Junkyard Cats - Faith Hunter Page 0,14

off a midsized space-going observation capsule, and adapted it to its own exoskeleton. I needed to get inside the office. But I’d have to cross the space between my dubious protection and the doorway, which they had likely been waiting on all along. And Jagger was now nowhere in sight.

I took a breath that stank of the remembered reek of war-sweat and burned ammo. I forced my body to uncurl. Carefully, knowing what I was about to say might set Mateo off, I asked, “Do the Crawlers have Puffers?” A Perker Crawler often carried Puffers. Puffers carried mechanical nanobots. Puffer mech-nanos had taken Mateo down.

Mateo hissed out a breath, metallic and grinding and full of fury. “Searching.”

Puffers were attendant, automatic, weaponized mini-bots that could slide out of the Perkers’ receptacles and go hunting on their own. Mini-recon-bots, or hand grenades on wheels, or specialized cutting and dismembering systems on wheels, all with versatile, origami-inspired construction, allowing the wheels to collapse inward, and the mini-bot to fold into a flat configuration, like a horseshoe crab. NASA had invented them for Mars explorers. Mama-Bots had stolen the concept and weaponized the Puffers. Puffers swarmed like bicolor ants, and because they were solar powered, and had mech-nanotech self-healing, self-altering, Puffer-building capabilities, they simply never, ever stopped. They had to be crushed or pried open one by one and blasted with AntiGrav to kill them.

Unless someone had a secret weapon.

Or was a secret weapon.

“Let me know when you see them.”

“You can’t,” Mateo snarled. “You don’t even know if it will work.”

“If I don’t try, they’ll kill us eventually. The only way you fought the nanobots inside your suit was to close it down, set it to run on auto, and hunt them one at a time. And that was in a confined space where they couldn’t run and hide and reproduce and come back with more bots. It took months and you nearly died. Out here we’ll lose for sure.”

They were bad, horrible months. The nanos had been inside his suit a long time before they had reproduced enough to start making changes to the suit. And they had eaten parts of him before he figured out that AntiGrav forces would destroy nanos. We’d had to blast his entire suit.

“We have an entire junkyard for them to hide in,” I said, trying to convince him.

“You have a witness. You cannot.”

I thought about Buck Harlan in the Tesla. He died getting me a message, probably the message that the Perker Crawler was on the way—a death sentence. The Perker now knew I had a spaceship on the property, which would motivate it even more to destroy me. And the Asshole? He was a black hole of uncertain possibilities, none of them good.

Someone knew I was here. But that someone didn’t know what I could do.

“Shining. We don’t even know if it will work. Try it my way first.” Mateo stopped, fired. When the dust started to settle and I hadn’t answered, he added, “Please.” Mateo didn’t beg. Not ever. About anything.

His polite request was a first and it made me melt inside—an angry melt, but still a melt.

“Fine,” I snarled. “According to the screens, Bot-A is nearly in position to take me. Bot-B has stopped and is waiting for A to achieve attack position. Concur?”

“Concur. I’m in position with a clear line of fire to both. On three I’ll lay down attack and cover fire and you get into the office. If you see Jagger, take him with you.”

“You sure about him?”

“Hell, no. But he’s human and he’s OMW. We don’t leave either to a Perker. One.”

My body went liquid, as battle chemicals and human adrenalin flushed into my bloodstream like a flash flood. Still wearing the Dragon Scale armor sleeve, I slammed the Para Gen to full auto and swiped control of the weapon to Mateo.

“Two.”

Crouching, I braced my feet. Placed the palm of the war-sleeve on the AG Grabber support.

“Three! Gogogogogogo.”

I was already moving, shoving off, the Dragon scale sleeve stretching and contracting, throwing me across the wide-open space and through the air. Jarring my shoulder, spine, and pelvis, but making me freaking move.

Mateo fired, a double barrage of ammo. I went deaf. My feet touched down in the dirt three-and-a-half meters from my previous perch. Legs bent. Thrusted into a dead sprint. Battle reflexes, honed and augmented by what I’d become.

The Crawler bots fired. Blasted the air where I’d been and the front of the office. But I was inside the protective