LIFEL1K3

“Who brings a baseball bat to a gunfight?”

Eve peered out the side of the barricade. Eyes fixed on the Spartan, teeth gritted in a snarl. Stretching out her hand once more.

“Come on …,” she pleaded.

“Eve, what are you doing?”

“Why won’t it work?” she spat, furious. “Why can’t I do it again?”

Hails of burning lead raked their cover, pitter-pattering on the steel. Eve heard cries of panic, screams of pain. Lemon peeked out over the barricade, whistling softly.

“Look at him go …”

Eve’s eyes fell on the lifelike, widening in amazement. Ezekiel had scrambled up the back of the closest Spartan and, as if the metal were tinfoil, torn the ammo feed from its autoguns to stop it firing on the house. Wrenching its plasma cannon toward the Spartan beside it, the lifelike melted the cockpit and the pilot inside into puddles. The Brotherhood scattered into cover, Fridge Street laying down the lead on Ezekiel as it twisted and dodged, almost too fast to track.

Noticing the rooftop autoguns were OOC, two of the braver Fridgeboys made a dash for the house. Whether to seek cover or wreak havoc, Eve wasn’t quite sure.

“Finally!” Lemon cried.

Eve’s bestest leapt off the roof with a howl, dropping a Fridgeboy with 500kV crackling through his brainmeats. Kaiser was waiting inside the front door for the other one, and the scavver was soon dashing back to his comrades with his shins torn to ribbons.

Ezekiel dropped from the Spartan’s shoulders, grabbing a Kevlar-clad corpse to shield itself as it weaved through the hail of bullets. Even with only one arm, it carried the body effortlessly, gleaming with what looked a lot like sweat as it rolled into cover behind a stack of tires near the house. A pile of old retreads had been set ablaze by the plasma, thick smoke rolling over the yard and burning the back of Eve’s throat.

She realized Cricket had crawled up onto the roof beside her. The little bot was tugging at her boots and yelling at her to get back inside over the roar of the remaining Spartan’s autogun fire. Lemon was safe with Kaiser below. But Eve was still trying desperately to unleash whatever it was that had dropped that Goliath in the Dome. Eyes narrowed. Temples throbbing. Muscles straining.

Come onnnn …

“Eve, come on!”

She reached deep inside herself. To the place she’d fallen into when that Goliath raised its fist above her head. The moment she’d looked down the barrel pointed at her skull. A moment of perfect fear. Of defiance. Thrashing and kicking against that long goodnight.

This is not the end of me.

This is just one more enemy.

The Spartan jerked back like Eve had punched it. It trembled, as if every servo inside it were firing at once. She grinned as a cascade of sparks burst from the machina’s innards. And spewing smoke, the Spartan stumbled and crashed face-first into the scrap.

“Eve …,” Cricket murmured. “You did it.”

Eve punched the air. “Eat that, you dustneck trash-humper!”

As their last machina fell, the Brotherhood broke. Two of their Spartans were OOC, the Iron Bishop’s machina standing abandoned as the Brothers dragged their fallen leader away. With the death of their own boss and Ezekiel still laying down bullets from its nest of tires, most of the fight had been taken out of Fridge Street, too. They were stepping off quick, scattering into the Valley.

Eve scoped the bloody battleground that had engulfed her front yard. Some of the meanest, toughest beatsticks in Dregs had stepped up with a fistful of capital T and were now scuttling away with their tails between their legs.

Wiping the sweat from her good eye, the girl winked at the little logika beside her.

“Think you can chalk up a win for the good guys, Crick.” She smiled.

And that’s when the first bomb fell from the sky.

1.6 (#ulink_4fe497df-061d-51c0-a0f7-fb47eb5ad96c)

IMPACT (#ulink_4fe497df-061d-51c0-a0f7-fb47eb5ad96c)

Red on my hands. Smoke in my lungs. My mother, my father, my sisters and brother, all dead on the floor beside me. Hollow eyes and empty chests.

The soldiers stand above me. The four of them in their perfect, pretty row.

They have only one thing left to take from me.

The last and most precious thing.

Not my life, no.

Something dearer still.

A silhouette looms.

Raises a pistol to my head.

“I’m sorry,” a voice says.

I hear the sound of thunder.

And then I hear nothing at all.

No warning. No telltale whooooosh like in the old Holywood flicks. Just the blast.

And fire.

And screams.

A second incendiary fell, landed in the middle of the retreating Fridge Street Crew, sending Pooh and his teddy bear off to the Wherever in pieces. A third bomb blew the Brotherhood boys about like old plastic bags in the wind. Eve and Cricket looked up to the sky, the girl’s belly turning cold as she saw a light flex-wing with a faded GNOSISLABS logo on the tail fin swooping through smoke.

“This is not good …,” Cricket said.

The flex-wing zoomed overhead, cutting down anything that moved. The craft made another pass, mopping up everything still twitching. And finally, with the kind of skillz you really only see in the virtch, the pilot brought the ’wing down to a gentle landing on the trash and skipped out the door in the space between heartbeats.

“Riotgrrl?” Lemon’s voice drifted up from the verandah below. “You fizzy?”

“Stay behind cover, Lem.”

“No doubt. I’m too pretty to die.”

Eve’s eyes were fixed on the newcomer, standing ankle-deep in the mess she’d made. A woman. Barely more than a girl, really. Nineteen, maybe twenty. She wore combat boots and a clean white shift, hood pulled back from a perfect face. Short dark hair cut into ragged bangs. Some kind of sidearm Eve had never seen before at her hip. And in her right hand, the sheathed curve of what might have been a …

“Um, is she carrying a sword?” Lemon yelled.