting too close.”

“Wait a minute, dammit! We’ll go together and stick close to the bus. Come on.”

Hefting the shotgun, Marcus went out the door first; she followed behind, pistol ready.

“I’ll stay here and keep an eye on things in the bus!” the Claptrap called after them. “Ah-ha, yes. This seat needs cleaning, by the way. I’ll
make a note of it.”

Marcus looked around, but the Psychos were keeping their heads down. He pointed to a spot where she could hunker behind a low boulder, on the right side of the hummock, and she nodded, moved quickly to station herself there.

He climbed over the still-steaming front bumper of the truck to get to the other, stepped onto the ground, and saw a Psycho bandit coming around the
hummock, bent from the waist and surprised to see him waiting there.

He fired the shotgun almost point-blank and exploded the bandit’s head from his shoulders.

“A head for a head,” Marcus muttered as the bandit flopped dead at his feet.

He heard a noise and looked up to see another bandit, this one with a scar slashed across his bare chest in an X shape.

The bandit fired spasmodically, the
round going
over Marcus’s shoulder, and jumped back as Marcus fired. Marcus’s shot missed him, but then he heard the
crack-crack
of the woman’s pistol. Just as he’d hoped, the bandit had backed into her firing line.

Marcus didn’t bother to check. That woman knew what she was doing.

He grabbed the first bandit’s weapon, then turned to look at the bus—and swore. The shot that missed him had smashed
into the severed head on the bus’s hood, blasted it to pieces, scattered them all over what was left of the windshield and inside.

“Gonna be cleaning up messes till sunrise,” he said. He climbed back over the bumper and went to look for the woman.

On the other side of the hummock, he glimpsed a flash of light, a blinking outline of a woman that was there and gone—and a Psycho staggering back,
lightly wounded. The Psycho dived behind an outcropping of blue stone.

Where was the woman? It’d looked as if she’d gone invisible for a moment . . .

No, he must’ve been wrong. It was dusk, starting to get dim and shadowy. He must have been seeing things.

Then she was there, behind, tapping him on the shoulder. “We’d better get in the bus.”

He opened his mouth to ask her about what he’d seen,
but she turned away from him in a way
that suggested she didn’t want any questions. He mutely followed her back to the bus.

What was going on? Had he really seen her vanish? How had she reappeared behind him?

They climbed into the bus and closed the door.

“Am I . . . am I safe now?” the Claptrap asked.

Marcus ignored the robot. He checked the ECHO—no new messages had come through. But Scooter
had been clear that he was sending help, and despite his eccentricities, Scooter was usually dependable.

He carried his shotgun to a seat a few rows back and settled in where he had the best cover. Keeping his head low, he peered through the louvered windows, seeing no movement. “I don’t see anybody. If you wounded that Bruiser, as you figured earlier . . . and wounded that Psycho . . .”

The
woman nodded as she sat across the aisle from him. “Yeah—I figure they’ll be licking their wounds.”

“That’s disgusting!” the Claptrap called out.