4 – War and Peace
Maya and Zer0 entered the downstairs area of the garage in time to watch Gaige hurl an unidentified piece of metal into the wall with a shout. Anger and frustration lined the girl's face as she turned to Maya.
"Gaige, what's —"
"They knew, Maya! They fucking knew we'd be back for more information about her, and they've moved it!"
"What do you mean, they've moved it?"
"All those records I told you about, in the Hyperion database? They're all gone, and they're not anywhere else in the network! They've isolated them from external access completely. I know they haven't destroyed them, because that'd go against about six company regulations and two federal laws, and there's a record of the transaction, but I can't get at any of the information without direct access to wherever it's being kept!"
"All right, all right, calm down. It's not a —"
"It's like they're taunting me, and I hate it. I should get back in so I can taunt them about how puny their IT security is."
"I wouldn't if I were you," replied Maya, "they'd just increase their security if you did that."
"Eh, I'm not worried about that, I could use a fresh challenge. But god, this makes my blood boil. Apart from anything else, it means we're gonna struggle to get you the information you need now."
"But it has given us other information," said Zer0. "Hyperion wants to keep this information to themselves. That suggests her work dealt with sensitive issues. I suspect we are probing something they are keen to keep quiet. That is a little worrying."
"That is true." Gaige sunk down into her chair and waved Maya into one on the other side of the table. "Look, what's your end goal here? Are you trying to track this woman down? Or do you just suspect that you might find something useful in the records of her work?"
"Well, both, I guess."
"We could help find her," said Zer0. "I have a useful contact… so we can track her."
"Sorry?"
"I have a… contact who can find me her biosignature if she's registered with the Galactic Federation. Then Gaige and I can track her location. But it will take several days to execute."
"Well, I guess it's a better plan than no plan. Let's do it."
Elizabeth sat down across from Jasper, smirking slightly at the plaster on his chin. He frowned slightly in reply.
"All right, Jasper, here's the deal. Your intelligence suggests that there are a few of the psychos that are marginally more sane than the others. Those are our biggest threats. I knew about the one with the rebels, but I wasn't aware there were others like him."
"There aren't many of them, because from what we understand they were only the products of experiments that were interrupted part-way through. That only happened in a few cases, usually because of — errors, let's say — on the part of the testers."
"Right. According to the report, there's four of them. Do we know who they are or where they are?"
"No. Except for the one with the Crimson Raiders, obviously."
"Obviously. Can we track them down?"
"Given a little time, yes. We would have to go through the test records to find the incomplete ones, then match the test subjects with our records of their biosignatures, then track them down based on that."
"How long?"
Jasper scratched his chin absently, forgetting briefly about the plaster on his chin. "Depends on how deeply buried the records are, but I'd say a day or two to find all of them. In the meantime," he added a little hastily, as Elizabeth's brow creased slightly, "you can always go after the one with the Raiders. We have his biosignature on hand, as well as the other main members of the Raiders, because they're all technically classified as war criminals."
"Then why did we ever sit down and make an agreement with them?"
"Because we're technically war criminals too. But nobody was ever game to sue us while Jack was in charge."
"Hmm. Well, anyway, do we know anything in particular about the rebels' psycho? What's his name…" Elizabeth scanned the papers in her lap, "Krieg?"
"Relatively little," replied Jasper, pulling a copy of the intelligence report on the Vault hunters out of his filing cabinet and flicking through the pages. "Former test subject used by the Delta Team… escaped mid-experiment for reasons that were covered up by Handsome Jack personally… security footage suggests he wound up with the Raiders after meeting the siren, Maya, at one of our train stations shortly after she arrived on the planet. At least three dozen Hyperion personnel dead at his hands, not counting loaders."
Elizabeth contemplated this briefly. "The bit about the siren… run that past me again."
Jasper ran his finger down the page. "The siren was waiting for the Vault hunters' train, the one Jack had rigged with explosives. The psycho wandered by; she opened fire on him but was attacked by the rats, he helped her fight them off, she appears to have warmed to him after that."
"Other than his allegiance with the rebels, any lasting repercussions of this incident?"
"What do you mean?"
Elizabeth sighed, and tapped the intelligence report in her lap. "This report says that these quasi-psychos form emotional bonds with those who are kind to them. I know it's only relatively speculative, but still, is it possible they formed some kind of… connection, for want of a better word?"
"We only have very limited observations of their interactions after this initial event," replied Jasper, sitting back down, "so I can't say for certain, but I'd say it's likely."
"Right. I want both their biosignatures tracked and sent to my ECHO."
"Both of them?"
"You heard me," replied Elizabeth sharply. "How long?"
"Ten minutes."
"What's the quickest way to get down to Pandora?"
"Fast travel," said Jasper. "The Pandora network is fairly extensive, so there's a station about fifteen minutes walk from pretty much anywhere on this side of the planet, except the deserts."
"Good. And one more thing…"
Maya phaselocked a marauder, shot a spray of bullets into him, then dropped his corpse on an approaching psycho's head. Morbid, she thought, as she fired at the psycho, but funny.
She was technically on a job for Mordecai, scouting for a cache of weapons that had apparently recently been acquired by the Bloodshots, but she wasn't fully concentrating on the objective — this was little more than a good excuse to blow off a bit of steam. Obviously it wasn't Gaige's fault that she couldn't get any more information about Samuels out of the Hyperion network, but it was still frustrating. Still, Zer0's words had stuck in her mind — it seemed that they really had stumbled across something big, something Hyperion were going to great lengths to keep quiet. Exactly what that meant, Maya didn't know — she wasn't scared of Hyperion, having fought against them once already, but if Hyperion would really do anything to keep this quiet, she might be endangering Sanctuary, and that would draw the ire of the other Raiders once they got wise to it.
As ever, the foray through the dam had yielded nothing of consequence. Good news, Maya thought, but she knew Mordecai well enough to know that he'd still be suspicious. His sources — whoever they were — tipped him off about this sort of thing every now and then, and they were rarely wrong. But come on, the Bloodshots aren't that smart, she thought as she finally made it back to the entrance room. Does he really think that —
Maya was brought back to reality by the sudden realisation that the fast travel station she had used to get to the dam had been broken while she was inside. Pieces of metal lay scattered on the ground, the digistruct module was sparking angrily and the display projector was flickering feebly. Obviously supposed to force me to leave through the main gate and walk into an ambush outside, she thought grimly, rummaging through her storage deck for a singularity grenade. Well, we'll see about that. She eased herself slowly and quietly along the wall until she reached the gate. She couldn't see anyone outside, but that was the point of an ambush, after all. Pulling the pin on her grenade, she counted one beat, then stepped outside, threw the grenade into the air and stepped back inside, pistol at the ready.
The grenade imploded in mid-air with its characteristic vacuum sound before exploding, scattering a few pieces of scrap metal. No bandits were pulled from the roofs, no voices could be heard… it was odd. Swapping her pistol for her SMG, Maya crept slowly out of the dam, finger on the trigger, keeping her back to the wall. But there was no gunfire, no shouting voices… only the distant screeches of circling rakk.
Her inner combat instincts continued to control her every move until she reached the entrance of the compound, where she threw another grenade to make sure there were no assailants waiting on the other side of the walls. The icy plain beyond was completely devoid of enemies, and the Happy Pig was only a short walk from here. Perhaps the station was damaged in a gunfight that went on while she was inside the dam, she told herself. Or perhaps some goliath couldn't work out how to use it and got mad. Swapping back to her pistol, she walked quickly up the hill to the abandoned motel. Turning to the vending machines, she started going through her storage deck and selling the useless weapons she'd picked up.
Out of nowhere, a sudden stinging pain struck the back of her shoulder. Swearing, she spun around, stumbling slightly. A figure was crouched in the shadows behind the motel, pointing the offending weapon at her.
Maya raised her pistol to return fire, but her arm felt heavy and her vision was swimming. She fired at her assailant, but the bullet glanced harmlessly off the side of the motel. She tried to raise her left arm to phaselock the figure, but found herself unable to muster the energy to move her arm properly, let alone perform the phaselock. Taking a halting step forward, she sunk to her knees, then fell flat on her face, unconscious before she hit the ground.
Elizabeth watched with a slight smile as Maya collapsed. Standing up, she ran quickly out to the unconscious siren, her crossbow loaded and ready in case she was only feigning unconsciousness; when she plucked the spent tranquiliser bolt from the siren's shoulder and rolled her over, however, it became clear that this was not the case.
"First things first…" muttered Elizabeth to herself. She pulled a metallic collar out of her bag and fastened it around Maya's neck. The lights on the collar lit up in purple and blue, and the siren's tattoos seemed to dull slightly. Elizabeth then pulled out a roll of strong electrical tape, often used by the Helios maintenance staff as a temporary seal for minor oxygen leaks, and used it to bind the siren's wrists and ankles, working as quickly as she could — if a gang of bandits blindsided her, she wouldn't last five seconds, and the tranquiliser would only keep the siren down for fifteen to twenty minutes, depending on her weight.
The siren was tall and fairly muscular, but Elizabeth managed to hoist her into a fireman's carry with relatively little difficulty. Grunting slightly with the exertion of carrying Maya's weight, Elizabeth moved over to the fast travel station, laid her hand on it, and vanished in a swirl of blue particles.
Mordecai looked impatiently at his watch, then down at the central square below his favoured perch on the balcony. It wasn't like Maya to delay this long in reporting back from a mission this straightforward, and if she was ever in trouble she'd ECHO for help. A slightly sick feeling was creeping into his stomach — if the Bloodshots really did have a new weapon cache, then it wasn't completely impossible that they'd been able to mount a successful defence against a single Vault hunter. He'd wanted to send Axton as well, but Maya had insisted on going by herself, and Mordecai had agreed without much argument, knowing that Maya harboured a deep-seated dislike of the commando and that he was, in turn, terrified of her.
"Mordecai."
Mordecai glanced around and saw Zer0 inside the control room. He hadn't seen him enter the building, but then again, did he ever?
"Yeah?"
"Maya is on your job. When do you expect her back? It has been some time."
"I was just thinkin' that, Zer0. I only sent her to the Bloodshot dam, so it really shouldn't have taken her this long to get back to me."
Zer0 touched the side of his helmet, as Mordecai knew he did when operating his communicator.
"Maya. Your status." Silence. Zer0 repeated himself, then lowered his hand.
"No response at all. Here, no news can be bad news… I will track her down."
"What exactly are you two up to? She came in looking for you the other day. I thought you were Gaige's toy-boy, to use her words."
"No need for crudeness. This is a private matter, as per her request." Zer0 vanished, causing Mordecai to snort slightly.
"Fucking drama queen."
