Chapter 11: Surprise

Twenty minutes into the fight, an exploding barrel went up directly in front of the command technical. Masha remained unscathed by some miracle or another. Waddell was hit by numerous bits of shrapnel into the chest, abdomen and arm and the latter seemed to have severed a nerve or something, because he was completely unable to move the limb afterwards. Without inflicting to much pain on the wounded driver, they had switched places and now, on top of her other responsibilities, Masha was driving a car with six people on board, namely three wounded men from Harker's technical, the gunner, Waddell and herself.

She kept a record of enemies taken out of the fight. Two had hard-crashed early on, one had driven into a Spiderant nest, Hox had shot down two by now, the second one with his sawed-off launcher, Gaspard had two, Nelbert had one, Truman had one, with his bow LMG, amazingly, Penrose crew had one. The suppression fire had probably claimed a bandit's life or twenty, but they couldn't be sure about that and it was the vehicles that counted. They were still outnumbered.

The raiding party, meanwhile, had lost Harker's technical and an Outrunner: driver Stan Grawicz had caught a bullet to the head, denying him any chance to use an Instant Health, and in his dying moment he must have yanked the wheel around, because his car had turned violently to the right and left sight. Masha hadn't heard from the gunner yet, though there was a slim chance that he was still alive. Penrose had a dead man on board, they were still missing three people who had been blown off Harker's truck and they had just cracked the three quarters mark of people in the party being wounded.

They had had to restructure on the run. Gaspard was still up front, in order to thwart enemy attempts to encircle them, the technicals were right behind him, the Outrunners formed a ragged half-circle around the rear, everyone was staying relatively close together, so they could bundle their firepower and give the Hodunks a taste of every turret in the party. The downside was an increased vulnerability to explosions, but if the enemy had something more powerful than barrels, they had yet to use it. At first, Masha had tried to keep Bracundo's and her own technical close to the Monster, as designated transporters for wounded, but as the fight wore on, it turned out to be a useless idea: There were simply too many wounded to fit in two technicals, even if they huddled close together, and the people in the Outrunners could not be missed on the line. If one of them got shot, he or she would still have to drive or dish out. Nelbert was the only exception; after the last use of the booster, they had bought just enough time to transfer the Private to Bracundo's technical and replace him with a Slab.

The radio crackled: "Ground Dust, this is Gods Eye, you're still there?"

Masha heaved a sigh of relief. "Yeah, we're rather hard to kill. Do you have visuals on us?"

"Affirmative! I've mapped your course to Surprise Four, they are moving towards you as we speak. There is a wadi opening up at Gaspard's two position, that's where they're hiding."

"Copy that! Gaspard, you're listening?"

"Yep."

"Lead the way." As nice as it was to have air support once again, Masha was a little anxious to move into a dry valley. She understood, why Surprise Four had chosen to position themselves there, and yet there would be a traffic jam of sorts once they entered. And with murderous Hodunks in hot pursuit they couldn't pull a stunt like that.

"How far into the valley, until we reach them?"

"Half a kilometer. The wadi is rather wide, but the entrance can only be passed by... three vehicles side by side. It's the only way in, the walls are bedrock and too steep to drive down. Be advised, once you're inside the wadi, you will receive sniper support wherever needed."

Masha nodded and barely dodged another barrel. Now to avoiding a snarl-up.

The Monster was the strongest vehicle in both regards to firepower and armor, furthermore it was the slowest one, so the others could easily overtake it and leave it to defend the rear. Masha decided to add the technicals of Van Heerlen and herself to the rearguard, as they were the least damaged. Penrose and Bracundo with all their wounded should go in first, then the Runners, the fastest cars, which meant they could hold the line a little longer, before they overtook the rearguard and slipped through the bottleneck. They still needed to keep the Hodunks at bay.

"Gods Eye, can I have a strafing run from you, before we move into the valley? Just to buy us a little more time?"

"Ah, negative, negative. I've deployed all my Surveyors and I've been hit myself. Can't effectively maneuver, but I can still stay aloft."

So much for air support.

She started giving detailed orders. First of all, no one was to break formation until the valley was within a reasonable reach. Entering the wadi suddenly became a delicate balancing act of keeping as much firepower together as long as possible without ending up with a big traffic jam at the entrance. The last Outrunners to leave would have to be the best shots, in order to maintain a precise, long range cover fire. Loggins was feeding her data all the while, which was an enormous relief. The pilot had the time and equipment to acquire accurate distances and align them with the speed and course of the ground forces, where Masha would have been left to guess everything by eyesight.

The valley was plainly visible now. The desert seemed to cave in, two otherwise unsuspicious hills flanked the ramp downwards. It was covered in loose sand and steep, but according to Loggins' ground radar the cars would be able to move down there without sliding or getting stuck.

"Go!", the Sergeant ordered.

Bracundo and Penrose floored it, overtook Gaspard and shot down the ramp. The Outrunners followed, though not as organized and graceful as Masha would have liked. She yelled into her ECHO to prevent crashes and keep people from blocking the bottleneck. "Zayit, brake! Linda goes first! Derleth, hold your fucking position! Truman, you go on the right side, right, right, not left!"

Two Outrunners slammed into each other, the gunners shouting wildly at their drivers. Linda weaseled her way past them and down the slope, running on two wheels for a second. Penrose reported visual contact with Surprise Four. As the field cleared, Gaspard and his gunner opened up with everything they had, including two machineguns at the rear, adding a third car to their kill list.

And then another Hodunk bore down on Masha from the left and hurled his barrel. Instinctively she accelerated, but the missile hit them nonetheless. The technical was sturdy enough not to topple, but it rocked right out of her control. Waddell might have been able to keep the car on track, but he lay wheezing in the passenger's seat and the technical swung off to the left, past the ramp. Masha's hands reacted a split second before her brain and she steered clear right.

The technical went over the edge of the wadi with enormous speed.

"Hold fast!", Masha shouted.

Loggins had been right: The ramp was very steep, the valley was surprisingly wide and it got deep quickly. The technical fell four meters at the least and its momentum carried it halfway across the wadi, before it hit the ground with a vengeance. The suspensions were put to the test brutally. The wounded in the back were slammed against the cockpit and screamed in pain and surprise, which was a good sign considering the barrel's explosion hadn't killed them. The gunner was almost yanked from his turret. Waddell, dazed as he was, had wedged himself in a way that let him survive the shock without even moving. Masha crashed into the steering wheel and her left knee hit the dashboard from below with enough force to make it explode with pain.

"Sarge! You're alright?!", Derleth cried.

"Holy burning shit! You just jumped over me! Awesome!", Gaspard yelled.

"Ground Dust, enemies closing in from behind, drive on, if you can! Do you request evac, repeat, do you request evac?", Loggins asked, but his voice was shaking, as if he was about to panic. As usual.

"Drive, damn it!", Waddell croaked and reached over to turn the wheel.

Masha realized that she still had her right foot on the gas.

"Incoming left!", the gunner reported groggily.

A hard fight against inertia, impulse and other nasty ingredients of dynamics later, Masha had the technical back on course, at least driving in the right direction now. Her knee was ravaging pain and below it was a horrible, counterintuitive deadweight: Her eyes told her she still had a lower leg and a foot, but she could feel neither. She was dangerously far away from the rearguard and already a new enemy was coming towards her and apparently her gunner was in no shape to return fire. She saw the Monster and Van Heerlen's technical try to put up a suppressive fire without hitting her, but they were too far away, while bullets from the Hodunk's machinegun were already ricocheting off the sides of her truck...

And then, in quick succession, eight sharp cracks pierced the all in all amazingly loud night. Masha never saw the bullets, but she saw the driver and gunner of the Hodunk truck go limp and the sparks on the bonnet, before it breached and a last well placed shot that made the engine explode.

Sniper cover.

"Don't slow down!", Waddell advised.

"Why?", Masha responded. She was surprised by her own calm.

"The way you move your left leg, you can't change gears. Go below 80 and you kill the engine. And we don't want that."

"We def'nitely don't want that", someone from the cargo area agreed meekly.

The gunner was back in shape and the heavy thumping of his machinegun continued. Masha kept one eye on the speedometer and another on the way ahead. She was seriously annoyed that Gaspard and Van Heerlen were the only ones still guarding the rear, the others, as far as she could see, were dashing deeper into the valley. For a moment she couldn't help but think of them as rats abandoning the ship: Without the need to hold formation, and thereby stick with the Monster's inability to outrun the Hodunks, they went on their merry way. And then Surprise Four swooped in from behind a sharp turn in the valley and Masha corrected her allegory: The rats had actually embarked the ship.

Behind her, the Hodunks came to a screeching halt.

"I'd give a bar of Eridium to hear their radio-chatter right now", Waddell quipped.

An enormous, rust-colored hovercraft moved down the valley. The crew had removed the masts, in order to keep a low profile, but the massive hulk was intimidating enough, splattered with blood and the green goo of sandworms, sandblasted, beaten and way, way bigger than any car. The thrusters were powered down, so the keel was almost touching the ground, threatening to crush everything within its path. The deck, looming several meters overhead, was lined with heavy weaponry, machineguns, harpoons and rocket launchers, apparently ripped from sand-skiffs or technicals and a lot of them opened up on the Hodunks.

It was the Buccaneers Bacchanal.

And it did precisely what they had always intended it to do: It scared the piss out of the Hodunks. Those who had ventured too far into the valley were shredded by the Bacchanal's cannonade, the rest turned as fast as they could and headed the way they had come. One car hard-crashed, trying to leave the wadi and came to a rest on its roof.

The raiding party had stopped in the hovercraft's backwash and was restructuring. Masha passed the ship by on the starboard side, finally noticing a thin, black-clad figure who stood in front of the Bacchanal as if the ship was unneeded backup, while he continued to fire his sniper rifle. The Sergeant lifted her hand in a feeble salute and the Vault Hunter flashed her a red smiley on his faceplate. She heard the gunner and the wounded in the back cheer the crew up on the deck and Zero down on the ground, but neither she nor Waddell were in any mood for celebrations yet. Once she had cleared the Bacchanal, she finally let go of the gas and stepped on the brake. The gear box made some delightfully dreadful sounds and the engine stalled within seconds.

Then, she just sat there. She inspected her left leg, pinched her thigh and tried to remove her boot, but everything below her knee was wobbly and non-responding. There was chit-chat on the radio that she didn't listen to. The cockpit was smeared with blood, mostly from Waddell's numerous wounds. Masha whipped off her mask and took a deep breath, the air was cool and tasted, of sand and dust, of fuel, rust and, courtesy to the Bacchanal's thrusters, ozone. Her sweaty hair stuck to her head in the most unsightly ways.

"Well... we're still alive", Waddell said matter-of-factly.

"So we are", Masha agreed and then the first medic came jogging from the hovercraft.

Hox slumped back in his turret, once the Outrunner stopped. He watched with delight as the Hodunks fled the valley, faced with the firepower and utter awesomeness of the Bacchanal. He saw Raiders up on the quarterdeck, two sand-skiffs in the aft hangar and, God be his witness, a Vault Hunter, standing in front of the ship. Despite the general mayhem, the cracks of his sniper rifle were clearly audible and each one told of at least one dead Hodunk.

Sergeant Wheatgrinder was the last to stop in the unorganized parking lot behind the ship. The screeching of tortured gears made Hox cringe and elicited an: "Ouch", from Linda. With all the explosions and gunshots now a whole ship's length away, the raiding party itself was strangely quiet. All but two drivers had shut down their engines. There were some painful moans, sighs of relief and the hysterical laughter of the Slab who had replaced Nelbert and was jovially slapping the high caliber machinegun.

Hox couldn't keep his eyes off the Bacchanal. He had seen ECHO pictures and even a hologram, he had heard the haiku reports about the task force's struggle to wrestle the hovercraft from the hands of another pirate gang in Wurmwater, but nothing had prepared him for this hulk. Literally. And they had actually managed to shock and awe the Hodunks, too, despite the jumbled odds. Overall, they had simply antedated the big raid. Now the clan knew that the Raiders had a movable fortress in the Dust and this was bound to make them tread lightly.

In the hangar bay, a ladder was extended to the ground and a team of medics poured from the ship. The first drivers crawled from their cockpits, stretched, tossed gloves, scarves and goggles aside. Men and women were gathering around the technicals to lift the wounded off the cargo areas.

Hox padded the barrel of his blemished launcher and when he withdrew his hand, he found his glove smoking. A quick checkup revealed the barrel to be sizzling hot. At first this didn't make any logical sense, and then he realized that the cooling system couldn't work with only half a barrel and the tubing ripped wide open. There was work to be done, but Hox didn't give a damn, as he dragged himself from the turret and jumped down on solid ground.
Landsickness made him unsteady for a second, then Linda was there and made things worse by hugging him fiercely. They both staggered and fell to the ground, with Linda on top.

"That was rough", Hox mumbled and tried to get out of all his protective gear.

"Sorry", Linda replied and helped him back to his feet.

"That's not exactly what I was talking about", the mercenary continued and tossed his gas mask over his shoulder, unerring into the turret. "More... the whole raid."

For a moment he expected her to make a sarcastic remark about him complaining about her driving abilities and he wouldn't have held that against her, but she just nodded, before adding: "Yeah, that was blown a bit out of proportion."

They leaned back into a hug, remaining upright this time. He felt their hearts beating together, still frantic, her arms wrapped around him and he saw over her shoulder how the medics were carrying stretchers and providing first aid that went farther than the stem cell injection the worst cases had treated themselves with.

"How many dead?", he asked hoarsely.

"Eight, as far as I know."

"Just like in the old days."

"Hm. And we're still alive... despite a sawed-off grenade launcher."

"As I said. Just like in the old days."

Linda smiled and they shared a quick kiss, before walking over where two able bodied people could be put to good use.

Mitch Darsher sat cross legged atop his mesa, had his ECHO in his lap and studied a CAD model of his exo-skeleton. He couldn't sleep. All around him was the hissing and growling of agitated Spiderants.

Thanks to his suit he had reached the mesas quickly and without any incident, jump after jump after jump. He felt like a kangaroo. Climbing up had proven to be a little more difficult; the boosters in the exo-skeletons legs weren't exactly powerful enough to lift him all the way up to the flat top, so he had used the metal arms to climb the almost vertical wall. If necessary, he had punched holes into the rock in order to produce a hold.

Only after he had reached the top, which was about ten meters in diameter, he had noticed the commotion at the foot of the mesa. His climbing efforts had roused the local Spiderants who were now swarming around the rock formation. The smaller ones had tried to jump up, some of the bigger ones had shot webbing at him and neither had hit. He was simply out of reach.

Also, he was trapped for the time being. Power in his exo-skeleton was dangerously low after all the boosted jumps. He didn't have a spare energy core, leaving him with only one option to recharge his suit: The solar cells.

At night.

Yup, life truly was great.

The cells could work with almost any amount of light and Elpis was bright in the sky. But reloading the exo-skeleton by means of the moon and the brightest stars was slow work. Very slow work. Excruciatingly slow. And, courtesy to Pandora's day-night-cycle, Mitch had more than eighteen hours of nighttime left to enjoy, before the sun would make its cosmic cameo.

With a lot of time to kill and unable to sleep, Mitch started to plan further work on his exo-skeleton. There was always something to improve and his latest addition to the modified construction equipment, cuffs around the joints to keep the sand out, had already paid off big time.

He had just saved a creative blueprint, when the radio came alive: "Ham, this is Gods Eye! Be advised, I'm closing in on your position right now, so please don't shoot at me."

Mitch pressed the button for a response. "Gods Eye, this is Ham! Thanks for the call sign. And thanks for picking me up."

Loggins chuckled. "Never mind."

The engineer deconstructed his exo-skeleton and scanned the horizon. As the copter wasn't using any lights at all, it took him a while to spot it on its beeline course towards him. Half a minute later, the copter was hovering beside him, so he was eye to eye with the pilot, which of course was complicated by Loggins' flight helmet.

"You've attracted quite a fan base", the pilot said, pointing to the Spiderants below.

"How did the battle turn out?", Mitch asked.

"Oh, they lured them to Surprise Four and the Hodunks high-tailed it out of there. We've seven dead and a shitload of wounded. Hop on board, I'll bring you there."

"Harker's crew?"

"They abandoned the car. Two dead."

"Who?"

"Get on-fucking-board!"

Mitch jumped for the last time this night. And true to his newly found expertise on this matter, he didn't miss and landed safely on the bench for paratroopers. "Alright. Now speed-fucking-up."

"Engineers", Loggins sighed, while turning his bird back in the direction of Ellie's Garage. "Always the wise guys."