Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(74)

The bounty hunter stared out over Armada, absentmindedly polishing his blade.

“Drop the shank!” a voice bellowed. “Drop it, and get down on the goddamn floor!”

Preacher sighed. Looked sidelong at the squad of Freebooter bullyboys gathering all around him. Seemed the neighbors hadn’t appreciated the ruckus.

“Mmmf,” he grunted.

The Freebooters were clad in piecemeal armor, made of hubcaps and Kevlar, strips of tire rubber and plates of scrap metal. But the guns they carried were the business—greasy automatics with enough punch to slow him up for a bit. Two of them even had flamethrowers. There were a dozen. More on the way, if his aural implants were anything to go by (and, yes, they were). Preacher didn’t really feel like a tussle, despite the blasphemy.

“Y’all obviously got no clue who I am,” he said.

“I know you’re gonna be a lot shorter, you don’t hit the deck now!”

Preacher frowned, scoped the Freebooter leader. He was wearing old football armor riveted with plate steel. His skull-and-crossbones bandanna was pulled up over his face, but the bounty hunter could tell he was barely old enough to shave.

Kids these days …

“Tell you what, son,” Preacher said. “I’m gonna reach into my coat. Nice and slow, like. And I’m gonna pull out the warrant I got for the missy I’m chasin’, who, I might point out, is beating feet farther from my current whereabouts as we jaw here.”

Preacher licked his split lips, spat bloody.

“You’re gonna notice a Daedalus Technologies seal on this warrant. You’re gonna figure out I’m in this pig’s sphincter of a town on Corp business. The Corp. The one that supplies the juice to Armada’s grid. You’re gonna conclude the missy I’m chasin’ is wanted by that same Corp and that you’re wasting said Corp’s valuable time. And you’re gonna mumble a big ol’ apology, you’re gonna order your boy to hand over that flamethrower there and, last, you’re gonna step the hell out of my way. We understand each other?”

The kid drummed his fingers on his rifle. Utterly unmanned.

“… You move slow,” he finally said. “Real slow.”

Preacher reached into his black coat.

Held up his Daedalus warrant with a red right hand.

“Now,” he said. “Hand me my goddamn flamethrower.”





1.24


GLASS

His ma had named him Quincey, but everyone called him the Velocipator.

He was a wizard. He didn’t wear robes or have a beard or a broomstick, but he conjured magic, true cert. In a world where nothing really worked anymore, the powerful needed a mechanic just as much as they needed armies and guns. And so while the Velocipator wasn’t one of the brightest peeps in Armada, he was still one of the most important. He kept the grid pumping juice. He kept the subway in working order. But most important, he kept the Admiral’s wheels spinning.

At the moment, he was working on her pride and joy: the Thundersaurus. The car was a beast—an old Mustang coupé cropped onto a monster truck chassis, its rear suspension jacked ten feet off the ground. The Admiral had a thing for ships, so the Velocipator had customed the ’Stang’s snout into a point, like the prow of an old speedboat. It was layered with rust, intake rising out of the hood like a tiny mountain of chrome. But it moved like its name, shaking the earth as it came.

The Velocipator pulled his screwdriver from between his teeth, hollered over the deep dub spilling through the old tune spinner.

“Oi, Slimm, you wanna grab me those filters Pando brung us? Might see if they fit.”

The Velocipator heard a series of wet thuds. A soft spang.

He swore he could smell burning hair.

“… Slimm?”

Armada’s chief mechanic crawled out from under Thundersaurus, cursing beneath his breath. “Bloody slackers, if youse are on the smoke again, I’ll …”

The man’s voice trailed off as he focused on the belt buckle in front of him. It was steel, slightly tarnished, attached to a pair of filthy cargo pants, which were in turn wrapped around a skinny girl with an impressive blond fauxhawk. She had a top-line optical implant and a Memdrive on one side of her skull. Welding goggles on her brow. A baseball bat rigged with some kind of shock generator in both hands.

“Hi,” she said.

The mechanic blinked. “You lost, sweetheart?”

“You don’t have any radiation suits around here, do you?”

“… Yeah, what for?”

“We’re going on a picnic.” She smiled.

The Velocipator frowned. There was no way this slice should be in here—the Wheelhouse was guarded by at least half a dozen Freebooters at any one time, sometimes more, and none of them had sent him word. And looking around, he saw no sign of Slimm, Jobs, Rolly or Snuffs, so there was no way she was here at their invite.

“Fizzy wheels.” She nodded to the beast behind him.

“Yeah, Thundersaurus, she’s a beaut.”

“Could I borrow the keys?”

“… What for?”

“Well, it’s gonna be easier to steal with the keys.”

The Velocipator’s frown was deepening. He saw a prettyboy with an old MfH-VI prosthetic arm cruise out from behind the fuel drums, rubbing his knuckles. He was carrying an automatic rifle that looked an awful lot like Rolly’s. The sawed-off shotgun stuffed into his jeans definitely belonged to Slimm—Velocipator could see his initials on the grip.