I had rescued him. Stolen him, actually. Right out from under the city manager’s nose. Had brought him to the scrapyard and stripped what was left of him out of the warbot suit and stuck him into the med-bay. Saved his life. Now, my friend was in danger from Puffers again; his worst nightmare. And I couldn’t protect him.
“How long can you keep the Puffers in that segment of the suit?” I asked Jolene.
“You’ll need to hit him, his entire suit, and especially that limb, with AntiGrav sometime in the next eighteen hours, sweetie-pie.”
It flashed through my mind that Jolene knew how to kill nanobots, which was unexpected. Before I could ask, she went on.
“The Puffer nanobots are already chewing into that leg segment and converting the base components to weapons. Them scary li’l suckers are a new version. They ain’t the Puffers I got in my database.”
I didn’t know where Jolene got the programming for the southern accent, but it was becoming jarring. “Jolene” was one of Pops’ songs. Had CAIT gotten into his music and somehow made the transition to Jolene? I made a mental note to change the voice to a male baritone, with a nice Welsh accent.
“You try it and I’ll zap you,” Jolene said. “I was given permission to choose my own gender-based pronouns, name, voice, and wardrobe, by the CO. And I ain’t giving that up.”
Wardrobe?“Fine,” I said, shaking my head at the vagaries of AIs. And then I realized she had heard my thoughts, which was way above CAIT’s abilities. It was freaky scary.
“Use vocals only,” I said.
Jolene uttered a “Humph.”
I scanned the screens and saw movement near the Grabber. Battery levels were at eighty-nine percent. Using remote access, I powered the Grabber and activated it. The AG sucked two humans into the air, where they hung like magician’s helpers.
“Look ma. No strings,” I said.
“Spiffy,” Jolene said.
Tuffs chuffed. I looked back at Mateo. Still unmoving.Damndamndamn.
In a blare of light, the junkyard office came online. Its offensive weapons fired.
TheSunStar’s floor shook. Things fell out of the ceiling tiles and peppered over me. The office fired again. A human sprinting toward its front from the entrance road danced and died as she was cut in two.
Seemed Jagger had woken up and decided to defend us. I double checked that Gomez had his more private defenses locked down, so only the modified, retrofitted US military systems would be available to my visitor.
I slid through the system and into the office’s internal cameras. Jagger was propped in the space-worthy, over-sized NBP compression seat, my command seat, scanning the yard. With a thought, I removed the ship sensors from his access. If he spotted me, he would think I was using a remote cubby somewhere on the property, not a spaceship command seat display.
“He’s a pretty one,” Jolene said. “You doin’ him?”
I checked to make sure Jagger couldn’t hear her.
“No. Not that that’s any of your business.”
“Shame. That’s a nice piece of eye candy. The invaders launched another drone, darlin’. You want me to take it down?”
“Affirmative.”
The new drone crashed and disintegrated.
Tuffs nudged me and I looked directly into her eyes. She dropped her leaf-green gaze to my lap. My blood had puddled there, was still dripping, where the ship’s engineering command-sleeve had stuck its sensors into my arm. A throbbing pain had taken over my arm, shoulder, across my back, and up into my head where the ache bloomed into a migraine.
“Yeah. I’m bleeding,” I said to her. “It hurts to defend this place.”
“It wouldn’t have if you had all your implants,” Jolene said, her tone stern and reproachful and way more human than an AI of her make, model, and age should be.
“Stop fussing at me.”
“Where the hell are you?” Jagger asked. He had heard me.
The invaders’ mini-tank broke free.
