Borderlands: Gunsight by John Shirley

Author:John Shirley [Shirley, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2013-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

Past the gate. Past a phalanx of Bruisers. Over the acid moat on the first bridge. Up the road, winding, winding . . .

Then—the second acid moat. The bridge. And their escort of Bandit technicals drew back.

“The Reamers don’t seem like they’re gonna cross this bridge with us,” Brick remarked, frowning.

Mordecai nodded. “Yeah, this bridge automatically dumps you in a moat of acid if you’re not one of them.”

Brick had already driven them on the bridge. He slowed the truck down, maybe thinking of throwing it in reverse—or high acceleration. Looking puzzled, he scratched his head with one hand, driving with the other. “Kind of late to tell me.”

“I should’ve mentioned it,” Mordecai admitted. “Well, see, I’ve got a chip I took off a body—it should identify me as one of them. So that’ll get us across. Probably.”

“Probably? I don’t like acid moats. You can’t kill them. Can’t find ’em. Can’t get out of ’em, neither.”

“We’re past the halfway point . . . almost.”

He glanced in the passenger-side mirror, saw that the technicals were indeed hanging back, waiting for Brick and Mordecai to cross the bridge. That seemed to indicate that maybe his disguise and his rap hadn’t been as convincing as he’d supposed. They were suspicious.

And if the chip didn’t work Mordecai and Brick would shortly get dumped in the moat of acid.

Funny, he thought, how a few seconds can seem to take a few minutes.

The trip across the bridge seemed to go on and on. But then they’d gotten to the far side, and Mordecai exhaled. “See?” He realized his voice was a bit squeaky with fear. He cleared his throat and made his voice gruffer. “The chip worked.”

Brick only grunted as they continued up the winding road to Reamus House.

• • •

Daphne now had two tentative plans.

Plan A was to use the machine pistol that Ripper had smuggled to her, blast her way through Jasper’s escort as they entered, before the armored door could close, slip through, and kill her way out of the building, appropriating better weapons as she went. Hopefully, she could kill Jasper in the process, and that would . . . just maybe . . . throw the place into leaderless confusion.

It probably wouldn’t work. And Plan B had an even smaller margin for success.

Daphne was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the staticky screen across from her. Boss Jasper had turned off the entertainment. Maybe to let her know time was running short and she should surrender herself to him. But she knew that behind the screen was a camera . . . watching her. Endlessly watching her.

She glared back at it, thinking things over.

There hadn’t been any word from Mordecai lately, except for a few whispered words, a brief message conveyed by Ripper, as he’d pretended to come in on a security inspection. Ripper slipped a gun under her pillow as he blocked the view of the camera with his body, all the while loudly warning her not to try anything or there’d be the devil to pay.

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