Junkyard Cats - Faith Hunter Page 0,43

plaz-skin beneath looked like a toddler had been drawing on my skinless muscles.

I looked back to Tuffs. “Deal.”

Tuffs again put her head to mine, and I figured she had to be touching for me see through her eyes, though that might change as my blood did things to her insides. My vision skewed sideways, and I saw Jagger through a cat’s eyes. He was standing in the middle of the office, feet shoulder-width apart, back ramrod-straight, OMW para-military badass enforcer to the core. He was studying the screens and my huge NBP compression seat, drinking from one of my stored water bottles. His expression said he was drawing conclusions I didn’t want him to draw. Jagger was smart. Like Jolene, I liked a smart man. Usually. Bloody damn.

My vision went sideways again, and I saw the invading vehicles out front. The people were no longer just standing around. The Mammoth Tactical Vehicle had been damaged, showing blackened blast marks on the grill and the silk-plaz windshield. Dents marred the formerly pristine body. While I was out, Gomez and Jagger must have surprised them with a bombardment. The bodies were still in the dirt, but all the cats were in hiding, not feasting.

The surviving invaders were inside the Mammoth, and my vision went upside down as I saw through a different cat’s eyes. Vertigo sent me spinning and I nearly fell over until I realized the cat was stretched out on some man’s lap, getting a belly rub. It was a weird view. The humans were drinking coffee and eating meat jerky, if the smell through the cat’s nose was anything to go by. My own nose and inner ears revolted at the unaccustomed scents and position.

In the Mammoth were six people, one injured. Five of them were sitting around the transport walls, on padded benches they had lowered just for that purpose. Clarisse was sitting in the center of the humans. Each of the others were touching her, somewhere, hand, foot, arm. It was an odd positioning.

Tuffs listened through her great-great-great granddaughter’s ears and I heard Clarisse say, “I’m not calling for reinforcements. We’ll wait here until the insertion team has exfiltrated with the needed intel. Once we know we have everything we need, we’ll bomb the scrapyard building into a crater. How long until the internal nanos have repaired our equipment?”

One-Eyed Jack handed her a cup and said, “Twenty minutes, more or less.”

That gave me a tight timeline.

“Next time, someone bring more coffee,” a man’s voice griped. “And decent food. This jerky sucks.” He handed a stick of aromatic dried meat to Clarisse. “And while we’re talking, why not use a nuke?”

“You’re a nuke whore,” a fourth man said. “If we nuke the place, the crack might cave in on the spaceship.”

Bloody hell. They had a nuclear weapon?

“What about the SFM?” the coffee-griper asked. “Why work with the military if we can’t blow things up?”

An SFM was a shoulder-fired missile launcher, which meant I hadn’t disabled all their missiles when I took out the mini-tank’s armaments.

Clarisse said, “I’m not wasting my four remaining missiles on a junkyard.”

Bad for her. Good for me, I thought. Then, Four missiles? Bloody damn!

The cat in the Mammoth felt the lap she was in shift. From my current perspective, it felt as if the vehicle’s internal repair nanos were mending damage to the undercarriage while the invaders were taking a break and brainstorming. Twenty minutes before the tracks of the mini-tank and the tires of the Tac-Vs were repaired too, assuming they all came with standard military mechanical repair nanobots. They were one-time-use nanos and very good at what they did.

“Jolene?” I asked the ship’s AI. “Start me a timer for twenty minutes. Give me a two-minute warning and thirty-second warnings thereafter.”

“Copy that, Darlin’. Twenty and counting.”

“Show me Mateo,” I whispered to Tuffs.

The vision shifted again. Mateo was still on the ground. His suit was juddering and shaking. The two observer cats were intent, watching the battle from outside the suit. Others were keeping watch from vantage points above the warbot. Through their eyes I saw evidence that the pride had attacked and killed several more Puffers. There was a third dead cat and bloody tracks that told me the survivors had carried injured cats to the office for med-bay treatment.

Tuffs switched me to the two humans hanging from the Grabber. They were either dead, or out cold and brain dead.

Tuffs’ vision moved to a different vantage point, watching the back of the property.