Borderlands: The Fallen Read Free Page B

could without overturning the outrunner—just managing to avoid a flying boulder, he zagged right again, coming up on a low, rocky hilltop. He accelerated, jumped the hilltop, coming down on the other side with a jolt, holding on with all his strength. The outrunner almost flipped over again—then clunked back down on its wheels.
    He spun the vehicle in a doughnut, brought it around facing the hilltop, came to a full stop, and clambered hastily up in the back.
    At some point, McNee’s body had fallen out. All that remained of him in the outrunner was blood, and brain matter, bits of bone near the turret.
    Roland caught a movement at the corner of his eyes—he looked around, caught a glimpse of someone down the slope on his side of the hill, half-hidden behind an outcropping of rock. Someone watching and waiting. He knew the type—a big bulky figure in helmet, long coat, and slitted goggles. A Nomad. Another threat.
    One thing at a time. The Primals were coming.
    Roland ground his teeth, gripped the turret gun handles, and then the first Primal was there, poised on the hilltop not more than fifteen meters away, a shrieking Psycho Midget riding on its back. The Primal scooped upa fifty-kilo boulder with the ease of a kid grabbing a snowball, and threw it underhand. Roland ignored the stone missile—taking the chance it’d miss—and fired a burst at the Psycho Midget. The Primal was too heavily armored to bring down at this angle. Its rider was just barely visible from here, hunched down on the Primal’s back, getting ready to launch one of those vicious little hatchets.
    Roland got lucky twice: the boulder missed him and one of his turret rounds caught the Psycho in the forehead. The mad Midget jerked in the saddle, shrieking in despair. The Primal, psychically linked to its rider, went bounding off in maddened confusion, tearing at its own head with a forearm talon.
    But the other two were coming. Roland doubted he could get them both.
    An idea suddenly came to him. He vaulted back into the driver’s seat, put the outrunner in gear, spun it around, and started down the hill, close to the outcropping where the Nomad was still watching.
    He didn’t head straight for the Nomad, but drove right by him.
    The mad giggling of Psycho Midgets came from close behind as he passed the Nomad—then came a snarling roar, the thumping of feet. Bellows of rage, a spate of cursing.
    He smiled. He knew his outlanders.
    Nomads hated Psycho Midgets.
Hated
them. Never missed a chance to kill them. One of their favorite methods was binding them and holding them up as living shields to catch gunfire meant for the Nomad.
    He heard a grenade blast, another, a burst of gunfire, and lunatic giggling that became shouts of pain.
    The Nomad had gone for the targets, engaging both Psycho Midgets and their mounts. That’d keep them all busy for a while.
    Roland gunned the outrunner, circling off to the right, heading back to try to intersect Crannigan.
    He bounded the vehicle over ridges, low hills, around boulders—finally pulled up, seeing a flying vessel of some kind—hard to make out what exactly—taking off in the distance.
    Chances were, Crannigan was in that orbital shuttle, heading off to conference with his handlers at the Atlas Corporation.
    Okay. He’d catch up with Crannigan eventually. All he had to do was wait, and patrol the area. And meanwhile look for those bandits. That cache of salable goods.
    He went back to the lowlands, looking for McNee’s body.
    There it was, about fifty meters off. It was already being torn apart by scavenging skags.
    Roland pulled the outrunner up, and stared, thinking that McNee deserved better.
    But that’s what happened on Pandora. You made a friend—they got killed. Should’ve learned that lesson a long time ago.
    Stay solitary as long as you stayed on this planet.
    Because Pandora wasn’t just a world. It was a planet-sized homicidal maniac.
    Pandora glowed like a dying ember in the big