dust flying into the morning air. The OMW national enforcer had what he’d come for—the sensor from my kutte. He had a plausible story of what happened while he was here, believing that he had been followed by some MS Angels and that he had saved the girl—Heather—who worked in the front office from attack. The story would hold because he was mine. He’d come back when I called him, and when he did, there would be four fresh graves and parts of a tactical vehicle as evidence to support his implanted memories. The story in his mind would hold.
Well, probably. I clutched the pulse weapon he’d left with me, hoping I’d never have to use it, but grateful to have the totally illegal military weapon. A girl can never have too many weapons out here in the middle of nowhere.
His One Rider approached the road out front. He turned and looked back.
I frowned at him. Outlaws didn’t look back.
Before Jagger woke up, Mateo and Jolene had spent an entire day scanning and testing parts of the bike with special emphasis on the AntiGrav and the miniaturized Massive Particle Propulsion engine. The CO, his southern belle AI, and Gomez were happy as any tech-savvy sentient and probably-becoming-sentient beings could be.
Jagger turned to the front and pulled onto the road. As the familiar, muttered, soft snore putter of the One Rider engine faded into the distance, the cats lined up around me, sitting, watching where I watched. They looked abnormally well fed and would for quite a while. At Jolene’s suggestion, Mateo had carried the cooked bodies into the deep freezer in the SunStar. We’d thaw a body every month or so and toss it to the cats. Sadly, Clarisse Warhammer and One-Eyed Jack had never reappeared. I was fairly sure the queen and her main mate had survived and gotten away.
She now knew I had Bug weapons.
I knew this much about Warhammer. She would never share what she knew about me or the junkyard with anyone else because she would want my stuff for herself.
She’d be back. With reinforcements. Eventually. Depending on how long it took her to convert new people and grow a new nest. How long it took to obtain equipment. And generate a plan to take me. I knew what she was. She didn’t know what I was. All she knew was that I had something she wanted, something that would give her power, something that, in the wrong hands—her hands—would upset the balance of power and maybe restart a full-blown World War III, instead of the skirmishes and tech attacks and bot assaults currently taking place.
I wasn’t giving up the junkyard. No way, no how.
The airlock opened, and my thrall stepped out into the sun, one hand over her eyes, searching for me.
“Go back inside,” I waved at her. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Cupcake, who refused to be called by her real name, waved back and followed orders. I didn’t know what I was going to do with her. Outright murder wasn’t something I could or wanted to do. Keeping her around was going to be difficult unless I started raiding the SunStar’s stores regularly. There wasn’t money, water, or food otherwise and the loss of Harlan and the Tesla-23B engine had delivered a beating to my income.
I had worked to implant in Jagger’s memories a desire to take Harlan’s place as my boss’s agent between the OMW and the local black market. Jagger had agreed, which was why Mateo had allowed him to live and leave. But I didn’t know how long Jagger’s compulsion would last.
I looked back at the office, focusing instead on my current short-term worry. Clarisse’s nanos and my nanos in Cupcake’s body might recognize each other and go to war, taking her out of the picture entirely. Not that I was hoping for that. Except for talking incessantly, Cupcake was good company.
As soon as Jagger’s dust settled, the cats wandered off, except for Notch and Tuffs and the newly-named Spy—who wasn’t sick with Clarisse’s nanobots either. So far, so good. The cats stuck around, watching as Mateo spider-crawled to where we stood and sat, his long legs bending his main carapace to the ground so he could see me almost face-to-face from inside his meter-wide faceplate. He detached his damaged leg and placed it under the Grabber, watching me. Waiting for the conversation we clearly had needed to have for a while.
I engaged the AntiGravity Grabber. The mechanical leg lifted off the ground and hung there. Inside, the attacking nanobots fried and died. We’d done the same to each piece of his suit, one at a time, over the last three days, a method suggested by Jolene, which would minimize the time Mateo had to spend out of his suit. This was the last piece except for the torso. Next I’d need to unhook him, peel him out of the suit, and carry him into the med-bay while the whole suit got a thorough blasting, just in case the piecemeal method had left some nanos alive. I resettled my 2-Gen glasses over my not-quite-human eyes and studied Mateo.
“So. You’re a spaceship captain. Commanding Officer of the SunStar.”
“Was.”
“And Evelyn Raymond? Who is probably part of Clarisse’s nest and no longer has full self-will?”
“My second in command. Someone I owe.” He tilted his deformed head inside his bot body, thinking. “I have self-will, and I’m part of your nest. She had the same training I did, so who’s to say she hasn’t retained some form of independence? And if she hasn’t”—he heaved a sigh and shrugged, his bot-arms lifting slightly, which was weird-looking—“she’ll need to be eliminated.”
“Okay. I get that. So. When are we going after her?”
“Not sure yet. According to our prisoner, Raymond is hell and gone from here and we don’t have much intel on the location or specs of Clarisse’s nest. We’re just two. You have thoughts about rescue plans?”
“Not yet, but Jolene and Gomez have become really chummy. Gomez might be Bug AI but he’s a lonely Bug AI. I think they’re falling for each other. And Gomez has scanners we know zilch about. He might have access to weapons or locations or . . . most anything.” I grinned. “Between the AIs and you and me, I think we could take on a team of MS Angels and rescue Evelyn.”
Tuffs made an outraged hiss.
“And the cats,” I said. “Begging your pardon, Tuffs.”
She flipped her tail at me, mollified.
“And Jagger?”
“I did what you suggested and put him to work. If he follows my implanted compulsion, he’ll become my new Harlan.”
Even though I had planted all that in Jagger’s brain, the person he would remember for the conversation was my fake boss, a burly macho man. I’d even given Jagger all of Harlan’s contacts, and told him that there was a traitor to the OMW in the list somewhere, and that person also likely had access to whoever was working in the Gov. and making alliances with the Angels. Jagger had told me it was probably a cell of people, not just one. He would be breaking bones and busting teeth, to find the traitors. That was an enforcer’s job and he was looking forward to it.
“And the traitors in the Gov.?” Mateo asked.
“I’ll have to go after them eventually, as soon as I get intel from Jagger on the traitor cell. They made an alliance with the bloody bedamned MS Angels. There are some things an OMW would never permit to happen. Not without a fight.”
“And you’re OMW?” Mateo asked, a wicked grin pulling on his disfigured face.
“To the core,” I said. “To the core.”
About The Author
Faith Hunter
Faith Hunter is the New York Times bestselling author of the Jane Yellowrock series, the Soulwood series, the Rogue Mage series, and the Junkyard Cats series.
www,faithhuter.net
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