Borderlands: The Fallen by John Shirley Read Free Book Online Page A

noticed an odd sort of collar, as if made out of metal scales, on thick coppery wires around his neck. It had the look of alien technology. He forced himself not to stare at it. “Bruisers?”
    “Like that big fella that I blowed up just now! No sir, I don’t care for ’em! They gimme the willies! Don’t like their little bandit buddies, neither! But Bruisers—they’re bone mean, and ugly as hell, and cruel as a pig that eats its own young! They’re really a mutie like them Psychos! That radiation from the Headstone Mine, it made ’em what they are! They wear them masks so you won’t see how ugly-mugged their ol’ faces is after that!”
    “I see,” Zac said. “I do thank you and … and Bizzy … for your … your intervention. And now …” Zac started to back away.
    “You going somewhere’s, buster? I don’t think so! No water, no weapons, no shelter! I seen that little spacetube of yours crash! I know what’s up! You’re prospecting—just like I was! And being as I haven’t had anyone but murderers and drifters and skags to talk to for many a moon—I’ll let you live so’s you can gab with me! What’s your name?”
    “It’s Zac, Zac Finn. I’m—”
    “Fine, Zac, just fine. Mine’s Berl and you already met Bizzy. Berl ’n’ Bizzy, Bizzy ’n’ Berl, that’s us! Now come along, right this way! I’ll take you to shelter! If we don’t get killed first! Always a possibility! I started out with apartner, you know, had more’n one. But they always get killed—and wasn’t me that killed ’em, neither, in case you were wonderin’ …”
    “No, no, I wasn’t wondering that …”
    Berl turned and started immediately toward the bluffs in the distance, whistling in that odd way—and Bizzy turned cumbersomely about, making the ground tremble with the placement of its pole-like hooked legs, and followed.
    Zac glanced around the vast, dust-swirling desert around him. He heard the grunt and snarl of skags in the distance.
    He sighed, and hurried to follow after Berl and Bizzy.
    Marla woke in the lifeboat—and was surprised to find that she was alive, and the lifeboat was still moving. It was warm in here, stuffy. She smelled her own sweat, heard a throaty machine rumble from outside.
    She could see blue sky through the transparent hatch, and gaunt flying creatures soaring and dipping, high in the sky—rakks.
    She was being carried along, somehow, inside the lifeboat. She had just room enough to get up on one elbow and peer over the edge of the compartment, through the curving pane of the hatch. She saw helmeted heads, each with its red stripe, jogging beside her.
    Up front was the back of a truck of some kind. They were jogging along behind the slow-moving vehicle, their goggled heads turning this way and that. She saw rifle muzzles lift into view from time to time.
    Armed men. Probably the notorious bandits of Pandora’s arid outlands.
    They’d found her lifeboat crash landed and had taken her, and the emergency craft, as a single prize. Judging by their discussion it seemed they were so far unable to get it open.
    “I don’t see why we can’t just blast it open!” growled one of the bandits. “So what if she loses an eye or some such, the useful parts’ll still be there!”
    “Because Grunj says
no
, that’s why!” piped up another bandit. “Vance called, gave us Grunj’s orders clear as day! He intends to get a good price for her! Fine slaver you’d be if you blew off a girly-slave’s face and hands! Price goes way down!”
    “But if we got her out of there she could walk on her own and we could ride on the truck!”
    “Stop your carpin’! We’re almost to the Coast! Look—there’s the Big Wetty, not more’n half a klick!”
    The Coast? Slavers?
Was she being taken to sea?
    Marla lay back and hugged herself, biting her lip because she didn’t want to give the bandits the satisfaction of hearing her sob. Then she thought of her shoulder bag.
    She found it, jammed