Driftmetal Read Online Free Page B

hadn’t worked, I resorted to
taunting them instead. “You guys seem to think you’re pretty tough,
picking on a defenseless techsoul when you know I could pound you
into meat squares if this was a fair fight.”
    “Who said anything about fighting? You’re the one
who tried to start a fight with that grapplewire of yours,” said
the first one.
    “Don’t you try to bamboozle me with your
technicalities. You should’ve seen yourselves, the way you looked
from down here, zipping toward me a like a couple of fiery devils
with hell’s own fury farting out your tailpipes. Either you came
over here to help me, or I’m going to keep thinking you came to
pick a fight. Now which is it?”
    “You have quite the knack for telling tall tales,
don’t you?”
    I still couldn’t see either of them, sitting behind
me on their safe hoverbikes with the nearflow howling around us and
the Churn belching below, threatening to eat me at any second.
    “I don’t have time to argue with a couple of primies about how tall my tales are,” I said.
    We call humans ‘ primies ’ because they’re
extra the-worst.
    “He’s an uppity one,” the first biker said. “Maybe
we should just leave him here.”
    “I’ll take my chances, if you’re gonna be like
that,” I said.
    “Have it your way,” the other one muttered. He
revved his hoverbike like he was getting ready to leave.
    “Whatever cave you antiques crawled out of, I doubt
it’s any safer than this,” I said, trying to sound as condescending
as possible.
    “Living down here isn’t difficult as long as you’ve
got the tech.”
    I scoffed. “Tech? Please. You primies wouldn’t know
tech if the Churn spit it onto your dinner plates.”
    “We’ve got plenty of tech. It’s just not glued to
our bodies like yours is. We found your bluewave beacon thanks to
our tech. And by the way, some good your tech’s doing you right
now, blueblood.”
    “Hey. Up until yesterday I had a real slick kit.
Some miner thugs pinched me and stole it all.”
    “Now why would mine workers do a thing like
that?”
    “‘Cause they’re lowlifes, is why,” I said. “Now how
about giving me a hand here?”
    I’ve seen the Churn knock a streamboat out of the
sky and swallow it whole. Trust me when I say I was at risk of
being swallowed very, very whole.
    “I’m sure you were just minding your own business
when they decided to come along and mug you.”
    “They had pulsers. You tell me.” I shrugged. My
shrug gave the gravel a chance to crowd in and press harder against
my lungs. All part of the master plan.
    “Poor fella,” said the first guy. “And how did you
respond when these cruel security guards had their way with
you?”
    “I ate them.”
    As if in reply, the Churn ate me.
    The ground opened and I fell fifty feet straight
down until the bikers stopped laughing and decided to reactivate
their energy field. I snapped to a halt, dangling from my wire like
a rag doll. They hadn’t stopped laughing, actually. I could still
hear their whiny guffaws echoing down. I’d heard dying streambirds
make nicer sounds.
    The bikes began to rise. They dragged me with them,
bumping and scraping against the sides of the pit as it collapsed
in around me. I felt the gravel sucking at my legs just as I shot
up above the surface. Good thing I wasn’t wearing boots. The
flecker shield and my bluewave comm were gone, devoured by the
Churn.
    “Where are you taking me?” I called up.
    The grav engines were roaring and the nearflow was
wailing so loud I don’t think they heard me, but I saw why they’d
been in such a hurry to leave. Captain Kupfer and his law-loving
super troupe were coming down through the clouds, converging on the
beacon’s coordinates.
    As much as these biker primies were pissing me off,
it turned out they were also my heroes. They’d saved me from the
Civs in the nick of time. Fellow Civ-haters. We must be on the
same team , I realized. I couldn’t tell whether the Civ