“She’s boring. Jolene is feisty, dontcha think?”
“I don’t really have an opinion.”
I swiveled back to the screens and searched for vid that showed me the junkyard’s entrance. And found it.
One manned Spaatz mini-tank and three Joint Light Tactical Vehicles from various branches of the military—all decommissioned and painted in black chitosan—were stopped out front. “Someone’s been stealing from Uncle Sam,” I muttered. Or the military had stabbed the OMW in the back and allied with the MS Angels. That would suck. For now, the equipment was trapped in the spiked tire and track traps that Mateo had raised.
From what I could tell, the human component of the assault team hadn’t expected resistance. Several had left the protection of their Tac vehicles and had begun trying to free the tires and tracks when Mateo and the office opened fire. Their armor hadn’t survived the combined firepower. I counted four humans on the ground, unmoving. The mini-tank was rocking back and forth on its track system. The tank was heavily armored, was handled by a human, and had a missile system mounted on top. With Mateo down and the office defenses on standby until the batteries recharged, I needed to damage or immobilize the missile system. I also needed to knock out any drones they brought. If the Spaatz tank got free, it had firepower the office couldn’t withstand without the particle shields up, and the mini-tank was small enough to maneuver around the aisles and find stuff it shouldn’t.
I needed more power faster. The office systems’ shields and the USSSSunStar’s power siggie could be seen from space if military satellites were currently actively looking for it, but I didn’t have a choice.
I checked the batteries. Still too low.
I cursed foully. Tuffs looked at me and flicked her ear tabs, amused. Jolene said nothing.
“I really don’t want to do this.”
I didn’t have implants to interact directly with the ship, so this was not gonna be fun at all. Taking a deep breath, I pulled off my armored sleeve and shoved my hand into the engineering command sleeve, screaming, wordless, knowing what was coming. The sleeve contracted around my hand, fast, painfully tight. Needles punctured into me and engaged my nervous system. It hurt. It bloody wellhurt. My scream went up in pitch. My breath shuddered as I forced myself to accept the pain and the input and the sensory overload.
I was damaging my arm. I was bleeding. I would deal with the injury later.
“That wasn’t the brightest thing you ever done, darlin’.”
I grunted. I increased the WIMP production and shunted more power to the office batteries. I could power up the office defense system and the AG Grabber or I could use some of the scant power to launch the office’s other ARVACs now and take longer to get the systems up and running.
I needed intel. I launched the flying drones and set them to auto-scan. The office went into brown-out again. Now I had 102 seconds until I had sufficient power transferred to activate the weapons and the Grabber. I hoped the intel was worth it.
Melded with Jolene, I pressed my eyes against the command faceplate showing me the ship’s external sensors, as the AI searched the skies. I spotted one enemy drone. Locked on. Sliding my bleeding hand to the left, I engaged the weapons array that was least likely to draw satellite attention. I fired.
Silently, the ship’s EntNu-based offensive laser array took it down.
Gomez said, “Alert. Armed incursion from the western boundary. Six, on foot.”
I pulled up the office cameras and spotted the six-man team, armed with automatic rifles, making their way into an older section of the yard. The scrap there backed up to a series of mine cracks, the main one wider than most and a hundred meters deep or more. The rock there was rotten, hundreds of unstable cracks forming when an old underground mine had caved in. I had scanned the area once and found traces of arsenic, benzene, and toxic coal dust. I hadn’t bothered to explore further. I had no idea what the invading team might be after.
“Do not engage,” I told Gomez. “Maintain observation via ARVACs and stationary camera system.”
For now, I let the invaders go, curious what they were looking for. Or maybe that was Jolene’s curiosity. It was already hard to tell as her sensors merged with my senses.
“You need to let me merge fully with the extra-ship defensive system you’re using, darlin’. This three-way we’re having is not working for me.”
Again, the accent threw me, but I let her merge into the office AI.
“Oh. My. Ain’t you jist the cutest li’l thang,” Jolene said to the AI. “Gomez. Nice name. Your English translated coding ain’t the best or the brightest but a lonely gal sometimes has to make do.”
“Flirt later,” I muttered. Far faster than I could have before, my mind slipped into the office vid scanners and checked around. There were more strangers in the junkyard, these close to the office. Two humans were at the rear office airlock. I fired everything I had at them. They went down. I slid through the screens, searching for more movement.
In the aisles, two cats were down and in pieces. I checked Mateo. He was still down. Eight Puffers were down near his suit, but as I watched, a Puffer pried apart an ankle seam in one of the three fully automated warbot legs. A second Puffer fired a small caliber weapon into the under-armor, round after round. “No,” I whispered. I counted eighteen rounds, a full mag for the Puffer. The first Puffer rolled back and tore into the opening. They were working together. That was freaky.
“Now that ain’t normal,” Jolene said. “Puffers talkin’? Dang. Next thang you know they’ll be having tea and crumpets.”
I had no idea what a crumpet was. It sounded like a good name for an insect, one I’d squash beneath my boot. Both Puffers crawled into the hole. The suit’s auto-defense system came on.
Jolene said, “Fully segmentin’ warbot suit. Isolatin’ Puffers.”
There was nothing I could do to help my friend, not from here. Not until the threat was averted and I could get to him. Then I’d dig the Puffers out and bash them open and stick them under the AG Grabber. “Good plan,” I muttered to myself.
But my heart was clenching. I’d found Mateo in a nearby town on the way here, when I was alone and terrified. He had been half-disabled, in the city lockup, behind bars. Somehow, he was able to act as the city manager’s AI and right-hand man, paid in nothing but food, minimal power for his suit, and Devil Milk. He was addicted and ignored and forced to work, deprived of the Devil Milk if he refused even the smallest command. No one had known it, but his suit had also been infected with Puffer nanobots and the critters had been eating him and the suit, cell by cell. Mateo had been fighting a losing battle with them for months.
