I flipped to that screen and saw four cats, all female, stalking a Puffer. The Puffer was a little larger than most, with a square device on top instead of a weapon. That made it a recon-Puffer. It was hiding under a shipping container full of folded flight wings—part of a batch I had lucked into last month and hadn’t gotten around to unpacking. The shipping container made a nice shady resting place for the Puffer. It also allowed the cats to slink up on it unobserved by any sensors on the Puffer’s carapace.
Jagger leaned in closer beside the defensive control seat. The scent of sweat and sunscreen and engine oil and road dust and cigar andmanwafted from him—a remembered scent, distant but . . .interesting. I breathed him in. My own, no-longer-strictly-human body reacted.
“What are they doing?” he asked.
“Hunting.”
“But they’re cats. They have to know there’s no protein benefit to the Puffers. No caloric benefit either.”
Because that was why cats hunted. Food. Normal cats, that is. I spared him a slant-eyed grin before returning to the screen. “Yeah, on the surface it’s a waste of time. But a Crawler—an interloper—entered their territory, divided in two, had babies, and went after the source of their food and water. Me. In cat hierarchy, I successfully killed the Perker parents, proving I’m the alpha cat. Based on that evidence, they have to kill its babies or the babies may grow up and kill me. And they’ll go hungry.”
“You’re implying the cats have intellect, the ability to reason, and sentience.”
“Shining,” Mateo warned in my ear.
My smile faded. Jagger already knew too much. He’d seen the office. Worse, he’dtouchedthings in the office. No matter what happened, it was already too late for him. If he somehow lived, Mateo would want to take him out rather than let him tell the Outlaws what he’d learned. At best, if Jagger left the junkyard at all, it would have to be a vastly altered Jagger. I held in my sigh.
“Yeah,” I said to Mateo and to Jagger, each for their separate comments. “Watch.”
The female cats were a mixed bag in terms of coloration—one with wide black and gray stripes; one with narrow, tone-on-tone gray stripes; one with orange stripes and a white spot under her chin; and one with splotches of brown and white and black. The tortoiseshell was the original matriarch of the pride; she had strange, long, bobcat-like tufts on her ears and one gimpy paw that had been partially amputated after a junkyard accident. I called her Tuffs because of the ear feathers and because she was . . . well . . . tough.
Most of the other cats were just called Cat. I wasn’t imaginative with names and there were alotof cats.
On the screen, Tuffs crouched on the edge of a stack of rear hatch doors. She looked at Wide Stripe, who belly-crawled a meter to her left. She looked at Narrow Stripe, who scooted back into deeper cover. The striped female cats were Tuffs’ lieutenants, each one the primary breeder in one of the two prides. Tuffs looked at Spot, the female with the best vantage for ambush and a proven warrior; the orange-striped cat flicked her ear tabs, then leaped at the Puffer. A silent killing machine.
Spot landed on top of the Puffer, claws digging in as it bucked on its collapsible wheels. She rode it, flipping it over and leaping out of the way. The gray-striped cats launched from either side and latched onto the upside-down wheels, holding them. The Puffer was now immobilized, unable to right itself. Spot released her hold and slid to her feet, to begin a scent-reconnoiter. In less than a minute, she found the tiny seam where the Puffer had been sealed for active duty. She began to scratch around the seam, sensing with her claws. She went still and looked up at Tuffs. The matriarch tensed, her eyes fiercely intent. Spot repositioned her body and dug in, releasing the seal. The Puffer bounced and twisted, pulsing its wheels. The striped cats pulled the Puffer apart. It stopped moving. When the cats were sure it was dead, they pulled it into the middle of Aisle Tango Three and sauntered off.
Tuffs looked directly at the camera and licked her lips, making a demandingmrowerbefore she turned her back on me and jumped high, to a skid full of ship anchors. Tracking her hunters from above, she followed as they searched for more prey.
“That’s . . .” Jagger went silent.
“Shining,” Mateo said, with his metallic sigh.
“Yeah. I know,” I said to them both.
“You have sentient killer cats.Andyou have a warbot,” Jagger said, in awe, going back to the most important part.
“Yeah.” I’d have to change Mateo’s name if I introduced them. Something similar, maybe, like Matt.
On the next screen, a Puffer appeared. It was a grenade launcher mini-bot. Jagger reacted quickly and shot it to pieces. I notified Mateo, who went to pick it up. Another Puffer appeared and was shot down by Jagger. Another. And another. My new pal seemed to be having fun.
Jagger moved closer to me, again watching the screens over my shoulder. It felt odd to have him there. Comforting and frightening and something else I had pushed away from my life and decided I’d never experience again. His scent was sweat-ripe and cigar-strong, tainted by the tang of engines and gasoline, that rare OMW scent that made mewant. . . .
I stopped myself right there. Unless Jagger survived the transition and I managed to alter his memories, he was a dead man walking.
“Warbot,” I said to Mateo. “Can you gather up the parts and add them to the frying Crawlers? Without getting your suit infected?”
“Roger that. Can do.”
But he didn’t sound happy about it. Or rather, he didn’t sound happy about our visitor, who could have slit my throat at any moment for the last—I checked my chrono—half hour while I defended the junkyard. And he hadn’t. Jagger was—for certain—one of the good guys. And that broke my heart.
“What’s his name?” Jagger asked.
I swiveled my chair to him, thinking Jagger was asking about Mateo, but found my visitor peering into the med-bay. I removed the war-sleeve—which hurt like amotheras it disconnected—and joined him. I pulled on gloves as I moved. It was likely too late, but . . . maybe?
“He’s Notch. Because of the notched ear.”
“The cats have sentience. And some sort of group communication. Like ESP,” he said. “Like those birds that move in concert in flight and look like living clouds. Or fish in the ocean.”
