Borderlands: Gunsight (2 page)

“So . . .” Marcus took a pull on a flask of hard liquor and went on, “every so often I got to have an audience. For stories, see. It’s . . . how I am, I guess. It comes from when I was a kid myself, and . . . well . . . some people are born storytellers and they don’t feel right unless they can do it. I can’t make a living at it . . . never heard of anyone making much of a living telling stories . . . so I sell guns, I pick up customers at the spaceport in my bus, that’s how I make my scratch. All you got to do is listen to me—that’ll pay for your supper. And maybe breakfast, too. But don’t get cocky—I can still knock you cold and sell you to the slavers if you piss me off. Am I clear?”

“I think so,” Larna said. “But you talk kinda funny.”

“Funny? Okay, so I got an accent. Dig the scythid droppings out of your ears, and I’ll tell you a story . . . all true!” He sniffed. “Well . . . mostly all true . . . lots of it . . . true, quite true . . . in many respects . . . except for here and there . . . but . . .
all true
! It’s about the Vault Hunter, Mordecai, and his winged friend Bloodwing, and it’s about a strange little killer of a woman named Daphne, and it’s about a settlement way up north, out on the fringes of the fringes . . . a hellhole of a town called Gunsight. And it’s about how a skinny little guy, not much bigger than you . . . Mordecai, I mean . . . it’s about how he took on a small army—no,
two
armies! And he hadda
fight for his life against a weapon so big you couldn’t see the end of it from the beginning of it. Hard mission, even though he’s just about the best shot this planet has. Now just listen . . .

“Mordecai, in recent years, has taken up a bad habit—drinking.” Marcus took another pull on his own flask of liquor. He looked at the flask and cleared his throat. “I mean, drinking
too much.
He was ‘on the wagon’ when he met Daphne, trying not to drink—but boy-howdy could she nag, dat woman. She wanted to run their part of Pandora, see. But ol’ Mordecai just wanted to take a mission now and then and have some fun and shoot some moron sons of bitches and target practice by knocking down a few dozen rakks and the like after breakfast. What his girl wanted, dat wasn’t what Mordecai wants. All Mordecai wants out of life, he likes to say, is ‘everything this freaking universe owes me’—for him, that means getting the best gun around and all the cash he can spend. But . . . conquering territory? Naw!

“Follow me? Well one day, Daphne nagged him too much and he got riled and got to drinking . . . At that time he was living not so far from Sanctuary—that’s that place Roland’s kinda got organized with his new Crimson Raiders outfit. And this place of Mordecai’s was called . . . now hold on, what the Angel’s Inferno was it called . . . oh yeah . . .”

O
h yeah, I remember now—Mordecai’s place was called “Mordecai’s Place.”

It was in a rugged area, semi-mountainous, up in the kinda-damn-cold north, not so far from the settlement of Sanctuary, and not so near, either. Not so far from that crazy little bitch Tina’s place . . . and not so near to that, neither . . .

Now, kids, picture Mordecai—kind of a small man . . . he prefers to say compact and wiry . . . and in fact his girlfriend, Daphne, who was fast beginning to act like a wife, was only two inches taller than he was. More often than not, Mordecai wears a close-fitting leather helmet, and goggles; a kind of rooster tail of dreadlocks stick out the back of his helmet; leather gloves, leather fighting suit . . . never far from a weapon . . . and behind those goggles his eyes are sharp as lasers . . . And he’s looking out at Pandora from way high up in his eyrie . . . a tower, is what it is, on a stony crag . . .

•  •  •

It was a brisk, windless morning in the high northlands.

Bottle in hand, Mordecai was standing pensively at the
sniping rail of the tower he’d taken over as his headquarters. Also leaning against the rail was a modified Jakobs sniper rifle, muzzle still smoking from his having snapped several rakks out of the sky. Mordecai had fired seven shots to kill six rakks . . . and Daphne had been watching. Her jeer rang in his ears still: “Ha! Took you two shots for that one!”

She’d said it as she sashayed back into the tower bedroom. “The Mordecai I knew wouldn’t need two shots to take down a rakk! But the
drunk
Mordecai . . . Oh yeah.”

Mordecai snorted. He wasn’t drunk, yet. That would come later. But maybe he’d unsteadied his aim just a
smidge
with the first bottle of Zed’s Cornfed Whiskey.

He heard a squawk, turned to see Bloodwing, his vulturine semi-reptilian pet, leather wings flapping as she settled down on the railing. She cocked her head and Mordecai thought he saw a familiar look of disapproval. Maybe because Bloodwing was now in her female mode; her species shifted between male, female, and neuter, according to some mysterious inner biological clock.

Mordecai growled, “Don’t tell me you think I’m drinking too much, too!”

Bloodwing shrugged her leather wings in a noncommittal way.

“I know what that means, Bloodwing. If Daphne says it, it must be true, that right? You’ve totally gone sweet on Daphne. It’s those Bloodcookies she’s been feeding you. You’re getting fat on them.”

Bloodwing squawked in protest.

“Oh, don’t give me that.” Mordecai took a swig of Zed’s Cornfed and grimaced, angrily tossed the bottle over the
ledge, watched it fall spinning hundreds of meters till it smashed into the rocks. “Zed should never have branched off into booze. Tastes like medicine.” And in fact it was stupid to be drinking in the morning. Not a good habit. Wait till at least midafternoon. Or okay, maybe noon. Or . . .

It was time, he decided, past time, for a paying mission. He needed to blow off steam with a really vicious, bad odds, near-suicide assignment. He was antsy and drinking too much and not getting along with Daphne. But he didn’t want the mission that Daphne had in mind—her own long-term plan to carve a small kingdom out of this corner of Pandora. The scheme wouldn’t even pay a profit for a while—if ever. She wanted him to take control of the surrounding territory, within a klick of Sanctuary. There was a lot of traffic in and out of Sanctuary—they could ship goods there, too. They could hire some men, make this a kind of fiefdom; charge a toll for caravans traveling through, levy fees for mining, hire yet more men, really build the place up. That was her vision.
“We’ll be rich and safe.”
A local king and queen . . . or maybe they’d be no better than a couple of annoying, heavily armed toll takers.

It all sounded like a big pain in the ass to him. Who wanted to be in charge of a bunch of hired guns who might snap a shot into you the moment your back was turned? It’s not like they were trustworthy like Roland. And Roland was busy organizing his Crimson Raiders in Sanctuary—planning to stand up to Handsome Jack and Hyperion.

“Women,” Mordecai muttered to Bloodwing, “are nesters.”

Bloodwing cocked her head and gave him a
“what else?”
kind of look.

Mordecai scowled up at the place in the sky where the
moon should’ve been—the moon was there, but it was almost stamped out, half hidden by the big metal H-shape of Handsome Jack’s orbiting base, a gigantic artificial complex of control and weaponry and surveillance. It looked like a humungous branding iron descending on the world, as if Handsome Jack were going to sear his H . . . for Handsome and Hyperion . . . into the living hide of Pandora.

Mordecai didn’t like the damn thing being up there. It was always watching, watching, endlessly watching . . . unblinkingly staring down at everyone. He’d come out here to get some privacy and peace and quiet. After that gigantic killing spree alongside Roland, taking out Gynella and her hordes, Mordecai needed to retrench, rethink, get a new angle on things—without being
watched
all the time. And if it wasn’t Handsome Jack eyeballing him it was—

“Morrrrrrdecaiiiiiiii!”
Daphne called, from the bedroom, her voice uncharacteristically honeyed. “I want my Loveygun to come back in here and
relax
with me!”

Loveygun . . . Relax
.

He knew what that meant. If he went into that room, she’d be waiting in bed, looking insanely sexy; he wouldn’t be able to resist, and they’d make love till he was exhausted and more or less in a passive “anything you want, baby” state. And then she’d start in on the Big Plan again.

And then? Then he’d hem and haw and say,
Sure baby, tomorrow, we’ll start tomorrow, or the next day, but maybe we should have a simple little mission first and raise money to pay for some of this stuff you wanta do and then . . .

And then she’d say,
You’re putting me off again . . . Loveygun
. With a little venom of sarcasm added to the “loveygun.”

Mordecai sighed. Months earlier, he and Daphne’d had
to kill a dozen or so Marauders and a Bruiser to get control of this tower. Once upon a time, it had belonged to the Dahl Corporation, some kind of transmission station. Right now what it offered was good defensibility; a clear vantage of the craggy land spread out below. And it offered a large, comfortable bedroom. But she wasn’t going to get around him that way, not this time.

“I don’t have time for any . . . for
anything
!” he shouted, over his shoulder. He took a step toward the door, hesitating. “I’m gonna go to Sanctuary, Daph, and hit the mission board—maybe see if Roland’s got something for me. Some kinda Crimson work . . . And . . .”

“And
what
?”

There she was, glaring at him, outside the door from the balcony to the bedroom, hugging herself against the cold.

It was funny—a sharp, cold wind started up the instant Daphne came out on the balcony, just as if she’d brought it there herself. She was wearing a sheer black negligee, black leather boots, and . . . nothing else. Except of course for the slim daggers she hid in those boots. Her long, straight black hair snapped in the wind like a pirate flag; her eyes flashed like dark gems. She was hugging herself in that vulnerable little-girl way—but she was glaring at him. It was a pretty unnerving glare—sure, she was small, curvy, pretty, but on many planets she was known as Kuller the Killer, one of the most prolific assassins to work for interplanetary organized crime. She’d retired from that life, to live here with Mordecai . . . but Kuller the Killer was still there somewhere inside her and sometimes Mordecai wondered if she might not get mad enough to let Kuller kill
him.

And that razor edginess was part of what he loved about her . . .

“Baby,” he said, “I want to make you happy, but I just do not want to start any big organizations that require employees or any of that stuff. I mean, that’s just not me!”

He had to look away from her—in that negligee, she looked smokin’ hot standing there and he didn’t want to give in.

“I’m going,” he said firmly. “Just for a trip—into Sanctuary. You can come, or not. But I’m going, I’m gonna see Roland, and maybe earn a little scratch and some ammo and supplies and . . . and a present for you. How about that jeweled .200-caliber HyperHawk pistol you were looking at, with the diamond inlaid grip and—”

“You’re not wriggling out of this with presents, Mordecai! We need to create a sanctuary of our own, not hang out at that one! I’m planning . . . well . . . I think we should have a baby!”

It was his turn to exclaim, “What!” And even Bloodwing squawked something that sounded close to that.

“Why
not
have a baby?”

“On
Pandora
? This hellhole is no place to raise a—”

“People do it, in some of the settlements! The place needs to be civilized! Remember those people at Bloodrust Corners—”

“And remember what they went through keeping their kids alive! It’s crazy, Daph!”

Her eyes narrowed and she hugged herself tighter against the cold. “Okay. You go to Sanctuary. I’m not going with you. I
might
be here when you get back—and I might not. You take the smaller outrunner. And we’ll see. But you better think hard about it on this little party trip of yours—”

“It’s not a party trip, dammit!”

“Yeah, right! You’re going to see that bitch Moxxi. She never did give up on you, and she wants you back in her clutches!”

Mordecai rolled his eyes. “Don’t start with Moxxi again! I’m not going to see Moxxi! I mean—I might stop in her place for a
drink
but . . .”

“Like there’s only one place to drink in that town?”

“Hey, she’s an old friend of mine—but a drink is all it’ll be—” Stupid to say anything about stopping in to see Moxxi; should’ve known Daphne’d take it all wrong. “Seriously—”

“You are flat out full of shit, Mordecai. If you’re leaving, and going there without me—you’re going to see that whore Moxxi! I know it!”

“That is just bullshit, Daph! I told you, you could come with me, I just want to talk to Roland, check the mission board—”

But she’d already gone inside. He almost followed her . . . then growled to himself, snatched up the rifle, and walked to the other end of the balcony. Bloodwing fluttered down onto his shoulder as he descended on the exterior elevator platform to the ground outside the tower’s base. Reaching the bottom, he glanced around the perimeter—no enemies handy. He should probably send Bloodwing up to look around, or maybe check the area scanners . . . No. He just wanted out of here right now, before he weakened. He had to make a statement, let the woman know he wasn’t clay to be molded by Daphne Kuller. He was his own man, dammit.