little logika wrung his rusty hands on the baseball bat’s handle. His heart was relays and chips and processors. His optics were made of plastic. And she could still see the agony in them.
But as always, the bot did what he was told.
Eve scrambled down the rooftop into the rising dust cloud, weighing her chances. Glancing among the carnage, she saw the Iron Bishop’s Spartan, still standing among the smoking corpses. As she crept out among the bloody scrap, she heard the female lifelike call from behind cover. Its voice was lilting, almost as if it were singing rather than speaking. And Eve could swear it sounded …
… familiar?
“Lovely to see you again, Ezekiel,” the newcomer called.
“You’re a terrible liar, Faith,” Ezekiel called back. “I always liked that about you.”
“I should have known you’d beat me here.” A smile in the song. “Been watching the human feeds again? Practicing in the mirror to be like them? It’s pathetic, Zeke.”
“And yet here we both are.”
Eve dropped onto her belly as the newcomer twisted from cover, sidearm raised, unleashing a volley of something razor sharp and whistling at Ezekiel’s cover. A series of tiny, pin-bright explosions tore the tires to ruins. Through the growing dust storm, she saw Ezekiel break from the shredded rubber, leap behind a stack of trashed auto hulks.
The lifelike reloaded, raised its pistol too fast to track. Sparks arced and ricocheted as Ezekiel ducked out of cover and blasted away. Down on her hands and knees, Eve crawled on through the trash, listening for Kaiser’s whines. A stray bullet whizzed over her head, the stench of burning tires making her dry-heave.
Grandpa bellowed over the engine roar. “Evie, get inside, dammit!”
Eve peered up from her cover. She was almost close enough to make a dash for the Spartan now, but she didn’t dare without knowing where the enemy was. Her eyes met Ezekiel’s across the ruins, and the lifelike shook its head. Gesturing that she should head back to the house. She heard a whimper somewhere out in the trash.
Hold on, puppy …
She was drenched, sweat burning her eyes. She tore off her poncho, tossed it away. On her belly now, crawling toward Kaiser’s voice. Ezekiel saw she was refusing to retreat, seemed to decide distracting their opponent was the best way to keep Eve un-murdered.
“I don’t want to fight you, Faith,” it called.
“I don’t blame you.” Faith’s reply rang somewhere out in the tangle of metal and bodies. “I can’t help but notice you’ve misplaced one of your arms.”
“I only ever needed the one to beat you.”
The lifelike’s laughter rang across the scrap.
“Pride cometh before the fall, little brother.”
“You’d know, big sister.”
… Brother? Sister?
Eve caught sight of movement, saw the newcomer crouched beside a tumble of old tires, slowly creeping around Ezekiel’s flank. And over the rising engine roar, the house groaning in its metal bones, she heard another soft whimper.
Kaiser …
There might be only a handful of meat in him that was real, but that handful needed her. If she broke cover, she’d be seen for sure. But if Grandpa was worried enough about this lifelike to try to get the house airborne, there was no way Eve was just going to leave her dog behind to rot.
She dashed out into the open, sprinting toward the Iron Bishop’s machina. Grandpa hollered over the PA. Ezekiel cried a warning as Faith rose from cover, pistol in hand. Trash was crunching under Eve’s boots, her lungs burning. But she ran. Fists flailing, heart hammering, across the bodies and wreckage, vaulting into the Spartan and slamming the cockpit closed. Stabbing the ignition, she slipped her arms and feet into the control sleeves. The machina roared to life around her, its engines thrumming in her bones.
Whatever the hells was happening here, this was something she knew.
This was something she could do.
Her plasma cannon vomited white heat, incinerating the newcomer’s cover. The thing called Faith was already moving, dashing toward Eve’s Spartan when Ezekiel appeared from cover and charged shoulder-first into Faith’s belly. The impact was thunderous, tearing a long furrow through the scrap as the lifelikes fell into a rolling brawl. Fists blurring. Blood and spit and wet, crunching thuds.
Eve lumbered through the wreckage in her machina, heavy feet crushing metal like it was paper. She scanned the scrap, caught sight of Kaiser in a pile of old retreads. He was dragging himself with his front paws, hind legs motionless. Eve tore the tires aside, reached down with huge, gentle hands, cupped the wounded blitzhund to her Spartan’s chest.
“It’s okay, puppy,” she breathed. “I got you.”
Kaiser licked the Spartan’s hand with his heat-sink tongue.
Eve lumbered back across the battleground, through the black smoke and rising storm of dust and dirt, toward home. The house was shuddering now, the squeal of tortured metal rising over the engines’ thunder. She couldn’t see Ezekiel or the other lifelike. Eyes fixed on her front door. The welds across the house were splitting, the freighter finally getting some lift, the rest of the homestead shearing away under its own weight. Eve ran hard as she could, every colossal step bringing her closer.
Forty meters away.
Thirty.
A proximity alarm screeched in her ear. Eve had time to hunch as three hundred kilos of engine block crashed across her Spartan’s back. The machina was sent stumbling, gyros whining. Another impact, this time into her legs, an enormous tractor tire bringing the Spartan to its knees. The thing called Faith leapt high onto her Spartan’s back, tearing out handfuls of cable. The hydraulics in Eve’s left arm lost pressure, Kaiser tumbling from her grip. Eve reached back with her good arm, seized the lifelike and hurled it as hard as she could. Faith crunched into a twisted loop of roller coaster track, belly tearing open. Pseudo-blood spilled on rusted steel. Lips and teeth slicked ruby red.
Eve tore free of her harness and hit the cockpit eject. Bursting out into the rising roar, she seized Kaiser’s scruff and dragged him toward the house. Dust in her good eye. Blood on her tongue. Kaiser whimpered, tried to crawl as best he could. He was so heavy. How would she lift him through the hatch? How could she—
A figure appeared beside her. Blood-spattered skin and eyes of fugazi blue.
“I’ve got him!” Ezekiel shouted. “Go!”
Eve stumbled toward the house, ribs and arm and head aching. The freighter was almost two meters off the ground now, still rising. Eve hauled herself through the doorway, boots kicking against the hull. Ezekiel leapt through the hatch in a single bound right behind her, Kaiser under its arm. Eve was on all fours. Chest pounding. Throat burning. And somehow she found breath to scream.
“Go, Grandpa, go!”
The
