Aldean's Crew ~ Chapter 1

I've not been on in ages. But I'd like some feedback if there is any to be had. The following is the first chapter of my latest brainchild. The cyberpunk story of which I need to come up with a summary. I'm not really a sci-fi-er but I hope it's okay.

~1~

Kira blew out a frustrated breath as she toed the ignition switch on her hoverboard. The junk piece was missing its start-up cuplink and was having trouble turning over. She kicked it again and snorted as the triangular board went rigid, hovering a few inches over the fire escape she was hiding on. She leaned back against a window and placed one booted foot into one of the docks toward the center of the board.

She looked at a small screen in the palm of her glove which showed a map of the city block around her and tracked the movement of several vehicles. A large, oblong shape was crawling toward the street she was over looking. Kira knew the clutter truck for the area would host some good cast-off tech. She hoped she could cash in on whatever she could find in it. If she could take down the driver, she’d be able to snatch as much as she could carry.

Most scavengers worked in pairs or in large groups, but she had something to prove tonight. Kira wasn’t going to be babied any more. She would take the clutter truck herself. Maybe then Dace and the others wouldn't act so put upon when she went with them on runs.

She wouldn't get more than one shot at it. The truck was going slowly, but not slowly enough to allow multiple attacks. The drivers the city used were smart; they knew how to handle themselves against poachers and scavengers. Kira had to make her strike perfect.

Ten seconds until the truck passed.

She pressed her free foot against the painted brick of the building and stood up a little straighter. The board underneath her bobbed a little as she put more weight on it but she ignored the movement. Her eyes focused on the narrow opening to the alleyway, her ears tuned out the ambient noise of the city; she was ready.

Five seconds.

She moved to stand completely on the board, her free foot barely touching the brick behind her.

Four seconds.

Blinking once, she turned on a pair of implants imbedded in her eyes. A pale green grid overlay her vision for a moment. Three windows in and across from the alley she was in turned red.

“No!” She barked. “This one’s mine.”

Three seconds.

Without taking her eyes from the yawning mouth of the alley, she keyed in a speed-velocity code into the screen on her palm. The board beneath her gave a growl as the thrust engines moved to accommodate her calculations.

Two seconds.

She pulled out a mini-gun and chambered a round.

One second.

Something dark dropped from one of the red-marked windows and fell to the street. It stopped just shy of the pavement and rushed out of site as the bumper of the clutter truck came into view.

“Hell,” Kira cursed under her breath as she kicked her foot forcefully against the wall.

Her board bounced to life, the automatic thrust kicking in to feed the momentum she’d started. She sailed ten feet from the fire escape before she met with the laws of gravity. Were she anyone else, she probably would have panicked when the TS-320’s engine stalled, but this was Kira’s machine; she knew it. The thrust redoubled a moment later, controlling her plummet as she zipped toward the truck.

The boot on her free foot caught against something as she tried to slam it into the dock on the board. She bit her lip and tried to free it again to get it in place before she came even with the ground but it was stuck. As the up thrust hit equilibrium with gravity, the board jolted to one side, twisting her caught foot and wrenching her ankle. Her boot tore free from the dock. Without thinking she pressed a small button on her palm with her free hand and ejected her other boot from the board.

She stumbled forward, hopping off of the board, which settled to the ground with a crack. The cab of the truck was beginning to disappear behind the next building. Kira took aim and pulled the trigger twice. Two medical-grade darts hit the driver in his arm and the truck began to speed up for a moment. The engine died a few moments later as her knock-out agent began working on the driver.

Wincing, Kira tested her weight on the ankle she’d twisted and drew in a sudden breath. She leaned down and pressed a series of buttons on the safety boot, springing a built-in compression bandage. She then gingerly hopped back to her hoverboard. Her hands made quick work of folding its four wings together so that the board made only a surprisingly compact triangle of metal and plastic.

Blood pounded in her ears as she limped as well as she could to the truck now idling in the street. The bitter feelings in her stomach hardened as she heard shouts erupt from the bed of the truck and she watched as one of the three poachers who had come in on her salvage darted off. There was still more to do before she could swing into the bed of the truck.

She limped to the cab and swung herself on to the foot rail so she could reach in and feel the driver’s neck for a pulse. Kira hated the idea of killing someone; she could leave that to the other thugs out on the street. Killing was where she, and the rest of her crew, drew the line.

There was a soft whirring sound as she leaned into the window of the cab, and she noticed that the driver’s fingers were twitching back and forth. The bottom seemed to fall from her stomach as she looked up his arm, taking note of the acidic burns where her darts had struck. She gingerly reached out and touched the driver’s cheek; it was nothing more than a cold sheet of latex.

“Oh no,” She whispered and jumped down, running for the bed of the truck as fast as she could.

She jumped onto the back bumper and climbed the back-gate and tumbled into the bed. Two people looked up as she crushed a couple of biohazard vials under her boots. One was a girl considerably shorter than Kira, though undoubtedly older than her. Dace Easton. The other was a boy close to Dace’s age and a little taller than Kira. He was Kira’s boyfriend, Bijan Jacobi. Kira raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything as she began sifting through the piles of discarded technology in the truck.

“Kir,” Dace began.

“That was a nice shot, how’s the driver?” Bijan cut her off.

Kira was picking through a tangle of wires, stuffing some into her bag without looking up. She wasn’t the type to usually be quiet, but when faced with the sudden appearance of her friends she was silent. Her hands moved with mechanical precision through the mess around her. “Android,” she whispered.

Dace and Bijan looked at each other and swore in unison, turning toward the piles on either side of them. Dace cast a sidelong glance at Kira before she spoke. “Get what you can, Bijan. We'll sort through it when we get there. Kira, how long do you figure we have before the damn machine starts up again?”

Kira pulled a crumpled hoverboard deck from the pile she was picking over and reached inside the engine housing, her hands feeling for the round start-up cuplink. She snapped it out of place and shoved it into her bag. She pointed to a spare hoverboard by Dace’s ankles. “Maybe another minute or two. Grab that deck, mine needs some repairs.”

“It's already been gutted, Kir,” Dace called over her shoulder, stuffing the deck into her pack anyway. “One of Ellyott's girls got here before we scared her off.”

“I never said it had to be pretty.”

Kira was pulling out tech pieces and tossing them aside. It was such a waste what those with money would throw out. More than half the parts on a cluttertruck were salvageable. Nestled into a pile of used game decks she found a couple more bio-waste vials with removed implants. She pocketed them quickly and began searching in another stack.

“Nothing like filching a good salvage from the city,” Dace laughed as she ripped a handful of wires from an old-fashioned stereo. “They're just gonna refurbish and resell it anyway. It's a decent scam, really. Got to respect them for that.”

Kira was examining a slightly damaged tazer. “Yeah, so you've said. You think I could tinker this up to work again?”

“Lemmie see it,” the boy offered and plucked it out of her hand. “Looks like most of the damage is superficial, but it needs a core, guess they saved it.”

Kira nodded. “Toss it in your bag; I'll see if any of my goodies can spare a few parts for it.” She climbed further into the belly of the truck where some of the larger pieces were. “Did y’all hear that?” Bijan stood up and looked at the front of the truck. The distinct sound of the power supply being restored sliced through the air. “Off the truck, now!"

A plexiglass top began to slide over the back of the truck, intending to trap them. Dace and Bijan both jumped on their abandoned hoverboards and shot toward the sky, leaving Kira hastily shoving wires in her pocket.

She looked up and ran to the far end of the truck's bed and jumped to try and reach the top of its back gate. Her finger tips brushed the edge painfully bouncing along the steel as she slid back down the gate. A hot spasm rocketed up her leg as she landed on her hurt ankle.

“Kira, get out of there!”

“I'd love to!” she screamed as she climbed the ladder on the gate. The truck was rumbling under her feet, bouncing her as she clung to the metal bars. With a final push, she flung herself over the top of the gate. Her hands were already gripping on of the hand holds on the other side, but as her legs came over the top her toe connected with the solid plexiglass of the cover.

The ground was a blur underneath her as she looked down; the cluttertruck was already gaining speed. She wedged one of her feet into a foothold. Her attack tripped an anti-theft sensor and now the truck was making its way out of the streets as fast as legally possible. Dace and Bijan were tailing the truck but neither of their boards was fast enough to stop it again.

“Jan!” Kira screamed back to him, “Catch!”

She carefully pulled off her backpack, trying not to fall from her precarious perch, and flung it at him. Her implants tracked the bag’s arc through the air. She let out a soft gasp as Bijan reached out and grabbed it, spinning his board to lose its momentum.

Dace sped up as much as she could. “Tuck your neck in and just let yourself roll!”

Kira nodded, taking a deep breath she kicked off from the gate and let go of the bar she was hanging on to. Her shoulder hit the pavement first. It was a moment of painful numbness filled with the sound of shredding fabric. She was still moving, adrenaline surging through her. It felt as if she were being dragged by the truck. Her legs hit next and she curled up tightly, letting herself tumble end over end, arms protecting her head. She still couldn't breathe. The back of her head cracked against the pavement. One final turn and she fell onto her side.

Bijan and Dace jumped off of their boards and ran up to Kira. Dace dropped to her knees and pulled out a half-dose of morphine to cut the pain. She injected it into Kira's neck before she began checking the damage. The green light of Kira’s implants was visible in her pupils and she was shaking.

“You with us, Kir?” Dace said reaching in her hip-pocket for some bandages. “That looked wicked nasty.”

Kira could only blink her eyes. The world flashed around her in shades of green. Her implants were misfiring and a patchy info-feed came through. The broken windows were flashing red without anyone in them. Bricks in the dilapidated buildings were supposedly moving. She tried to blink the implants off but they still flared up information.

“Yeah,” she coughed finally. “It felt kinda nasty.” Dace helped her up into a sitting position. Looking back at her shoulder, she groaned. “I think I need a new coat, huh?”

Dace nodded without looking up; she was fitting small square bandages over the exposed skin, taping them together in a patchwork. She pulled another half-dose of morphine from her pocket. “How're you feeling, Kir?”

“Oh, great. I think I'm going to take up truck diving. It's so much more extreme than bungee jumping. I may even do it tomorrow just for kicks,” she whispered. “How do you think I feel?”

Dace injected the drug in Kira's neck then helped her slowly to her feet. She shook her head, “How's your head?”

“It's still sitting on my shoulders isn't it? Doesn't feel like it though.”

While Dace had patched her up, Bijan had taken Kira's board out of her bag and docked it to his. He stood on his board and helped Dace get Kira situated on her own in front of him. Once her feet were secured, he maneuvered the two boards a few feet up, and held onto Kira's waist helping her glide through the streets toward their building.

“Did you get my stuff?” she asked quietly as Bijan stopped them in front of an old storefront.

“It's here. How's the morphine working for you?” he asked, letting the boards touch down.

Kira fell back against him. “It makes me not breathe.” She turned her head to look up at him. “Once I got over the not breathing thing, though, it starts to feels really good.”