Junkyard War, page 3
“If Evelyn is not enthralled and is a prisoner,” I said, “this is where she’ll be. Can you see into the cells?”
The cats touched heads again, communicating.
“In case you’re wondering,” Jolene said, “I’m thinking they got someone watching the cameras now, and they noticed my lil’ tricks. I’m altering the glitches.” The security cams rotated, stuttered, and stopped. “Security in the stockade is offline, but Spy, you make it quick.”
At the far end of the stockade’s narrow passage, two human guards were playing cards, arguing about the rules. Neither was watching the dim corridor. Spy appeared in Maul’s camera as she slinked along one prison wall. There were six doors, constructed of heavy-duty clear hempglass, not quite the quality used for war and space, but good enough to hold prisoners. Spy turned her chest cam toward each door as she passed.
In the middle cell on the left was the former second-in-command of the USSS SunStar, Captain Evelyn Raymond. “That’s her,” I said. I wouldn’t have recognized her except by her tattered, blood-stained uniform.
Mateo growled, a sound worthy of one of the cats.
Evelyn was vastly different from her military photographs—emaciated, thinning gray hair, her skin a sickly pallor, showing bruises and poorly healed scars. None of that should have happened had she been transitioned. Nanobots would have made her younger and healthy and forced her to be on Warhammer’s side, not gaunt and in prison.
I remembered the smell of the severed finger Warhammer had sent to me. It had led me to believe Evelyn had been transitioned into a thrall.
Spy studied Evelyn, and so did I. Her fingers had been broken and not set, allowed to heal out of place—the nine she had left, that is. The stump of the tenth was swollen, freshly healed skin at the amputation site.
If Warhammer had transitioned Evelyn, why was the captain in pain? Could nanobots be directed by the queen to harm a thrall?
I remembered Cupcake changing personality because I had needed a secretary, a warrior, and a badass right-hand woman. She had become that within hours. Warhammer needed a hostage.
Thrall or not, Evelyn was a trap.
Well that bloody sucks.
Maul let out a “Sisssss,” which meant he was unhappy, and Spy looked around, her cam catching his face. His lips were curled back to flash his canines, meaning he was feeling more than simple annoyance. Spy seemed to gather something from him, and she ran past the arguing guards, who never saw her.
Maul went the other direction. Spy darted into a passage with a door on the end and two others bracketing it. She angled her camera to reveal each door’s purpose: Kitchen, Bakery, Prep.
Spy pushed her way inside the bakery; it opened with little more than a touch. Lights started to brighten inside. A dozen rats turned to stare at her. “Mehshh!” Heart pounding, she turned tail and shoved back into the hall, speeding into the dark.
Maul came around an intersecting hallway and together they raced along the corridor, looking for more stairs up, looking for high ground the way cats looked for tall trees, a way out. Spy was in hair-raised cat-terror mode. I tried to offer advice, but I couldn’t get through the fright in her brain to tell her to go down any stairs she found to get away.
The overlapping panic, mental impressions, and the shaky video footage were making me nauseous and dizzy. Spy’s brain was a wash of color, scent, and nightmare-like fear. I pulled back mentally and studied the 3D floor plan coming together on my helmet screen.
Eventually the cats’ terror was washed away by exhaustion, and they stopped together, huddled in a dark corner. They had outraced the rats. For now.
Maul pressed a pocket on Spy’s tac vest and used his teeth to pull out a container of water. Together they turned it top side up, and Maul pressed the small lever that opened it. They both drank until the liquid was gone.
Through the grasses came a whispering sound. Shushing, like wind across the face of the bunker, except the air was still. Assuming it was someone coming to check on the guard I had killed, I stepped behind the rock and the ATV. To one side I saw grass bending and waving, whispering soft threats, but I could see nothing.
The grasses pressed forward, falling flat, then another wave. A group of six rats, walking abreast, appeared. Behind them six more. And six more. They passed by me as if I wasn’t standing there. And disappeared. But I could hear them squealing and grunting only a few meters ahead. They were eating the brown-eyed guard.
I clenched my jaw and turned my attention to the cats.
Maul pawed the small water container down the hall and watched it bounce. Then he sprayed the wall beside them with his scent. Spy added hers. Maul chuffed-growled out a sound that I was sure meant, This place is ours.
Forcing my mind away from the rats, I watched the cats. “You’ve got this,” I murmured to Spy. “Slow down. See what’s on this level. And when you find stairs, go down, not up.”
Spy ignored me, licked her front paw to show me how calm and collected she was, and sauntered along the hallway. Crazy cat.
A few paces down was a blast door, similar in shape to the airlocks on space-worthy vessels. It was marked with the word WIMP / TS Clearance.
WIMP. Weakly Interactive Massive dark energy Particles. TS. Top secret?
My insides clenched before I could control the reaction.
Below the label were the words Tier 5 Security Measures required to enter. Palm print and retina scans are compulsory.
According to the emerging map, this doorway led into a central three-story space that had no other doors. Someone had been trying to get into the room, demoing the security plate and the wall. The palm-and-retina scanner was in pieces on the floor, with a lot of other debris, including heavy-duty, honeycombed hemplaz carbon-fiber composite sheeting that hadn’t been dense enough to withstand what looked like an attack by a small rocket. Exposed behind the damage were walls built from ballistic armor, the kind on starship hulls. The blast door was undamaged.
This was the entrance to their power source. Or, if the rumors were true, a massive weapon. A planet killer.
“Bloody damn,” I whispered. “Mateo, you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“Affirmative. If Warhammer figures out how to get inside, she might get her hands on an Earth killer. And the presence of WIMP power means we can’t use the Simba’s city-killer to take the bunker down. It could detonate.”
Which would not only do irreparable harm to the planet, it would also attract the Bugs.
I said to Spy, “We have what we need. Retreat.”
“Hhhhah mmm,” Spy replied, and the two cats headed back down a set of stairs toward their air shaft, a stealthy trek by a different route across the underground compound. They passed offices, more barracks, and food stores that the rats hadn’t found yet.
They passed the bunker’s main entrance through a series of blast doors, and a loading bay and garage with dozens of ATV-like mini-tanks, a couple dozen civilian vehicles, and the stench of leaking batteries and diesel fuel.
It was getting close to morning, and the cats had a close call with two humans. They sped up their exfil to the escape air shaft.
Using the ropes, they made their way back up the shaft, pulling the ropes behind them. When they were both back at the surface, they dropped the ropes behind the tree, but left them tied, and followed their own scent trail through the grass. Spy stopped when she smelled the remains of the sentry and caught sight of the rats feasting. She hissed and marked the spot with her scent, claiming it.
I opened a hemplaz bucket of water, and though they gave me fierce stares, both cats jumped in, dunking themselves thoroughly to kill any of Clarisse’s nanobots they had picked up. Wet and stinking of cat, they then jumped into the small four-wheeler I was driving, and I could finally relax. To show my appreciation I helped them out of their soaked tac vests and rubbed them down with towels. As I worked I said, “You are amazing cats. The best hunter, fighter, infiltrator cats in the history of all cats.”
Spy purred, emitting a sense of satisfaction and pride. Maul lifted a leg to groom his privates, showing his mate that he had even more attributes than just being a successful hunter-fighter cat. Spy seemed overly interested in his display.
“Stop that,” I said. “Gross.”
Maul hacked with amusement.
I poured fresh water into plastic bowls, and opened two cans of super-expensive salmon. They chowed down, and I resisted petting them. When they wanted my attention, they would tell me. Otherwise, I was asking for claw and fang scars. They were not pets. They were equals. Or maybe they were in charge. Once I realized they were sentient and capable of group mental communication, I had never been completely certain of our hierarchy, and maybe it was best that I not find out. Ever.
The cats stopped eating and pricked their ears, staring out into the night. Moments later, I heard an electric engine in the distance, a soft hum of tires on gravel and grass.
I adjusted my helmet’s face shield and saw an ATV with two cats on the dash. Cupcake was driving, she and Amos both wearing Dragon Scale exoskeleton anti-recoil armor like mine, and they were laden with weapons. Cupcake gave me a military-style head jut and a halfhearted salute and turned her vehicle around, a clear indication I was supposed to follow them. In the distance I heard the faint hum of the Simba running on silent mode, which meant Mateo was back in his battle tank.
Cats on the narrow dashes of both vehicles, we made our way down the overgrown road, then to a wider road, where we rendezvoused with Mateo, piloting the Simba. The battle tank moved quickly, silently, and efficiently, and our glorified golf carts couldn’t keep up. At the next intersection, Mateo opened the Simba’s front hatch, extended his warbot’s telescoping legs, and picked up our four-by-four vehicles, placing them side by side on the flat top near one of the Simba’s rear hatches.
Far down the road, visible through the dead trees, we saw the flashing lights of the Hand of the Law. Before I could react, Mateo shoved the Simba’s discrete legs down and lifted the tank treads off the ground. He turned the battle tank off into the trees and down into a deep gulley where he went silent and still. On the street, the cops’ patrol cars roared by—old models, running on diesel, engines loud enough to muffle a marching band. The flashing lights slowed, stopped, and turned around. They traveled up and down the road, back and forth, searchlights sweeping the bare trees.
Jolene said into our comms, “I got into the local law’s communication system. They had a notification from the military that something big and unregistered was moving up the road. Y’all sit tight. As per CO Mateo’s previous order. I got to get into the corporate sat systems and make you look like a glitch, so the military will call them off.”
Bloody hell. The military, the Gov., and corporate military complexes had been in each other’s pockets since before the war, and with no oversight it had only gotten worse since the war ended.
My heart was racing, and I felt a little nauseous. If the military caught us with the Simba, we’d end up in an underground jail and never see the light of day again. If we lived through the confrontation. Which wasn’t likely.
Minutes passed.
Jolene said, “They sent up some aerials with cameras. Keep it dark.”
“Roger that,” Mateo said.
I tapped a private channel to Mateo. “Why here? Why now?”
“We must have triggered a sensor before we turned off the highway and took this tertiary road. Which we did to bypass the border checkpoints.”
Half an hour later, the cops pulled off and turned down the side road, spotlights shining into the trees as the rising sun made the shadows long and blacker than the night had been. Then they pulled away, emergency lights going dark.
“Okay, CO Sugah. The military’s sensors are now showing a glitch, but y’all can’t stay on the roads. You’re gonna have to travel overland some. I’ve got topo maps, and I can keep you from falling off a cliff, but it ain’t gonna be a fun trip home.”
I punched the button to remove my armor, stored it in the ATV, and dressed in black layers from the stuff Cupcake had packed into my gear bag. Prewar, the trip would have taken maybe two hours. Three with traffic. This is gonna suck, I thought.
I was right.
Thanks to the change in route, the piss-poor back roads, and having to ford mucky river beds whose bridges had been washed away in floods over the years, it took us two-and-a-half nights to get back to the junkyard. For the most part, we had to hunker down and hide in the ATVs by day, trying to sleep. We were sunburned, dehydrated, and miserable when we pulled in, arriving after midnight, having been gone for five nights and four days. We were tired, sleepless, gripey, and stank to high heaven.
In the office, I tossed my armor into the donning station where the receptacles for body fluids would be sanitized and the entire suit treated to a decontam for my own nanobots. Exhausted, I wanded myself halfway clean, gave all the cats kibble and water, and fell into bed. Maul curled against my spine and Spy draped around my head like a crown. I had a feeling that was less happenstance and more symbolic, but I was too tired to care.
* * *
At four a.m., a rooster crowed and woke me. It wasn’t the first time. The rooster had gotten out of the henhouse and taken off into the junkyard where, I assume, he ate toxic bugs and chased the hens when they got out. And he crowed. I said, “Gomez, mute all outside noise.”
“Muted,” the AI said in his calm voice. I shoved Spy off my pillow, rolled over, and went back to sleep.
At ten a.m., I woke to comfortable temps, the AC not yet running in the background. I completed my ritual mourning for Harlan and remembered, one by one, all the people I had killed, ending with the brown-eyed sentry. She hadn’t deserved to die. Several hadn’t deserved to die. But they were gone, nonetheless.
I rolled out of bed, let out the cats, hit start on the coffeemaker, and spent enough time in the personal toilette compartment to actually feel cleanish without the use of water. A full body wanding took time, and when I was done, I still had to vacuum up the dead skin cells and hair. Hygiene in the barren stone desert of West Virginia was difficult and time consuming.
I sniffed the clothes I had left hanging over the stall door days ago, decided they didn’t stink too bad, and dressed, then finger-combed hair goop through my short, sun-bronzed hair, slathered sunscreen over my brown skin, and opened the door to the office. The smell of coffee, faux bacon, and eggy goo with peppers and garlic was a sour spicy scent that wasn’t entirely pleasant. And there were people. Even after all these weeks, it was still a shock to my system to see humans in my office-home. Thralls had no sense of personal space, so they seldom knocked, had figured out how to get inside no matter how well I secured the doors, and were here every single morning with my breakfast and their itinerary.
Every. Single. Bloody. Day.
Cupcake dished up our plates; Amos poured our coffee. Tuffs, the pride’s Guardian Cat queen, was sitting on the back of the Comms chair, and her mate, Notch, sat on the foot of the bed, watching. The tip of Tuffs’s tail was twitching, a sign that she was less calm than she appeared. Taking my place at the dinette I had repurposed out of a high-end RV meant turning my back to the cats, which was still difficult to do and required more trust than I normally possessed.
Tuffs had a tortoiseshell coat, eyes the color of spring leaves and forest moss—green things I remembered from before the war. She had strange, bobcat-like tufts on her ears and one gimpy paw that been partially amputated in a junkyard accident. I called her Tuffs because of the ear feathers and because she was so tough. Notch was a solid steel gray with a notched ear from a fight long ago, and was one of the few intact fighter cats who Tuffs allowed to breed.
“Good morning, Sunshine,” Cupcake sang as she slid my plate in front of me.
I grunted. Amos grunted too and handed me a cup of hot, strong black coffee. The real thing. Having all this new money meant no more drinking fake coffee, no old stale coffee, no weak coffee that was more water than caffeine, and no fear of running out of coffee, kibble, or water. And that ability to buy stuff was a direct result of Cupcake being in my life. If only she didn’t talk so much.
All. The. Time.
Cupcake chattered brightly through the meal and continued the prattle afterward, as she cleaned the office. I started on one set of the quarterly books—for the taxes and the official merch—and Amos restocked the medical supplies in the med-bay. Cleaning included giving the Bug alien command chair a thorough vacuuming and damp wiping to remove accumulated cat hair. Lately, the cats—who were led inside in small groups by Tuffs, for reasons I still didn’t understand—had often abandoned my bed in favor of the Bug ship’s extra-large Comm chair, which suited me just fine, though it was possible their lounging location meant they were assuming command. With cats, who knew?
“Did you hear a single word I said?” Cupcake demanded.
I looked up from the books, dredging through my unconscious memory for her last words. “Veggies in the greenhouse, some fruit, lots of greens. The old rainwater storage container on the roof has been patched. The new water-collection system is ready for cooler, damper weather. And you have a new toy for me.” Thirty minutes of babble condensed into four lines.
“And the part about Mateo?”
“His business,” I said, my tone going steely.
“Not so. He’s got the hots for Evelyn, and we all know it. That’s why we’re going after her. He was in love with her onboard, during the war. You know it,” she said, her tone as unyielding as my own.
I had always wanted Cupcake to stand up to me, to be her own woman. That desire was coming back to haunt me.
“I’m outta here,” Amos said. “It’s gonna get all girly.” He levered his big body toward the airlock. “But if you decide to go all girl-on-girl wrestling, call me back in.”
