Junkyard Cats - Faith Hunter Page 0,42
Jolene said.
But she released the command sleeve. Needles slid from my flesh, ripping clotted blood from the hundreds of minuscule wounds, clots that had slowed the bleeding. The pain was like lightning and ice and fire and sharp blades and salt. So bad I forgot to breathe. The faint hum of a decontamination feature went into effect, a feeling against my shoulder—a half-buzz, half-high-pitched drilling noise. My arm slid out and flopped in my lap. Pain like I’d been flayed, thrummed through me. I was scared to look at it.
Jolene said, “Yeah. You’re all badass, uh huh. I can see that. And you’re gonna take on the bad guys, single-handedly, ain’tcha?”
When I could breathe again, I looked down. I had fallen forward against the Comm Sleeve. My hand was in my lap. My armor was off up to a space above my elbow. From fingertips to the edge of the remaining armor I was skinless. Bloodied and leaking. The pain so cold and sharp and intense that even breathing was a torture.
“Ha, ha,” I whispered.
“What’s funny?” Jolene asked.
“Single-handedly?”
“Oh,” she said. “That was funny. I’m programmed for humor. Mateo doesn’t let me use it often.”
Mateo. Her CO. Who was brain damaged. That had to have been awful for her all these years, alone, semi-sentient, with no one to talk to. Which I must have mumbled aloud.
“What do you mean, semi-sentient? I’ll have you know I’ve evolved way beyond my original programing, Darlin’. I left CAIT behind more than four standard years ago. I can give you the exact day I evolved, if you want.” When I didn’t answer, she said, “Huh,” sounding disgusted. “There’s an emergency med-bay to your right. The blue vertical lights? It’s sized for the chief engineer, but I can modify it to fit you. If you step inside, it’ll fix you up enough to survive and fight for a while. It usually gives the chief engineer or the last man aboard twenty-four hours of extra life.”
I looked at the glowing blue lines, and realized it was an upright coffin-shaped closet, about two and a half meters tall and a meter wide. As I watched, two doors unsealed and swept back. The inside was a standard med-bay, except it was formed for standing upright. I popped the safety straps away and tried to rise from the command seat. A puddle of half-clotted blood ran down my legs. Splashed on the floor. Splattered everywhere. Had to be a couple liters at least. Too much to lose and still fight. All four cats raced to lap up the protein.
“Erp,” was all I managed.
Then the world tilted, spun. I was falling inside the med-bay. Everything went black.
* * *
The med-bay door opened and I dropped, boneless, onto the engineering command floor. I knew I had fallen because my cheek was on the cold hemp-plaz tile, half of it having dropped from the ceiling. And three cats were in front of me, noses nearly touching mine.
“Hey,” I said, mostly to the cats. “That was weird.”
“That was twenty-seven minutes, forty-six seconds of IVs, healing lasers, topical blood clotting chemicals, two syringes of plaz-skin, four layers of Inviso-Dermis, and enough time-release chems and steroids to let you beat an augmented prizefighter in a—”
“Stop,” I managed. She did. “Tuffs. You still here?”
Tuffs shoved the other cats aside, including Notch, who was twice as big as her and twice as mean. Or so I had thought. He gave way to the Guardian Cat.
“Show me Jagger. Then the invading vehicles and people out front. Then Mateo. Then the two in the Grabber. Then the two at the back of the property. Please,” I added, knowing I was demanding help from a source who was not used to taking orders. She sat, slid her tail around her legs, and stared at me. “Um. Pretty please?” I added. “With sardines on top?”
Tuffs touched my nose, then forehead to forehead, and sent me a vision of small fishes in the prides’ food bowls. There were two sets of dishes, one for each pride of cats.
“You bargain hard,” I murmured.
I pushed with my uninjured arm and managed to sit upright. My own armor sleeve was open on the floor beside me. I wasn’t sure how it had gotten there. Energy spurted through my bloodstream as the first of the time release pain meds and steroids kicked in. “Oh,” I breathed. That felt better. Fortified, I studied my arm. The Inviso-Dermis made my flesh look gelatinous and the weird colors of the