Chapter 33

Hyperion Site: Project Odysseus: Faux DHAL Mining Site Loading Area

The woman looked at them with a gleam in her eyes. She was the same one that Artemis had seen in front of the docked ships and she looked the same as she had then.

Something about her did make one think slightly of the military. It wasn't her stance, which while straight, was slightly slumped, almost bored looking. It wasn't her hair, which looked like drying blood and stuck out in short, messy spikes, as if she hadn't combed it. It wasn't even her clothes which did have a bit of a militaristic air about them, with her black tank top and many pocketed pants. Her feet were covered by heavy boots, with heavy metal toes. It was the way that, even though her clothes looked worn, her gear was all cleaned and well maintained. It was the look in her cold eyes, that she had seen and done things that would drive a normal mind insane. But more than anything, it was the air about her, one of barely contained menace, an open threat of danger and the knowledge of how to apply it in a brutally violent way.

Her face was still caked in white paint, thick enough that even Moxxi would call it too much. But now that they were closer, Artemis felt that it looked more like white mud than makeup. Something about the way it cracked. Still, none of it had flaked off, so what her actual skin looked like, none of them could tell.

"You kept me waiting." She said in a low, sing-song voice "I don't like waiting."

"Well, if you'd 'ave told us that you wanted to meet, we may have been here on time." Artemis shot back.

"My, aren't you the bold one. Is it ignorance or arrogance that gives you such confidence, I wonder?"

"I've often found that the two are closer related than most people give credit."

"Well, aren't we a cleaver one. Of course, that's why you were so useful. Tell me, other than Hel, are there any other of my" She paused as if mulling over what to say before continuing with an obviously fake smile "comrades, left alive? I simply must know?"

"And why's that? You don't seem like the kind that would go for avenging your 'comrades', plus there's the fact that you left them to die."

"Oh my, so you found me out. I am most curious about how exactly you managed that, but no matter. To answer your other point, I don't care if you did kill them all, I just want to know who might still be left alive in there, so that after we finish, I know if I have to wait for anyone else or not."

"I'm gonna assume that it wouldn't be a pleasant chat if one of them did come out."

"Oh my, is that how you think of me?"

"Isn't that how you think of yourself?"

"Ha, truly. It has been a while since anyone's got me as readily as you."

"I don't think that was a compliment."

"Take it how you will. Now then, answer my question."

"No, there's no one else coming."

"Excellent. So, did you kill them all, or are some of them with?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Quell my curiosity as it were."

"They're dead."

"Even the Baron? Surely you didn't kill him. I bet he threw his weapons down without a fight. Am I right?"

"If that's what you thought of him, then why did you follow him?"

"Hmm, I suppose I could tell you that. Alright, I was trying to not draw as much attention to myself, so I found someone that I could manipulate, OK fine, threaten into doing what I wanted and not be the one in charge when the authorities came looking."

"That explains why you want him gone, but what about the rest of them?"

"It's time to start over. They were useful for their parts, but they've served their purpose. You don't keep an old gun when it's worn out do you? No, you chuck it and get a new one. Same with them, disposable parts should be gotten rid of when they've passed their usefulness."

"I still have the second gun I ever got."

"Ah, I guess we aren't alike, you're one of those sentimental types. How are you still alive then?"

"Speaking of which, why did you let me go earlier?"

"Why, cause I still needed you of course. Well, need might be too strong a word. Regardless, you were useful. See, if you were around, the rest of them would be separated, looking for you, fighting you, and if I was lucky, dying to you. And you performed admirably." She placed the heel of her palms together and clapped her fingertips mockingly before continuing. "That let me do what I needed to do."

"And did you."

"No. Turned out that this wasn't where Jack was keeping it."

"Keeping what?"

"That you don't need to know."

"Fine, then answer this for me, if you wanted them dead, why didn't you do it yourself?"

"Too risky. I could've taken any one of them on easily, but if another one walked in before I finished, I would've been in trouble. Not because I couldn't handle two, but because they would've attracted the rest, and then I would be hard pressed to fight my way out. Besides, it would've been too much work."

"But you couldn't 'ave predicted that we'd be here, so what where you planning on doing?"

"You really ask a lot of questions you know. You're starting to wear on my patients, but I suppose you want to know why you're going to die, and you did do me a service, so I can indulge you a little longer. I would have done pretty much what I did anyway, send them into the lab a few at a time while I checked what I needed to and set the self-destruct. Then while they were swarming the lab to take revenge for their fallen comrade, I would have disabled their ships and left."

"So why didn't you just leave?"

"Because of you. I didn't know where your ship was, nor if I could disable it and since I didn't know what the rest of your team looked like, I needed to wait. Besides I figured that you'd do what I do to prevent my ship from being stolen and disable a vital system in a way that would be hard to figure out, but easy to fix. Take that part with you and your ship can't easily be stolen. Am I right?'

Artemis nodded.

"Clever girl. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to get going, So I'm gonna have to kill you, and then whoever you left back there."

"Whom." Gaige said with no small amount of exasperation.

"What?"

"It's whom ever."

"Why do you care?"

"Cause I don't wanna get killed by someone that can't even use the language they're speaking properly."

"I don't think what you want really matters."

And with that she spread her arms, the instant she did, they saw the familiar Digi-struct squares appear behind her. They quickly resolved into sets of thin robotic arms sprouting from her back. Six in total. The additional weight pulled her up into a proper posture and in the hands of each one appeared a gun. Two of them held SMGs, while the other four held pistols.

"Well crap." Gaige said and dove for cover as two of the hands-on Shiva's back slipped their guns into her normal hands and then slammed into the ground, launching her into the air. As she came down on the cab of one of the vehicles stored there, she opened fire.

Six separate guns fired at the two girls, split evenly between them. They took off running against the hail of bullets, but even more so since they knew what would be coming next. The pistols went dry first and the mechanical arms chucked them even as a new set of guns formed. The tossed guns spun around the room, firing away as they boomeranged around the room.

Gaige dropped into a slide under one of them and fired her shotgun without caring where it was aimed just as the SMGs got tossed. Swearing she watched them fly out and affix to the walls, where they started firing like mini-turrets. Bullets danced all around her as she dove behind one of the wheels, but even there wasn't safe since the turret turned and started firing at her. She fired her shotgun at it in frustration, not really aiming for it and watched the bullets ricochet off the wall and fly back over the vehicle at her back.

She heard them hit a shield and sighed, this was gonna be a long fight.

Artemis sprinted across the room, dodging the lines of fire from all sides. She knew that she needed to try and cut down the number of angles that she could be attacked from, without limiting her routs of escape too much.

She spun around and fired her pistol twice, watching the bullets hit a shield and spun back around, dashing towards the shipping container against the wall. She dropped into a slid and caught the corner, spinning herself into the opening on the side as the bullets pinged around her.

Putting her back to the wall she quickly switched out her equipment before leaning out and lining up the SMG she had equipped. The line of bright white-blue shots flew towards the stationary woman, slamming into the shield with noticeable sparks as the electric laced shots tore away at the shield.

The shots caught Shiva's attention and she started to move, turning she brought more of her attention to Artemis, her shark-like grin widening as she laughed.

Deathtrap watched as Artemis was forced to duck back behind the wall of the fake shipping container she was using as cover as Shiva turned four of her guns onto it. When they were empty, she stopped walking along the top of the vehicle that she was on and chucked them at the opening. Two of them sailed in while the other two spun around the room shooting away, less than a second later Artemis dove out with the edges of the explosion singeing the back of her shield.

He didn't like that, so he took aim at the temporarily stationary foe, whom had all but ignored him up until then and charged up his laser.

The impact of the red beam nearly knocked her off the top of the vehicle, knocking her aim completely off the girl who was dashing away from the shipping crates, and the resulting explosion finished sending her tumbling. The Digi-arms out of her back caught her and rolled her back to her feet as if nothing had happened, but the glare she threw at the floating robot told him that he had succeed in getting her attention.

She was starting to lose her cool, though the smile never left her face, the area around her eyes tightened noticeably. She seemed to be trying to make a choice when shots that had ricocheted off the wall slammed into her shield, helping her make her decision. She needed to cut down the number of opponents on the battlefield. She had no problem fighting against the odds, but at three on one, against highly competent opponents, well that made it a bit hard, even for her. Still, her shield was holding and she hadn't yet had to get serious, so she felt that she was in good shape.

Looking at her options she ruled out the annoying one that was hitting her around the vehicles, anyone able to do that would be able to dodge away and still fight. She also ruled out the robot, as nasty as that shot had been, he would be able to dodge away in more directions then the others. Which left the one she had talked to, it seemed that she was good at dodging, but lacked any of the tricks that the others had, meaning that she would be the easiest to take down since she needed to be at least partially out in the open to fight back. She would start there, then see if that enraged the others enough that they made mistakes, if not, well then, the robot was next.

Artemis watched in horror as all eight guns turned on her and opened fire. Swearing she did the only thing she could do, dove behind the tire of the nearest vehicle and waited. As her shield started to recover, she listened, behind the gunshots and all the other noises, she listened to the movements of her opponent, calculating where she was and which direction she would be attacking from. Artemis didn't have any tricks like Gaige, nor any heavy attacks like Deathtrap, so she had to fight the way she could, and if that meant drawing the ire of the opponent, well she would do the best she could at it.

She heard the strike of the Digi-arms against the ground and immediately grabbed the side of the tire and pulled, throwing her body under the vehicle. She felt more than heard the impact of the woman landing on top of the cab and as she rolled the length of the vehicle saw the short burst of fire hit where she'd just been.

Knowing that her opponent would lose interest in her if she couldn't find her, Artemis threw herself out from under the vehicle and dashed a short distance before firing at Shiva's back. The rounds once again hit her shield sending out sparks and crackles of electricity. Even as she watched, the woman spun around and spotted her with the look of someone who was about to capitalize on their opponent's mistake.

'Good' Thought Artemis 'As long as she thinks that she's directing the fight, I can keep her following me.' And with that she took off running.

The wave of bullets slammed into her shield, forcing her to change direction. Running at the next vehicle she waited until the last second before dropping into a slide and skidding her way to the other side. As she spun up against the tire, she heard the distinctive sound of the Digi-arms impacting the roof of the other vehicles cab and before Shiva could land on this one, Artemis ducked back under.

Deathtrap watched the chase around the room, quickly grasping what Artemis was doing and helped her in the only way he could at the moment, firing his electo-laser at the multi-limbed opponent. Each shot that connected managed to slice into the field, weakening it bit by bit.

As he watched the woman jumped between vehicles, easily clearing the distance between them in a single bound, her guns always searching for a target. The instant she landed, she was hanging over the edge to shoot the girl that was no longer there. To her credit the second she saw that she spun around and dashed to the other side, ready to catch her prey making a break for it, only this time, Artemis had just rolled under the vehicle, only to roll back out as soon as it was clear. She gave a signal to Deathtrap and the instant he motioned back, booked it, trying to put some distance between herself, Shiva, and where Gaige was hiding.

For his part, Deathtrap fired another elcro-laser into Shiva to buy her time, to which his opponent casually spun two guns his direction and fired, forcing him to dodge. Even as he did, the stream of fire from Gaige continued, bouncing off the walls to hit her shield. He knew that she wanted to get out and fight properly, but she also knew that this was the best way to do it, even if she didn't like it.

Still, it was only a matter of time before something went wrong, and just as Shiva's shield was getting near the breaking point, it did.

As Artemis dashed from cover, firing at Shiva, the woman didn't give chase, instead opting to toss her nearly full SMG in her path. The gun landed and sprouted legs as it turned to the running girl and opened fire, forcing her to dive to the side. Shiva took advantage of this and jumped at her, pulling a pair of blades as she did.

Artemis jumped aside, barely avoiding the initial strike, but then to her surprise, Shiva used the two arms that had the blades to swing herself forward at incredible speed, planting a powerful kick into her gut, sending her flying.

She bounced and rolled before coming to a stop. As she did so she heard the sound of metal against the ground and out of the corner of her eye spotted Shiva coming down at her. Without time to get out of the way, the best she could do was to twist herself so that the limbs landed on either side of her, but unfortunately for her, that trapped her without room to dodge or pull herself out.

Looking up, she saw the triumphant look in the woman's eyes as she brought the blades down. A fraction of a second before the blade impacted her, something grabbed her and sent her flying.

Deathtrap had seen what was about to happen and had dove in, grabbing the girls' leg and pulling her out from under the other woman. As soon as he was clear he took off, flying away with the girl still firmly grasped by the ankle.

As she found herself flying, Artemis replaced her dropped SMG with her pistol and fired off a shot at the back of their opponent. Whether it was luck, her knowledge of mechanics, or her natural ability to find weak points, the shot tore through one of the limbs at the perfect angle, shearing it off and sending the severed arm spinning away.

Shiva watched the arm hit the ground with a frozen expression, she had been sure that she had the girl and yet it had turned out like this. For the first time, she had taken major damage to her rig. She had lost an arm. And while that didn't impair her combat ability that much, it was more of the principle of the thing.

She was mad. Pissed off. It wasn't like she had been taking the fight that lightly, but now, she was serious. Deadly serious. It had struck home that if she didn't end this soon, she might not be the one walking away. So, she let out as intimidating a howl as she could and turned to where the robot was setting the girl down.

Gaige heard the howl from where she was shooting from and sighed. It wasn't like she wasn't peeking out and keeping tabs on how the fight was going, it was that she didn't know how to help any more then she already was. Admittedly, when she saw what was happening to Artemis she had tried to help, but her method of fighting relied on more than a little amount of randomness. She wanted to be more in the fight, but she knew what the other girl would say if she tried, 'This is for nothing if you die.' and 'You should've stayed in cover, you can fight from there, besides, I should be the one in danger, I still owe you.'. It was the last one that made her leave her cover and dash out.

Shiva's back was to her, all of her attention was on the other two, so Gaige switched weapons as she ran. She watched as the woman chucked all six of her guns, causing the others to dive in separate directions. Gaige slid to a stop and leveled the triple barreled shotgun at her opponent and fired.

But just as she pulled the trigger the woman spun around, smacking the gun to the side, causing the shots to miss. Without pausing to let Gaige pull back she grabbed hold of her arms and pulled her up so that they were face to face.

"Well if you want to volunteer to be first..." She hissed, her eyes flashing.

Gaige struggled against the unbreakable strength of the Digi-arms as Shiva reached for her knives. Knowing that she didn't have any time to spare Gaige did the only thing she could, she kicked with all her might.

The spike covered boot slammed into the woman's rock-hard abs with as much force as she could muster and while it might not have done much damage, it hit her just right to cause her to drop her.

Hitting the ground hard she looked up to see Shiva looking down at her with a psychotic gleam in her eyes, the knife raised to strike down. She raised a boot to place on Gaige's chest to hold her in place, ignoring the shots that tore into her from the other two and drove it down.

Gaige twisted as she saw it coming and managed to avoid getting stomped on, but she took the follow up kick to the ribs. Rolling over she winced and saw the woman take a step, prepping to kick her again. With no other options springing to mind, Gaige did the only thing she could and punched the incoming leg. Her cybernetic, which could punch through concrete, slammed into the incoming leg and with a sickening snap, the leg bent in the wrong spot.

To her credit she neither screamed nor passed out, probably a benefit of her training, but she launched herself back, skittering away on four of her arms as the fifth held her broken leg in place. Her arms grabbed into the walls, lifting her up as she climbed her way to the ceiling. Holding herself in place, two of her arms held her leg in place while her normal hands stuck her with an Insta-Health vial.

Artemis ran over to where Gaige was getting herself up, firing her pistol at Shiva as she went, trying to keep her from fixing herself, or at least trying to prevent her shield from recharging.

"What the hell were you thinking? You had a perfectly good place to shoot from, you should've stayed in cover."

Gaige sighed as she heard almost verbatim what she had imagined. Rubbing her ribs, she pulled her gun off her back and replied "I was tired of you two taking all the risk, plus I thought I saw an opening, so I took it."

"And almost died because of it. You shouldn't rush this."

"Yeah well, you almost died yourself. If we don't change things up, next time Deathtrap might not be fast enough to save you."

"And neither of us might be fast enough to save you."

"True, but I'm not one to sit around and let others do the fighting for me. I wanna be in the thick of it, it's how I fight."

"So, I'm a coward for not wanting to take unnecessary risks?"

"That's not what I...you know what, we'll finish this later, right now, I wanna finish this bitch."

"On that we agree."

It wasn't like they'd been standing still while talking, they had been dodging the shots coming from the ceiling and sending back ones of their own. Shiva scuttled around the ceiling, having taken the time to splint her leg, and was now firing away with three of her arms as the other four grabbed onto anything they could, and when they couldn't find anything, they punched into the ceiling itself to find purchase. Letting go with two of her arms she grabbed hold of the steel girders running the length of the room and pulled out two more guns as she swung between the beams.

The girls split and ran under the barrage of fire. Gaige opened fire on the ground in front of her, letting the Anarchy laced bullets fly. Without looking, she could hear them hitting their target even as she dove into a slide under the nearest vehicle. Artemis meanwhile dove into the scorched container long enough to reload and regret that she didn't have another SMG on her. She was also regretting leaving her rifle behind, but she had figured that it wouldn't be all that useful in a close-range fight. She dashed back around the door and opened fire on the woman dancing along the ceiling.

Deathtrap watched the woman clinging to the ceiling and considered his options. His heavy weapon would take too long to charge up to be of use here, and his electric laser might be of some use, but that harness was no doubt insulated, which left him his claws and his caustic laser. The latter would be the most useful, but not against her.

Aiming to where she might go next, he fired off a shot, targeting the beams. The caustic laser sliced into the metal, leaving a green sizzling cut behind. Sweeping around the room he continued to fire away, slicing the beams where he could till, he saw Shiva grab onto one of them. The weakened beam gave way under the additional weight, causing her to nearly plummet along with the metal. Her arms tossed the guns and scrambled to catch anything, barely managing to snag one of the nearby vents, which promptly started to give way, but it was enough to allow her to swing to the next beam and from there she jumped to the wall and onto the floor with a string of curses.

Gaige watched the opponent hit the floor, her Digi-arms absorbing the impact before setting her down. Switching to her assault rifle, Gaige rolled out and opened fire while moving to the next bit of cover. Artemis was right, it might not be the way she preferred to fight, but she needed to change it up to fit her opponent. Besides, she was still fighting in her own way, letting the Anarchy filled bullets bounce around the room till they shredded their target.

Shiva whipped around and spotted the red-haired girl dashing across the open ground, sending sprays of reality defying bullets bouncing her way. Bullets that she couldn't seem to dodge. She'd made a mistake. She should have dealt with this one first. The other two had to step out to fight her, but this one could just hide, and after the mistake she had made trying to sneak up on Shiva, it was unlikely that she would make the same mistake a second time, so now was the time to nip this bud.

She raised herself on her additional arms and sprung after her, only to catch the other girl out of the corner of her eye stepping forward and whipping something into her path. Her mind, well-honed by years in covert ops, as well as living with bandits, instantly recognized it as a grenade and slammed her arms into the ground to redirect her forward momentum.

She barely managed to throw herself out of the way as the grenade exploded in a wide nova of fire, and then her path after the girl was cut off by the incessant rain of fireballs that followed.

She didn't know whether to be impressed or annoyed. It was a good tactic, to cut off her mobility as best that they could, but it would only hold her temporarily and if she still had her shield, she would have just bullied her way through.

But, she realized, that hadn't been their plan. No, what the girl had been trying to do was give her friend time to get out of sight again, and in that she had succeeded. But now Shiva had no open targets but her, so she spun around and brought up her guns again as the girl dove back around the edge of the container.

Gaige had felt the fire singe the back of her ponytails, it had been that close behind her, but it had shaken the woman off her trail so she was grateful. Part of her wished that Artemis had aimed a little further behind her, but she knew that if it had been, the woman would have just dashed through it. Still, she had a new spot to catch her breath, so she poked her head out and took a quick survey of the situation.

Deathtrap was flying around, firing lasers at the woman, even as she nimbly dodged around them and continued to shoot at where Artemis was hidden, slowly moving around to where she would be able to see her directly. The real problem was that each time she reloaded, she chucked the guns into the space, hitting the girls shield. Gaige knew that she couldn't take much more of that before her shield broke and she started to get seriously hurt, so she needed to move quickly.

She grabbed the side of the cab of the vehicle she was using as cover and pulled herself up, into the narrow gap between it and the back. Planting her foot, she pushed off the side and got her hands onto the top. Just as she did, she heard the sound of one of Artemis's grenades going off. 'Clever, trying to use one as a smoke screen' she thought as she pulled herself up. Peeking over the top, she made sure it was clear, and out of the corner of her eye caught Deathtrap trying to circle around to drive Shiva off of Artemis.

She heaved and pulled herself up, only to be slammed in the side by something. Landing hard in the bed of the vehicle she groggily turned and saw Shiva looking down on her. 'When did she get there?' Gaige thought before realizing that the entire attack on Artemis had been bait to draw out her real prey.

Artemis had dashed out in time to see something go flying into the bed of the vehicle as Shiva stood triumphantly on top, meaning it could only be one thing. Not even taking the time to think that the woman had used her own smoke screen against her, taking the moment of being in cover to maneuver to attack, she pulled her gun and fired at her.

The shots both hit, the first in the thigh and the second in the arm. But before Artemis could move any further, one of the Digi-arms flipped something at her and the next second she felt herself slam into the side of the container as her right arm exploded in pain.

The only reason that she didn't scream was that the pain was so great that it froze her diaphragm, locking the noise inside her. Slowly turning her head, she saw that her arm was pinned to the side of the container by one of Shiva's blades, which had went clean through her arm, bone and all to hold her in place with the guard. Turning back, she saw Shiva drop into the back of the vehicle, though her arms were still visible as she advanced on the fallen Gaige.

Gaige rolled over just as a metal limb slammed into the bed next to her head, followed immediately by a second on the other side, trapping her. She looked up as a third hand smacked away her gun and the woman pulled her remaining blade. Shiva looked down and the makeup cracked further as she smiled gleefully and raised the blade, ready to plunge it into Gaige's heart when the room echoed with a loud boom and the hand, just above the wrist, exploded and went flying.

Shiva staggered back and then forward holding the gory stump before letting out a screech of pain. Gaige didn't waste any time, hopping to her feet and using the momentum delivered a left-handed uppercut with all of her strength behind it.

The blow smashed into the woman's jaw, raising her off her feet and throwing her from the back of the vehicle, where midair, Deathtrap, whom had been flying in at top speed to save Gaige, caught Shiva by the head and slammed her down onto the ground with all the force he could.

He flew over to where Gaige was still getting her feet under her and helped her down from the back. She glanced around and saw Artemis, still pinned to the wall, with her smoking backup piece dangling at her side.

Gaige motioned for Deathtrap to keep an eye on Shiva as she ran over to where Artemis was barely standing. As she got close, she took in the sweaty pallor of the girl and knew that she was nearly passing out, so she tried to get her talking as Gaige got to work.

"This is gonna hurt" She said as she grabbed the blade.

"As, opposed, to, what?" Came the panted reply.

Gaige shrugged and pulled. The blade came free even as Artemis let out a string of non-word curses and slumped down holding her arm.

Crouching down next to her, Gaige looked around before shrugging and unhooking the girl's chest guard and wrapped it around her arm, adding in her own hammer to complete the splint before injecting her with an Insta-Health vial.

The medicine took immediate effect and her color began improving. Soon she was able to push herself back to her feet and managed to get out a "Thanks".

Gaige stood up and handed her back her guns with a smile and said "I should be thanking you. Now what do ya say we go over there and make sure she's dead?"

"Best thing I've heard in a while." Artemis said taking her guns back.

They walked over to where Shiva was still lying and each leveled a gun at her.

"Ready?" Gaige asked, and with a nod, they fired, killing the last of the Lords of the Death.