Chapter 29

Garden of Minos

The girls hunkered down behind the small rise, waiting for the next shot to come.

"You think it's the bandits?" Gaige asked.

"Really? Have you ever known a bandit to fire off only one shot?"

"Well, no, but..."

"It's Orion, he must've found us."

"Who's this Orion person anyway?"

"Another hunter, but for right now, let's shelve that conversation and deal with him first." She thought a moment as she looked around "Well, he must be on the same level as us, since there aren't any ships above us in that direction, which means he doesn't have that advantage, so, since I doubt we can take him out at the moment, we need to either flush him out, or drive him off."

"I take it you've got a plan."

"Not a good one, but something. First off, I need the rifle."

Gaige didn't hesitate and handed over the DAHL assault rifle she was carrying with a "Full clip, set on semi-auto."

"Good, now to create an opening." She rolled onto her back and waved her hand low to get Deathtrap's attention. He turned and nodded to her from his hiding place behind the central tower. Jinx mouthed to him 'Ignore my signals, wait for me to yell and then circle him any way you can.'

He nodded in response and she started making hand signals to him to fall back to the other side of the tower, but she was making them a bit higher than she needed to.

She rolled over as Gaige figured out what she was doing and offered "Give me the pistol, I can poke the barrel around the corner just before you go."

Jinx nodded and handed it over before pulling herself into a crouch and wiggling slightly, trying to get used to the feeling of her missing ribs. Without a word she held her hand up with three fingers extended and counted them down.

At zero, Gaige poked out just a hair and pulled back as the sniper round tore through the space just in front of her. At the same moment, Jinx tore out and dropped into a slide behind the next rise in the ship.

Rolling onto her stomach, she checked the rifle and then yelled "Go." To Deathtrap, who immediately flew straight away from the shooter and dove off the side of the ship, using it for cover as he flew to the side.

Jinx knew that Orion must be checking all three positions at that moment, and would be starting to panic at his disintegrating sense of control. She needed him to look away, even if it was just for a moment, so she waved to Gaige, who got what she was after and took off running back towards the stairs, dropping into a slide after a few steps and dove back to where she originally was as the rifle cracked again and the round went wide.

The instant that Gaige had dropped into a slide, Jinx had rolled out from behind the cover and lined up her shot. The muzzle flash let her know exactly where her target was and she sighted it in as best she could, lamenting the fact that she was using an assault rifle instead of her trusty sniper rifle, but she didn't have any choice at the moment, and the rifle was still better than the pistol. Regardless, she quickly sighted in on her prey and squeezed off a shot.

Even at the distance, she heard the shout and the cursing that followed as her bullet almost hit its mark. Still, she didn't move, instead opting to wait and see what her opponent did.

In next to no time at all, she spotted Deathtrap flying across the bottom of the ship and after giving her a sign, popped up on the backside of it, only to look around for a second, before spinning the other way. Seeming to find nothing, he gave a sign and continued to hold his position, scanning the area as the girls dashed over to where he was.

Getting there, they found no sign of Orion, only a score across the top of the protrusion that he'd been using as cover and a small splatter of blood.

"You got him." Gaige exclaimed.

"No, one of the chips kicked up by the bullet must've hit him. Not enough blood and not the right angle to be from my bullet."

"Still, to get that close at that range, with an assault rifle, I couldn't do that."

"No, but you've got tricks of your own, and besides, if I had my sniper rifle, I would've taken him out and we wouldn't have to be looking over our shoulders from now on."

"So, I gotta ask, what'd you do to piss this guy off anyway?"

"Hell if I know. Probably just breathing."

"But you know him? I mean, you've met him before, or did you just know him by reputation?"

"We met. Briefly." Jinx sighed and looked around "Which was probably enough to piss him off. Still, we need to get outta here. He probably went that way, so we should go that way." She said, making small hand gestures.

Gaige looked like she wanted to say something more, but just nodded and followed along. It wasn't long before Jinx spoke up again.

"You remember what I said, the day we met I think it was, about how I won the Montamore estate?"

"Yeah, you said there was a contest."

"Right, and I also said that the old man's relatives brought in outsiders to do their hunting for them."

"Yeah, and that didn't sit well with Sir Montamore, right?"

"Correct, well, Orion was one of them."

"The hunters right, not the relatives."

"Wha? Yes the hunters." Jinx snapped "He was actually Morrigan's, that's Montford's mother by the way, but he was her hunter."

"Was he any good?"

"Came in third I think."

"Outta? How many?"

"Twenty-three. No wait, it was twenty-seven, four of them had accidents before the hunt began, that's right."

"Accidents?"

"One drank poison, one had an allergic reaction to something he ate, one slipped on a loose rug at the top of the stairs, and I think one had his foot run over by a carriage."

"Oh, those kinds of 'Accidents'. Still, this Orion must be pretty good if he came in third."

"He's not bad, but he's dirty. Didn't hunt clean. Let's put it this way, if he'd been able to add the other hunters to his trophy count, he probably would've won."

"Oh, so what's he doing here? Other than being after you I mean. Wait, you don't think that he's seeking revenge for being beat, do you?"

"No. If I had to guess, I'd say he was still in the employ of Morrigan, or maybe Montford, and they sent him to try and eliminate me to get the estate back."

"That's ridiculous. Not that I don't believe you, it's just, why go that far for a house? I mean, it's a nice house and all that, but isn't that a bit excessive?"

"No, I agree. But even more ridiculous is that fact the it won't do them any good, I already changed the inheritance succession paperwork."

"The whositwhatsit?"

"Basically, who gets the estate in the event of my untimely demise. OK, put another way, if I die, it doesn't go to them anymore."

"So, who does get it? Wait, that's a bit personal, don't answer if you don't want."

"You do, though I might change that when we get back."

"Me?"

"Who else did I have? I mean, I set it up to go to you, and if something had happened to you, which since I thought we'd be together seemed likely, then it'd go to your dad, and if he wasn't around, then to Sir Hammerlock."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I just kinda figured that he'd appreciate it, and wasn't hard up enough to take out the others in his way and nice enough not to either."

"You're right, that doesn't sound like him. But wow, you were gonna leave that entire estate to me? You thought that much of me. I feel like such an ass."

"Of course, if you killed me, the estate would skip you and your family. Just throwing that out there."

"I'd never!"

Jinx just shrugged and kept walking, turning a few times till she came to a large ship and stopped.

"What's up?" Gaige asked.

"We need guns. This ship might do."

"I guess."

"Can you open it?"

"Who do you think you're talking to?" Gaige said, pulling the tools out of her belt and getting to work on the hatch. "But why this ship?"

It was a fair question, they'd passed over a number of other ships, some that looked like nothing more than cargo haulers, a few that looked like abandoned wrecks that must've drifted in and another private ship. But this one wasn't anything special, it looked like a decent mid-sized ship without anything really to set it apart.

"Nothing, it's just, well, I think this is a smugglers ship, or something."

"Why?"

Jinx just shrugged.

"Gut feeling? Whatever, we'll know soon enough." And with that the door slid open.

Leaving Deathtrap to guard, Gaige took point, not that they expected any resistance, but she had taken back the DAHL rifle, so she was the best armed. She swept in and cleared the area, finding nothing of note. In fact, it looked much the same as it had on the outside, a plain ship.

Jinx followed her in, but unlike Gaige, she wasn't tensed up, instead she just cocked her head and nodded before following along.

When they got to the central corridor, Jinx spoke up. "I'll check the back, the engineering and hold, why don't you check the crew quarters and bridge area, see what you can find?"

Gaige shrugged despite wanting to search for more tools and headed to the bow of the ship and started making her way aft, checking each room as she went, making sure to double check the closets for hidden panels, till she made her way past where they'd split up.

Not running into Jinx by then, she started to get worried, but continued her sweep, eventually finding the other girl in the hold.

"This is where you've been this entire time? I mean, I finished searching the rest of the ship and found nothing. How about you?"

"Well, I was right. Smugglers." Came the reply as she casually gestured to an open panels on the wall and floor. Gaige stepped over and looked in. There were stacks of crates and boxes, a few of which had been pried open revealing their contents. They were packed with contraband, from boxes of Helian cigars, to cases of Velir liquor, to underground Truxican ECHOs, all of it would be worth a fair amount to the right buyer, but was all worthless here.

"Well, this is all junk." She announced walking over to where Jinx was "You find anything else?"

"First off, it's not junk. Sure, most of it's worthless, but that liquor's listed at, like, 145 proof, so we can use it for disinfectant or even Molotov cocktails if need be. But no, not what we're looking for, but I did find this which isn't bad."

She moved aside a bit to show Gaige the bag that had been tucked between the crates in the floor. Inside was a stack of papers, a couple of rolls of money and two guns, a short Jakobs shotgun and a SMG from a brand she didn't immediately recognize.

Leaning in for a closer look she muttered "Must be a, I think it was called, bug-out bag? That sounds about right."

"What's that?"

"It's something that people like smugglers and spies and such have, remember that movie we watched, with the double agent? The thing she grabbed from inside the wall? This is the real-world version. I bet those papers are IDs and such."

Jinx picked them up and flipped through them muttering the names on them "Yep, but who chooses Gabriel Dynamite as their allies?"

"Someone desperate to sound cool?"

Jinx just shook her head and pulled the guns out. "Well, at least there were guns. Got a single shot Jakobs and a...what is this thing?"

"Lemme see it." Gaige took the SMG and looked it over, after a minute she said "It's a MA."

"It's got kids?"

"What? No, MA. As in M, A, stands for Mangala Arms, they used to be headquartered on Partali I think. Anyway, they tried starting a fight with the Torgue corporation, didn't end well for them."

"Really?" Jinx replied, voice dripping with sarcasm. She took the SMG back and asked "So they're like Istivan's corporation, gone and mostly forgotten. So what were these MA weapons known for?"

"Whatda ya mean?"

"Well, like Torgue fire gyro jets and Jakobs favors doing the most damage per shot, that kinda thing."

"Oh, well, their big thing was trying to figure out how to make each of their bullets split into multiple projectiles. After they went bankrupt other corporations bought them up and used their technology in some of their own guns."

"Ah, so it sounds like more of your thing."

"Yeah, these type of weapons work amazingly with my Anarchy, so why don't I take these new ones and give you the others."

"That's what I was suggesting."

"Yeah, I was just agreeing with you." Gaige paused for a second, realizing that they were getting a bit combative and made a peace offering "Look, sorry, we need to work together to get outta here, so, let's just try and get along."

"Yeah fine." Came the reply from Jinx as she stood up and handed over the guns. While she was at it, she tossed over the money. Taking the assault rifle as they started to leave, she paused and said "What are we doing here anyway?"

"Huh? We were looking for guns, weren't we?"

"No. I mean, yes, but I was wondering what we're doing here. In this place. Like, why did you want to come here, even after you knew that this place was a trap. I mean, you'd finally gotten back your family and everything, so, I gotta ask, why?"

Gaige stopped, facing away and didn't say anything for a little while, eventually she started talking softly "That's something that I've been trying to figure out since we got here, and especially since we, I, messed us up, and, I haven't come up with a concrete answer, but I suppose there were a couple of reasons, though none of them were good, at least not really good.

"I guess at its core, it's that you're right about me, I am a coward in the face of happiness. I think that, at least in part, it was that I became scared of having it all. I mean, like you said, I'd gotten my family back, you helped me take care of Holloway, I even had gotten a friend, so I think I was worried that I had too much. That I was afraid that I'd lost something of myself along the way, like, I donno, maybe getting everything that I'd wanted had cost me some part of what made me good. That I didn't have anything to strive for anymore. That I would be too scared of losing everything to actually throw myself into a dangerous situation like I used to. I don't think I'm articulating it well, but I think you got that.

"The next thing I thought of was kinda similar, but that I wanted to prove I was still a badass, I mean I feel like I've been stumbling a lot lately, in combat and such I mean, doing things that I never used to do, like getting captured by bandits, twice now actually, but things like that and I wanted to prove that I was still at least partially as good as I thought I was. Well that and I didn't think there was any challenge here that we couldn't handle. I mean, I thought as long as the three of us were together, we could handle just about anything, so I guess it was arrogance.

"Then there's the one that's hard to say, but I suppose I need to be honest to prove to you that I want to repair what I broke, so here goes. I think the other main reason that I made us come here was you. That's not trying to put the blame on you or anything like that, far from it, this was all my fault. It's just that everything that we've done up till now was all to help me, I never got a chance to help you, to pay you back for all the things that you've done for me, so when the chance came along, I jumped at it, I ignored all the things that should've warned me away and forced us to come here, despite knowing it was a trap.

"Well, there was also the fact that we were kinda on rocky ground, so I guess that I thought that if we went on an adventure, especially one where we couldn't get out of easily, you'd have to talk to me, let me in and tell me what was up. That and I was hoping that we could patch things up, though I really dropped the ball on that, didn't I?"

"Yeah, you did. But I kinda get it now, not that I agree with you, but at least that's out and we've cleared the air a bit, so let's go."

"So where to next?" Gaige asked as they started down the corridors.

"Outta the ship, unless there's something else you wanna look for in here."

"Not what I was meaning, but now that you mention it, was there anything of use, other then the bag I mean?"

"I did find some tools, and more importantly I got us some soundproof headphones."

"Well, that's at least something, what kinda tools?"

"Basic stuff, pretty much what you found, but that's beside the point, what were you meaning then?"

"Well, after we get off this ship, where's the next stop?"

"You want me to decide everything?"

"No, but, well"

"You can make up your own mind."

"I know that, and I can, it's just that you seem to be the one in charge right now, so I was seeing if you had an idea or if we needed to brainstorm or something."

"Fine. Way I see it, we need more guns and equipment before we can make another attempt at the Orochi, so we've got a few options. One, we can keep raiding ships, looking for stuff. It'll take time, and there's no guarantee that we'll find anything, but it's relatively safe. Or, second, we could go fight some bandits. Not suggesting that we hit their camp, but find a roving patrol, they would most likely have better equipment then we could find on a ship, or at least a better chance of getting something good, but it runs the risk of not just fighting them, but alerting others in the area and getting surrounded. Next option would be to try and make it back to the Hunter's Moon. We know what's there, but that would be one of the harder options, almost impossible really, cause not only would we have to get to it, but we'd need to find Mentes's home first, like I said earlier. And the last option that I can think of is that we head back to the Bear's Den and see if we can get their help. Obvious problem there would be that they probably would say no."

"Yeah, I'm saying no to option four. We'll need to go back to the Bear's, but we need to do that after the creature's dead."

"Why's that?"

"Got a plan to get them to help us hit the lower floor, but we need to have taken care of the creature first."

"I'll leave that to you. So, we've got three options, unless you've got another you wanna share?"

"Nope. Well, there is one other option, but it sucks."

"And that is?"

"Hitting the bandit camp and getting our stuff back."

"Too big of a risk at this point."

"Yeah, that's why I said it sucked. But as far as options go, as much as returning to the ship sounds good, it also sounds pretty impossible at this point, like you said, I mean, I guess we could go looking for this Mentes's place while raiding ships as we go, and if we run into any bandit patrols that look handleable, we could take them out as we go."

"So, a combination? Seems plausible, the only problem is that I'm sure that Mentes lived down quite a ways, far enough that I could feel a difference in the gravity."

"How much so?"

"A fair amount. At the very least, it was more than was at the bandit camp."

"Hmm, so we'd have to find a way down, and then back up is what you're saying. That could be a problem, I'd rather not rely on Deathtrap to carry us around too much."

"Why?"

"Well, I could argue about energy use, or servo wear and tear, but really it's just undignified for him."

Jinx just shook her head and headed out the door to where Deathtrap was waiting for them. He spotted them and gave an all-clear sign.

They stepped out on the deck and looked around. "So, we've been headed in that direction." Jinx said, motioning the way they'd come from and out the other way "But where was the bandit camp?"

"Wait, you don't know that, and yet you were still leading us?"

"Well, I wasn't in any real position to remember it, was I?"

"Well, no, but...you're right, I shoud've remembered that. It's, um..."

"Urgu" Deathtrap said pointing down and off the aft on the port side.

"Hmm, we've been headed kinda towards it, haven't we?" Jinx said squinting off the side of the ship as if she could make it out.

"Urru"

"Well, we haven't ran into anything yet, so we should keep going, where's the wall?"

"Why'd you have to say that?" Gaige groaned, realizing too late what the other girl was saying.

"Huh?"

"Don't 'Huh' me, you can't be saying things like that, it's bad luck."

"What's bad luck about a wall?"

"Not that, saying things like we haven't run into anything. You can't say things like that."

"Weren't you the one mocking my superstitions like, a couple of hours ago?"

"No, I mean, I wasn't mocking them, I just didn't agree with them."

"But yours are different somehow?"

"Yeah, no, I mean, saying things like that always seem to precede something bad happening."

"Or maybe you only notice because you're looking for a connection."

"Says the person that thinks saying something about them being gay brings suffering."

"You really wanna go there?"

"Urgurrr" Deathtrap said, smacking both of them in the backs of the head.

"OW!" They groaned in unison, before looking at him with teary eyes. He just shot them a flat look that cowed both of them.

"Sorry." Jinx said.

"No, you're right, it's not fair of me to mock your superstitions when I so strongly defend my own. But you still shouldn't say things like that."

"Fine, I'll try not to. But, nothing." She said motioning around them.

Gaige had barely started to groan when the first bullet pinged off the deck next to them.