Alone: Book Three of the Generations Trilogy (Generations Trilogy, 3, Band 3) - Hardcover

Buch 3 von 3: The Generations Trilogy

Sigler, Scott

 
9780553393194: Alone: Book Three of the Generations Trilogy (Generations Trilogy, 3, Band 3)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0553393197 ISBN 13: 9780553393194
Verlag: Random House USA Inc, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

In the final installment of an exhilarating sci-fi adventure trilogy in the vein of The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Red Rising, Scott Sigler’s unforgettable heroine, Em Savage, must come to grips once and for all with the perilous mysteries of her own existence.

“We thought this place was our destiny—not our doom.”

Pawns in a millennia-old struggle, the young people known only as the Birthday Children were genetically engineered to survive on the planet Omeyocan—but they were never meant to live there. They were made to be “overwritten,” their minds wiped and replaced by the consciousnesses of the monsters who created them.

Em changed all of that.

She unified her people and led a revolt against their creators. Em and her friends escaped an ancient ghost ship and fled to Omeyocan. They thought they would find an uninhabited paradise. Instead, they found the ruins of a massive city long since swallowed by the jungle. And they weren’t alone. The Birthday Children fought for survival against the elements, jungle wildlife, the “Grownups” who created them . . . and, as evil corrupted their numbers, even against themselves.

With these opponents finally defeated, Em and her people realized that more threats were coming, traveling from across the universe to lay claim to their planet. The Birthday Children have prepared as best they can against this alien armada. Now, as the first ships reach orbit around Omeyocan, the final battle for the planet begins.

Praise for Alone

“Another Scott Sigler masterpiece . . . thrills on every page, shocking turns, vulnerable and powerful characters, heartbreak, and battles.”—Amy Braun, award-winning author of the Dark Sky series

“Thrilling . . . an incredible end to an incredible series.”—Bingeing on Books

Praise for Scott Sigler’s Alive

“Suspenseful . . . [Alive] lives up to its hype, packing plenty of thrills. . . . A page-turner that whets the appetite for volume 2.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Fascinating and intriguing . . . a cross between Lord of the Flies and The Maze Runner and yet . . . so much more.”—Fresh Fiction

“A ripping, claustrophobic thunderbolt of a novel.”—Pierce Brown, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Red Rising

“Unstoppable and real, M. Savage is one hell of a heroine. Get ready to be left breathless.”—Kristin Cast, New York Times bestselling author of the House of Night series

“Sigler has created a wonderful and engrossing character in M. Savage. Strong and smart, but with the naïveté and misgivings of any teenage girl, she’s someone you’ll definitely want on your side when s**t hits the fan, which it most certainly does.”—Veronica Belmont, host of Sword & Laser

“The puzzle unfolds masterfully, right down to the last page.”—Phil Plait, PhD, author of Bad Astronomy

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

New York Times bestselling author Scott Sigler has written sixteen novels (including Alive and Alight), six novellas, and dozens of short stories. He is also the co-founder of Empty Set Entertainment, which publishes his YA Galactic Football League series. He lives in San Diego.

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Part I

Home and Hearth

One

A stabbing pain jolts me awake.

My neck?.?.?.??the needle, the snake?.?.?.??

No, not a stab. A poke?.?.?.??a poke of cold metal. I lift my head, look around. My silver bracelet. I wear it over the sleeve of my black coveralls, its wide ring circling my right forearm just below my elbow—I must have rolled over in my sleep, laid my neck on the long point that extends from the flat ring down to just behind the back of my wrist.

I’m cold. I’m wet. It’s raining again. Correction: it’s raining still. I was sleeping on the tiny metal deck of a spider cockpit, other people crammed in around me. My thigh is numb—I rolled over onto the combat knife I always have strapped to my leg.

So tired. As uncomfortable as I am, I just want to go back to sleep.

A boy’s voice: “Em, wake up.”

Victor Muller, part of my spider’s three-person crew.

“D’souza spotted them,” he says. “She’s coming.”

That wakes me up for real. If Maria is coming, maybe it’s time to fight.

Finally.

I sit up. Muscles, cramped and stiff. My cold skin feels like it’s made of half-dry clay. Our black coveralls are good at keeping us warm, but in the jungle the dampness always finds a way in.

Ten days of this. Ten days of hiding, without fire or heat, without a hot meal, eating prepackaged food and raw jungle plants. Ten days since I bathed—I want a shower almost as much as I want to catch the Belligerents. I want to lie on my couch, Bishop’s arms around me as I watch the jungle from afar, not from within it.

I miss him. I miss his eyes, his hair and his smile. I miss the very smell of him. If we’re able to force our enemy to battle—and that is a very big if—I might be hurt in the fighting. Possibly even killed. Before I left, he told me he loves me.

Did I tell him the same thing?

I think I did. Yes, I must have.

You would have told O’Malley, and you know it.

Well, hello, Annoying Little Voice. How nice of you to show up now.

Annoying Little Voice always wants me to second-guess myself, to doubt my decisions. It always seems to think things would be better now if they’d gone a different way then. If I’d made different choices. If I’d had stronger self-control. I hate that damn voice.

Wiping the last of the sleep from my eyes, I reach up and grab the armored ridge that surrounds the cockpit. I stand, slowly, careful to not jostle the branches that hide our position.

The twin moons of Omeyocan—one bluish, one maroon—shine through sparse cloud cover. In the daytime, this jungle is bright with yellow leaves, brown tree trunks and long blue vine stems. At night, everything is a blue-purple shade of gray. The plants gleam with wetness.

Spingate still insists on calling our machines “pentapods,” but no one listens to her about that. To us, they are spiders. Five-legged, yes, but spiders all the same. The machines are meant for a two-person crew: driver and cannon operator. We use them with crews of three, adding one person who can fire with whatever weapon they have at hand. Three makes for close quarters. The cockpit is open-air. No glowing holograms here—all the controls are manual, built to last a thousand years, to take a real beating and keep on working. A waist-high, horseshoe-shaped armored ridge surrounds the cockpit, protects us from bullets and musket balls. The ends of the horseshoe blend into the cockpit’s rear wall, which comes up to my sternum. If I stand straight, I can rest my arms on the spider’s sloping back and fire my bracelet at whatever is behind us.

We’ve repainted the spiders to cover up centuries of superficial damage. Each one has black numbers on the sides (ours is 05), while most of the shell is dark yellow with jagged stripes of brown and blue—the colors of the jungle. When the machines work correctly, they blend in well. Of course, they’re all a couple of centuries old, so they don’t work correctly all that much. Parts often clatter and gears frequently grind, making unmistakable noise. We do our best to fix those problems when they come up.

There are two legs in front, two on the sides—one each below where the armored ridge blends into the back wall—and one leg in the rear. The three-jointed legs all end in hard, sharp points, which can slice right through any enemy unfortunate enough to be in our way.

I ride in the cockpit’s right side. Yoshiko Bawden, the driver, is on my left, in the middle. She’s a tall, muscular circle-star who thinks it’s funny to make fake burp sounds. When she’s not being crude, though, she is a fierce warrior. She’s always kept her black hair shaved down. Before we began this campaign, she had some of her fellow circle-stars tattoo the word killer on the right side of her head. She has a pitchfork strapped across her back and a bracelet on her right arm over her coveralls. She used to use an axe, like Bishop does, but she prefers the pitchfork for jungle fighting. I have known her almost since I first woke up. I’m so grateful to have her as part of my crew.

“Little” Victor Muller is on Bawden’s left, where he mans the beam-cannon. He’s not little anymore, though. When the circle-star came out of his coffin, I was a bit taller than he was. Now my eyes come up to his chin. He’s added muscle as well. He’s not as thick as Bishop, probably never will be. Victor has the same wiry frame my friend Coyotl had—long, lean, athletic. Victor wears a bracelet on his right arm. In his hands, he holds a spear. Not my spear, of course, but one that looks close to it. A repeating rifle is slung over his back, black barrel and the black loop lever that lets him reload it with a flick of his hand gleaming from a recent cleaning and oiling. Victor has become one of our best warriors, almost as skilled as Farrar, Bishop and Bawden, who are all fully grown.

I am brave enough to fight, but I’m not stupid—I want people in my crew who can protect me. I’d rather have Bishop instead of Victor, of course, but right now it’s more important to our people that Bishop remains back in Uchmal.

The lower half of our spider is buried in the jungle floor, the upper half covered in branches and vines. Sometimes you hunt your enemy—but only if you can find them. When you can’t, your best bet is to set a trap and hope your enemy falls into it.

It looks like they finally have.

A light rustling from the jungle in front of us. I see what looks like a thick, yellowish snake rise from the underbrush and move toward us. The furry snake ends in wicked, hooked pincers that can snap together so hard they’ll damn near cut a person in two.

A few meters away, the full animal rises up from the underbrush. A year ago, the sight of this predator would have scared me half to death. Now? It only scares me a quarter of the way.

When I first saw these creatures, I didn’t have the memories or words to describe them. It’s still hard. Different people have remembered different things at different times, filling my head with images of animals that Matilda only read about in books. The heavy body of a bear. The thick trunk of an elephant. Below where the trunk connects to the head is a piranha’s dagger-toothed mouth. Claws of a tiger. All of it covered in brown-striped yellow fur. Heavy plates of mottled yellow bone on its chest. Three beady black eyes in a line on each side of the head, which is also plated in yellow bone.

On the back of this beast, on a saddle made of tough...

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Verlag
Random House USA Inc
Erscheinungsdatum
2017
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0553393197
ISBN 13 
9780553393194
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
240
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
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Softcover