Flashback: Takeover
Zero straightened up and politely knocked on the door that had been cut into the overturned shipwreck. Immediately a hatch opened beside the door and a triple barreled shotgun was shoved through it, pointing straight at the Vault Hunter. "What do you want?!", the resident of the hideout shouted. The wreck provided an interesting, metallic echo, but it was definitely a man talking, in his thirties maximum and probably out of good teeth.
"I mean you no harm / Please just answer my question / I'm hunting a ship."
"A ship, eh? Lots and lots of those around and you don't need to hunt any of them", the unseen man snarled. "They're just lying on the rocks, wherever the ocean dropped them off, when he upped sticks and left."
"That's why I'm asking: / Do you know the Bacchanal? / Big, brown hovercraft?"
"Yeah, I know the blasted thing! But I don't want to have anything to do with it. Don't go out that often. Just crazies and beasts and crazy beasts."
"So, you didn't see it?"
"Well, I wouldn't call it seeing."
"Please, enlighten me."
"Heard about it! The Mouse's Witnesses use their bragging rights to the fullest! Took the thing to the Rustyards. Anything else you want to annoy me with or could you be so kind as to get your ass off my front lawn?!"
"Thank you for your help/ I won't bother you again / Withal, clean your gun."
"Huh?" The shotgun disappeared and the hatch slammed shut. "Oh boy, the old iron is really in need! Thanks, stranger."
Zero turned and walked as far as the rickety fence, where thirty men and women in various heat defying outfits had been calmly waiting for the conversation to end.
"Well", Private First Class Andrew Sturmer remarked, fumbling with his headband, "that was remarkably informative."
"Finally", Boatswain Renjo added and looked back on the junkyard and all the inhabited shipwrecks they had visited. Most of them were intact. Five had been home to psychos and therefore been reduced to happily smoking ruins.
"Anyone ever heard of these Witnesses before?", Specialist Ina Heartforce asked from the depths of her yellow veil.
"Religious nut jobs", Private John "Joke" Carroda chimed in, who preferred his integral helmet to the caps, hats and sashes sported by the rest of the crew, because he had secretly managed to revive the air conditioner. "They believe a prophet called Mouse will come from the skies and make them masters of the known universe."
"Burning birds of prey, weapon vendors, now rodents. This planet has some strange religions", Mechanic Ashley Burrow muttered.
"Let's get back on board / We have a destination / Next stop, the Rustyards", Zero addressed his crew and marched back to their three sand skiffs. The hovercrafts had seen a good chunk of fighting during the full Pandoran day they had spent searching for the Bacchanal. Sandworms only, though. After the commotion about Captain Blade's treasure, the desert north of Oasis had gone pretty quiet. There just wasn't enough of anything out here to warrant staying behind, at least for the bigger gangs. The remaining inhabitants were reclusive and suspicious of everything. Or completely out of their mind. Or a combination.
However, there seemed to be enough sane men out there to operate an enormous hovercraft.
In hindsight, Zero thoroughly kicked himself for leaving the Bacchanal unguarded in the desert. Granted, after the fight with the Leviathan they had had other things on their mind, but it was still unforgivable to leave something behind that equaled an aircraft carrier in terms of Pandoran Road War.
They had only come back for it, after the war with the Hodunks escalated beyond a mere nuisance. "These guys already knelt before Vallory, they're used to it. So we just need something to establish ourselves as a force worth kneeling before, something big and powerful that leaves these bandits surprised, scared and short a couple of limbs, if possible. I want them to surrender faster than Tediore to Vladof after the Battle of Dionysus", Lilith had explained vividly and sent Zero to get something that fit the bill.
The crew was by now pretty adept at stowing themselves away on the slim skiffs and they left the settlement behind quickly. Zero sat on a chest full of equipment, carefully watching the landscape speeding past. He imagined Wurmwater as it had been less than five years ago: A deep, vast ocean, the gateway to the thriving city of Oasis, crowded with ships on the surface and mighty Leviathans in the deeps, dotted with small islands and dangerous reefs, encrusted with barnacle and seaweed, where nowadays steep, jagged stone reached high into the sky. But neither climate nor sea level had taken kindly to the sudden change of the moon, when the Crackening had happened. Geostationary or not, Elpis still had an effect on Pandora and thus the ocean had, quoting the local with the dirty gun, "upped sticks".
"You think these zealots will put up a fight?", Renjo asked casually, but with an undeniable undertone of excitement.
"Maybe not", Carroda in the gunner's seat answered. "Fanatics are always prone to a good bluff or perhaps we can trade them somehow. But, well, you know how things go down here and if you want some advice about the social interaction with religious people on this planet, just ask Zero. He's got some stories to tell."
Zero turned his head slightly to look Renjo in the eye, who returned the gaze for a moment and then just slowly shook his head, without flinching. This was commendable, as eye contact with the faceless assassin usually sent the recipient running for the hills, but then again, most of them weren't native Pandorans who had sailed a boat into Split Skull Bay during the worst days of the Bloodshot occupation and subsequently loaded the goods waiting on the quay under constant attack, killing six bandits in the process.
"Look at that!", Squad Designated Marksman Charlie Suez yelled from the control stand. "This old hermit was right! If the Bacchanal didn't bust through here, I don't want to know what did."
The sheet metal gate that blocked the canyon leading to the Rustyards was breached. As were the ramshackle huts and bridges guarding the bottleneck. Zero was surprised to see the pockmarks of detonations where the canyon had been enlarged, so the big hovercraft could fit through. These Witnesses were brighter and more organized than most Pandoran bandits.
"Let's stop in the breach / We will continue on foot / Scout the area!", Zero ordered.
"Shoot on sight?", Renjo chimed in.
"No", the assassin said with enough determination in his voice to settle the matter there and then.
"Technical personnel should hang a little back", Sturmer suggested via radio.
"A good plan indeed / Do not let yourselves be seen / Stealth is our best tool."
The soldiers quickly fanned out, creeping down into the ship graveyard. The techies stayed with the skiffs, although the natives among them were clearly itching to partake in the fight. Zero had gone to great lengths for his motley crew, carefully picking out good soldiers as well as mechanics (requiring him to threaten Scooter with a gun, as he had impressed everyone remotely competent for the work on Sanctuary), medics and sailors. Especially, these were people who could keep their mouths shut, so he didn't have to confiscate every ECHO communicator to make sure no one accidentally leaked information.
Leaving the protection of the canyon, Zero spotted the Bacchanal immediately. The thrusters were turned off and the ship rested on braces and scaffolding, far enough away from the huts and houses of the ship graveyard to have a decent field of fire, in case anything living inside the gigantic wrecks decided to attack. There were sixteen people on the deck, three up on the quarterdeck and one in the aft hangar, though Zero suspected more in the bowels of the ship or somewhere in the graveyard. The new owners had clearly brought the hovercraft here to embattle it, as the wrecks provided a bountiful source of material. Metal parts were scattered around the scaffolding and the Witnesses had already added a figurehead in the form of a sandworm to the bow and something akin to a shrine in the middle of the deck.
The soldiers had stopped dead in their tracks and crouched close to the ground. Sturmer signaled the technical personnel to join them and they complied.
"What shall we do?", Carroda asked silently.
"...with the bleeding psycho, early in the morning", Specialist Marcos sang on and was ignored.
"Easy, shoot them from up here like rabid skags", Suez said who was calmly screwing a silencer on his "Pooshka" sniper rifle.
"It sounds quite tempting", Zero agreed. "Let me try something else though / I'll board, silently."
"Might as well, I certainly can't cross that much open ground unseen", Sturmer said. "Just give us a signal when to move in."
"Try getting closer / Start shooting, when things go wrong / You'll notice my act."
"Copy that", Suez confirmed, setting up a sharpshooter position.
Zero nodded wistfully and then he started to run, straight towards the hovercraft.
"So... when are you going to go?", Renjo asked somewhere behind him.
"He's already gone", Carroda chuckled and waved his hand through the hologram that was still standing back with the men.
By the time the cloak had used up all its energy, Zero had reached the stern of the Bacchanal. Looking back he chastised himself for leaving one, faint boot print in a small spot of loose sand. It was virtually invisible to anyone who didn't know what it was, but perfection was decidedly something else.
He was basically below the ship now. Silently the assassin started to climb the scaffolding and eventually the stern, passing the now empty hangar and quickly reaching the bulwark beneath the quarterdeck. The cloak was still reloading, but Zero was comfortable with waiting where he was. No one had seen him. Her looked back towards the canyon, delighted by the fact that his crew was closing in as quietly as humanly possible. Granted, he could spot them easily, but he knew what he was looking for and he had the advantage of training, technology and unmatched eyesight.
The cloak hummed readiness and Zero activated it, somersaulted over the railing, weaved past the three men on the quarterdeck and jumped to the seventh rung of the ladder leading up to the crow's nest. Not even out of breath he reached the top of the ladder, still cloaked, observed the men below him on the deck, decided where to land and jumped down, uncloaking in mid-air.
After all the battles on Pandora, all the bandits, soldiers and beasts, killing a large quantity of enemies all on his own had surprisingly decreased in being a challenge to Zero. The perfection of a headshot from a mile distance, the surgical precision of a katana thrust, all that was still enormously satisfactory, but the assassin had decided that the biggest challenge on Pandora was to settle a conflict without violence. Sniping everyone on board this vessel with just one clip of ammunition wasn't half as interesting as trying to talk the Witnesses into surrendering the ship without one shot fired.
Zero landed with soft knees, his reinforced boots made the first sound they had made in a while when they collided with the metal of the deck and made it reverberate. To the zealots it must have looked, as if he had literally fallen from the sky. There were now seventeen of them on the main deck and they looked shocked, which was a nice start.
"Rejoice, my children", he said, drawing himself up proudly. "The great Mouse is among you / The wait is over."
The expressions around him turned from shock to surprise, disbelief and puzzlement. There were only men, wrapped in white sashes, five had shields on them, all carried firearms in their belts or on their backs and twelve of them were armed with long steel hooks. Still, no one said a word and Zero continued.
"Trust merits reward / I will lead you to rule the world / Your dreams will come true." He stepped forwards and the men nervously backed away. This was getting better by the second. "Our future..."
"Hey, excuse me a moment?!" A man came running from the deckhouse. He wasn't yet thirty, wore a skintight black suit, his eyes were of a mesmerizing blue and a strange, transparent mask covered the lower half of his face, with little tubes going up into his nostrils. The other zealots quickly made way for the newcomer and bowed their heads.
"You must be a priest", Zero decided and looked the young man in the eye. To his credit, he didn't withdraw. "You have lead my people well."
"I'm not a priest!", the man shouted indignantly. "I am the great prophet Mouse!"
There was an uneasy pause. Zero cocked his head. "Are you sure 'bout that?"
"He is the one foretold", another believer agreed.
"Foretold for centuries", the prophet added arrogantly. "I am the Shortening of the Way, my army of free men will wage a holy war to make me Emperor of the universe! And that makes you, sir, a dirty impostor and heretic who will be..."
Zero drew a pistol, still amazed at how awkwardly his plan had backfired, and killed the prophet with a single headshot, that left the mask in perfect working condition. "Yeah, yeah, whatever / Trust me, he was a liar / I am the prophet."
"No, you aren't!", a zealot yelled and brandished his hook. "He showed us! He called for the beasts of the deep sand and they came to him and..."
A shot rang and pierced the man's throat. The believer crumbled on the deck, gargling and sputtering and eventually fainting from blood loss. Zero made a mental note to commend Suez on his timing and chide him for not hitting the head.
"You dare to doubt me?!", he roared, raising his arms over his head. "Six hells of pain shall unleash! / Unless you kneel down!"
But the parish of the tragically deceased prophet Mouse was way past their boiling point. "He's got a sniper up the slope!", one of them shouted.
"Death to the heretics!", another screamed and swung his hook against Zero.
The assassin took a second to sigh exasperated, then he drew his katana, blocked the hook and shot the attacker with the same pistol that had ended his prophet's life. The remaining fifteen men pounced on him with drawn weapons and earsplitting battle cries. They were utterly confused when their hooks and bullets passed ineffectively through the hologram in their midst and then a third men died, as a katana pierced his back. At the same moment Zero's crew emerged from the deckhouse, armed for close combat and it became rather bloody on the deck. Hooks, bayonets and barrels clashed, as the men lunged at each other in the confined space. Zero ignored the main carnage and swiftly climbed back on the quarterdeck, where three more zealots were hastily grabbing weapons. The assassin cut them down with ease, all the while listening intently to the fight below, in case his help was required. It wasn't. From the corner of his eye he spotted a fanatic who was lifted off his feet and over the bulwark by a shotgun blast. He heard sporadic sniper fire, but clearly Suez was afraid to hit his own people, which made him a bad marksman in Zero's opinion.
The fight didn't last long and no zealot survived it. Zero's crew had suffered a number of wounds, but no one was in mortal danger. Renjo, whose upper arm had been ripped open by a hook, was grinning from ear to ear. "I can't believe it! I just boarded a pirate ship! Now that's something I can tell my children."
Clean up was in full swing, when they were joined by the rest of the crew. Carroda had led a quick search party into the belly of the ship, turning up empty handed. Marcos and Renjo were singing "Bleeding Psycho" at the top of their lungs while throwing bodies over board. The medics took care of the wounded, while most of the mechanics disappeared into the engine rooms without even visiting the deck. Zero used the break to ECHO Lilith on an encrypted channel.
Just when he finished, he spotted the first Witnesses coming back from the wrecks, laden with engine parts and sheet metal. They were vigilant enough to notice the bodies on the ground and stayed behind cover, their numbers slowly growing. Some zealots scanned the Bacchanal through field glasses, others readied weapons, but they were probably still waiting for their full force to arrive.
Zero beckoned Suez to come over and pointed at the gathering believers. "Take them out at will / A good chance to hone your skills / Try headshots only."
The designated marksman gave him a look somewhere between fear and irritation before he rested his rifle on the railing. He waited, swiveled his gun on its bipod and then a zealot flung a metal container at the ship, which caused Suez to instinctively shoot him. Right between the eyes. The container rolled through the sand and came to rest a hundred paces from the hovercraft, way too big for a grenade and way too lightweight for a bigger bomb. Then the casing unfolded and revealed a strange metal construction that looked like a hydraulic press, which started thumping the ground at a high frequency.
"What the hell is that?!", Suez gasped and stared at the metal thing.
"We'll figure it out / In any case, a nice shot / Fit for a sniper", Zero commended the soldier, who just looked at him blankly.
The construction didn't do anything else than pummel the ground and the zealots were retreating deeper into the graveyard now. The little thing was clearly supposed to cause something the believers didn't want to be near, but Zero failed to see what it could possibly be.
A hatch opened in the middle of the deck and revealed a very surprised Bob Illner, a mechanic from Elpis and their greatest authority on the issue of hover thrusters. "Oh. So that's where this leads." Then he spotted Zero. "Hey, chief, quick update: The engines are looking good, we're ready to give it a burl. Ash and Greg will come up in a jiffy to check on the thrusters, we can't ignite recumbent plasma before making sure the magnetic locks ..."
"No more tech jargon", Zero sighed. He already knew, way, way too much about digistruct technology and mechanical engineering, courtesy to Gaige's ramblings. "Just do what you're here to do: / Get us moving, fast."
"Ace!" Illner closed the hatch behind him and Zero noticed disaster approaching from the farthest corner of his eye, just before it hit the Bacchanal headfirst. The ship shook violently. Scaffolding screeched and snapped. People staggered, Specialist Heartforce slipped in a puddle of blood and landed prone on the deck.
Zero had fought the Leviathan, but the Sandworm that had just burst from the ground may have given the guardian of Blade's treasure a run for his money in terms of size. It was at least five meters in diameter and the fanged open mouth easily measured two more from jaw to jaw. The beast had rammed the Bacchanal and now it was menacingly rearing its head over the railing. The situation reminded Zero strangely of old depictions of sea serpents, as they attacked the ships of hapless explorers.
The Sandworm wound up and spit a ball of acid at them. Even Zero dove for cover, as the missile impacted and green, sizzling liquid was flying every which way. Sturmer screamed horribly, as a single drop hit him on the forehead, but Medic Glenn Erics was there to empty his entire canteen into the soldier's face, diluting the chemical to a bearable concentration.
Zero ripped open the hatch. "Start the engines now!", he commanded. "Quick update: Sandworm attack / We will distract it."
"You better do that", Illner agreed meekly. "The thrusters need to be lit from outside, as..."
Zero slammed the hatch shut. He didn't fear for his own life, but he saw the pattern the acid had eaten into the metal. This beast could seriously damage the Bacchanal and it was still the goal of their mission. The rest of the crew had unanimously started to pepper the worm with everything they had, but its scales proved to be resilient even to Torgue-ammunition. Zero joined his men in the effort, aiming for the head high above the railing.
"Useless!", Suez shouted, sounding surprisingly calm.
Zero turned his head sharply and flashed the marksman a question mark on his faceplate, still shooting.
"I already emptied a magazine into its mouth. If it has a brain, it's not up there and this thing is so big it will rather die from lead poisoning than from any bullet wounds. Cover!"
Acid splashed over the deck. Zero ducked behind the mast, quickly figuring out something else. Even if they couldn't kill it that way, destroying the creatures head would rob it of its main tool to cause havoc. The assassin grabbed a longshot grenade from his SDU and flung it unerring into the worms maw. He saw the explosion, but instead of doing vital damage, it just made the creature angry. It screamed and jabbed at the deck, nearly crushing Renjo who barely rolled out of the way.
"Ah... thrusters..." Zero turned to see mechanics Ashley Burrow and Greg Kowalski who were gawping at the chaotic sight of the deck.
"Starboard engine's free / You can ignite it right now / I'll clear port for you", Zero explained to the startled machinists and headed for the railing. The worm jabbed again at the ship and rocked it on its braces. Tortured metal snapped. The ship tilted to starboard and then suddenly righted itself, as the hover thrusters ignited on this side. Capsizing was averted. For now.
Zero activated his ECHO while carefully studying the Sandworm. "Attention all crew / To your stations, leave the worm / Get ready to move."
"The worm is kind of in the way", Carroda objected.
"I'll handle the beast", Zero reassured the Private and tucked a rocket launcher out of his SDU. There was no weapon he loathed more. It wasn't a tool for a killer, but for a destroyer. Still, he needed the worm to look his way.
The rocket barrage did two things: it caused the first visible damage to the worm, blowing off a feeler and a chunk of what could be called its forehead, and it made the creature turn to Zero. The worm attacked, mouth wide open, ready to swallow the Vault Hunter whole.
He jumped at precisely the right moment and landed on the Sandworm's head, which was treacherous footing. Zero buried his katana in the soft, unprotected flesh between the scales, for his plan as well as for support. The worm went ballistic. It withdrew from the ship, taking a couple of sails with it in the process, and shook its head violently, but Zero held on with an iron grip, cutting deeper and wider, forcing the scales apart. Green blood gushed over his boots and made the footing even worse, but finally the cut was to his liking. He quickly shoved his remaining grenades into the wound and only pulled the pin on the last one. Then, Zero yanked his sword free and let go, sliding down the side of the bucking Sandworm as fast as gravity would allow him.
Behind him, the worm's head exploded into a mist of green goo and splinters of the scales. Suddenly lacking a maxilla, it couldn't even scream in pain. It just wobbled, like a garden hose losing pressure, and then it hastily burrowed.
The desert was tinted green in a radius of five meters and sweeping his fingers over his faceplate, Zero was not surprised to see that he too had been given a paintjob. He turned slowly to see the Bacchanal hovering free, two meters above ground and already going about. The assassin flashed a smiley on his faceplate, then he started to run after the hovercraft.
Carroda threw him a rope and by the time the ship had turned around, Zero was standing on the deck again, green liquid dripping off his suit and everyone regarding him with an incredibly awed expression. Even Marcos had stopped his singing.
"Status?", Zero asked.
"Lots of warning lights in the engine rooms, but nothing critical", Carroda answered carefully, as if he was handling a wild Skag. "Renjo has the helm. We'll proceed to rig the remaining sails on the foremast."
"Excellent." The Vault Hunter veered away from the Private.
"What about the Witnesses?", Suez added, equally as cautiously.
Zero gave this some thought. Their prophet was dead, if he actually had been one was anyone's guess. They had learned how to call a big worm from the deep, but they decidedly hadn't tamed them. "I'd say, leave them be / Without their prophet, they're weak / Just men of the sands." And with this Zero disappeared into the deckhouse, in search of a bucket to wash off the Sandworm's blood.
A/N: For some odd reasons I'm adding a Dune disclaimer here. I don't own a syllable of the Dune books and not a frame of the movies and I will never monetize anything that resembles characters or events from these works. Call me paranoid, but a stitch in time safes nine, right? Thanks for reading as always, cheers!