Junkyard Cats - Faith Hunter Page 0,32

Tac vehicles and had begun trying to free the tires and tracks when Mateo and the office opened fire. Their armor hadn’t survived the combined firepower. I counted four humans on the ground, unmoving. The mini-tank was rocking back and forth on its track system. The tank was heavily armored, was handled by a human, and had a missile system mounted on top. With Mateo down and the office defenses on standby until the batteries recharged, I needed to damage or immobilize the missile system. I also needed to knock out any drones they brought. If the Spaatz tank got free, it had firepower the office couldn’t withstand without the particle shields up, and the mini-tank was small enough to maneuver around the aisles and find stuff it shouldn’t.

I needed more power faster. The office systems’ shields and the USSS SunStar’s power siggie could be seen from space if military satellites were currently actively looking for it, but I didn’t have a choice.

I checked the batteries. Still too low.

I cursed foully. Tuffs looked at me and flicked her ear tabs, amused. Jolene said nothing.

“I really don’t want to do this.”

I didn’t have implants to interact directly with the ship, so this was not gonna be fun at all. Taking a deep breath, I pulled off my armored sleeve and shoved my hand into the engineering command sleeve, screaming, wordless, knowing what was coming. The sleeve contracted around my hand, fast, painfully tight. Needles punctured into me and engaged my nervous system. It hurt. It bloody well hurt. My scream went up in pitch. My breath shuddered as I forced myself to accept the pain and the input and the sensory overload.

I was damaging my arm. I was bleeding. I would deal with the injury later.

“That wasn’t the brightest thing you ever done, darlin’.”

I grunted. I increased the WIMP production and shunted more power to the office batteries. I could power up the office defense system and the AG Grabber or I could use some of the scant power to launch the office’s other ARVACs now and take longer to get the systems up and running.

I needed intel. I launched the flying drones and set them to auto-scan. The office went into brown-out again. Now I had 102 seconds until I had sufficient power transferred to activate the weapons and the Grabber. I hoped the intel was worth it.

Melded with Jolene, I pressed my eyes against the command faceplate showing me the ship’s external sensors, as the AI searched the skies. I spotted one enemy drone. Locked on. Sliding my bleeding hand to the left, I engaged the weapons array that was least likely to draw satellite attention. I fired.

Silently, the ship’s EntNu-based offensive laser array took it down.

Gomez said, “Alert. Armed incursion from the western boundary. Six, on foot.”

I pulled up the office cameras and spotted the six-man team, armed with automatic rifles, making their way into an older section of the yard. The scrap there backed up to a series of mine cracks, the main one wider than most and a hundred meters deep or more. The rock there was rotten, hundreds of unstable cracks forming when an old underground mine had caved in. I had scanned the area once and found traces of arsenic, benzene, and toxic coal dust. I hadn’t bothered to explore further. I had no idea what the invading team might be after.

“Do not engage,” I told Gomez. “Maintain observation via ARVACs and stationary camera system.”

For now, I let the invaders go, curious what they were looking for. Or maybe that was Jolene’s curiosity. It was already hard to tell as her sensors merged with my senses.

“You need to let me merge fully with the extra-ship defensive system you’re using, darlin’. This three-way we’re having is not working for me.”

Again, the accent threw me, but I let her merge into the office AI.

“Oh. My. Ain’t you jist the cutest li’l thang,” Jolene said to the AI. “Gomez. Nice name. Your English translated coding ain’t the best or the brightest but a lonely gal sometimes has to make do.”

“Flirt later,” I muttered. Far faster than I could have before, my mind slipped into the office vid scanners and checked around. There were more strangers in the junkyard, these close to the office. Two humans were at the rear office airlock. I fired everything I had at them. They went down. I slid through the screens, searching for more movement.

In the aisles, two cats were down and