Borderlands: Unconquered Read Online Free PDF Page B

Suppose he resists the SusDrug—and anything else you might offer.”
    “Oh,” she said, shrugging airily as she turned to walk toward the door of her headquarters. “If Roland refuses us, if he truly resists . . . then see that he’s killed. But kill him with respect. A nice clean head shot.”

T his town, Roland thought, striding down the rubbishy street, makes Fyrestone look like an urban paradise.
    Jawbone Ridge was a crusty, dusty, trash-strewn settlement of shacks, humplike cement bunkers, retrofitted mining trailers, and tents on a long, wide ledge of rock just under a toothy, jawbone-like ridgetop of dull red stone. Come to think of it, Roland figured, you couldn’t really say itwas a settlement. More like one of those vacant lots where debris piles up, just gets blown there by the wind. The gritty wind of the desert had brought the town mostly shady con men, out-of-work thugs, failed miners, itinerant drunks—Jawbone Ridge was known for its numerous liquor stills—and a few shopkeepers. The shopkeepers, Roland saw, had slammed their steel shutters down to coincide with sunset.It seemed they were afraid ofsomething. The sun wasn’t quite down completely, but already the place was shut up tight—except for the Steel Incisor Saloon down at the end of the road. The boozing dive was made of pieces of old mining machines, trucks, earthmovers, and robots, all cobbled together, welded into the boxy shape of a building like a wrongly made jigsaw puzzle.
    Roland put a hand onthe Hyperion Invader automatic pistol holstered to his right hip and headed down the street to where light spilled out the open front door of the saloon and someone giggled madly from within.
    So far, asking around the area, he hadn’t been able to find Brick. He’d seen a wanted poster of him, put up by Atlas—the Atlas Corp. was mad at him for something or other. He’d spotted a place where a walllooked as if it had been punched right through—Brick liked to punch through wanted posters. But no Brick himself, not in person.
    If Brick worked as a bodyguard for a mining boss, where was the mine? The only mining concern left in the area might not be in the town itself. So where was it—and where was Brick?
    Instead of Brick, he found Mordecai. Roland stumbled right across him, literally, ashe walked in through the door of the Steel Incisor Saloon. He tripped over the groaning, prostrate figure of the legendary Pandora gunman.
    “Ow!” Mordecai said.
    “Sorry,” said Roland, leaning over to help him stand—which wasn’t hard, since Mordecai was a lean little guy. Lean but wiry, and dangerous. He had a pointed black beard, a leather helmet, and goggles; unruly black hair thrust like a roostertail out the back of the helmet. “Didn’t see you there, Mordecai.”
    “Not you with the ow. Them! They smashed two bottles over my head. At once. One each.”
    Mordecai pointed at two women standing at the bar across the room—like everything else in the saloon, it was made of random rusty metal parts. One of the women was short and stocky, with ’roided, heavily tattooed bare arms; she wore a sleevelesscamo-patterned paramilitary outfit with a red G stenciled on it; under the G was the outline of crossed rifles. She was shaved bald, and her eyes were hidden in dark wraparound sunglasses; her broad face was tattooed with two blue lightning bolts. Her teeth gleamed with gold, and she was toying with a big serrated knife as she looked Roland over. Towering over her was a big, gangly, awkward-lookingwoman, the tallest woman Roland had ever seen. She had leanly muscled arms that seemed too long for her body, her big hands ending in curved implanted steel talons; her hair was spiky gray, and her face was long, too long, her eyes like blots of darkness, her mouth froggish and crookedly outlined in lipstick; she wore a low-cutarmored top showing pendulous breasts that hung to her waist.
    Shealso looked Roland over and made a contortion of her