Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(8)

The engines grew louder, the distant popopopopop of the S-Ks’ guns echoing across the Scrap as the chase approached the island. Kaiser gave a low-pitched growl—a signal that he must be really annoyed. Eve knelt beside him, gave him a hug to shush him.

Glancing back to the dogfight, she saw the indie take out another Seeker-Killer, its smoking ruins tumbling from the sky. She was wondering if the flex-wing might live to fight another day when a burst of bullets caught it across the engines, sending it pinwheeling through the air. Miraculously, the flex-wing managed to catch its final pursuer in a return burst, and the last drone crashed into the ocean, setting the black water ablaze.

“Bye-bye, lil’ birdie,” Lemon muttered.

Lem was right; the damage was done. The flex-wing was losing altitude, dark smoke smeared behind it. Only one way it was going to end. Question was where.

Eve followed the craft’s arc overhead, flinching as the ship tore its belly out on a mountain of old auto wrecks. She lost sight of it behind a ridge of corroding engines but heard it crash, a screechskidtumbleboom echoing in the ruins around them.

She grinned down at Cricket, tongue between her teeth.

“Don’t even,” the logika groaned.

“Oh, come on, we can’t let someone else scav on that?”

“It just spanked three Daedalus S-Ks out of the sky, Evie. They’ll have heard the noise in Los Diablos. Sticking around here is dumber than a box of screwdrivers.”

Lemon scoffed. “It’s ‘dumber than a box of hammers,’ Crick.”

“It’s not my fault Grandpa wrote me crappy simile algorithms.”

“You’re the one who just pointed out how much trouble we got,” Eve said. “Imagine the scratch we might make on salvage like that.”

“Evie—”

“Five minutes. You game, Lem?”

Miss Fresh looked her bestest up and down.

“What’s Rule Number One in the Scrap?” she asked.

Eve smiled. “Stronger together.”

Lemon nodded. “Together forever.”

Eve scratched Kaiser behind his metal ears. “Whatcha think, boy?”

The blitzhund wagged his tail, his voxbox emitting a small wuff.

“Three versus one.” She grinned at Cricket. “The ayes have it.”

“That’s the problem with democracy,” the little bot growled.

Eve sighed, looked at Cricket sidelong. Grandpa had built him for her sixteenth birthday—her first without her mother or father. Her sisters or brother. Not even the bullet to her head had scrubbed away the memory of their murders. But the first night Cricket sat beside Eve’s bed, watching with those mismatched eyes while she slept—that was the best night’s sleep she’d had for as long as she could remember. And she loved him for it.

But still …

“I know the urge to worry is hard-coded into that head of yours,” Eve said. “But true cert, Crick, you’re the most fretful little fug I ever met.”

“I am as my maker intended,” he replied. “And don’t call me little.”

Eve winked and shouldered her pack. With a nod to Lemon, the girl turned and trudged down the slope, Kaiser close on her heels.

Scowling as best he could, Cricket followed his mistress into the Scrap.





1.3


WINDFALL

The four of us huddle together. Our parents and brother dead beside us. So close to dying, I feel completely alive. Everything is sharp and bright and real. My eldest sister’s arm around my shoulder. The warmth of her breath on my cheek as she squeezes me and tells me everything will be all right.

Olivia. The eldest of us. The epicenter. She taught us what it was to love each other, my three sisters and my brother and me. To be a band, thick as thieves. The Five Musketeers, Mother used to call us, and it was true. Five of us against the world.

The beautiful man glances behind him, and another soldier steps forward. A woman. Sharp and beautiful and cold.

“Faith,” Olivia whispers.

At first I think she’s praying. And then I realize the word is not a plea, but a name. The name of the soldier now leveling her pistol at Liv’s head.

“Please,” I beg. “Don’t …”

The Five Musketeers, my father used to call us.

And then there were three.



Eve double-checked the power feed to her stun bat as they moved, creeping down the tank hulks with the sun scorching their backs. Both she and Lemon wore piecemeal plasteel armor under their ponchos, and Eve was soon dripping with sweat. But even the most low-rent scavver gangs had a few working popguns between them, and the protection was worth a little dehydration. Eve figured they’d be done before the sun got high enough to cook her brain inside her skull.

The quartet made their way across rusting hills and brittle plastic plains that would take a thousand years to degrade. Kaiser went first, moving through the ruins with long loping strides. Cricket rode on Eve’s shoulders. She could see a couple of nasty-looking ferals trailing them, but the threat of Kaiser kept the big cats at bay. Dust caked the sweat on her skin, and she licked her lips again. Tasted the sea breeze. Black and plastic. She wanted to spit but knew she shouldn’t waste the moisture.

They scrambled into a new valley, a telltale trail marking the flex-wing’s skid through the sea of scrap. The ship was crumpled like an old can against a pile of chemtanks, black fumes rising from the wreck. Eve sighed in disappointment, wondering if there’d be anything at all left to salvage.