by Faith Hunter
I found the screen, ID’d the aisle number, and saw it was a straight shot to the office. SS armor-piercing warheads were designed to take out spaceship armor. The shrapnel alone could be sufficient to damage even the office. I had to risk powering up the office’s defensive shields. They’d be visible from satellites and I’d be totally screwed if the Gov. found me, but screwed might be better than dead. The fact that it was still daylight and energies might be hard to detect from space convinced me. I ripped off my glove and slammed my left index finger down on the screen, activating the WIMP-particle-based shields. A faint orange glow filled the air, sparkling off the dust and weapon-fire smoke hanging there. Mateo fired. The blasts shook the raw stone under the office and up through the office floor. Jagger cursed in surprise.
“Bot-A down. Fry it,” Mateo said.
I flipped off the shields, found the disabled bot on the screens, and swung the Grabber toward it. “It doesn’t reach. And I’m blowing through my stored power like prewar Vegas. I can’t keep this up.”
“Recommendations?” Mateo asked, only a hint of snark in his voice.
“Can you pick up an engine block and use that to shove it six meters closer down Aisle Alpha One?”
“I might miss some pieces.”
Which meant Puffers and nanos all over the junkyard. I blinked away frustrated tears, thinking about hunting Puffers for months.
“We got no other options. Except to say we need a portable AG Grabber.”
“Hindsight,” he agreed, more gently. “You might be the brains to my brawn, but you aren’t perfect.”
No, I wasn’t perfect. I knew that. But with Mateo’s brain permanently scrambled, the decisions were up to me and I hadn’t thought through potential threats. Pops woulda been pissed. I should have bought a portable grabber off the black market long ago.
With one hand, Mateo picked up an old V-8, nearly two-hundred seventy kilos of rusted heavy. He carried it to the disabled Bot-A and placed it to one side. Bending over the engine, he braced his three legs and adjusted his gyro-balance to push. With the V-8 between him and the bot’s nanos—and any Puffers that were still active—he began shoving.
“You’re loaded,” Jagger said.
“Wand your hands,” I instructed him.
“Why?”
“Just do it,” I answered. Because I couldn’t exactly say that he had touched my stuff and now was likely to die.
“Holy shit. You got a warbot,” Jagger said, peering over my shoulder.
That I ignored.
Bot-B trundled into Aisle Alpha One behind Mateo.
“Behind you!” I shouted.
Mateo shifted. Lifted a lower limb. Fired. SS armor-piercing warheads took out the bot. Mateo’s cybot limb flexed with the recoil, nearly knocking him over the engine. He corrected his balance and kept pushing Bot-A, not touching it himself. Hoping the extra distance would keep him free of nano contamination. He wasn’t even breathing hard when he said, “In position. Leaving the Bot and the V-8 for AntiGrav decontamination. Going after Bot-B.”
I positioned the AG Grabber over the Crawler and the engine and waited. Our two minutes were nearly up. The Bots’ nanos would activate in seconds.
Using an electric engine this time, Mateo shoved the second Crawler over, stacked the electric engine on top, and went back with a steel-bristle broom and a heavy-duty dustpan sufficient for picking up hemp-plaz and synth-metal parts.
“Ten seconds,” I warned. He emptied the scoop under the Grabber and stepped away. “Frying it,” I said.
The Grabber lifted the thousand kilograms, give or take, as easily as it had lifted the Puffers. I set it to cook for an hour—which would leave us with a lot of time we couldn’t fry other stuff, but I couldn’t see another option. The energy usage was draining my reserves. Timing was going to be dicey, but the sun was still up and the solar panels all showed green. They hadn’t been hit by the weapons fire, so I was still collecting energy. “What about you?” I asked—meaning what do we do about any nanos that might have infested Mateo’s warbot body. Again.
“Running diagnostics,” he said. “I’ll set the suit to scan me every hour. If I see something, I’ll cut it off and you can fry it. Then I’ll reassemble it.”
Mateo sounded calm and matter-of-fact. Clearly, he had been thinking about protocol should he ever be infested again. He hadn’t freaked when I mentioned Puffers. He was doing good. Real good. That said a lot about his improving mental capabilities and health. I’d spent a lot of money on Berger-chip plug-ins to help restore his brain and give him back his memories. Money well spent.
“Copy that,” I said. “Keep me informed.”
“Got another batch of cats on a Puffer,” he said. “Screen forty-seven.”
I flipped to that screen and saw four cats, all female, stalking a Puffer. The Puffer was a little larger than most, with a square device on top instead of a weapon. That made it a recon-Puffer. It was hiding under a shipping container full of folded flight wings—part of a batch I had lucked into last month and hadn’t gotten around to unpacking. The shipping container made a nice shady resting place for the Puffer. It also allowed the cats to slink up on it unobserved by any sensors on the Puffer’s carapace.
Jagger leaned in closer beside the defensive control seat. The scent of sweat and sunscreen and engine oil and road dust and cigar and man wafted from him—a remembered scent, distant but . . . interesting. I breathed him in. My own, no-longer-strictly-human body reacted.
“What are they doing?” he asked.
“Hunting.”
“But they’re cats. They have to know there’s no protein benefit to the Puffers. No caloric benefit either.”
Because that was why cats hunted. Food. Normal cats, that is. I spared him a slant-eyed grin before returning to the screen. “Yeah, on the surface it’s a waste of time. But a Crawler—an interloper—entered their territory, divided in two, had babies, and went after the source of their food and water. Me. In cat hierarchy, I successfully killed the Perker parents, proving I’m the alpha cat. Based on that evidence, they have to kill its babies or the babies may grow up and kill me. And they’ll go hungry.”
“You’re implying the cats have intellect, the ability to reason, and sentience.”
“Shining,” Mateo warned in my ear.
My smile faded. Jagger already knew too much. He’d seen the office. Worse, he’d touched things in the office. No matter what happened, it was already too late for him. If he somehow lived, Mateo would want to take him out rather than let him tell the Outlaws what he’d learned. At best, if Jagger left the junkyard at all, it would have to be a vastly altered Jagger. I held in my sigh.
“Yeah,” I said to Mateo and to Jagger, each for their separate comments. “Watch.”
The female cats were a mixed bag in terms of coloration—one with wide black and gray stripes; one with narrow, tone-on-tone gray stripes; one with orange stripes and a white spot under her chin; and one with splotches of brown and white and black. The tortoiseshell was the original matriarch of the pride; she had strange, long, bobcat-like tufts on her ears and one gimpy paw that had been partially amputated after a junkyard accident. I called her Tuffs because of the ear feathers and because she was . . . well . . . tough.
Most of the other cats were just called Cat. I wasn’t imaginative with names and there were a lot of cats.
On the screen, Tuffs crouched on the edge of a stack of rear hatch doors. She looked at Wide Stripe, who belly-crawled a meter to her left. She looked at Narrow Stripe, who scooted back into deeper cover. The striped female cats were Tuffs’ lieutenants, each one the primary breeder in one of the two prides. Tuffs looked at Spot, the female with the best vantage for ambush and a proven warrior; the orange-striped cat flicked her ear tabs, then leaped at the Puffer. A silent killing machine.
Spot landed on top of the Puffer, claws digging in as it bucked on its collapsible wheels. She rode it, flipping it over and leaping out of the way. The
gray-striped cats launched from either side and latched onto the upside-down wheels, holding them. The Puffer was now immobilized, unable to right itself. Spot released her hold and slid to her feet, to begin a scent-reconnoiter. In less than a minute, she found the tiny seam where the Puffer had been sealed for active duty. She began to scratch around the seam, sensing with her claws. She went still and looked up at Tuffs. The matriarch tensed, her eyes fiercely intent. Spot repositioned her body and dug in, releasing the seal. The Puffer bounced and twisted, pulsing its wheels. The striped cats pulled the Puffer apart. It stopped moving. When the cats were sure it was dead, they pulled it into the middle of Aisle Tango Three and sauntered off.
Tuffs looked directly at the camera and licked her lips, making a demanding mrower before she turned her back on me and jumped high, to a skid full of ship anchors. Tracking her hunters from above, she followed as they searched for more prey.
“That’s . . .” Jagger went silent.
“Shining,” Mateo said, with his metallic sigh.
“Yeah. I know,” I said to them both.
“You have sentient killer cats. And you have a warbot,” Jagger said, in awe, going back to the most important part.
“Yeah.” I’d have to change Mateo’s name if I introduced them. Something similar, maybe, like Matt.
On the next screen, a Puffer appeared. It was a grenade launcher mini-bot. Jagger reacted quickly and shot it to pieces. I notified Mateo, who went to pick it up. Another Puffer appeared and was shot down by Jagger. Another. And another. My new pal seemed to be having fun.
Jagger moved closer to me, again watching the screens over my shoulder. It felt odd to have him there. Comforting and frightening and something else I had pushed away from my life and decided I’d never experience again. His scent was sweat-ripe and cigar-strong, tainted by the tang of engines and gasoline, that rare OMW scent that made me want. . . .
I stopped myself right there. Unless Jagger survived the transition and I managed to alter his memories, he was a dead man walking.
“Warbot,” I said to Mateo. “Can you gather up the parts and add them to the frying Crawlers? Without getting your suit infected?”
“Roger that. Can do.”
But he didn’t sound happy about it. Or rather, he didn’t sound happy about our visitor, who could have slit my throat at any moment for the last—I checked my chrono—half hour while I defended the junkyard. And he hadn’t. Jagger was—for certain—one of the good guys. And that broke my heart.
“What’s his name?” Jagger asked.
I swiveled my chair to him, thinking Jagger was asking about Mateo, but found my visitor peering into the med-bay. I removed the war-sleeve—which hurt like a mother as it disconnected—and joined him. I pulled on gloves as I moved. It was likely too late, but . . . maybe?
“He’s Notch. Because of the notched ear.”
“The cats have sentience. And some sort of group communication. Like ESP,” he said. “Like those birds that move in concert in flight and look like living clouds. Or fish in the ocean.”
“Seems so. No way to prove it.”
“You could catch them. Have them taken for study.”
Which someone might want to do to me, now that I’d broken cover.
“No.”
Jagger’s eyes met mine and he smiled. Up close, his eyes were a dozen colors—pale-milk-chocolate brown and green and, in one, a tiny spot of blue. In the confines of the office, he was taller than I had thought, broader. His scruff of beard was maybe two days old. And bloody hell, that achingly familiar scent. His hand lifted and I thought he might remove my orange glasses. Something inside my chest did somersaults as my entire system responded to a man I didn’t even know. Carefully, deliberately, I stepped back and didn’t touch him.
“I respect that,” he said, dropping his hand. “Warrior honor.”
Unsettled, I bumped into the fridge, used it as an excuse, opened two more beers, wiped them both with a skin wand, and set one for him on the table at the dining booth.
I had stripped the booth from a high-end RV and it, along with the RV bed, were intended to hide what the office really was. From Jagger’s reaction, I wasn’t sure I had succeeded. Taking the beer, Jagger stood beside the leather bench at one side of the booth, opened the bottle, and took a swig. Then took a step toward me. And another.
“Well, you gave me a couple beers and entertainment.” His eyes sparkled, like milk-chocolate fireworks. “Best battle I’ve been part of in weeks. As first dates go it’s been pretty good.”
He stopped in front of me. Close. Too close. The progression of the bottle to my mouth didn’t stutter but it was a near thing. Bottle rim at my lips, I said, “Date? Kinda presumptuous there, Asshole.”
Jagger laughed, the sound filling the office, vibrating in my chest and lower, into the part of me that felt . . . something. Something full of need and loneliness.
“When your kutte’s tracking sensor went off, we took bets if it was really you. Shared photos from back then. Told stories. I can see the twelve-year-old Shining in your grown-up features. Pointed chin, high cheekbones. Eyes.”
This time he did reach for my glasses. I seized his wrist with a gloved hand, stopping him. His hand was tanned and dark and had long black hairs that curled at the knuckles. He stopped, his hand only centimeters from my face.
“Seeing as Shining Smith just won me a month’s wages, I figured least I could do is buy you dinner and a movie,” he finished.
“Not my name,” I said, ignoring the kutte situation, and pushing at his mind with my blood. If he was already being infected with my own special nanobots, I’d be able to alter his thoughts.
Into my earbud, Mateo said, “Setting the screens for auto-load so you can follow the cats. Consider it entertainment on your date.” And, yeah. There was some major snark this time.
“I don’t date Outlaws,” I said, pushing harder. “I remember Mama’s boyfriend too much.”
I didn’t date, period. Not in years, not that I’d say that. It would come across as even more of a challenge. Outlaws did love a challenge, and being told “no” was a major dare. I didn’t know him at all, but somehow, I knew Jagger wouldn’t use force. Instead I would become his goal, to wheedle, charm, pursue, stalk, and court—what an OMW made-man would do to get whatever or whomever they had been denied.
Jagger pulled from my grip, walked back, and sprawled on the bench seat, one knee bent, his boot heel on the wood beneath the leather cushion. Another man might have put his boot on the leather itself. Something about the consideration made me like him and I couldn’t afford to like him.
“Ladies tell me I’m adorable,” he said.
“Old Ladies are biker chicks. Not me.” I wasn’t and never would be an Old Lady. That was a term for one of the women who married into the Outlaws or became a longtime girlfriend. I was not a goal to win or a woman to pursue. I was way more than that.
His expression shifted and he sat upright, sliding his hand along my table, where my own hands had been at breakfast. Oh, bugger. It had been less than twelve hours since I sat there, ate there, my hands on the surface. And I hadn’t wiped it down.
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah. I never thought about how that might sound to you. You did what the rest of us couldn’t. You stopped the Mama-Bot. You saved our butts and earned the patches to prove it. Sorry.”
“Don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.” But I did. I was Little Girl. I was the only living female made-man in the Company at the time. I’d paid my dues. Lost everything. Nearly died. And saved the warriors of three chapters and a battalion of Uncle Sam’s fighters from certain destruction. I’d been awarded my kutte, elevated in status, and honored. And then Pops died and the nanobots I had been infected with proved to be too dangerous. So, I vanished.
My nanobots—the mutation I carried and the infection I transmitted—were why it was already too late for Jagger.
Feeling the gloves on my hands,
knowing they looked strange in this setting, I tossed Jagger a package of processed cheese crackers and sat opposite him.
“No fresh food,” I said, hiding the fact that I had a greenhouse, just as I hid so much else. “And no getting out of here. Not until the Puffers are all gathered and destroyed.”
“What about my bike?”
I shrugged. “Soon as the sun recharges my batteries, I can decontaminate it before you leave.”
“Leave? We leave together.”
“If that was an invitation, it lacked a certain charm, Asshole.”
“Shining—”
“That sounds like a name. It’s not mine. Eat your crackers.”
Into my earbud, Mateo said, “Make a decision and make it soon.”
I didn’t tell him the decision had probably already been made.
I drank my beer. Ate the cracker Jagger passed me, sharing from his pack. We settled back and watched the screens as the cats skulked around the junkyard in small groups, killing Puffers. Mateo followed the mayhem and destruction, gathering up the bot remnants and taking them to the AG Grabber to fry. AG Grabbers were pre-war tech. A lot of other stuff on the property was war tech and I was not supposed to have it. Like Mateo’s warbot suit, the only thing keeping my friend alive.
“Who’s the warbot?”
“Don’t know his real name,” I lied, speaking softly, slowly, pushing with my blood, continuing the attempt to alter his memories. “But I call him Matt. The boss, the owner of the junkyard, found him working as a slave in a town not far from here and brought him back here to live or die. He lived. Boss might know personal stuff, but Matt and I don’t share histories or private info. At all.”
“I like the modifications he made on his bot.”
“He’s good at what he does.” Which carried a lot of unspoken threats. Threats Jagger understood, if the fleeting, challenging smile was an indication. Really? He’d challenge a warbot? OMW-dude was an idiot, on top of being an Asshole. A good-looking, almost-charming Asshole. I clenched my fists at the need to reach out and touch him.
