Chapter 18

Pandora

They fell into darkness as they passed below the ground, only coming to a stop in what felt like a void. Looking around her as her eyes adjusted to the gloom, Gaige spotted old machinery and in the light coming from the broken ceiling she realized that they had broken into an old DAHL mine, made all the more clear by the large stenciled letters on the wall.

Deathtrap set them down gently, near the fallen bandit, and after a quick glance, Gaige determined that, yes, he was in fact dead, totally dead, like his shield had landed on his head, dead.

She turned to the other girl and demanded "What the hell? Were you trying to kill us?" But she stopped her rant upon seeing how pale the other girl was. She smiled with a wince and pulled out an Insta-Health vial.

"Sorry about that, I'll explain in just a second." she managed.

"Turn around." Gaige flatly demanded.

The other girl started to protest, but seeing the look on her face just sighed and complied. Turning, Gaige saw a cluster of wounds on her back where she had been shot.

"What the…"

Artemis smiled thinly and used the vial, sighing as it took effect and the wounds started closing before Gaige's eyes. Straightening Artemis turned to her and said "Sorry about the whole falling thing, I was trying to hit you sideways, but the impacts kinda threw me off."

"What?"

"You didn't see those bandits then? The ones that came up with those two, shield guy and purple dude, as soon as their bosses died, they were about to open fire on you. Still this was not what I expected to happen. So sorry."

"You apologize an awful lot you know, but thanks, I guess, and thanks for the assist with that guy." she thumbed over her shoulder at the shield still stuck in the ground like a grave marker.

"Well I had help in mine as well" she turned to the floating robot "Thanks for that by the way."

He held up his hand and Gaige chastised her "Well, don't leave him hanging." so she slapped her metal hand against his.

"Well now what?" Artemis asked looking around.

"First we should find the foreman's office, you need to sit down. How many of those things have you used today anyway?" she asked, indicating the discarded vial.

"I donno, five? Six? Something like that."

"You need to sit down, take a minute, those things take a lot out of you, don't they? Always have for me. I think it's something in how they work, but I always feel worn down after I take too many of them."

"That probably has more to do with why you had to use them then what they do to you, but yeah, I am feeling a bit ragged. Few minutes to catch my breath and I'll be fine."

"Babe?" Gaige said turning to her floating buddy, he nodded and started floating into the dark. The two girls started following him when suddenly there was a crash behind them. The spun, weapons up to see the shield laying flat, with a dead psycho on it.

"What the…"

And then another psycho splatted onto it. And then another. Falling through the hole in the ceiling psychos were throwing themselves in.

"Are they…are they trying to get to us still?" Artemis asked slightly horrified.

"Let's get out of here." Gaige said, turning back to follow Deathtrap to a door in the wall. Pushing through, they were greeted by a solid wall of darkness.

"Damn it's dark in here" Gaige muttered flailing to try and get the lights to turn on

"Hmm, power seems to be out." She said as the switch clicked uselessly.

Between Deathtrap's glow and the light from their ECHO screens they were able to find their way through the room, though when Artemis banged her shin into a desk, she was secretly glad it was her left leg.

Eventually they found the power station through a door in the back of the office and Gaige pulled up a chair and ordered Artemis to sit while she went to work on fixing the generator. After a few minutes of silence other than telling her to adjust the light here or there she sat back.

"Well the good news is that everything seems to be in working order, gotta give it to them, they really made these things to last. The problem is that to get it started back up, we need to give it a kick. Usually there would be a small starter motor that you would get going and use that to kick start the power system, but it seems fried." She turned to Deathtrap and cocked an eye.

"Urru" he replied sadly.

"No dice huh, well I guess you haven't had a chance to recharge for a while now so don't worry about it, keep what you've got left for an emergency." she said, patting him in the arm. "But what to do."

"Why not use that pistol?" Artemis said.

"As much as I want to sometimes, I don't think shooting it will solve our problem."

"No, the C.O.V. one. Isn't it engine driven? Can't you use that to start the generators?"

"Wha…yeah that should work, have to destroy the gun to do it though."

"Better than sitting in the dark."

Gaige nodded and took out the gun. She worked quickly and within a few minutes had the engine sitting on top of the generator ready to go.

"Well, here goes nothing." she said pushing the starter. After a few worrying seconds of wheezing it took off, and after a few moments of waiting and eying some dials, she flipped a few switches and pushed a button. There was a loud, long grinding noise and then the engine chugged to life.

The lights blinded them as they came on, even as they flickered in intensity while the power stabilized.

Blinking against the light, Gaige led the way back up to the foreman's office and took a seat on the desk with a sigh. Artemis joined her after making sure that the doors were closed, taking the chair.

"So we've got power, now what? And where are we anyway?" Artemis asked, looking around.

"It's an old DAHL mine. Whole planet is littered with them. Well the place was settled by them, so it does make sense, but this place seems to have been abandoned and not even the bandits knew about it, which is odd, since most of them were DAHL employee's way back."

"You seem to know a lot about this."

"Learned a lot in my Vault Hunting days" she said in a mix of pride and sadness "But enough about the past, looks like we'll have to make our way through the mines to get out of here."

"We could just wait until enough of the psychos throw themselves in to climb up the mountain of bodies to get out." Artemis snarked.

"First, ew that's nasty, and second by the time there are that many they may not die on impact, and also they'll stop long before that and I don't want to be in here that long, so at best we'll use that as a backup plan."

"Jeez, I was just kidding, no need to give it such serious thought."

Gaige stuck out her tongue at the other girl before laughing with her, shortly they returned to the topic at hand.

"Urrgur"

"No babe. I mean, yes you could fly us out, but the place would be swarming with bandits, so we'd just end up back where we were. But it was a good idea. Now then, we should wait here a minute to gather our strength, then search the room for anything useful, speaking of which, what do we have for weapons?"

"Well first off…" she drew her canteen and took a sip before tossing it to Gaige, who eyed it like she had just been handed the most precious thing in the world. Cautiously taking a sip she sighed, and took a good drink before restraining herself and closing the canteen.

"Hoo, I needed that." she said leaning back with a smile.

Taking back the canteen Artemis slid out of her chair and sat cross-legged on the ground before she placed the canteen on the floor in front of herself and started emptying her bag.

"Let's see, I've got my sniper rifle" she said placing it in front of herself "and seven rounds, my pistol, and let's see fifteen rounds, my back up gun and no rounds for it, an electro-caustic SMG and forty four rounds, five assault rifle rounds, huh had one more than I thought and nine shotgun rounds. Other than that, I've got a half full canteen, two more Insta-Health vials, some tools, a shield, and an ECHO. Might have something else in one of these pockets, hey a mint, but that's about it. You?"

"Why nine shotgun rounds?"

"I snagged them at some point and must have reflexively pocketed them."

"That makes sense, as for me, let's see, I just used the C.O.V. pistol, but I still have ten rounds for it." she said laying her bullets opposite Artemis's "The DAHL SMG and twelve rounds. A Vladof assault rifle and twenty-seven rounds, I dropped the other assault rifle when I got this, it was out anyway. I also had a shotgun at one point but I dropped it."

"Why"

"Wasn't like I planned on it, I used it to parry a buzz ax and it went out of my hands and over the edge. Speaking of why's, if you had the Maliwan, why were you using the DAHL? Seems like melting someone would have been better."

"It's the charge up time, kinda hard to pull off snap shots with it."

"OK then why carry it at all? And why not a fire? That would've been really useful."

"Cause I'm a hunter. Most things go down if you shoot them with a regular bullet, right, but armor and shields interfere, hence the elctro-caustic. And the charge time is less of an issue in the wild,
for one, you aren't getting shot at, and for another, you can usually get a longer stretch to line up
your shots."

"That makes sense, but the way you handled yourself, this wasn't your first firefight was it?"

"No. No it was not."

"Yeah you seemed pretty good at it."

"It's no different from hunting, put down your prey as quick and clean as possible. And don't think about it."

"So who was the first?"

Artemis looked at her quizzically.

"The first person you killed. Everyone's got a story about it."

Artemis looked at her for a second and then down at her hands "It was a short time after I had become a hunter. I was on some planet, I don't even remember which, truth be told, but it was a craggy muddy planet. I was going down some canyon and turned a corner. Right there" she held her hand up like she could see it "This, like half a bridge or something, with sheet metal houses on it and the next thing I know this psycho jumps off it screaming, this large ax or cleaver held over their head. I didn't even think about it, I just shot her out of the air. One shot and her head was gone. Didn't even have time to register cause the next thing I knew there were psychos pouring out and before I knew it there were a dozen of them dead. And the worst part is, I have never felt bad about it.

"Course there were others after, bandits, bounty hunters, trophy thieves. All of them dead now, and I still, I don't feel bad about it. No sleepless nights, no tears, nothing. And I don't know, does that make me a bad person? Am I a monster?"

"No. You are not a monster, nor are you a bad person, you just killed bad people who would have done the same to you given the same chance. It's like that for me to. The first person I killed, well that was Marcie, which you know about. Well that's the first that I'm responsible for, and truly the only one I feel bad for, I mean she was a bitch and all, and her dad cheated like mad for her, and she was a bully and I hates me some bully's. But she didn't deserve to die like that."

"That wasn't your fault. That wasn't Deathtrap's fault. It wasn't even her fault. It was an accident. As they say 'shit happens"

"I know, and I keep telling myself that, but I still feel responsible."

"Well, if we ever meet Mr. Holloway, don't hesitate because of that."

"Ouch, I mean, you have a point, but that was a bit harsh don't cha think?"

The other girl shrugged "I did tell you I wasn't a people person didn't I?"

"You weren't kidding. Wait, what were we talking about anyway?"

"Urrug"

"Right, first kill. I guess my first in person kill would have been…you know I don't rightly remember. I had just arrived on Pandora and the train I was riding on crashed, damn you Jack." she shook her fist at the memory "That's where I met the other Vault Hunters, as well as CL4P-TP, we killed some Bullymong, which contrary to what Hammerlock says, is too much fun to say. Actually we met him right about then, and then we encountered some bandits. That's right it was a psycho, he jumped off this roof and ran at me. I nearly froze up, I mean the others all had combat experience and Deathtrap was kicking ass, but this one came for me, and I reflexively squeezed the trigger and he took a shotgun blast to the chest. Like you, I didn't have time to process what I had just done because someone was shooting at me, and I killed him, and the next and the next, and by the time it was over, I didn't feel anything. I guess it helped that they were only human by a technicality at that point, but when I started fighting soldiers and Hyperion technicians I didn't feel anything for them. I think it was Axton who once said 'It's them or us, it only becomes a problem if you start enjoying it.' or something like that. Or maybe it was Maya who said that, I don't remember. Anyway that was my story, I think we've rested enough so let's get back to getting out of here shall we?"

She stood up and stretched before starting to riffle through the lockers and drawers through the room.

"Nice." she declared, holding up an old Jakobs shotgun.

In the end they found the shotgun, two boxes of ammo for it and another two boxes for the pistol, as well as an old DAHL SMG that was far inferior to the ones they had so they stripped it of rounds and tossed it aside.

"Hey, what's this?" Artemis said pulling something out from behind one of the drawers in one of the desks. Holding it up she saw it was an old ECHO log.

"Play it, better to know." Gaige said with the exasperation of experience. She slid it into her ECHO and they listened as it started up.

"Damn thing bit me.

Stevenson had been keeping it as a pet apparently, and the damn thing got out. Don't know what it was, only that it's got teeth. Apparently Raffe knew, let him have it, thought it would improve morale or some shit. Idiot.

I think that's what's been responsible for the disappearing ore. Boss will probably call me crazy for it, but I saw that thing's teeth.

We're gonna have to put it down. Stevenson's not gonna be happy about that but screw him, he wasn't the one that got bit. Boss is gonna have to get a few more guys from the morning crew to help and then we're going after it.

I'm gonna kill that thing myself just you wait."

The girls looked at each other, puzzled.

"Look around, see if you can find anything else, useful or related to that." Gaige said.

In the end they found an old accident report that detailed one of the shift leaders getting bit in the leg by an unknown creature and a rough map of the mine.

Gathering their stuff, they redistributed equipment, Gaige took the DAHL and Maliwan SMGs, the shotgun and the assault rifle as well as the ammo for them, while Artemis took her rifle and pistol and their ammo. Gaige offered her more weapons, but she declined.

They slowly exited the room, checking their environment now that they could see it, and found that other than the pile of dead psychos, the room looked much like they thought it would. A large cavern had been hollowed out and metal supports had been put in, mine cart tracks led off down the tunnels and dim lights illuminated it all.

After a minute, Artemis declared something while heading to the pile of bodies under the hole in the ceiling. "Looks like they've stopped, probably means someone in charge showed up. Which means that they'll be looking for a way down, and or another way in."

"What are you doing?" Gaige asked as the other girl started digging in the pile.

"Here we go" She declared with a grin holding her prize aloft before tossing it to Gaige

"A working shield, a spike roid one, not what I prefer but better than the nothing you've got now."

"Yeah, they took all my gear when I was captured, didn't have time to grab one, didn't even think about it actually, thanks."

She strapped it on and fired it up as the two girls and the robot headed into the tunnels.