Chapter 3: Captivity
Maya made her quick report on the machinery and just when she finished, there was a knock on the doorframe. A Raider stood there, his helmet tucked under the left arm, the right hand lifted to his temple in salute. There was a strange, blackened scar on the right side of his clean shaven head, remnants of an electrical burn he had sustained in a fight against an ION-Loader. "Lieutenant Jessup reporting in!", he announced loud and clear, before dropping his salute.
"Any emergencies?", Maya wondered innocently. Because that would have been her cue to take up guns and go deal with whatever emergency was out there.
"Nothing out of the ordinary, I'm afraid", the soldier answered with a sincere amount of compassion in his voice. "Now, daily update..." Jessup moved over to the holo-table. "Where shall we begin?"
"Hyperion", the sirens responded almost in unison.
"Fine. The Slabs are still upholding the siege on Control Core Angel and as long as it keeps them happy - let them. The guys down in the Core have water and supplies in abundance and they sure as hell won't move out of there in the near future. They don't even answer to ECHO-messages.
Apart from those, we picked up literally everyone. Not kidding, I double checked with the files from the Info Stockade. Every Hyperion employee left on this planet is accounted for."
"Where did you find the last ones?", Maya interrupted.
"Marks and Zimard came across them in the Nexus. Sheer luck. Which unfortunately doesn't relieve us from the obligation to pay every drink these two down next week."
"Was there a fight?", Lilith inquired.
"Well... not really..."
Arvid Johnson wiped his brow furiously, but the sweat kept pouring out of every pore on his head, making his buzz cut feel like a soaked, sweltering mattress some moron had strapped to his head. And he was already walking in the shadow! Sand crunched beneath his boots, Rakk screeched in the distance and the sun burned down in a way that somehow made it audible. At least he didn't have to wear the bulky, yellow protective clothing anymore, but even so his thin shirt and his canvas-pants were soaked.
"It'll be alright", Fred Porres muttered next to him. "It'll be aaaalright. We'll reach the highway, we'll reach the Blight, we'll reach home base, it's all going to be totally alright..."
"Oh, buck up", Johnson hissed. His colleague didn't react. He had his eyes closed and moved his hands in front of his chest in a delicate pattern, as if he was weaving something.
"He'll snap out of it", Sling predicted. The soldier held his sniper rifle low, the butt resting comfortably against his hip. "You'll see. He's just shell-shocked, that's all."
Johnson made a loud, disapproving noise. They hadn't seen any shells. They hadn't seen any combat at all. What they had seen was the world coming apart around them. A world of safety and supplies and regular paychecks.
The engineer peeked up at the Eridium-pipeline. Strong steel resting on concrete foundations. That was his world. Pressure and viscosity, shear stress and velocity profiles. Predicting how the thick fluid would behave inside the pipeline, designing practical solutions for complicated problems, finding the right alloy to withstand Skag-spit.
And now he was trudging through the desert, together with his colleagues and the detachment of soldiers that had been with them at the pumping station. They had left just a day ago, following the pipeline through the Boneyard, back to the mining areas of the Eridium Blight. An electrical storm had destroyed the remaining loaders and their ECHO-communicators a week ago, so they didn't have the slightest idea if any other Hyperion force was left on this blasted planet. Johnson frankly didn't care. He desperately wanted to reach the nearest launching pad and leave for good.
Because a horrible, nagging thought was tormenting not only him but probably everyone in their little, miserable band: What if they were the last? Surely Hyperion would do better than Dahl or Atlas, surely they wouldn't leave anyone behind on Pandora, surely there was some means of evacuation... but what if not? What then?
Pandora didn't have a regular spaceport. There were a number of Hyperion launch pads, though. After Helios Station had crashed, the company had sent freighters into deep orbit, in order to collect the rockets loaded with (and ironically, powered by) Eridium. One of those launch pads was their destination. It would be their way off Pandora.
Had to be.
Johnson bit his lip. Somewhere out there were the escape pods to this nightmarish planet. They would get out of here. He would get out of here. He'd cash in his paychecks, return to Hephaestus, propose to Gemma and on some distant day they would simply laugh about the days when Hyperion had collapsed and he had been dragging through the sands of a Skag infested wasteland.
"Alright, stop!" Staff Sergeant Haynes who walked at the head of the band raised his fist. "Take a break everyone, one cup of water each, rest your feet, but don't any of you doze off, understood?"
"Yes, Sir!", the soldiers answered in perfect unison, while the engineers merely nodded and muttered something along the line of: "Thanks" or "About time."
Johnson sat down in the shadow of the pipeline, took a bottle of water from the storage-unit at his belt and unscrewed the lid which served as a cup. Sling shouldered his rifle and sat down beside him.
"Ever shot a gun?", he asked the engineer.
Johnson did not want to have this conversation and busied himself with the water.
"You know, it might come in handy. It might take some time, until we can leave here", the sniper continued.
"You're not helpful", Johnson snapped.
"I am. All of us want to get out of here, but we have to face the fact that 'as-fast-as-possible' could mean 'in-a-couple-of-weeks' in this case. And people don't live on Pandora. They survive. So, better get used to firing a weapon, before this planet literally kills your face."
"I understand that. I've usually don't think about it, but I understand what it means to be on frigging Pandora even without you explaining in unsubtle terms."
"This whole planet is rather unsubtle. The only thing even remotely subtle are the Stalkers with their camouflage. And you're not doing yourself a favor, if you don't think about this situation. Otherwise you end up like Porres."
Johnson gave his colleague a quick look, surprised to see Garrison, one of the bulky Infiltrators, squatting next to the heat stricken engineer, calmly talking to him.
"Well, you end up like the Porres of five minutes ago", Sling corrected himself. "Haynes told us we should prepare you individually for the grind ahead."
"You still don't know, if it's going to be a grind", Johnson replied stubbornly and with an increasing feeling of dread.
"Face the facts", Sling said softly. "That's what you lot do all day, isn't it? Your job is all about them. Facts. Handsome Jack is dead. Helios crashed. Hyperion didn't send a relief unit, not for us, not for anyone. The Info Stockade was shut off from outer space. The radios have been silent for days in a row. The only people calling were people on the ground, some of them rather desperate. Haynes spent a week trying to get permission from high command to leave the station and he didn't even get an answering machine. Now please join the dots."
Johnson drew a shaky breath and clenched his fists. For some reason his mind conjured up an image of Gemma, her green eyes sparkling with happiness, her broad smile heartwarming. And his heart felt as if it had been ripped out.
"Now, Hyperion may be gone for good, but there are still ways of this planet. There are smugglers. There are the Crimson Raiders, we know they've got off world connections. There is material left behind that we may fix. If any group can escape this cesspool, it will be the one consisting of highly trained engineers and battle hardened killers, am I right?"
Johnson fought back tears, as he did what the soldier had told him and stopped pretending. Of course they were abandoned. Why would Hyperion do something Dahl and Atlas hadn't done? After the crash of Helios, the company had merely extracted every ounce of Eridium they could, before everything went to shambles. For the vice presidents, superintendents and top managers it was all about profit. And evacuating a couple of thousand workmen and fighters from a notoriously dangerous planet was anything but profitable. Quite the opposite, because all of these people would demand their just payment and some might even get the idea to take the company to court for compensation.
Slowly, the engineer nodded.
"That's the spirit." Sling briefly placed a reassuring hand on Johnsons shoulder, before tucking a submachine gun out of his storage unit. "And you will keep this beauty at your side from now on, okay? Target practice starts whenever we spot the next Skag."
Johnson inspected the weapon closely, bewaring of the trigger, but on closer examination he figured out how to reload the gun and how the devices at the butt would dampen the recoil to the point, that the weapon would actually stabilize with continuous shooting. For practicing purpose he extracted and inserted the magazine a couple of times over, eventually trying to do it without looking. It was pretty easy, the computer did most of the work.
Looking around, Johnson saw that some of the other engineers had been handed weapons too, mostly SMGs and pistols, Old Barnes however had earned a sniper rifle, because, as everybody had been told times over and again, the man had been an excellent marksman back on Themis. Fred Porres and two other engineers had apparently been deemed unstable and were left unarmed.
Suddenly they had become a war party and the sight was incredibly reassuring. Desperate hope and stubborn denial had turned to grim determination. They would fight their way off this planet, for sure! Fuck Hyperion, and see you in court! Johnson couldn't force the grin from his face.
"Eyes left!", Haynes shouted suddenly.
Everyone jerked around. Two clouds of swirling dust had appeared on the horizon, quickly drawing closer.
"Oculars!", the Staff Sergeant demanded. "Take positions!"
The soldiers fanned out, forming a semicircular perimeter around the engineers with the foundation of the pipeline at their backs. On each flank two men with assault rifles had taken a knee, next in line were the Infiltrators, Garrison and Howler, who held shotguns and were saving the remaining energy in their cloaks for the attack, in the center four soldiers knelt in a protective wall in front of Haynes and Faulkner, the squad's Raptor, who had propped a rocket launcher up on his shoulder. Sling and Wick, the designated marksmen, had taken positions behind the Infiltrators and were the only ones left standing upright, apart from the Sergeant.
"Trucks incoming!", Haynes reported to his squad. "Machineguns and catapults. Switch to corrosive weapons."
"Can't you take them out already?", Barnes demanded, his voice dripping with nervousness.
"Shaddap, civilian", Garrison barked.
"Can anyone make out insignia?", Haynes asked, eyes glued to the binoculars.
"White Vault Symbol with Black Dagger on Red", Sling announced, peering down the optics of his sniper rifle. "Crimson Raiders. What are they doing up here?"
"Lay down your arms." Haynes voice was hard, serious and allowed no questions. "All of you! Hands behind your heads!"
"What's going on?!", Johnson whispered, incredulous, but no one listened, much less answered. Perres had started to shake once more. Why did the clan affiliation of the approaching bandits matter? They were savages, the lot of them! Bloodthirsty madmen who wouldn't accept surrender, who probably didn't even understand the concept of surrender anymore. This was an incredible gamble that would never pay off...
The trucks drew to a stop, weapons trained on the shaking Hyperion men. Rust, sand and probably the occasional firefight had taken their toll on the sturdy pickups, they were beaten and ugly, the front bumpers smeared with blood, the driver seats were merely protected by roll cages, the sides were laced with rusty spikes and saw blades, daring anyone to climb on board. The front passenger seats had been replaced with catapult turrets, ready to hurl explosive barrels at anything that proved to be hostile.
"I, Staff Sergeant Samuel Haynes, herewith surrender unconditionally to the forces of the paramilitary organization called Crimson Raiders. My men have thrown down their weapons, we are ready to go into captivity and of course we will submit to the compensation program, which by the way I know about in detail. My men, however, don't, so I would appreciate it if you would elaborate."
The driver of the left vehicle carefully climbed out of his seat, holding a submachine gun. He wore a grey coverall and pieces of red Atlas armor, including greaves, gloves and an integral helmet. "Well, well, well, fancy with words, aren't you, matey? Where from?"
"Pumping Station 5, thirty two clicks to the north."
"Where to?"
"We intended to reach one of the Hyperion launch pads."
"None left, matey, at least not in the functioning kind of way." The bandit chuckled and turned his head, counting under his breath. "Well, that's funny. You're literally the last batch of Hyperion out here on its own, did you know that?"
"We lost our ECHO communicators to an electrical storm some days back", Haynes replied, looking sternly into the distance, somehow still defying the Raider by not speaking to him directly.
"Fair enough. Alright guys, I'm not as fancy as your leader here concerning words, but I'm Private Marks of the Crimson Raiders, we're the winners of this war and your lot are its prisoners. As Hyperion sure isn't gonna pay for your release, we'll have to extract some kind of reparations from your sorry asses." The bandit started to pace in front of them, his comrade was still in his car, letting the turret turn a little left and right, just to make sure everyone was on the same level. "Now, you'll be put to work. A full, regular year of work and in my opinion that's about as cheap as it gets for you jerks. After that, you're free to go and we'll arrange a passage with the smugglers for you. However, these fine gentlemen prefer to get paid, so if you can't prove you can afford, it's another two months working down here. Deal?!"
"What kind of work would that be?!", Barnes shouted.
"Depends on your skills, really. You're engineers, right? Well, you'll be fixing up cars, constructing houses and salvaging bandit camps. Or you'll just mine Eridium."
"How are we supposed to prove that we can afford a passage?", Johnson asked slowly.
"Oh, for Terramorphus sake, couple of days without it and you've already forgotten about the brilliant invention called the ECHOnet? Don't you worry, once you've done your duty, you may call home, have you're people pay them smugglers and start filing the lawsuits. I'd really hate to see each of you get less than ten million compensation from Hyperion for what you've been through."
No one spoke, everyone had to process this new Situation.
Barnes was the first one to speak up: "Hold it, Haynes, you knew about all this?! And why the fuck didn't you..."
"I wanted to try", the Sergeant replied, calm and even. "One year of hard labor is still one year of hard labor and I wanted to skirt it if possible. The Crimson Raiders broadcasted a call for everyone of us shortly after Helios crashed: lay down your arms, do your reparations work and so forth. I heard how other prisoners were treated, but, well, I still wanted to try another way off this rock."
"And you're lucky there is one nowadays", Marks added, casually starting to pick up the discarded weapons. "When Atlas hauled ass, there weren't even smugglers. We were literally stuck on the ground and being abandoned is not a good feeling, isn't it, mateys? So you guys are enormously lucky, for one, that high command offers you a sure way out and then again that you're actually useful alive and we ain't just gonna shoot you like rabid Skags for all the crap you pulled on us. And now, would you kindly climb on board?"
Johnson slowly started to move, still struggling to understand their humongous luck. He hardly knew any of the bandit factions, but he'd never guessed that anyone of them could be so reasonable. Okay, one more year on Pandora was pretty bad in itself, more so because this time it would go completely unpaid, but at least it meant relative safety and most importantly a sure way out of here.
Marks herded them onto the trucks, while speaking into his ECHO: "Guess what, we've got the last Hyperion guys! And you know what that means? We're owed a week of free drinks, if I remember correctly. Hell yeah! Anyhow, we're gonna hand them over to Waffles and his gang up at Hero's Pass. They can start straight away with cleanup."
The cargo area of the pickup got a little crowded with fifteen men, but it would do. Johnson found himself with the back to the turret and he was very careful not to raise his head to high. He had no desire to touch the explosive barrel loaded into the catapult.
"So", Johnson started, addressing Sling who huddled down beside him, "those Crimson Raiders... who the fuck are they?"
The sniper made a face. "Oh, Marks already explained. They fought Hyperion, Hyperion withdrew and now apparently they run the show. Lots of former Atlas soldiers, adventurers and Vault Hunters. True and tested Vault Hunters!"
"And are they... trustworthy?"
"Apparently. They actually accepted surrender after the battle at Hero's Pass and Haynes wouldn't have done this, if he hadn't been sure they would treat us... not too bad. I was about to say good, but screw that. It's still one year of forced labor. But after that..." Sling didn't finish the sentence, he just gave a relieved sigh.
They would be going home. The thought hit home like a sledgehammer. The Raiders wouldn't kill them, as long as they complied, and Johnson intended to do so. The sudden certanity of his eventual departure made him dizzy: He would leave Pandora and once he returned to the core worlds, he would hire a lawyer, any lawyer, in a case like this it didn't really matter, and sue the living shit out of Hyperion. And his colleagues would do the same, he was sure of that.
Speaking of stick and carrot.
"Gemma, I'll come home", Johnson whispered, as the truck jerked into gear and roared back to wherever a handful of engineers and unarmed soldiers could be put to good use.