Normal heroes always take a detour. Of course, I'm not a protagonist, and there are serious doubts about my normality - is there anyone normal on Pandora? Or rather, who could be called normal on Earth? - but since I live in a reality with RPG elements, it's a almost god's will.

  Although if you think of AlBa as a god, I don't think he did.

  Or can I say so, if they're sidequests? Considering that all normal players do them first - probably. I'll take it that way, anyway.

  In any case, it'd be downright stupid to run headlong into the Eridian guards. You'd have to prepare well first, stock up on weapons, ammunition, and shields,

  and not go.

  ...It would be nice, yes. Alas, by the will of God, or whoever AlBa is, we have to.

  Hmm, can it be considered a holy quest, in that case...?

  Well, either way. I'll really need all the trump cards I can get, and if there are some difficulties with equipment, it's quite possible to raise a level, and preferably several. Look for a part-time job, the same Moxie usually has one. As I understand it, it counts as tasks for which I get "experience", and I have to shoot. Plus something for the "Club of the Badassess", they have some nice bonuses for advanced members there.

  The problem is that these part-time jobs can be just as dangerous at times.

  - Just find a lost worker, or at least his ECHO, they said. Just a simple job for a couple hours, they said - I hissed.

  - Don't get distracted! - Mordecai yelled through the rumble of the machine gun, and I turned the wheel, rounding a large boulder ahead.

  This job, for a change, had been thrown to me by a hunter. A technician had gone missing on a small farm mixed with a mining and processing facility - even on this planet, it turns out, some things still aren't done through digitalization. The owner asked to find him dead or alive - at least to get his ECHO and tools back - and for an additional fee to kill the skags that most likely ate the poor guy, plus help with repairing and adjusting the equipment. Mordecai was quite able to do the first part himself, but the last part was the main thing for the customer, so the hunter decided that it made sense to call and do everything together. And it would be safer - the customer had warned that there were a lot of skags there.

  - How many of them are there? - Mordecai said angrily.

  - Do not count, shoot! - I responded.

  - The machine gun overheated! - He responded, and I, holding the wheel with one hand, handed my partner the Wave. He chuckled his tongue, but opened fire.

  For Mordecai trail was easy to follow. Unlike me, the hunter was really a hunter, and needed no applications: his eyes, and those of his pet (though he preferred "partner") did the job of a tracker far better than ECHO. I followed him, since on the one hand I would need to work one of the test rigs if a worker died, and on the other hand I had a wheelbarrow on which to cover sections of the trail faster. Plus, a chance to get a little hands-on lesson from a pro, and cover in the form of a car turret, just in case. Even though it's much less powerful than one might think, but the "ammunition" is very cheap, practically free. And considering that the goal was not to track prey, but to find a missing person, the noise of the machine was not a problem. More likely to scare off lone predators.

  Well, that's what we thought.

  The Bloodwing sounded nasty scream a second before a small hill nearby exploded; just enough time for me to jump on the car, starting to climb into the driver's seat - the turret could be controlled from there, too. A second more, and I could see in my scope from unknown... no, from under the ground - there were at least three dozen skags, and more kept appearing. Three things stopped me from firing immediately: their number, the fact that they were in no hurry to attack, and two other things.

  - Who are you and what are you doing here? - The human sitting on some sort of throne on the back of another giant alpha-skag, a man in dirty overalls with a large wrench sticking out of his breast pocket, asked.

  And, to make matters worse, both the giant and most of the other skags were wearing a kind of metal plate armor.

  Mordecai glanced at me.

  - Mercenaries, - I said. - Looking for you, I think. At the behest of our employer.

  - This fool wants me back? - said the man, and raised his hands to the sky. - Too late! He never appreciated my talent, my skill, my ingenious plans! But no longer will I be limited by his limitedness and narrow-mindedness! Now that I have been able to achieve...

  He stopped abruptly and stared at Mordecai and me, shifting his gaze from one to the other.

  - I've got it! - he proclaimed with apparent madness. - This wretch wants to force me back so that he can continue to exploit my genius! But now that I have this army at my disposal, all of Pandora....

  BANG! The man collapsed with a hole in his forehead.

  The eyes of both Mordecai and skags crossed on me. I put the revolver away and shrugged.

  - What? - I asked. - It would have come to this anyway. Now...

  The 'bird' figure fell from the sky onto the corpse, tearing the ECHO off of it.

  - ...Let's go!

  I opened fire, covering Mordecai, a fraction of a second later than the skag flock took off. He swung into the gunner's turret and took over; I hit the gas in the process. The closest skag, even though it was riddled with bits of metal, managed to claw the car, but it didn't have the strength to claw back.

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  The others, however, were a problem.

  The armor the madman had put on them was good enough to withstand the machine gun from the auto-turret; Mordecai managed to hit the gaps between the plates despite the movement, the shaking, and the low accuracy of his weapon, but Pandora's critters were tough and resilient, and there were a lot of them.

  - Any grenades? - Mordecai shouted.

  - Where would a poor engineer get grenades? - I shouted back.

  - All in the house, for kids? - He snorted, continuing to take short bursts.

  - I don't come from Pandora. We're out of our own, and there's no production yet, - I explained. The hunter seemed to tsk.

  The Bloodwing, perched on the metal frame of the lattice at the gunner's nest, made its unpleasant scraping sound and soared into the sky. A second, and it fell on the pack, clawed for a second with its claws, of considerable size, into the beast's backbone, and soared again, returning to its master. And in his claws... I pulled one hand off the steering wheel, rubbed my eyes, looking in the mirror, and even turned around. Nah, my eyes didn't deceive me: there was a grenade in the wing's claws. Wut.

  - ...How does he do that...? - . . .it came out of my mouth.

  Instead of an answer, though, only an explosion followed as the wing's master used the offering. The grenade split into several smaller grenades, covering the expanded space with explosions, but that wasn't enough: a singularity grenade would have been a good fit here, the other modifications not so much.

  Alas, it seemed that Bloodwing had already done its fair share of common sense abuse for the day. He still attacked the Skags a couple times, but he didn't bring any new grenades - only ammo blocks and one banknote.

  ...In principle, this is also absurd.

  It seemed that new skags immediately took the place of the knocked out skags; one consolation was that they were no longer armored. Unfortunately, the unarmored ones were faster.

  Also, some were spitting even on the run. Mordecai knocked down some of the spit, but the ones that did hit him had to use a sprinkler, the equivalent of a fire extinguisher, for fire and acid.

  The main problem, however, was the alpha. The giant, despite its size and armor, from which bullets simply bounced, was even faster than smaller relatives, and did not catch up with us mainly because the usual skags tangled under his feet. So we had to shoot them very selectively, mostly the ones that got ahead; the tumbling carcasses slowed him down.

  That's all, unfortunately. I don't know what kind of armor that psycho had put on him - a colleague, my ass - but despite Mordecai's attempts, the ECHO displayed a full bar of hitpoints, with no damage taken. Weapons were too weak to penetrate it, and even corrosive weapons only left smudges. It would be good to get a piece of that armor and see what was in it... but first, survive.

  I had a plan after all. A good one, a solid one. I'm exaggerating. But it at least not crazy.

  Lead the pack to the client's base? Nah. They've got a good defense there, but even if they decide to cover us, they'll take it out of our pay. But there are free perimeter turrets in the other direction, even closer. The only problem is not getting hit by their fire.

  - Angel! - I said. - If you want to earn a point in your favor, you have a great opportunity!

  No answer. All right, I'll do it myself.

  Border turrets, as already mentioned, are simple and cheap, controlled by simple algorithms instead of AI, and they have no friend-enemy identification system; they shoot at any target that crosses the border at a standard range from the turret. So.

  - ECHO, display the guard zone of the border turrets - I commanded, and the area ahead of us became the colored red. And now the most problematic moment... - Start the liquidation program.

  The name - from "liquid" as "fluid", a program of accelerated synthesis of water. To replace the water that was now pouring out in a thin layer of sand and dust on the rock behind us.

  Cryogenic weapons had not taken root on Pandora, alas - too sensitive to the dust that was ubiquitous here. But even without it...

  The skag's paws are good at finding their footing on rock and mud. But wet rock... that's more difficult. Especially when you're dealing with a multi-ton carcass with a lot of inertia.

  Hard to brake in time.

  The whistling sound of a shot with a thud... and a pop? testified that my bet had played out. The giant skag practically burst from the hit of... three? shells of turret cannons; it was joined by a couple of smaller skags, which also did not have time to slow down.

  - Not bad, - Mordecai said approvingly.

  - Praise me fully, - I said. - Can you handle the rest of them?

  - Sure.

  The hunter was true to his word. By interspersing turret fire with handgun fire, he reduced the pack's numbers until the remaining skags gave up pursuit: even they can recognize when prey is out of reach.

  The employer listened to the report about the armored skags with obvious interest instead of concern, but since we were paid substantially more for the ECHO, Mordecai and I decided not to go into it - there was too little ammo left, and we'd definitely need it if we were to delve deeper into the local affairs.

  - How likely do you think it is that in a while there will be armored skag riders in the Sands or something? - Mordecai asked. I shrugged.

  - I think, plus minus a hundred percent. Do you want to go back and prevent it?

  - Nah, I don't get paid for that, - the hunter said. He handed me a flask. - You want one?