Ezekiel shouted. “Are you okay?”
A deep electronic reply rang out over the radio as another round exploded. “NOTHING A NICE BACK RUB WOULDN’T FIX. IF YOU’RE NOT TOO BUSY?”
“Lemon can’t operate the tank turret. Take care of those rocketeers!”
“… YOU MEAN SHOOT THEM?”
“No, I mean ask them to dinner!” Ezekiel shouted. “Of course shoot them!”
“MISS FRESH,” came the big bot’s reply. “WOULD YOU BE SO KIND AS TO REMIND THIS IDIOT MURDERBOT ABOUT THE FIRST LAW OF ROBOTICS?”
Lemon sighed, spoke by rote. “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a hu—”
Another explosion rocked the tank, and Ezekiel started cursing with way more chops than Lem would’ve given him credit for. Thing was, even though Crick couldn’t lay any kind of hurting on a human, picking a fight with a grav-tank and seventy tons of armored robot gladiator didn’t seem like the most sensible plan. So why had these scavvers decided to—
“… Oh,” Lemon said, blinking at her rear cams.
“Oh what?” Ezekiel called, still gunning the engine.
“Oh, sh—”
Another blast rocked the tank, and Lemon fell clean off her seat, splitting her brow on the controls. Pulling her helmet back on, she hollered into her comms.
“Crick, check our six, we got capital T!”
The big bot turned to face their new pack of trouble. Stomping along the gully behind them came the ugliest machina Lem had ever seen. On its four legs, it only stood three meters high, but it was at least seven long. Cobbled together from the remains of half a dozen other machina, it had a serpentine neck, a couple of old earthmover scoops fashioned into snaggle-toothed jaws. Two floodlights atop the scoops gave the impression of large, glowing eyes.
The machina reminded her of a vid Eve had shown her once. These big lizard things that had romped the planet before humans came along to wreck everything.
Dinosomethings?
Anyway. It was big. And rusty. And stomping right at Cricket.
Its pilot was mostly hidden inside a heavy safety cage, but Lemon could see he was dolled up like his rocket-friends, muddy gold colors and all. His voice was thick and rough, crackling over the machina’s PA system.
“Dunghill knave! I challenge thee!”
Cricket tilted his head. “… UM, WHAT?”
The machina pilot opened up with a pair of autoguns, the shells shattering on Cricket’s hull. The bot raised his hands to shield his optics, sparks and tracer rounds lit up the dusk. Deciding the machina was a bigger threat to Lemon than the rocket crews, Crick charged headlong into its line of fire.
“YOU WAITING FOR AN INVITATION, STUMPY?” he yelled.
Ezekiel spat a final curse and thumped a fist on the console. Sliding out of his chair, he squeezed past Lemon and up into the turret. Zeke was tall, broad-shouldered. Olive skin and short dark curls and bright blue eyes. His right arm was missing below the elbow, but the injury came nowhere close to ruining the picture. Ratcheting the turret hatch open with his good hand, he shot Lemon a wink.
“Stay there, Freckles.”
“True cert,” she nodded. “I’m too pretty to die.”
Pushing the hatch open, he was gone. Lemon watched on cams as the lifelike dashed off, skipping sideways to avoid another rocket blast. He moved like a song through the broken stone, disappearing up the gully into the smoke and the dusk.
“Run, ye three-inch coward!” one of the rocketeers cried.
Meantime, Cricket was toe-to-toeing the enemy machina. Crick was still getting used to his new body—the old one had been forty centimeters tall, after all, and he clearly wasn’t quite at home in the body of a seven-meter-high WarBot. But the Quixote had been made by the best techs in Gnosis R & D, and Crick’s strength was scarygood. With one titanic fist, he crushed the machina’s autoguns to scrap, tearing them off in a hail of sparks. The scavver pilot reared his machina up onto its hind legs, roared into the PA.
“Have at thee, villain!”
A burst of fire exploded from the machina’s jaws, engulfing Cricket in blue flame. A blast like that would’ve probably melted his old bod to slag, and instinctively, Crick flinched away with a booming, electronic yelp. The machina pilot followed up with a swipe from one massive front leg, smashing the logika into the gully wall. A victorious cry went up from the rocketeers above.
“A hit!”
“A very palpable hit!”
“Who are these goons?” Lemon muttered, shaking her head.
Cricket climbed back onto his feet as the machina crashed into him, seizing one of his arms in those earthmover jaws. Crick struck back, tearing away the panelwork at the beast’s throat to expose the hydraulics beneath.
Meanwhile, Ezekiel had climbed the cliffs farther down the gully, and made his way back under the cover of dusk. Thanks to the Libertas virus, lifelikes weren’t beholden to the First Law, and Ezekiel had proved in the past he had no problems with grievous bodily harm when it came to protecting his friends. He stole up behind the scavvers in the first rocket emplacement, and without ceremony, booted one over the sandbags and onto the jagged rocks ten meters below.
Cricket ripped loose a handful of cables from the machina’s throat, hydraulic fluid spewing from the rends. The jaws lost pressure and Crick pulled his arm free, raising one enormous fist to slam the head into the ground. But before the blow could land, his optics began flickering, and the big bot wobbled on his feet.
He took a step backward, struggling to keep his balance.
“I DON’T FEEL SO …”
The machina pivoted, its massive tail knocking Cricket back up the gully. The big bot tumbled along the ground, crashing to a halt against the grav-tank’s rear. Lemon fell out of her seat again, wiping the blood from her split eyebrow as she peered at cams. The big bot was trying to stand, but his movements were sluggish, clumsy, like he’d spent a hard night on the home brew.
“Crick, what’s wrong?” she asked.
“I DON’T …”
“… Crick, you gotta get up!”
The dinomachina was stomping toward him, jaws limp, one floodlight smashed. Ezekiel had leapt the six meters across the gully to the other emplacement, and was busy ending the second crew. But as Lemon watched, the scavver pilot slapped a control pad in his cockpit, and a cluster of short-range rockets popped from the machina’s shoulders, ready to unload right at Zeke’s exposed back.
“Fat-kidneyed rascal!” the scavver cried.
The situation had turned a deep shade of ugly.
Lemon knew she should stay in the tank. It was safer there. She was still aching and tired from the Babel throwdown, and feeling kinda queasy, talking true. But Cricket was her friend. Ezekiel was her friend. And beat and sick though she felt, Lemon had lost enough friends already today. Without thinking, she lunged toward the tank’s hatch, popped up into the smoke and flame. And fixing the machina in her stare, she dragged her cherry-red bangs from her eyes, pulled her helmet on tighter and stretched out her hand.
She’d been twelve years old when she first used It. Just a skinny little scavvergirl, scratching out a living on the meanstreets of Los Diablos. It’d been late at night outside the Skin District, and she’d stolen a credstik, slipped it into an auto-peddler for a quick meal. But the automata had swallowed her stik, no food to show for it, and Lem had just lost it. Rage boiling in her empty belly. A gray static, building up behind her eyes. She’d made a fist