Junkyard War, page 5
Cupcake tittered. Amos chuckled, sounding lascivious. Mateo said nothing.
“Okay,” I said, changing the subject. “Cupcake, what about this new toy you mentioned at breakfast?”
“It’s a beauty,” she said. “It’s a nano detector. Jolene made it in her lab.”
“We have activity at the outer perimeter,” Mateo interrupted. “ARVACs are airborne.”
“Jagger?” Cupcake asked. “You know he’s gonna come around sometime.”
“Negative,” Mateo said, a moment later. “ARVACs indicate an old electric truck. Long bed. Traveling at a manageable thirty-two kilos an hour.”
“I got it, Mateo. You take care of that,” I ordered, my hand making a circular motion encompassing the trading stuff on the ground. At a dead run I headed back to the office.
Inside, I pressed the small button that allowed me to see the security screens and spotted the old truck as viewed from an ARVAC cam. It was loaded down with big bags and plastic bins and household stuff—a mattress, a recliner, pillows—all strapped down with old flex. It was also towing a fourteen-foot trailer. A shotgun barrel extended out on the driver’s side, meaning the driver was riding their own shotgun. There was too much glare to see faces, but I knew who this was and what had happened. As Wanda neared, I felt her desperation and her panic. I felt her awareness of another person in the vehicle. Was she under duress?
“Bloody damn,” I whispered. Keeping an eye on the screen, I wanded the sweat off me and dressed in cleaner clothes. Checked on the cats in the med-bay. Four were done. The rest were still being neutered.
Knowing this was going to suck no matter how it went down, I turned off some of the perimeter security measures along the drive so no one got killed by accident and grabbed my comms and my second-gen sunglasses just in case there were enemies along for the ride. I debated carrying weapons, but I knew that there was an appearance of strength to not carrying them, and also that I would be well protected by Mateo, who I could feel moving toward the drive. Weaponless, I walked out of the airlocks and into the hot sun. In the middle of the dirt drive, about twenty meters off the old rutted, pitted road, I stopped.
Cats gathered around my feet, and without looking I knew it was the clowder that had gone with Cupcake and me to Charleston.
The rest of my nest was all around me: Mateo at the juncture of Aisle Tango Three and Aisle Alpha Three now, watching on his suit screens; cats mostly in clowders with a few outliers all heading this way; Cupcake walking toward my flank; Amos taking up a firing position behind the AG grabber.
The old truck turned in, its electric engine silent. Wanda braked about six meters away and turned off the engine. She got out of the vehicle, leaving the door open as she approached. She was wearing a sweat-stained dress and old sneakers without laces. She hadn’t had a bath or a personal wanding in a long while. The stink of her body reached me before she did. Her skin was cracked and her hair dry as straw, signs of dehydration.
Behind her, in the windshield, a face pressed close to the old plaz-glass.
Bloody damn.
Wanda had her kid with her. Worse, I could feel the pull, the attraction, the knowledge that the kid was mine too, part of my nest.
What in all the flames of all the hells was I going to do with a kid? And how did this happen? Instantly, a possible explanation presented itself. When she got home from Morrison’s Foundry, Metals, and Scrap, Wanda had hugged her kid. Some of my nanobots had transferred during that hug. I should have made sure Wanda showered more thoroughly, washed her hair, changed clothes, changed shoes, before she left Morrison’s. I hadn’t pushed her to be scrupulously clean. I hadn’t done enough to protect her child.
My fault. I hadn’t thought.
Wanda stopped in front of me, her hands hidden in the folds of her full skirt. “I tried to stay away. But I lost my house when the new mayor decided to put up a housing unit.” Her hands bunched into the lank cloth and released it. Bunched and released. “I had no place to stay.” Tears gathered in her eyes, but they dried instantly. “I’m falling apart staying away from you. My kid and I were living on the street. So I tracked down Jagger, and he told me how to get here.”
I wasn’t a kind person by nature, but I knew responsibility. I knew honor, the kind I had learned at Pop’s knee and in WWIII fighting with the OMW. And I knew that when I made a mistake—like leaving Wanda alone in Charleston—I had to make it right.
Before I could speak she added, “Jagger said I should bring the most recent intel I uncovered. That it might make you willing to take me in. Take us in. I can work. I’m good at secretarial things. Good with accounting of all kinds. I can clean and—”
I raised a hand to stop her. “You’re welcome here, Wanda. You and the kid.”
Wanda’s shoulders started shaking, and I realized she was crying arid, tearless sobs. She was broken inside. She was a thrall, and her queen had left her behind. I was coming to understand that, even with my own newly mutated nanobots, my thralls still wanted to be with me, and some of them would find it impossible to resist the need for a queen.
Bloody sodding damn.
“Pull your vehicle up to the office. Cupcake will find you a place to stay and some supplies.”
Wanda gagged and dropped to her knees as if my words had slammed her down. Or were lifesaving. Maybe both.
I’d been mostly a kid when I made my slow, dangerous way across the country to Smith’s Junkyard and Scrap. Along the way I had been close to dead more than once. Getting here, to safety, had been a huge relief. “Wanda, it’s okay,” I said gently. “I’m sorry I left you there so long.”
“Sugah,” Jolene said into my earbud, “Wanda gave us good intel while she was in Charleston. We got stuff on Marconi and all his young’uns. And she was searching for who’s on the take in the local law, which is prolly what she’s brought with her.”
“Wanda, you were . . . serving me in Charleston. In a big way,” I said, guided by Jolene’s words. I walked close and touched her shoulder with one fingertip. “All that information you sent was invaluable. And even if it had been crap, I’d still have welcomed you here.”
Wanda leaned into me and hugged my thighs, weeping.
Yet. What if . . . ? I was paranoid. Which might keep us alive.
I tried to figure out where to put my hands on Wanda and finally patted her head. She hugged my legs tighter.
At the truck, two little feet landed on the dirt, visible beneath the open door. Sneakers in a faded blue. Bare legs. A towheaded kid peeked around the door and met my eyes. Bright blue eyes in a very dirty face.
I sighed and held out my hand. The kid raced to me but threw himself—herself?—against their mother’s back. They—the kid—were wearing filthy clothes that might once have been shorts and a T-shirt. Gently he-she-they reached out a small grubby hand and held it two centimeters away from my leg. Sighing, I took the hand. The kid and Wanda both sighed with me, then slumped against my thighs.
I might be paranoid, but I checked for foreign nanobots, just in case Warhammer had found her, enthralled her again, and sent her. But the nanos on and in Wanda and the kid were all my old ones, the ones from before my recent PRC nanobot infection. I had hoped that my new transition had been enough to end my thralls’ dependence on me. I had been wrong. And now, my touching would infect them with my new improved nanos. Bloody damn.
“I gotcha, Wanda,” Cupcake said, sliding a hand under her elbow. “We’ve been saying how much we need another secretary to handle the front desk and the calls.”
“If we’d a known you were in trouble, Honey Cake,” Jolene said, her voice coming from the speaker system near the driveway, “we’d a sent for you ages ago. You done good, gal. Real good.”
That should have been my line and I knew it. “Make sure they have everything they need,” I said. “Supper tonight in the office, Cupcake. Something special?”
Cupcake pulled the two to their feet and away from me, leading them down the dusty drive into the junkyard. Amos drove their truck into an open place near the guest quarters and began unloading it.
Pulling my mic around, I spoke softly into the comms system, so Wanda couldn’t hear me. “Cupcake. We need cams on them.” She didn’t reply, but I knew she had heard.
The housing was something new to the junkyard—three cargo containers on Aisle Alpha Two. There was a fancy one for Amos and Cupcake, and two had more minimal supplies: water, ready-to-eat meals, basic furniture, and a personal toilette compartment. One had hidden cameras inside to watch the guests. It was a guesthouse or prison, whichever we needed, with just a turn of the locking mechanism.
“Jolene,” I said, “look at the intel Wanda says she brought. Add it to ours. When Cupcake is free, get her to look for long-term housing for Wanda in Naoma. The kid will need to go to school, and they don’t have to live on-site twenty-four seven.”
“Gotcha, Shining Sugah.”
Cats around my feet, I decided to go over the inventory in the smallest, dirtiest storage shed in the junkyard, which looked as if it would fall in with a gentle wind. But the ramshackle appearance was false; it was built like a vault. And like a vault, it was packed full of gold and gems in the form of jewelry. My Pops had left me a fortune, and I had never known about it until Cupcake arrived. If she had been paid a salary, I’d owe her a raise.
Spy, watching me from the shade of an overhang, sent me an image of a slab of salmon, presented to Cupcake.
I breathed out a laugh. If Cupcake wanted money, she knew where the stuff was located better than I did. But . . . maybe I owed money and approval and awards or something. The Outlaws gave patches and women and status to made-men. And status and money to female made-men. The military gave money and rank and pretty little medals. I’d have to think about that.
In my earbud, I heard Cupcake chatter as she led Wanda and the kid away. “Amos will bring in your stuff. Hydrate, sleep, clean up, eat, whatever. Supper is at six thirty.”
I hadn’t felt Warhammer’s nanobots on Wanda or her kid. So far as I could tell, neither had been transitioned away from me. The presence of the kid suggested Wanda wasn’t here to infiltrate and observe. But her timing was unsettling.
When Cupcake left Wanda and the kid, I tapped my mic and said, “So I wasn’t being paranoid at the timing of Wanda’s appearance, Cupcake?”
“You weren’t alone, Shining,” she replied into the comms system. “It’s fishy as week-old cod. Jolene, security system on?”
“Video and audio on, Cupcake, darlin’. The kid’s name is Alex. I’m searching through archives to see if I can find a birth record.”
Mateo said into the comms, “Shining is popular this week. Outlying systems indicate we have another visitor. Male. Riding a motorcycle. Good thing you left the outer perimeter weapons system offline.” If his vocal cords could sound sly, they would have.
Jagger? That could make me feel weird.
Mateo said, “We have ARVAC readouts and vid.”
“I’m listening.”
“Sensors suggest he’s on his OMW bike, the one equipped with a miniaturized MPP. Muters on the engine.” Muters changed the sound of a Harley, creating an infiltrator mode, a soft snore rather than the full-throated war-bike roar. “Enviro visual shielding is functional but not active. Our sensors are better. He is alone as far out as the sensors can detect.
“The One Rider bike is mounted with the same weapons as his first visit: one 9-millimeter Heckler & Koch MP8 Universal Machine Pistol, two 9-millimeter Heckler & Koch MP8 machine pistols. As per visuals, he is not armored but wearing kutte. Jeans. Two additional semiautomatic weapons on his person, make unknown. Knife in a hip sheath.”
“I’m unarmed,” I replied. “Are you in position to take him down should he instigate hostile actions or prove to be an unfriendly?”
“Affirmative and with pleasure.”
“Yeah, well, don’t shoot him just for fun.”
Mateo made that grinding snorting sound of laughter. If the warbot warrior decided to shoot Jagger, there was nothing I could do to stop him.
* * *
The bike turned in and puttered up the drive to me. It was Jagger, on his official Harley—the one he rode as enforcer to McQuestion, the war chief and vice president of the Outlaw Militia Warriors—and his bike and clothing told me that this was an official visit. A black leather jacket was strapped on the bike, probably from when he started out on a cold ride at dawn. He was wearing his kutte with all its patches over a sweat-soaked T-shirt, sweat-stained jeans, and riding boots. He wore fingerless riding gloves, a helmet, and a neckerchief against the sun. He was sporting a week-old beard I could see beneath the telescoping modified faceplate, the hemplaz shield splattered with the guts of the desert’s toxic mutated bugs who were still looking for a place to overwinter. He also carried all the weapons Mateo had described.
And he was everything I remembered. Big. Lean. Shoulders like a slab of concrete. Dark haired. Bloody gorgeous.
The bike came to a stop. His feet dropped to the dirt. The bike went silent.
Through the faceplate his eyes met mine. My insides clenched as if we were in bed together and I was ready. So ready. But I relaxed my posture as if I had no cares in the world and said nothing. Jagger was here without an invitation, without an order from me, without notifying me first. It was the surprise assault of an unexpected business meeting, OMW style, and with the negotiations coming up, that might mean anything.
“Asshole,” I greeted him calmly.
Still straddling the bike, he pushed up the gut-smeared faceplate and grinned through his beard. “McQuestion sends his regards to Little Girl, Shining Smith, made-man, daughter of the war chief and then the international president, Bill Smith.”
So. McQuestion knew my name and lineage. It was going to happen eventually, and wasn’t surprising, but it was still sucky.
“Greetin’s and felicitations,” a Southern voice said over the speaker system. Jolene was sticking her nose in.
At my feet, Spy let out a loud “Siss Mrower! Orrrowmerow,” telling me that though she knew this man and had fought mutual enemies with him, right now he was an invader and bad news all around. To Spy, something was off about him—anger in his body language, tension in his face, probably something she could detect in his scent.
Yeah. Not my Jagger. McQuestion’s Jagger.
From my other side came Tuffs’s decidedly lower-pitched “Baaaahr.” This place is ours. Cats were all around me now, weaving or staring or hiding in ambush, eyes on Jagger.
Into my ear, Mateo said, “Passive systems just pinged. He’s wired. He may be under suspicion by his boss.”
That was even more bad and meant I needed to step carefully. I let a tiny smile move my lips. “Asshole. Logan Jagger, national enforcer to McQuestion. Little Girl attends you. But if you move wrong, you will be struck down and killed and your innards given to the cats. We clear?”
“Crystal.”
Tuffs said, “Kkkkk.” Dead humans. Good protein. The rest of the cats echoed her, “Kkkkk” coming from all around me and resounding into the junkyard.
Mateo said into my comms, “One tiny cam on his bike, facing you. Someone’s getting a real good look at you, Shining.”
“Why did you identify yourself as Heather on my last visit?” Jagger growled. “And where is this boss you claim to have?”
As lies went, that was a good one, questions that might keep him alive if the cam and the mic meant he was under threat. I pursed my lips, thinking. Popped a hand on a hip and said, “Intel said MSA was moving in. I’m outta the loop on OMW operational protocols and the current organizational situation. I had no idea if you were compromised. Still don’t. So I lied. It’s not a killing offense.” I grinned briefly. “Not most of the time.”
The tension in Jagger’s face eased. My words told him that I had caught on and he could relax some. He said, “Red’s Old Lady has been contacting leaders of the biker clubs and companies all over the eastern half of the US for a parley.”
“Eastern” meant east of the Mississippi. Most of the land to the west was barren desert, ruins, and PRC bots, with a few outposts of civilization and the military still fighting the good fight against decreased rainfall, floods, and autobots that built more bots out of the remains of cities.
“Red’s Old Lady has a name.”
Jagger ignored that. “Last time there was an attempt at a negotiation, twenty-four ended up dead.”
I made a little finger twirl, gesturing him to keep talking.
“And McQuestion’s IT man says some of the communications can be traced to these coordinates.”
Bloody damn. Jolene and Cupcake had slipped up somewhere. But it was too late to go back. “So you put two and two together and figured out Heather was an alias.”
“And the woman you call Cupcake was Red’s Old Lady in the Hells Angels.”
“Not bad IT work. Hope you don’t mind if we keep our weapons on you.”
Jagger grinned and set his kickstand, but he stayed sitting, his jeans stretching over parts of him that I would not be interested in.
Not.
Never.
Liar.
“A fortified cabin, within a few miles of a major interstate highway, was in the hands of the MSA. Then in the hands of an OMW made-man. That would be you, Little Girl. And you gave that fortress away without McQuestion’s consent. You gave away property to Marconi, a Hells Angels chapter president,” he enunciated carefully, as if to point out my stupidity.
I chuckled and shrugged, a “so what?” expression on my face.
“Marconi then moved up in the Hells Angels. He’s now a regional president, and he’s so powerful he may as well be co-prez now. McQuestion is not happy.”
Cupcake whispered into my earbud, “Damn. That’s new intel. I should have known about it. Sorry, Shining. On the other hand, I did give McQuestion info about the other clubs.”
“Uh-huh,” I said to both of them.
Jagger shifted on his bike. “He wants to open negotiations with Little Girl early and explain to her what her future position will be in the organization.” His tone told me how McQuestion expected this to go. He expected me to comply.
