Junkyard Cats - Faith Hunter Page 0,33

in pieces. I checked Mateo. He was still down. Eight Puffers were down near his suit, but as I watched, a Puffer pried apart an ankle seam in one of the three fully automated warbot legs. A second Puffer fired a small caliber weapon into the under-armor, round after round. “No,” I whispered. I counted eighteen rounds, a full mag for the Puffer. The first Puffer rolled back and tore into the opening. They were working together. That was freaky.

“Now that ain’t normal,” Jolene said. “Puffers talkin’? Dang. Next thang you know they’ll be having tea and crumpets.”

I had no idea what a crumpet was. It sounded like a good name for an insect, one I’d squash beneath my boot. Both Puffers crawled into the hole. The suit’s auto-defense system came on.

Jolene said, “Fully segmentin’ warbot suit. Isolatin’ Puffers.”

There was nothing I could do to help my friend, not from here. Not until the threat was averted and I could get to him. Then I’d dig the Puffers out and bash them open and stick them under the AG Grabber. “Good plan,” I muttered to myself.

But my heart was clenching. I’d found Mateo in a nearby town on the way here, when I was alone and terrified. He had been half-disabled, in the city lockup, behind bars. Somehow, he was able to act as the city manager’s AI and right-hand man, paid in nothing but food, minimal power for his suit, and Devil Milk. He was addicted and ignored and forced to work, deprived of the Devil Milk if he refused even the smallest command. No one had known it, but his suit had also been infected with Puffer nanobots and the critters had been eating him and the suit, cell by cell. Mateo had been fighting a losing battle with them for months.

I had rescued him. Stolen him, actually. Right out from under the city manager’s nose. Had brought him to the scrapyard and stripped what was left of him out of the warbot suit and stuck him into the med-bay. Saved his life. Now, my friend was in danger from Puffers again; his worst nightmare. And I couldn’t protect him.

“How long can you keep the Puffers in that segment of the suit?” I asked Jolene.

“You’ll need to hit him, his entire suit, and especially that limb, with AntiGrav sometime in the next eighteen hours, sweetie-pie.”

It flashed through my mind that Jolene knew how to kill nanobots, which was unexpected. Before I could ask, she went on.

“The Puffer nanobots are already chewing into that leg segment and converting the base components to weapons. Them scary li’l suckers are a new version. They ain’t the Puffers I got in my database.”

I didn’t know where Jolene got the programming for the southern accent, but it was becoming jarring. “Jolene” was one of Pops’ songs. Had CAIT gotten into his music and somehow made the transition to Jolene? I made a mental note to change the voice to a male baritone, with a nice Welsh accent.

“You try it and I’ll zap you,” Jolene said. “I was given permission to choose my own gender-based pronouns, name, voice, and wardrobe, by the CO. And I ain’t giving that up.”

Wardrobe? “Fine,” I said, shaking my head at the vagaries of AIs. And then I realized she had heard my thoughts, which was way above CAIT’s abilities. It was freaky scary.

“Use vocals only,” I said.

Jolene uttered a “Humph.”

I scanned the screens and saw movement near the Grabber. Battery levels were at eighty-nine percent. Using remote access, I powered the Grabber and activated it. The AG sucked two humans into the air, where they hung like magician’s helpers.

“Look ma. No strings,” I said.

“Spiffy,” Jolene said.

Tuffs chuffed. I looked back at Mateo. Still unmoving. Damndamndamn.

In a blare of light, the junkyard office came online. Its offensive weapons fired.

The SunStar’s floor shook. Things fell out of the ceiling tiles and peppered over me. The office fired again. A human sprinting toward its front from the entrance road danced and died as she was cut in two.

Seemed Jagger had woken up and decided to defend us. I double checked that Gomez had his more private defenses locked down, so only the modified, retrofitted US military systems would be available to my visitor.

I slid through the system and into the office’s internal cameras. Jagger was propped in the space-worthy, over-sized NBP compression seat, my command seat, scanning the yard. With a thought, I removed the ship sensors from his access. If