Borderlands: The Fallen (2 page)
R
iding in the bus from the spaceport to Fyrestone, looking out the dusty, louvered window at the craggy gray-blue landscape, the aluminum-blue sky, McNee can’t believe he’d talked himself into coming back to this vicious planet.
It was all Roland’s fault. Roland knows that McNee likes him. Took to him almost like a son—McNee is old enough to be Roland’s old man. Takes advantage, that Roland, that’s what he does, damn his eyes …
<
That’s what the subspace message had said. But the real message was the “Can’t do it without you” part. That’s what McNee is a sucker for; that’s what brings him to this hellworld on the outer edge of the galaxy. First time Roland had admitted he needs McNee’s help. But of course, it’s hard to find anyone you can really trust on Pandora.
Speaking of which—there’s that big chunk of a weapons dealer, Marcus Kincaid, chuckling to himself as he drives the creaky old hydrogen-cell-powered bus. They’re alone on the bus, except for a Claptrap robot in the very back, muttering to itself. Kincaid, with his squat face and short black beard, isn’t just the guy who drives the treasure hunters and prospectors in from the spaceport—he’s the one who sells them weapons. Unauthorized weapons. Some good—some not so good. He brings you here, then sells a weapon to the guy who’s likely to kill you in the next half hour. Or sells you the weapon to kill the guy trying to kill you. McNee doesn’t have much use for Kincaid, but you have to put up with him.
From somewhere on the bus canned music plays, some group singing,
“Ain’t no rest for the wicked, until we close our eyes for good …”
They come to that old, decrepit billboard McNee sees every time he comes.
WELCOME TO PANDORA, Your Final Destination—
McNee wonders what wise guy came up with that slogan.
A skag runs across the road, the vicious four-legged, three-jawed predator leaping right into the bus’s path. The bus doesn’t slow and the skag becomes red mush on the windshield, before oozing off.
McNee shakes his head. Here he is, heading back into the Borderlands.
“Ha ha, time to wake up!” Kincaid says, glancing back at McNee. He speaks in a jovial, heavily accented growl. “It’s a beautiful day, full of opportunity!” His accent sounds like one of the desert nomads of the homeworld, to McNee.
“Well, you got any new weapons in Fyrestone, Kincaid?”
“Got plenty new weapons always,” Kincaid rumbles, chuckling. “Nice Eridian beauty, fry your enemy in ten seconds. If you can pay!”
McNee sighs. He’d blown most of his money from the last trip here—blew it on the Planet of Pleasure. But he didn’t regret it. Good memories to get a man through a cold, lonely Pandora night. “Rumors of another Vault out on this dirtball somewhere, I heard …”
“Ah the Vault … So, you want to hear a story, eh?”
“Marcus—you really don’t have to tell me that one again …” Kincaid tells the same story over and over to keep the Vault Hunters coming. So he could sell them weapons. Some story about the Vault he’d worked up talking to a nephew.
But once Marcus Kincaid gets started, it’s hard to stop him. “What … about treasure hunters? Ha! Have I got a story for you!”
“I’ve actually heard it …”
“Pandora! This is our home! But make no mistake, this is not a planet of peace and love …”
“That’s one hell of an understatement.”
“They say that it’s a waste planet, that it’s dangerous. That only a fool would search for something of value here …”
“Thanks for that, Kincaid, always nice to hear that from you …”
“Many people tell it, the legend of the Vault—”
“That one’s shut down, from what I heard,” McNee says, leaning forward and asserting himself with jabs of
his finger at Marcus Kincaid. “But what about that new Vault they’re talking about—or some kind of crashed ship or something with a lot of artifacts, way out in the Borderlands …”
Marcus glances at him, scowling. “That is something maybe is not wise to talk about! Atlas, others … they don’t like it when I ask … Best you not ask either. Just go after that weapons cache Roland wants you to find. Kill a few Psychos. Try to come back with all your fingers and toes.”
“Wait—how’d you know what Roland said to me on subspace transmission?”
“Who you think he came to, to send the transmission? Me! And when you find the weapons cache—you sell it to me! I sell for profit! Everyone will be happy, ha ha.” After a moment he adds: “If you live. Not so likely. Very dangerous out there where Roland has gone. Very dangerous …”
“Okay so it’s dangerous.”
“Very, very … very …”
“You
said
that, Kincaid.”
“… dangerous. So, back to my story—you’re going to love this one, I promise …”
I
t was raining in the Arid Lands, on the planet Pandora.
“Some
arid
lands,” Roland muttered to McNee, as they stared out the mouth of the cave, watching raindrops splash from rocks, flow in crevices. “Oughta be called the Wetlands.”
“Don’t happen but once or twice a year,” McNee said, tinkering with an Anshin shield—Anshin was a not especially effective brand of force field armor.
Roland and McNee were a stark contrast. McNee was middle-aged, Roland was fairly young; McNee was as slender as Roland was bulky with muscle; as sunburnt and pink as Roland was dark-skinned.
“Rain’ll spur some plant growth, mebbe,” McNee went on, frowning over the device. “Wake up a Wyrm Squid to come out ’n’ play.”
“Don’t care to meet any Wyrm Squids today,” Roland declared. “I’m sure as hell not in the mood. Saw a big one
eat a whole town once. It was hungrier than my fat aunt Matilda and that’s going some. You gonna get that shield running or not?”
“I dunno, the rain seems to make the cheap ones short out and all we got’s cheap ones. Need to get back to Fyrestone, get some decent gear. But you’re all about, ‘I
know
there’s a big Atlas weapons cache out East in the Graves for the Brave, it’ll be easy pickins!’ Sure it will, Roland. And I think ‘Why would I go any place called Graves for the Brave’ anyway? But I just trail after Roland like a skag pup after a brain-damaged mama …”
“You
insisted
on coming along,” Roland reminded him. But he was smiling to himself. For some reason he enjoyed McNee’s eternal bitching.
“Who’d watch your back? A back a sniper couldn’t miss, I might add, what with the size you are … Ow!” A small electric arc had jumped from the shield and he sucked his burnt finger. “The hell with this shield …” He tossed the tool and the broken shield aside. “I’ll do without one today.”
“Don’t seem wise.” Roland himself had a pretty strong Pangolin shield. “You oughta fix it.”
“Don’t seem wise to go without your Scorpio Turret either. And where the hell is it?”
“Not my fault that spiderant come outta the ground right under the Scorpio. I’ll get it fixed up first chance. Looks like the rain’s quitting … Speaking of skags, McNee, you did check this cave out all the way back, didn’t you? Stinks of skag in here.”
“I kilt a family of the buggers, in the back, while you were tucking the outrunner away. You want some skag
meat, go back and skin ’em. The motherbuggers haven’t been dead more’n twelve hours or so.”
“I’ll pass. Come on, we’re burning daylight. Let’s check the outrunner, see if it’s swamped. Psycho Midgets might’ve messed with it.”
Hefting his Tediore Defender—a shotgun he’d upgraded to vicious effectiveness—Roland ducked his head and led the way out of the low cave mouth, into the steaming afternoon. The clouds were parting; the sun was burning through, sucking streamers of mist from the wet ground. The red-stone canyon walls dripped water, but already the sandy ground had soaked up most of the rain. There was even a rainbow over the juttingly slanted butte.
“Another be-
yoot-
iful day!” McNee jeered. “On the most dangerous planet in the galaxy …”
Roland automatically scanned the ancient bed of the canyon for any movement. A little stream was running through the canyon; flowering bushes and purple thatch were poked up here and there.
He didn’t see any of the local fauna. Almost all the animal life of Pandora was hostile. Anything you saw might attack you. It was a strange food chain—made up entirely of predators, as far as he could tell. Predators eating predators eating predators. But it was the humans, and the descendents of humans—the subhumans, really—who were the most troublesome creatures on the planet, to Roland’s mind.
The rain released curious scents from the red and blue sands; some putrid, some spicy, some acrid, some earthy. A twisted, leafless growth, like branch coral, spiked on a nearby outcropping of clay—its tips seemed to be writhing. He paused and watched it warily. Some new threat?
“Hey now look there!” said McNee, admiring the writhing bush. “That’s gotta be a rare sight, some plant response to rain in the Arid Lands! Maybe something you see only a couple times a year … Could be no other humans saw it before …”
The plant’s tubules extruded what looked like small tongues, the wet red organs “razzing” in every direction, fibrillating furiously, spitting some kind of seedlings.
Roland was more interested in scanning for enemies. There wasn’t
too
much to worry about—just scythids, rakks, spiderants, bruisers, stalkers—
“I mean,” McNee was saying, as they headed down the canyon, “I seen some pretty impressive critchers on this planet, but I tell you what, who knows what lives way underground? Besides the tunnel rats I mean. Now, in a cavern down in Freebottle, I saw somethin’ like giant fleas—”
—bugmorphs, crystaliths, larva crab worms, tunnel rats, Nomads, goliaths—
“—fleas big as St. Bernards,” McNee went on. “Turn a regular dog inside out with one slurp—”
—wyrm squids, drifters, skags, spitter skags, elder skags, alpha skags, corrosive skags, spiderants, gyro spiderants, Badass spiderant burners, Psychos, Midget Psychos, Burning Psychos, Badass Psychos, Roid Rage Psychos—
“—but I knew a guy tried to make a flea circus with ’em, hired a clown to get ’em to jump through hoops. The giant fleas ate the clown, though, first crack out of the box … Hey, looks like the outrunner’s okay.”
The open-air outrunner, hidden away between two boulders, looked untouched. It was even gleaming, a little cleaner from the rain. The outrunners were something like
the old Desert Terrain Vehicles, with a big gun in the back. “I’ll drive,” Roland said. “You get on the turret.”
“Okay—so we’re going to find that weapons cache today?”
“Sure, sure,” Roland said, climbing into the driver’s seat. “We’ll find the bandits, if they don’t find us first, follow ’em back to the Graves of the Brave. It’s hidden back there in the Hunter Lands. Somewhere. Anyway there’s something going on back there—has to be. All kinds of mercs and bandits looking for something back there …”