Borderlands: Gunsight Read Online Free PDF

that thing under control!”
    Mordecai grinned. “I’ll try. But Bloodwing doesn’t like insults—and she does like eating people’s eyes. You going to lead me to your boss or not?”
    “I’m getting in with you, and I’ll guide you. Just don’t let that thing bite me—or poop on me, either!”
    Ripper climbed in, keeping the gun trained on Mordecai. He waved “out of the way!” at the armored vehicles, and the rolling batteries backed up, angling out of the way.
    “Go ahead,” Ripper said, glancing nervously up at Bloodwing, “but take it slow and don’t get cute.”
    “Yeah, yeah, what else would I do,” Mordecai murmured, driving on slowly. They passed the entrenchments, the armored vehicles, and rolled into the main street of the settlement. There was still snow from a recent storm, here andthere, edging the metal shacks and Quonsets and scrappy structures that made up the town. A group of young people, maybe teenagers, stood in front of a Quonset hut with a hand-painted sign: HANDSOME JERK’S BAR AND GRILL . On the wall by the sign was a cross-eyed, highly insulting caricature of Handsome Jack. The teens were wearing heavy, floppy clothing, drinking clear liquor out of jars, carrying handmade weapons, and they’d gone in for some hard-core scarification. They’d blade-scarred their faces, all over, slashing in curious patterns; some of it looked aboriginal, with radiating lines and zigzags; others had traced numbers, and recognizable symbols. A young girl was using a sharp piece of steel, carving a skull face into the cheek of a young boy; the boy gritted his teeth with the pain but he flashed an obscene gesture at Mordecai as he drove by.
    “Healthy little town you got here,” he remarked as they drove up to the fortress at the heart of Gunsight.
    “Don’t much like the locals here,” Ripper said. “But I got tired of wandering out there—” He waved a hand vaguely toward the wastelands outside town limits. “Couldn’t make much of a living out in the Borderlands. Never got laid, either. Better, here. Jasper pays pretty good. You be smart to work for Jasper, Mordecai. But that Reamus—don’t take a job with him. He’ll turn you into a monster . . .”
    Mordecai had heard rumors about the mutated psycho called Reamus, over in Tumessa. And he didn’t question the “turn you into a monster” remark. This was Pandora, after all.
    He slowed for the corrugated gates in the high, metal walls, hardly marked with rust, of Jasper’s fortress. The corners of the walls were set up with bastions and embrasuresbristling with gun emplacements. “Looks better constructed than a lotta places I’ve seen,” Mordecai said. “Steel walls, something like fifteen meters high, good ’n’ solid . . . nice job. Your boss must have some money all right, to pay for that.”
    Ripper made a grinding sound in his throat that might’ve been a chuckle. “Sure he’s got money! Other people’s money! Best-organized Bandit outfit on the planet. No secret, really, once you’re here—and of course if you don’t join up, he’ll just kill you, so you won’t be talking about it too much any which way. You join—or you don’t leave alive.” He spoke into a wrist communicator. “Open the Angel-damned door, you skag-sucking idiots, it’s me! I got that Vault Hunter for Jasper!”
    The corrugated metal gates creaked and started to roll back.
    “Moxxi told me, once,” Mordecai said, “about a Bandit clan using Buzzard scouts to suss out a town, then coming out in waves with armored vehicles to rob the place blind. After which they get out, and fast. Bandits with special red and black masks . . . lotta ‘Marauder class’ run by Nomads . . . but nobody seems to know where they’re based. Sound familiar?”
    “You’re a smart one,” Ripper allowed, nodding. “That’s us. But like I say, you don’t join up, good and true and committed, he’ll feed you to Bigjaws. And that ain’t just