by Faith Hunter
The false memories had held for a while. And then I had kissed him, reinoculating him. He was mine. He’d never betray me. He mentally, physically, and emotionally couldn’t. He’d die first.
I could have come to care for Jagger, except I’d never know if he liked me for me or because his brain had been rewired. He was still loyal to McQuestion, but only in situations where the two loyalties didn’t clash. Jagger was in deadly danger.
“Tell him who you think I am. Bring him for a visit, and we’ll deal.” I checked my chrono. “We have eight hours of night left, ten before full light. We going after the Simba?”
“Yeah,” Jagger said. “One problem. According to Marconi, there’s a local gang camping near it. They have a rep as bad as the old MS-13. And they have weapons. Lots of weapons. When the Law tried to go after them, Marconi says they kidnapped a cop’s wife and sent her home in pieces. The Law’s done nothing to stop them since.”
“Will the Law object to us going after them?”
“Not a lick. They might even cheer us on.”
“Okay. Let’s get out of here.” I looked around. “Poor Marty died in a terrible fire.”
“Got it,” Jagger said.
I frowned. “Did Marty have family?”
“A grown daughter somewhere. Wife died in the war. A girlfriend who dances in the Pink Bunny Gentleman’s Club,” Cupcake said.
I glanced at her. “Make sure they each get something in the mail. Anonymously.”
“Will do,” she said.
I left the building, turning my back on Marty on the floor. If local officials did a proper postmortem, they would know he had been dead for hours before he burned, but I was betting on the city not having a proper forensics med-bay. And not wanting to spend the money on a dodgy character.
With Marty gone, I’d have to rebuild all my contacts in this city, not something Jagger could do. But once Clarisse was dead, maybe it was something Wanda could do. If she had a job to serve me, that might keep her away from me. I wrapped a fist around the grab handle and swung into the diesel cab’s passenger seat, almost landing on Spy in my chair. She gave it up with ill grace. “Don’t you give me that look,” I said to her. “Now I’ll have your cat hair all over my butt.” She sniffed at me and jumped onto the dash.
Amos climbed into the back of the bed, which was loaded with I-had-no-idea-what, beyond the Antigravity Grabber, except he had claimed a recliner from somewhere and strapped it in. He stretched out the footrest as he got comfy, guns in his lap.
Cupcake placed Marty’s food and water supplies in with our growing stash of confiscated items, climbed into the cab, and started the diesel, the thrum a cat call, literally. They came from everywhere. Leaping and running and stinking of rat. Spy slithered into my lap, curled up, and closed her eyes. It took maybe two seconds and she was purring.
Barely avoiding jackknifing, Cupcake wheeled us around and out of Marty’s. As we pulled away, I watched the view in the overlarge side mirror, and saw the burst of flame as it shot out the open door of the storefront. The entire building was in flames in moments. Against the glare of fire, I saw Jagger silhouetted in black as he and his bike pulled out behind us.
As we drove, I went through Marty’s shipping manifests and discovered that one of my new containers, 374, was dedicated to brand-new armored suits. I wasn’t acquisitive by nature, believing that all things were to be bartered away if the price was right, but . . . armor. Brand-new military armor. Oh, yeah. My covetous heart wanted armor. My armor at home had been top-of-the-line space armor before the end of the war. It was excellent, but it was a decade from new and not designed with explosive weapons, atmosphere, and full gravity in mind. If the manifest was right, these would be better.
We dropped off the unnecessary gear at the hotel and showered again. My mutated nanos lived only a few minutes in water, and seventy-two hours on dry surfaces, so being clean was vital. Plus, any excuse for a water shower. Out back, in the overflow-parking security area, I found container number 374 at the back of the lot, hidden from prying eyes by the other containers, and used Marty’s special key to open the lock. The high-tech lock made a tiny whirring sound as it released. “Oh, yeah. Come to mama,” I whispered.
I pulled on the door, and it rammed outward against me, loud noises banging inside. Only Jagger’s quick reflexes saved me; he was instantly there, his bigger body mass holding the door open only a crack as things slammed against the inside. His arms were over me, bracing the door, making a cage of protection around my body. He smelled like sweat and woodsy cologne, sandalwood maybe.
“Thanks,” I said, suddenly breathless, trying not to respond to his straining body, his chest an inch from me, his arms quivering with stress, and that amazing scent. I pulled a flashlight and shined it into the crack. Boxes stamped with Uncle Sam’s seal and MAII 2050. Military armor for sure. Box after box. I swept the inside with the light.
Each armor suit had its own box, and the 12-meter container was stuffed full. The boxed suits had shifted during transport. I slipped out from under Jagger, though being under him sounded pretty wonderful right now.
“It’s like a rockslide in there. Let it go, but jump back. And by the way. It’s all armor.”
“All of it?” he asked.
I grinned at him in the darkness. “Chock-full.”
“Little Girl, I like your luck today.” He gave me a devil-may-care flash of teeth in his scruffy late-night beard, and sprang away. The door banged open, boxes tumbling to the ground until the pile below was tall enough to stop the rockslide. Box-slide.
As if the universe was my buddy again, I spotted a suit for a female body type, adjustable between 1.5 meters and 1.8 meters and 45 to 90 kilos. It would fit me. The label said it was automated, actively repositioning Dragon Scale exoskeleton armor with anti-recoil sleeves and legs, heat and cold resolution, Chameleon-skin visual shielding, and was formatted with fourteen different enviro camouflage patterns.
I might have made a cooing sound as I dragged it to the side, tore open the box, and pulled the suit out of its molded hemp-plaz packing. I held it up to me. It was a peculiar matte gray that seemed both iridescent and full of shadows, like a black pearl at sunset. The scales overlapped like snake scales, almost organic in the way they moved when I bent a sleeve. “You are so pretty,” I whispered to the suit. I wanted to be in it, but the box was otherwise empty, no donning chamber within.
Before I could ask, Jagger called out from inside the container, “There’s a bigger box at the back. Looks like a portable donning station.” Jagger shoved the bigger box across the tumbled boxes, and it landed with a whomp and a puff of dust. Jagger dropped down beside it and tore it open. The donning device was stacked in easy-to-assemble sections, could armor up to eight people at one time, and came with a Berger plug-in to walk him through the setup. I was beginning to think the military had gotten this one right. The donning station assembly was idiot-proof. Just in time, Cupcake and Amos showed up to help, and the cats helped by getting in the way. Despite the cats, the station went together, forming an eight-sided circle.
An octagon, my Berger chip started. I touched it off.
The donning station’s power source was in the middle, the stations facing out. Its batteries showed green, and it powered up fast with a nearly painful hum of electronics, casting long shadows and flickering lights in red, green, and blue across the secure parking area.
Each of the eight narrow niches was numbered—one through eight. They had stubby arms that stuck out straight, a neck rest, and a crotch wedge for rough measurements. I lifted my armor suit and held it to the back of number one. Nothing happened. After a moment, I looked over my shoulder at Jagger, who was listening to the Berger plug-in and said, “Try tapping the pads there with both index fingers to initialize.” He pointed near the suit’s hands. I pressed the tiny bumps, and, with a soft sucking whoosh, the armor was yanked away from me, molding to the back of the donning unit. It opened with multiple clicks,
like a lobster shell cracking open, the interior a shimmery silver that was hard to focus on.
Jagger, Cupcake, and Amos placed their suits into niches two through four. The donning station clicked, whooshed, and they snapped into place too. Amos walked around the entire system and stopped in front of unit number four and the shimmering, open, outsized suit there. “I’mma be badass in this shit.”
I stripped down to undies and tank top and stepped onto the low mounting pedestal, my feet centered in the outline. Turning my back to the armor suit in the same way I did at the scrapyard with the armor I’d taken from the SunStar, I sucked in a deep breath, held it, and began a mental countdown. I closed my eyes and my mouth loosely, forced my muscles to relax, and held utterly motionless, hands down and out to my sides. I began to blow out the breath. “Initiating auto-donning,” a tinny voice said, coming from near my ear.
The armor positioning arm slid out and encircled my waist, snugging me into the torso segment. The armor sections began snapping over my body, interlocking, shrinking, and expanding to my exact measurements, repositioning against muscles and joints, expanding and contracting to fit me. Snugging tight. I fought the desire to bolt as the helmet and face piece locked over me.
Claustrophobia and memories from my own piece of hell stabbed into me like knives. The respiratory tube shoved between my lips, into my mouth, and against my cheek with a puff of stale air. I exhaled that first puff, inhaled slowly on the second. The armored boots snapped shut midcalf.
I stretched out my fingers, knowing the worst was still to come, and forced myself to hold utterly still. I breathed. Again. Again. The glove sectionals encasing my fingers slid and shifted to the proper lengths.
“Prepare for peripheral nerve engagement, left hand,” the speaker said. I gasped and swore as minuscule needles, thinner and finer than acupuncture needles, pierced my palms, along the sides of my fingers, and into my fingertips. “Bloody damn,” I spat. The pain was like having my hand set on fire. “Prepare for peripheral nerve engagement, right hand.” It too engaged. Sharp, burning, cutting, and then intensely icy as the chemicals coating the needles in my hands began to take the pain away. The worst was over.
I opened my eyes, looking out into the night through the suit’s visual screen and sensors—some low-light sensors that let me see clear as day, some infrared, and some high-tech, designed to break through known heat and cold shielding. Fancy electronics, way better than my old suit.
“Do you wish catheter and bowel removal collection to be initiated at this time?”
“No. God no.” Once, long ago, the first time I tried on armor, I had made the mistake of saying yes. Never again. I’d pee in the suit and let it slosh in my boots first.
“Liquid oxygen breathing supply required?” the speaker asked.
I said into the tiny speaker inside the faceplate, “No. Current Earth atmosphere, night desert conditions, West Virginia.”
“Complying,” the suit said. “Except for critical chest and head areas, this suit is a soft suit until hard suits are required. Should environmental factors or physical attack necessitate suit hardening, a tone will sound.” I heard a soft tone. “This indicates that Dragon Scale hardening is imminent. If wearer wishes to negate suit hardening, wearer must say either, ‘Postpone,’ or ‘Reject.’ Otherwise, Dragon Scales will convert. This will take approximately one second, during which the suit will not move.”
“Lack of movement while under attack?” I asked.
“Correct. All suit-monitoring sensors are on the upper left screen. This suit should be charged to full capacity before using. The suit is currently at forty-six percent power. This provides approximately twenty-two hours of normal, non-combat usage. Full combat usage will drain this suit’s current power levels to zero in less than seven hours.
“All others of your unit may be located and followed via screen number two at the lower left. Other sensors and screens may be positioned by use of the buttons on the left palm.”
I stepped down the small rise to the pavement, my combat boots silent and comfortable as jogging shoes. The night was completely alive; I could see as well as in daylight, though the color palate was gray, green, and glittering silver. And I could see what was behind me. There were no blind spots. I held out my arms, and the scales covering my arms and legs interlocked and shifted with every movement. This suit was bloody brilliant!
Cupcake was a yellow glow to my left in the unit-member screen. Jagger was blue. Amos was pink and shaped like a big teddy bear, which I did not tell him. We locked up the armor container and geared up from another container of goodies, choosing weapons for the fight with the gang, and tools to free the Simba. We used the anti-recoil feature in reverse, to toss heavy equipment around and lock everything up. It was going to be a very long, tiring night. But I did so love new toys.
∆∆∆
We left the parking area secure, under the control of two of Jagger’s people—Outlaws by their garb, totally loyal to him by their attitude. OMW riders in Hell’s Angels’ territory was a recipe for disaster. We needed to get out of here fast, before Marconi got wind of Jagger’s people.
Cupcake drove the rig, headlights bouncing in the darkness, Jagger and Amos in the back (which was now empty except for its passengers, a huge pump, and an Antigravity Grabber). I sat shotgun, and the cats took over the dash, tails twitching with excitement.
We picked up the earth movers, which was a lot easier than I expected thanks to my new AG Grabber. The rig was carrying far more than its approved weight capacity, but we crossed the river and turned upstream at a steady six kilometers an hour. I could walk faster than that, but with the weight and the condition of the roads, I couldn’t complain.
Impatient, I tapped my comms. “You there?”
“Copy,” Mateo said. His voice changed slightly, sounding almost gentle, a tone I rarely heard. “You’ve done amazingly well.”
A glow rushed through me. Praise had come seldom in my life. “Thanks.”
“Are you okay after Marty?”
The question hit me in the gut like an icy sucker punch, and the glow vanished. I wasn’t thinking about Marty, neither his betrayal nor his death. “No. But I’ll deal with it when I get home.”
“Copy that.” He went silent. Mateo understood nightmares.
To keep from seeing the look in Marty’s eyes as he died, I tapped comms to Jagger. “You get confirmation from Marconi that we can take out the gang operating in his region?”
“His exact words were, ‘You do this for my city, and I will open peace and territory negotiations with McQuestion.’ And he’s keeping the Law occupied elsewhere tonight.”
“He’s not going to start a riot, is he?”
“We agreed that collateral damage was foolish. Otherwise he’s in full control.”
“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”
Jagger sighed softly, “I regret everything since I met you, Little Girl.”
And just like that, Jagger broke my heart.
Two hours later, we made a slow left into the trees and came to a stop, the engine rumbling. It was blacker than the lowest pit of hell when I opened the door and the cats bounded out, vanishing, exploring. I swung out of the cab, shut the door, and Cupcake locked the truck armor into place. I caught a glimpse of Amos and Jagger as they disappeared into the trees on the other side of the narrow two-rut road. I gave Cupcake a thumbs-up, dropped low, and crab-walked into the brush, where I slid my battle faceplate into place and actuated temperature shielding and low-light-sensor blocking software on the Chameleon skin. I initiated the anti-recoil in the Dragon Scale’s arms and legs. And I went ahead and requested hardening of the armor. And bloody hell that hurt! The suit went from comfy and stretchy to what felt like wearing a full-body steel corset in one second.
Cupcake began a slow crawl along the road, the diesel engine loud enough to wake the dead—or a drugged, drunken, and sleeping gang. Moving fast, thanks to my nanobot modifications, I
preceded the cab’s bouncing lights.
I had a long-range RADR blaster and old-fashioned ARGO gas-operated shotgun secured at my spine, a powerful short-range blaster on my left thigh beside a wicked blade, two ten-millimeter semiautomatic handguns—one on my right thigh, one at my back—and what Pops called an “I’m fucked” weapon at one ankle, for when everything was lost and I needed to shoot myself to avoid capture. I didn’t need holsters. The armor came with little foldouts that formed locking mechanisms to hold my gear, including the bag of extra magazines above my left buttock.
Just ahead, I saw campfires, cars parked or abandoned here and there, tents and RVs. No sentries. No detectable sensors. I raced in from tree to tree, and then from rusted hulk to RV.
Dogs were chained to trees, sleeping, curled into tight balls of despair.
Music boomed through speakers—something with a cello, postwar and disjointed, as if the cello had been shot full of holes—loud enough to hide the diesel roar. I circled on the edge of the campsite, my suit sensors still spotting no cameras, no lasers, no warning systems.
There was a small cage to one side, and it was full of people. Standing room only, crammed too full to allow anyone to lie down. The stench was horrible, and I initiated air filters as I one-armed myself up into a tree and raced along a branch over the cage. Prisoners. Emaciated. Naked. Bleeding. Women and children and what had once been pretty boys. A memory of the woman in the log house flashed through my mind. Was there a connection? If so, what?
“Let’s make them pay,” I whispered into my mic.
“Approaching from the south,” Jagger said. “Prisoners are in the furthest RV.”
