Junkyard War, page 18
I rounded another pile of rubble—a hotel, according to the remnants of its sign in my lowlight face-shield screen. I spotted three mini-tanks. One was overturned; another had crashed into it. The third was on its nose, rocking back and forth, trying to right itself. I tucked myself into a crevice behind a broken ancient cement-block wall. Auto-targeted two blasters at the humans I could see, but their heads and air filters were turned away. I fired anyway. Retargeted. Fired. Nothing changed. Their armor was old but solid at this distance and angle. It was going to have to be up close and personal again.
Watching for movement, I said, “Jolene. We’ve taken down three of Warhammer’s warriors. We have three more in sight here. So that leaves Warhammer and three others. Do we have any Maarsies still flying, and can you ping their positions?”
“We have two Maarsies left flying. No cameras. From their pings I am capable of calculatin’ their coordinates, though the mini-tanks will have moved well beyond the Maarsie positions.”
“That sucks. Work on that while I clean up here.”
The crashed mini-tank engines were hot, which would hide my heat signature on IR and decrease their likelihood of seeing me in lowlight. Two of the warriors were ambulatory and trying to get their buddy free, covering the night with blasters as they worked. Grabbing Spy with one hand to keep her from being slung around, I darted to the closest tank and fired from behind and beneath the tank at the driver. Point-blank at the air filters. The biggest weak point in the old armor. The driver died. I repositioned and fired. One more, then the other, died.
Spy bit my glove to make me let go.
“Sorry,” I muttered to her. She hissed at me, showing fangs.
“Jolene. Update. Only three enemy combatants and Warhammer remain active,” I said.
Mateo was already ahead of me. I took off after the warbot. For all the discomfort of having initiated the bodily fluids mode on the armor, I was glad I had, because it had been hours since I last peed.
* * *
Half a klick later I came upon three more wrecked mini-tanks. One driver was dead at the wheel. Mateo, fully visible, was holding another man by one arm, peeling his armor off by brute force. It was One-Eyed Jack, Warhammer’s Number One and mate. He was screaming. The sound got worse when Mateo started pulling off the man’s fingers.
Clarisse darted out from her overturned tank and fired a three burst at Mateo. It was like shooting at a five-centimeter-thick steel plate. Mateo ignored her and pulled another finger off One-Eyed Jack. The dangling man squealed. Clarisse fired fully automatic, her fancy new weapon bouncing with the action. In seconds she had emptied the extended mag.
Mateo swatted her with a leg. She flew in a tumble of limbs. Rammed hard against a tank track.
I felt the vibration of her landing as if I’d taken the blow myself.
In that fraction of a second, I realized our nanobots were weirdly attuned.
She pivoted and spotted me. I literally felt her eyes on me—invasive, crawly, heated with fury.
I knew her intent even before she raised a blaster. I lifted an arm to block and swiveled so Spy was protected by my helmet and body. The energies bounced off me. Spy dropped from my shoulder into the shadows of night.
I stood. Met her weird eyes across the distance.
“You’re about to die, Warhammer. And just for kicks I’m going to tell you why. You could have had anything and everything in the world. But you took Harlan. And so I’m ending you.”
Warhammer screamed in mindless rage. She swung the auto-gun around her shoulder on a strap. Caught it. Pointed it at me. But she hadn’t changed out mags.
I brought up my own blaster. Auto aimed for the air filter near her left ear. Fired. Steady stream of power.
Warhammer fired. Nothing happened.
My weapon still tracked. Melting a hole at a helmet air filter.
Warhammer ducked behind one of the tanks.
The blaster lost tracking.
From above me somewhere, One-Eyed Jack stopped screaming, now grunting irregular gurgling breaths.
Mateo fired a three burst. I had no idea what he was shooting.
Warhammer stepped out from the mini-tank.
Auto-tracking again, I shot her. My blaster should have boiled her brains, but she shifted, the tracker slipping away again. It was calibrated for human speed. We were faster.
Bloody damn.
She raised her gun.
Warhammer had reloaded.
She fired.
I leaped to the side as she emptied the weapon, wasting ammo.
Behind me, One-Eyed Jack fell silent.
Hidden behind a pile of refuse and debris, I stretched out low. Steadied my blaster. Aimed at her helmet. Fired again. Missed. Warhammer was as fast as me.
She raced down the deserted street, leaping over debris, skirting behind rubble that had once been buildings. Firing all the way. Then she pulled out a new weapon. I couldn’t see what it was. She stopped, turned, aimed at me where I lay in the bricks and rebar. She fired.
It sounded like a cannon going off.
“From your armor cameras,” Jolene said, her voice unusually crisp, “I can tell that Warhammer is firing a Smith & Wesson Model 500, once the most powerful handgun on the planet. The bullet diameter is 12.7 millimeters. It is also unsuppressed, Shining Sugah, and the military convoy nearby has heard her weapon fire. They are maneuvering to investigate.”
I cursed.
“Sugah,” Jolene continued, “do not let that woman fire at you point-blank. You will sustain damage.”
“Not in my plans.”
“Without Maarsies with cams overflyin’ I cannot tell you how soon the military will send their own reconnaissance flyers or how soon they may arrive on scene. I am attemptin’ to track their communication system, but they seem to be aware of my interference and have put up firewalls of a kind I have not encountered before. You better hurry, Sugah.”
I rolled to my knees and moved silently around a bigger pile of rubble, rebar sticking up and out and bent like pretzels. I reset my armor and crawled through a small hole. To the side, Mateo began to dismember Warhammer’s last fighter, the screams high-pitched and desperate. He didn’t last as long as Jack had, dying in seconds.
My speakers picked up the low scrape of movement just ahead.
It was clear Warhammer’s armor had far fewer bells and whistles than mine did. Her soft-mode was loud where it brushed the wreckage. But her body was augmented. Even without the new speed functions, gyros, and mechanical reinforcement, she was fast.
I peeked out from behind an exposed basement foundation.
Mateo reared up over the wreckage of the buildings. “Your turn,” he said, his metallic voice echoing through the wreckage.
Warhammer tripped over a low wall. Landed. From the ground, she fired at Mateo with everything she had. Mateo moved slowly toward her, his legs like a massive spider, her rounds bouncing off his carapace. Her gun jammed.
“Peel pieces off you like I did Jack, for what you did to Evelyn.”
“She’s mine,” I whispered to him. I set my blaster on auto-aim, auto-fire. Weapon out in front, Harlan’s dead face in my mind like a beacon, I ran for her.
Leaped over the low wall. Engaged auto-targeting.
The barrel end of the biggest handgun I had ever seen was pointing at me.
She had faked me out.
In midair, I tucked, swiveled, pivoted, rolled. The first round caught me ten centimeters to the left of my navel, in the pad of flesh at my waist.
Pain slammed through me like a tidal wave hitting a shore, overriding everything.
I landed wrong. Things broke.
But my hand still worked.
Auto-targeting readjusted.
I fired.
Warhammer’s helmet melted at the contact spot. Her face turned scarlet. Her cheeks and nose boiled and melted. Her eyeballs, that disconcerting orange like mine, bulged and burst. Blood and viscera splatted on her face shield.
It wasn’t enough. I kept firing.
Inside the helmet, her head . . . exploded.
Skull fragments, blood, and gray matter hit her face shield.
The face shield opened. More of her filth pulsed onto my armor and helmet.
My armor cleaned the gore from my faceplate.
Her neck stump pumped a final gush that fell to a trickle.
Clarisse Warhammer was dead.
I had killed her.
“That worked,” Mateo said.
Breathing hard, hurting, I studied the queen. What was left of her.
My suit began sending out alarms. I shut it off. I knew it was bad. I didn’t need the list of injuries.
I punched a button on my suit. It stood me upright, and I walked to Clarisse’s body and picked up her right hand. Lifted it across her body and with her own index finger pressed the disengage button under her left arm. Her armor opened up like a lobster tail, splitting down the legs, then the arms, then the torso.
Clarisse Warhammer really was dead.
“Harlan,” I said aloud. “You are avenged, my friend.”
The pain increased. I was breathing too fast.
My suit overrode my commands and broadcast alarms.
Darkness descended over my vision.
My gyros failed. I fell over.
The ground came at me.
* * *
I woke to see a darkened room and a vision of a human face, but elongated like a hologram with bad software problems.
“Jagger,” I murmured. “You look like shit.”
“I look better than you,” he said, a weird stretched-out smile lighting his far-too-pretty face.
“Am I in a med-bay?”
“Yes. In the bunker medical ward. You got hit. Multiple times,” he said, conversationally. “Your armor managed to deflect or absorb most of the rounds, but a few things got through.”
He was out of his armor, wearing his kutte, a long-sleeved T, and jeans. He looked relaxed and relieved and freshly showered and scrumptious. Sadly, I think I said that to him.
He chuckled and said, “I didn’t think Mateo would get you back in time, but he did. He managed to damage another of his remaining short limbs getting you to safety.”
“That’s going to be a bitch to replace,” I said. “Warbot limbs are in short supply.”
Jagger smiled slightly. “Fortunately, Jolene was able to override the programs of a med-bay that had been triaging a Sabbath and put you in. We got you stabilized.”
“The Sabbath?”
“She lived.”
“Okay. What shape am I in?”
Casually, as if he was at a bloody damn tea party, he said, “Upper descending colon was hit and was resected. The lower lobe of your right lung was hit. Fracture of your dominant arm in three places when you took fire and then immediately landed wrong. You have titanium plates, rods, assorted screws, and various unpronounceable bits of mechanicals inside you now. Mateo described you as having warbot bones. Your nanobots are healing you at an astonishing rate of speed.”
I breathed out a sigh. “Evelyn?”
“Stabilized physically.”
Not healing. Just stabilized. That was bad. Those two words said a lot about Evelyn’s mental state.
Jagger added, “We didn’t think she had been transitioned, but we were wrong. When we tested her with your nano detector, the nanos were at a low level, not high enough to heal her like yours are healing you, but they’re present. Mateo said something about transitioning her to heal her fully.”
My father’s face flashed into my memory. I’d killed Pops when I tried to heal him. “Where is she?”
“Mateo has her in a med-bay in the Simba with him. He’s nursing her.”
Mateo knew as much about healing with med-bay protocols and Berger chips as I did, and a lot more about protocols for injuries. “Okay. What about the military convoy that was nearby?”
“Mateo hauled most everything off before they got to the kill site. Military found signs of a battle. One body. No armor. Blood, bits of intestines, a finger. Some mini-tank parts. They decided it was local gang warfare and withdrew.”
I chuckled, and it freaking hurt. When the spell of pain passed, mostly, I asked, “Bengal, Mina, Jacopo?”
“In that order, being fitted with a replacement limb; in a med-bay with femurs being repaired, and pissed. Warhammer managed to transition Jacopo before she dropped him, so he’ll go through med-bay protocols when one comes open.”
“What about the rats, any of Warhammer’s thralls left alive here, and the WIMP power source?”
“The cats hunted down and found the rat queen. I went in and killed her, and then burned her body. The rats are . . .”
He stopped and scratched his bearded chin. He looked good with a five-day beard, dark and bristly as a porcupine. His pretty eyes met mine. “The rats are sitting in corners, staring off into space. They don’t run, eat, or drink. They’re dying where they were when their queen died.”
I scowled. That wasn’t good. If the rats were dying in place because their queen died . . . “And Warhammer’s thralls? Are they sitting and staring off into space?”
“Yes. At first. There were only twenty-four left. Once our own people were stabilized and the less injured moved out, the thralls were put into med-bays and flushed with fluids, and while they don’t seem anywhere near a hundred percent, they do feed themselves and take showers when told to.”
How was I supposed to care for that many queenless thralls? “What do the medicals think about any further improvement?”
“Maybe. Slowly. They did better when we took them out of the bunker and let them see sunlight. Most hadn’t been outside since they were captured and transitioned.”
“The WIMP power source?”
“Untouched. Unfortunately, everyone knows it’s there, whatever it is—power source, weapon, or both. Eventually someone will come after it. Mateo and Jolene are prepared to bring down the bunker without damaging it.”
“Hmmm.” Mateo’s bunker busters. Some things were great. Some were not so great. Much like life in general.
“What about Warhammer’s nanobots? Is everyone washing appropriately?” Warhammer was dead, but her nanobots would still transition anyone they got on for seventy-two hours.
“The Sabbath rigged up a water line from the bunker’s pump to the outside. I issued orders for showers every hour for anyone inside. Clothes are washed and worn wet. And then showers again in an hour. Nobody’s happy, but everyone’s following orders. They saw the rats.”
“Yeah. That was scary.”
Jagger opened the med-bay. Picked up my hand. He traced the bones beneath the surface of my skin. His fingertips felt rough and scratchy. I liked it. “Mateo also said that alarms went off at the junkyard this morning. Wanda called for assistance and then was cut off. Jolene said the office was shaking, and then went silent for two hours. Shit’s happening there.
“An hour into her com silence, Mateo took off in the Simba with Evelyn still in a med-bay, running in silent, full combat mode. He said to tell you that you have thirty-six hours before bunker busters kick in.”
Mateo must have left them emplaced, aimed, and ready to fire. I had a day and a half to clear the bikers out of the bunker, which I was sure they all wanted to claim and would happily go to war over. Bloody lovely.
“Jolene?” I asked.
“Your Jolene came back online twelve minutes ago, demanding we wake you up. I had no idea Southern ladies could sound so pissed.”
Jagger held up a finger and tapped his comms. “Anyway, you need to hear what she has to say. Jolene, you’re on.”
“Just so you know, Sugah, I just shot up a passel of bikers on matte-black bikes carrying the latest in military gear. They were all wearing black unmarked street clothes with no kuttes, no insignia. I am currently tracking the serial numbers of the ruined bikes, and Wanda is burying the dead. You get your little butt back here. You hear me?”
“I hear you. Thank you, Jolene.”
“You’re welcome, Shining Sugah. Out.”
I scrunched up my face. “How am I supposed to get home?”
“You’ll have a long walk.”
My face must have said that I was not amused.
Jagger chuckled, a sound that traveled along my skin and bones and nerves like fire, to settle low in my belly. “I’ve been offered a bike with a sidecar,” he said. “Amos will ride my bike. Cupcake will be provided one of my private bikes. We’ll have a small escort for protection, insisted upon by Whip and McQuestion, and they’ll be driving your ATVs.”
So they would know exactly where the junkyard was. I could refuse the escort, or dismiss them before we got there, but that wouldn’t last long. I focused on the other crap in his statements. “Sidecar?” I growled. “I hate sidecars.” My mother had died in one, but I didn’t say that. Instead I shot him an I will hurt you when I am well look.
Jagger just grinned. “And when we get home, we’ll revisit that expression.”
“Home?”
“McQuestion has offered to give the junkyard provisional chapter house status.”
My eyes might have bugged out of my head. “You could have led with that, Asshole.” I shoved my good arm under me to sit up.
“Whip says you can ride with his personal house if you’d rather. Same invitation from both Bengal and Mama-Killer. Marconi offered to adopt you as family. I thought the clubs might go to war right then.” Asshole seemed to find imminent war among biker clubs amusing. He adjusted the med-bay mattress so I could relax.
As the mattress moved to better support me, all kinds of thoughts meandered through my head, the kind that I’d have to look at later, after I was no longer druggy. Family beckoned, though I’d probably have to kill Mina if I went with Marconi. And I’d have to turn Whip into a thrall to keep him from getting shot if I went that route.
My own chapter house in the OMW though. That had possibilities.
“Thanks,” I said, as the bed stopped moving and pain from being shifted eased.
Not looking at me, Jagger said oh so nonchalantly, “To keep bloodshed from happening, Cupcake suggested the junkyard become neutral territory.”
