Borderlands: Gunsight Read Online Free PDF Page A

And she was there, too. Professor Elenora Dufty, Superior Technician and Robotics Engineer. He heard her voice, echoing in his head, at times, when he slowed down to do a sunlight-recharge.
    You’re a nasty naughty lazy little Claptrap, and you need to get moving, and find him, and make him understand, he must be made to understand! Only then, only then . . . Oh but oh and oh, I swear to the Angel I shouldn’t have let him look into my eyes!
    Stuff like that. Apparently random comments, really, apart from the constant urging to get back to the quest.
    The quest . . . to find Mordecai the Vault Hunter . . .

M ordecai had learned some things, hanging out with that peerless tactician Roland.
    And one of the most useful things he’d learned was, Make the enemy think they can predict you. Then do the unpredictable.
    That’s what Mordecai had in mind as, shivering with the chill, he drove up to the outskirts of Gunsight. This Jasper figured he had Mordecai on a string. Figured he’d make him dance like a puppet. Good, let Jasper believe that.
    But Mordecai was more inclined to find his Daphne, break her out, first chance. He’d steal a Buzzard, fly her out of Gunsight—and just leave this whole stinking, ice-cold territory behind.
    Till then he’d let Jasper think he was going to play ball. But when the ball came back to Jasper, it was going to be trailing smoke from a fuse.
    The first thing Mordecai noticed about Gunsight was the big beetling, rocky hillside it was backed up to. Knobbed withboulders, flecked with snow, the steep hillside sheltering the town could also be used against it—except Mordecai could make out the steely glint of heavy weaponry up there, and scanning lenses. Jasper would be controlling that stuff . . . and maybe feeling too confident about it. Mordecai stored that observation away for later.
    The second thing he noticed were the heavily armed Marauders camped around the outskirts, behind concrete and metal porta-wall emplacements. There was a town beyond them, with small houses and bars and supply hutches, but it had been turned into an armed camp. A couple of Buzzards buzzed him, the small flying vehicles passing just a dozen meters over his head; two defensive batteries on wheels rolled up to block his way into town.
    “Time to act like a good guest should, Bloodwing,” Mordecai muttered. “Be polite.”
    Perched on his right shoulder, Bloodwing shuffled her leather wings creakily and seemed to chuckle. He often wondered if she really understood him, when he spoke to her, as fully as she seemed to. Maybe her breed had a little telepathy working for it. Sometimes he thought so.
    He slowed, braked the outrunner to a stop, and raised his hands over his head. “Mordecai reporting to Jasper!” he shouted.
    The Marauders stood behind tanklike mobile defensive batteries: squat metal-studded armored vehicles about twenty meters ahead. A couple of Nomads stood with them, he noticed. A cannon muzzle in one of the batteries swung to sight in on him—it looked to Mordecai like a BL2 Plasma cannon. “Hold your damn fire!” Mordecai shouted. “I told you I’m expected!”
    One of the hulking Nomads approached the outrunner, scowling, keeping a Vladoff shotgun pointed at him. His breath jetted visibly from his nostrils in the cold air. “You’re this Mordecai we’re expecting?” he asked, eyebrows raised. “Mordecai the Vault Hunter? You? ”
    “Yeah! What’s so surprising about it?”
    “I figured you’d be a big badass like Roland, or Salvador or that Brick fella . . . one of them . . . But I got boogers bigger’n you!”
    Mordecai shrugged. “And who’d you be with your badass boogers?”
    “Commander Ripper, that’s who I am. And I guess you’re Mordecai all right—Boss said you’d probably have an ugly flying nasty on your shoulder and there it is.”
    At that, Bloodwing stretched out its neck and snapped its beak at Ripper—who took a quick step back. “Keep