“Drop shields. Gomez. Target invaders and fire B/B array.”
“Roger that. Firing.”
The weapons fired. A dozen blasts of dark matter particle beams swept the vehicles out front and held there, that peculiar orange glow brightening the entire junkyard. The attackers’ weapons stopped. The engines stopped running. Everything stopped.
The temperature in the office went up twenty degrees in four seconds and the warning monitors began to blare. Cold night air blew in from outside through the retrofitted vents, hard blasts, the fan engines whining.
The cats went silent, all eyes on Tuffs and me.
The B/B array used dark energy—physics and tech no earth scientist understood yet, mostly because they didn’t have a functional array to work with and no Bug would tell them. The only thing anyone on Earth or in the solar system knew about the particles was that they sounded like “BeeBee” in Buglish. I, however, had a Bug ship, a small one that had downed theSunStar. Access to the Bug ship gave me knowledge about how to operate the array, if not how it actually worked. It also made the perfect office and safe house, as long as I could keep its presence here a secret. Snug as a bug in a rug. Something Pops used to say to me when he tucked me in at night, before the war.
It took a good five minutes to fry the people in the vehicles. I had less than that between satellites. I watched as someone jumped from the Mammoth and died, his body leaping and bouncing as he boiled. It was kinda gross.
Tuffs jumped into my lap. She put her nose to mine and stared.
“I don’t know how it works,” I told her. “But it makes things hot, especially organic things.”
It boiled them in their own juices. It didn’t do much to Hemp-plaz. It didn’t do much to metal except make it hot, though not hot enough to melt it, damage the temper, or warp it, or not in the short term. Just hot enough to boil and sear flesh. It was a bio-specific weapon. It damaged nothing except living creatures.
“Stay away from it until I tell you it’s cooled.”
Tuffs showed me images of bodies. Deadhumans. I got the concept ofGood protein.
“You can have the bodies once Mateo pulls them out of sight.”
Tuffs made a gruff sound of pleasure and leaped to the floor to stare around at the members of her pride.
Time passed. Jagger snored. I got up from my chair and stood over him. He was huge, big enough to fit perfectly in the space I had originally called the Bug bed, though I’d no idea what the Bugs used the space for; I had dragged in an old RV bed and set it up for sleeping and under-bed storage. Every few months, I placed the quilts, pillows, sheets, and all my stinky clothes under the AG Grabber and then took them into town to a laundry while I shopped for supplies. I’d probably be charged for the cat-hair cleaning now.
It was past time for cleaning. But maybe I’d take a few nights to sleep in the bed and smell Jagger on my pillow before I took the laundry load to town. Just a few nights where I could feel less alone. I put a hand on Jagger’s. His was calloused and rough and so hot it almost hurt. A cat butted my hand away and hunched her shoulders at me as if in warning. I stepped back.
Jolene said, “Next satellite will rise above the horizon in ten seconds. Nine. Eight . . .”
I retook my command seat and placed my hand over the control that worked as an off button for the shield.
“. . . Three. Two. One.”
I slammed my hand down. The B/B shut off.
Instantly, half-cooked people raced from the Mammoth. Mateo targeted them and took them down. It took maybe thirty seconds. Everything went silent.
Mateo spoke through my earbud.
“Initiating silent tracking in case someone got away. I’ll keep watch on the wreckage. It’ll take hours before the vehicles are cool enough to inspect, even by me. It’ll be dawn by then and I’ll drag them to the back of the property, under some ghillie-tech cloth and out of sight.”
He fired another shot at something I didn’t see.
“Roger that,” I said. “Don’t forget to eat something.”
“Yes, Mom,” he said, making fun of little ol’ me trying to take care of warbot him.
I ended comms and spun in my seat. The cats were all looking at me.
“Okay, that’s unnerving.”
Tuffs lifted her tail and walked to the storage compartment where the preserved goat milk was stored. Pointedly, she looked back over her shoulder.
“Ah,” I said. “I guess you do all deserve something special. Stay away from the vehicles out front and stay off the office roof where the B/B array is. Both are probably hot.”
