Chapter 32

Garden of Minos

Jinx slowly reached up and pulled her headphones off, allowing all the ambient noise to come rushing back in. She slowly turned and saw Gaige doing the same.

"Is it dead?" She asked, quieter than usual.

"I think so, buddy, you got anything to say?"

"Urru"

"Good. Yep, it's dead. Nice saves by the way. Thanks for that." She said while holding her hand up for him to give her five.

"Man, no wonder you couldn't take that thing out alone. We barely managed together, not that I was much help." Gaige seemed a bit down on herself.

"I donno about that, you took out one head."

"Yeah, just one, Deathtrap took out, what, three? So, you got, what, four of them?"

"Maybe, but if you hadn't taken that one out, it would've been a lot harder to take the rest of them, plus, you made a good distraction, for a while..."

"Sorry about that, that was just a bit scary bursting out of the deck like that, but it didn't seem too interested in me really."

"Yeah, seemed to have a grudge against me, probably wasn't used to prey getting away, not to mention hurting it. Oh, and you also saved me back there, thanks for that by the way."

"Don't mention it, it was about time that I got to help you."

Jinx noticed that the other girl wasn't looking at her directly. In fact, she seemed to be looking anywhere but her. She kept looking over at the Orochi's corpse and looking away in a bit of disgust, but not at Jinx, which was making her feel unwelcome. Just as she was about to say something, she spotted her own arms, still covered in blood and globs of saliva and realized what was wrong.

Before she could say anything, Gaige spoke up "So, should we find the Ranger's Iron, or did you wanna do something else first?"

"I should probably get a shower."

Gaige glanced at her and then quickly away "That's your first priority?"

"Well, I don't wanna get whatever we're after covered in gunk, do I?"

"That's fine and all, but could you cover up first? It's makin me a bit, uh, self-conscious."

"Cover up?" Jinx said in confusion, but Gaige just made a motion at her torso causing her to look down and find that one side of her tank top was hanging open.

She quickly tried to fix it, but wasn't making much progress and tried to ease her own embarrassment by saying "What, it's not like it's gonna get any smaller by getting seen, besides, it's not like you haven't seen them before."

"What? I never..."

"Come on, I woke up naked."

"I didn't peek! I looked away while it was happening, not that there's anything wrong with your body, I just didn't think it was appropriate to look while you were unconscious."

"So, while I'm conscious is fine?"

"That's not what I meant!"

"I was just teasing. But this shirt's shot. I can't get this, maybe you could give me a hand with it?"

Gaige turned around and found the other girl looking away, holding up the strap for her. She slid up and quickly grabbed the ends and tried to ignore their sliminess as she tied them into a knot while saying "Sorry."

"Now what?"

"I'm sorry I ripped your shirt."

"Wasn't like I was fond of it, besides, you tore it saving my life, so small price to pay. And anyway, only you two saw anything, so it's not that bad. But I guess we should be glad all the same that you didn't end up wearing that dress, right?"

Despite her words, Gaige could see Artemis's ears were glowing red, telling her that she was in fact embarrassed about being seen and was desperately trying to cover her embarrassment behind a thin facade, so Gaige decided to let it drop and switched subjects.

"Right. So, are we moving out right away?"

"Nah, need to collect some trophies from this thing." She turned to Deathtrap and asked him "I'll need a hand with that, if you're willing."

Gaige interrupted his nod with a "Seriously?"

"Yeah, I mean, I don't think I'll be able to cut through this thing, especially with the lack of knives and such that I have at the moment."

"Not that, I was meaning, you're seriously concerned about getting a trophy, right now?"

"Why not? I mean, I'm already covered in blood, so I can't get much, uh, gooier, so why not get right into it. When his energy levels are back, I mean."

"Again, not what I'm meaning. I mean, is this the right time for this? Shouldn't we be worried about bandits or something?"

"What, you think someone's just gonna stumble in on us? No one's coming in here, not for a while at least, which gives us a little time and I, for one, want to be able to prove that I've faced one of these, and won. That, and I want a jacket made out of its scales."

Gaige looked at the creature and muttered "OK, that I get."

"Besides, don't you wanna be able to prove to Sir Hammerlock that you helped take the legendary Luring Orochi down?"

"No. I mean, yes. I mean, let me start over. I would like to be able to prove that I faced it, though I still don't think that I did all that much. It's just that I don't know if this is really the best time is all."

"Look, if we don't collect stuff from it now, we might not get another chance. I mean, we might not get to come back this way, so if we're taking trophies, it's gotta be now."

"You really seem adamant about this."

"Well, this might have been the last one of the Luring Orochi's left anywhere."

"And we killed it."

"It's not like we had a choice in the matter."

"I know, it's just that if it was really the last one, I feel a bit bad for it is all."

"That Vadosarin that we killed on Pandora was one of a kind. So was the Pseudo-Siren queen. As well as whatever that thing that I fought in the dump. And then there was the Warrior or whatever it was called that you killed. And the Keeper of the End. But you didn't feel bad about them, did you?"

"Well, no, but..."

"Just cause something's unique, or the last of its kind doesn't mean that you should just let it live, sometimes it's for that reason that you can't. There are plenty of creatures that should have been allowed to live, but got wiped out, and plenty of others that shouldn't be, continue to exist, now granted, most of those are man-made things, or Eridian made, but that's beside the point, we can feel bad about them being gone, but, like in this case, if it comes down to you or it, you have to go through it. That's all there is to it. This, or the Warrior are a threat to everyone if they get out, so they need to be taken care of, that's all there is to it."

"Doesn't mean I have to like it."

"No, it doesn't."

"And it doesn't mean you have to nail its head to the wall either."

"No, but I wanna. Plus, this thing did nearly eat me, so there is that."

"Yeah, I gotta tell you, my heart nearly stopped when that happened."

"Yours? What about mine? That was terrifying."

"How did you avoid getting swallowed by the way?"

"Oh, ah, when I shot its mouth with the Torgue pistol, it kinda blasted a hole through the upper palate and I managed to jam my hand in there and hold on."

"Eww. Wait, what happened to the pistol anyway?"

"I kinda dropped it, and it's in there somewhere." She motioned to the body before continuing "Well, enough of that, buddy, you got enough energy to help me out?"

"Urru"

"Great, let's get started."

The two of them got to work, well, it was mostly Deathtrap doing the work and Jinx guiding him, but it wasn't long before they had the scales stripped away from the upper neck of one of the heads that he'd severed and as the girls watched, he took one of the sheets of deck plating and chopped through it, leaving only the head and a few feet of neck.

As Gaige got to work tying a cable she'd found in one of the ships around it, the other two got busy with Deathtrap cutting chunks of hide off while Jinx extracted some of the teeth and horns.

As she was stuffing them into her bag, Gaige couldn't help but call over "Why're you keeping so much random stuff? I mean, I get the head, and some of the scales, even the couple of claws you wanted, but that just seems like a lot of random stuff?"

Jinx sat back, holding a freshly extracted tooth that was longer than her arm and turned it around, examining it while she spoke.

"You know how I made the anti-electrical part of our cybernetics out of the Honey Stuck Wibbler's coating, right? And how the glazing that I colored the outside with was made from their wings? You never know what you can make out of parts, and it's not like there's a guide on this one, I mean, like I said, this was the only one I've ever even heard of, so it's not like anyone's making a list of what you can take from them, or what you shouldn't, so I don't want to leave anything behind that might be useful."

"Ah, and what do you think you can make outta that?"

"No idea, but I could probably use it for scales on a handle. Or make a chess set outta it. Or you could take it and hang it on your wall. The truth is that I won't know until I can check it out."

"Fine, just don't take too much."

"Why? The hold's mostly empty isn't it?"

"Yeah, but how're you getting it back there?"

"Er, oh yeah, that's a good point."

"Plus, don't we have to find that ship and get some stuff off of it too?"

"We may need to take multiple trips."

"I thought we might not be coming back this way?"

"We might not, but all that means is that we need to take only what we really want this time, and then see if we can come back."

"Urgurr"

"Right, sorry. That piece's good. That should be enough of that, cut off two of the claws where I marked and we'll be good, though I still want to cut open the side and see something."

"Oh that's just gross." Gaige gripped.

"What? I wanna see if I can figure out exactly how it was making that noise. Can you imagine how useful that would be in a fight?"

"I understand that, but you're talking about cutting it open and almost literally walking into it."

"Still standing here covered in gore."

"If you do that, I'm not standing downwind of you."

"There's no wind here."

"Or within thirty feet of you until you've washed."

Jinx turned away and muttered just softly enough that Gaige had to strain to hear her say "That's fine, you probably don't wanna be that close to me anyway, do you?"

Gaige winced, but didn't say anything back, instead she turned her attention to the task of bundling up all the various trophies. It wasn't that she didn't get the collecting of trophies, she did, in fact, she still had plenty of guns she'd taken off of defeated foes. And she understood everything that Artemis was telling her about learning from the creature, but she couldn't help but feel anxious about being out in the open for this long. But what was really getting to her was the way that Artemis was still making barbed comments to her what seemed like every chance she could get. Gaige knew that she deserved it, and that if that was the worst that she got, she should consider herself lucky, but she was getting tired of it, of the constant put downs, much like she'd been tired of Artemis's constant tearing herself down, but just like that, she didn't know how to address it, so she just took it for now.

Gaige sighed and as she finished tying the bundle together, turned around to find Artemis standing on top of the corpse looking around at its side.

"What are you doing?"

"Trying to figure out how it was making those noises."

Gaige sighed as she thought to herself 'at least she wasn't crawling inside it' and asked "And?"

"And what?"

"What d'yah mean, and what? What'd you figure out?"

"Oh, I doubt that we could replicate it. Looking at it and everything I think that it's got an extra set of lungs and some kinda bladder system inside that produces the 'song'. I think that a number of the heads are, or rather, were, constantly breathing in to fill the bladders or lungs or whatever and those alternated to push air through some organ inside that made the noise, so it could produce a constant 'song'."

"I'm gonna pretend that I understood more than three words of that so that we can move on."

"Fine." She turned to Deathtrap and asked "You at least got what I was sayin, right?"

"Urru"

"Good." She said as she hopped down.

"So, where's the ship?"

"Which one?"

"The one we're here for, which one did you think I meant?"

"Well, you could've been meaning my ship. Or Mentes's ship."

"OK, fine, you're right, but we're in here right now, so obviously we'd be looking for the Ranger's Iron."

"Then why didn't you ask that."

"I did."

"No, you asked where the ship was, why didn't you ask where the Ranger's Iron was?"

"Forget it." Gaige nearly screamed in frustration "Where's the damn ship!"

Artemis looked like she was about to ask which one again, but Deathtrap caught her eye and shook his head, much to Gaige's relief.

"Fine, I think it's that way." She said, pointing up at an angle and off to the side.

Gaige looked in that direction and cocked her head "How're we getting up?"

In the end, Deathtrap lifted them one at a time up four levels, figuring that if they wound up over where they needed to be, it would be easier to drop down then to go back up, especially since he'd be carrying a load of trophies.

As they headed in the direction that they hoped would lead them to the ship, they paused as they passed over the ship that the Orochi had been using for its den and looked down into it.

Gaige was the one to speak first as she said "Guess we should count ourselves lucky that it didn't decide to use the Ranger's Iron as its home."

"Yeah." Came the reply followed by "I think I'm gonna pass on going down there."

"Why would you want to?"

"Well, all of the gear that it's eaten would be in some kinda refuse pile down there, right? There's probably all kinds of rare stuff in there."

"Ah, true, but a refuse pile?"

"You know...it's"

"I KNOW WHAT A REFUSE PILE IS!"

"Don't shout at me like that. And if you knew, why were you asking?"

"I wasn't asking, I was just thinking that it would be pretty nasty to search through."

"Ah."

"But wait, if this thing eats people who drift in, well I suppose it would also eat anything else that comes in, but no matter, if it eats what comes in, and this area's sealed, how's it still alive?"

"You mean with its size and all? My guess is that it spends almost all of its time in a state close to hibernation. You know, sitting there 'singing' as it slows its heart and metabolic rates down to almost nothing and only wakes up when something draws near enough to eat."

"Well, that sounds like a life."

Jinx shrugged and said "Let's move on." Before she started to walk away.

It wasn't long before a ship came into view that all of them knew would be the Ranger's Iron. Something about the shape of the ship said old Jakobs to them. Its outside showed signs of battle, which lined up with what Mentes had said, and sitting next to it was what looked to be an equally battle scarred pirate ship, further cementing his story.

They got up to it and found the hatch hanging open, which caused Gaige to speak up.

"Well, let's hope what we're after's still on board."

"Oh, it should be."

"What makes you so sure?"

"We're pretty deep in the Orochi's territory, so it's not like a lot of bandits or scavengers come this way."

Gaige nodded and the other girl started to enter when Gaige stopped her. "Ah, before you go searching, you might wanna consider a shower or something. Maybe a change of clothes."

Jinx looked down at herself and nodded "Ah, yeah, probably wouldn't be amiss. Let's just hope that they still have water and anything that I can wear."

They started into the ship and made their way to the front without encountering anything, in fact, it was creeping Gaige out the way the ship looked like everyone on board had just gotten up and walked away, which she supposed was what'd happened.

For her part, Jinx didn't pay it any mind, since she knew what'd happened and instead focused on finding the captains quarters, which didn't take all that long and she soon found herself standing in the middle of a large room covered in wood paneling. Straight across from the door was a large desk covered in brass instruments and writing utensils. The wall directly behind the desk was covered in shelves of books and more instruments, a few of which she could identify as old stellar charting gear. On one side of the room was a door that led to a large conference room dominated by a table carved out of a single piece of wood so large that made her wonder if the ship had been built around it, because there was no way that it would fit through the door. Across from that was the captain's private quarters, where she found a door leading to a personal bathroom.

Wasting no time, she threw open the doors of the wardrobe and started rummaging through it, tossing clothes onto the bed haphazardly. Gaige shook her head as she watched, feeling torn. On one had she really didn't think that the other girl would find anything that would come close to fitting her in there, on the other, she was seeing some nice-looking clothes getting tossed, so she could sympathize with her for at least wanting to look.

It didn't take long for Jinx to have an armload that she carried into the bathroom and shut the door behind her.

Not wanting to just stand around while the other girl was showering, feeling it would be a bit creepy, Gaige wandered back out to the 'office' area and started going through the desk to see what she could find and quickly found the ships log, which this being a Jakobs ship, meant a large hardbound ledger filled with neat cursive writing.

She started at the end and worked her way back, finding that the last entry must have been before they'd been attacked by pirates, if what Mentes had told Artemis was to be believed. Scanning backwards she found mostly notes about crew conditions, astrological events, and some kind of internally coded system for stating where they'd stopped.

She hadn't made any headway on it when the door opened and Artemis came back out looking freshly scrubbed. Gaige was impressed that she'd found anything to fit her until she figured out that she'd washed her pants and had an oversized vest on under her chest protector which was hidden under a large leather jacket that had the sleeves rolled up and was still almost swallowing the girl up.

"Well, find anything?" She asked as she walked in, obviously pretending that the wet jeans weren't seriously uncomfortable.

"Nah. The ship's log isn't useful, everything's coded."

"Oh well, let's have a look around. Guess we should start up here and work our way back, though I'm guessing that most of the stuff we'd want would be in the hold."

"Probably, though in that case, why not start there?"

"You're the kind that can't wait to open their presents, aren't you?"

"Yeah, patients never was my strong suit. You?"

"Never got any presents, so I never felt any rush to find things. Plus, I've found that you never know what you'll find if you take your time."

"Fine. I suppose we should take our time here, this might be one of the few ships that we could find some good stuff on, since, well, you know."

They started at the front and worked their way back, searching each room as they went, trying not to think about the fate of the people that had once occupied the rooms they were now going through. In just about every cabin they found something of note, from guns and ammo, to gear and tools, and even a number of ECHO movies, though Gaige felt that Artemis was still too young for some of them, so she made sure to keep them from her eyes.

Pretty early on they found a sealed door that would require either a good investment of time, or the right keys to get through, so they made note of it and decided to come back to it at the end, since they both agreed that what they were after was probably on the other side of it, and the keys might still be in the captain's quarters, though they hadn't seen them, but they figured that they might still be somewhere in his rooms, since they hadn't really been looking for them.

They made their way to the cargo hold and found an absolute treasure trove of crates and boxes, each branded with the Jakobs name.

Each one of them took a side and started prying them open, finding guns of all kinds neatly lined up in some, others were filled with ammo.

Jinx was looking through a crate of assault rifles when Gaige called out to her. "I found something you should see."

She made her way quickly over to where the other girl was standing in front of a couple of pried open crates, and seeing her approach, Gaige stepped out of the way. Inside were sniper rifles. The first crate was filled with six of the same kind, ones that, while older, Jinx had still used before.

The other crate was of much greater interest to her, since it was filled with four rifles, each one slightly different from the rest. One of them had a scope that ran nearly the length of the rifle. The next had a shorter scope, but the barrel was heavier. The third was the shortest of them, but looked light and easy to use. The fourth had no scope, but the barrel and cylinder were considerably heavier than the others.

It was the last one that she pulled out, turning it over in her hands to get a feel for it. She popped the cylinder and looked through it, before snapping it closed and pulling the rifle up to her shoulder and giving the trigger an experimental squeeze, before nodding.

"You like that one?" Gaige asked hopefully.

"I think so, it's a bit heavy and I won't know for sure how it handles until I put a few rounds through it, but I think it might be acceptable."

Gaige looked at the other rifles and shook her head "I still don't get why you don't like scopes."

"I don't dislike them, it's just that I'm better without them. It's got to do with bullet drop. If I use a scope, I have to calculate the bullet drop for the zoom I'm using. But mostly it's got to do with the fact that I can grab any gun and use it the same, I don't have to grab a scoped assault rifle to get the same results, for instance. Plus, I prefer the wider range of vision I get without the scope."

"I get that, but I just thought that with how good your vision is, that you'd be really good with a scope."

"Eh, doesn't work together all that well actually."

"Oh, OK."

"Still, you might wanna grab one of these. I mean, I know that it doesn't really work with your style, but still not the worst thing to carry, especially with how often you find yourself reset or whatever."

"I just might." Gaige said looking at them "You got a recommendation?"

"Can't really say without trying them out, but at a glance I'd say to leave that one." She pointed to the lightest looking one "It probably doesn't have a lot of stopping power. So, I'd go with one of the other two. If you wanna see your enemy a ways away, take that one, otherwise, this one would probably have the greatest stopping power."

"Hmm, tough choice, with the one, I could probably see further then you, but the other would hit harder, especially with some Anarchy boosting it. Still, I gotta go with practicality and since I could always carry binoculars for seeing, I'm gonna have to try this one." She said picking up the heavier barreled one and slung it across her back. "Right, so other than the fact that we're sitting on a treasure trove of guns, are we done here? In the hold I mean."

"I guess. It seems that what we're looking for isn't here."

"Must be behind that locked door, so let's go find the key."

Jinx nodded and led the way back to the captain's quarters and looked around.

"Well, I guess we're gonna have to search it again."

"Yeah, but at least we know what we're looking for this time."

They split up and began searching the rooms, checking each drawer, behind each picture, on the shelves, but it wasn't long before they had to concede that they'd found nothing.

Gaige looked up from the captain's desk, gently swiveling in his chair and asked "Do you think he had the key on him, when he, you know?"

"Maybe, and I doubt that he had a spare around, so I don't think that we'll find anything in the rest of the quarters. So, I guess we're gonna have to do this the hard way."

Gaige sighed and pushed the chair back, giving the desk one last look before getting up and walking around.

"Stop!" Jinx said, holding her hands up.

"What? What is it?"

"Take a step back."

Gaige did as she was asked, gently moving back, eying the ground distrustfully.

Jinx shook her head and said "Take a couple more and then walk back towards me."

Gaige backed up till she was about to fall back into the chair and carefully stepped forward again, which caused Jinx to shake her head and declare "No, like you did before."

Gaige took the step back and walked forward again, this time with a bit more force in her step, watching as Jinx closed her eyes and focused on something.

When Gaige got past where she'd been told to stop, the other girl's eyes popped open and she turned to Deathtrap to ask "Can you move the desk?"

The robot shrugged and flew over to pick the desk up carefully and under her direction set it off to one side. As soon as it was clear, she dropped down and grabbed the edge of the carpet and tossed it aside, revealing the hardwood floor and the small hatch hidden underneath.

Carefully she lifted the hatch to expose the safe that had been hidden underneath.

"Move aside." Gaige said dropping down "I got this."

It didn't take long for the safe to give up and swing open revealing its contents. Inside they found an amount of money, a pistol, a few ledgers and in a small side compartment, a complex looking key.

Leaving most of the stuff behind they quickly made their way back to the door they'd left behind earlier and Gaige handed the key over, indicating that this should be Jinx's to open. She carefully slid it in and with a turn, the door gave off a long series of clunks as the bolts slid out of the way and the door swung open soundlessly.

Pulling it the rest of the way open they found themselves staring into a fair-sized vault stacked with branded cases. Looking at each other they decided to start at the top and work their way down.

The first box, one of the smallest in the room contained a beautiful wooden case with a heavy pistol laying inside. Jinx picked it up cautiously and turned it over. It was an exquisite piece of work, covered in unnecessary filigree, but was still a nice heavy pistol about on par with the one that she'd lost, so she slid it into the holster on her hip.

The next box held what looked like the prototype to an assault rifle. It looked quite similar to the ones that they had both used in the past, but other than a few of the detailing's on it, wasn't all that impressive, especially compared to some of the ones that they'd used. Still, they took it.

The next box was filled with all kinds of research information that they didn't have time to go through at the moment, so they re-closed the box and set it aside to take with.

The lowest box in the stack was also the largest. It took both of them to pry up the lid and inside they found a gun that caused both of them to stare at it with their jaws hanging open. Neither of them had ever seen anything like it before. It looked like a sniper rifle built for a giant.

Despite being in two pieces, they could tell that when assembled, it would be taller than either of them. The barrel was as big around as Jinx's arm. On one side of the case were the cartridges for it. Each one was almost as long as her forearm and the actual bullet was wider than her eye.

"This thing is definitely the 'Iron Hammer' that Wainwright was talking about." She muttered as she carefully lifted one of the cartrage's out, marveling at its weight.

As she turned it over Gaige muttered "How much damage could this thing dish out?"

"More than would be necessary for almost any normal use. But I think it's safe to say that this is what Wainwright asked us to find."

Gaige nodded and then as Artemis started to assemble the cannon asked "Wait, you're gonna carry it?"

"Yeah, probably easier to carry this way then in the crate."

"I guess." Gaige looked around and said "But we still have some more boxes to go through."

"One moment." Artemis finished assembling the gun and loaded it before setting it aside and turning to the last few boxes. She saved the obviously different one for last and found a few more guns in the other crates, but nothing of interest, so she turned to the last box, which looked more like a travel case than anything.

It was a hard case, covered in leather with a handle on the top and a set of latches keeping it closed. She carefully set it onto one of the crates and popped the latches before opening it.

Inside, nestled in a dark silk lining were two silver containers.

With a gentleness that surprised Gaige, Artemis reached out and ran her fingers across the engraving on them.

Leaning around the girl, Gaige read the engraving "Lavidia Montamore and Minerva Montamore?"

"That's what this was all about, why he couldn't let this go." Artemis muttered causing Gaige to glance at her, as if asking her to confirm what she suspected. "It's Sir Montamore's wife and daughter."