Borderlands: Gunsight by John Shirley Read Free Book Online Page A

belts automatically slithered over them of their own accord and hooked into place. The vehicle had a shield, Mordecai noted, as the force-field came to life, creating a transparent bubble of purplish energy around them. Looked like a weak shield, though. Still, there was a down-angled machine gun mounted between the two bucket seats. He quickly grasped how the machine gun was operated—and by then Daphne had the engine whirring, the rotors spinning, kicking up a column of wind around them. Bloodwing screeched and flew up, to wait for them on high—and as Daphne pulled back on the stick the Buzzard tilted forward . . . then plunged toward the street below.
    A rocket shell flashed past them, exploding on the helipad above them as they almost crashed headlong into the street. Guardsmen ran shouting to get out of their way. Bullets and Eridian blasts cut past . . .
    “Daphne—?” Mordecai said, between gritted teeth.
    Then she got the hang of it, and the Buzzard grabbed the air, got some vertical lift going, and tilted forward, rising, up and up, till Daphne shifted it into horizontal flight and they headed toward the outskirts of the city.
    Mordecai shook his head in stunned amazement. Had they really done it? It seemed they had. Luck, and skill, and more luck.
    Another rocket flashed past. He watched it go, missing—and then saw it turn in midair, arcing back at them again as the Buzzard rose up and up. It was some kind of heatseeker.
    “Mordecai—!”
    “I see it, Daph!” He was already clutching the joystickof the machine gun control, and a set of red-line holo-projected crosshairs danced in his line of sight. He instinctively fixed the crosshairs on the nose of the oncoming rocket and squeezed the trigger, keeping the crosshairs tracking the warhead as it came. The rocket was hit squarely, exploding too far away to wreck them—but close enough that the Buzzard rollicked in the shock wave and flak sparked in the chopper’s weakening shield. More gunfire sang into the shield from below and he saw the energy flickering, threatening to burn out; but now Daphne was lofting them high over Gunsight, and they were angling off to the north, so that the shooters were losing their fix on the Buzzard.
    “By Skagzilla’s Arse—we really pulled it off!” Mordecai said.
    “We’re not home free yet!” Daphne shouted, over the noise of the engine. Her hair was fluttering about in the wash from the rotors. “And where are we going to go? We can’t go home. He’s going to come after us! That megalomaniacal son of a hive is all about . . . wait. What—?”
    The Buzzard was slowing, slowing . . . and stopping in midair.
    “We losing power?” Mordecai asked, his mouth going dry.
    Looking down he could see the outskirts of Gunsight below. There were gun emplacements turning their way now.
    “No, no,” Daphne said. They both looked up at the rotors, saw the blades still whipping around. “It’s just—maybe the directional controls were damaged by incoming . . . uh-oh.”
    Now the Buzzard was turning around . . . and heading back the way they’d come. Daphne was struggling with the control stick . . . but it moved in her grip with a life of its own.
    “Oh no,” Mordecai muttered.
    “It’s being remote-controlled!” she yelled. “They’ve got some kind of lock on it now! It must have a home-base override . . . dammit!”
    “We gotta find where the signal’s coming from! If we can break off the antenna, maybe you can get control back!”
    But they couldn’t find the control antenna, and in less than a minute they were flying, quite involuntarily, above the main avenue, back over the stronghold’s walls, and down toward the helipad. Mordecai tried aiming the machine gun—but it was locked up. Frozen. Would not turn or fire. The shield flickered and went out.
    Mordecai shouted a quick warning to Bloodwing to stay out of reach and then they were landing on the helipad.
    Where Commander