I opened both airlocks to retrieve the cat bowls. Cats came running from everywhere. I used all the remaining goat milk, added some powdered milk and water to it, poured the last of the fish stew into a tiny bowl for Tuffs and Notch, and poured a lot of crunchy krill-based kibble—placing the extra-special treats outside, near the body of Rikerd Cotter, which was beginning to smell.
I didn’t need to look at his face. Or the faces of the ones out front. I killed them on purpose because they were trying to kill me and mine. And they were all just protein now.
Tuffs made a demanding chuff, looking at the kibble and the lack of two sets of cat bowls. She sniffed in disdain.
“I’ll add serving dishes and sardines to the grocery list. I haven’t forgotten our deal.”
I peeled the purple malleable explosive material off the door seal and rolled it all into a ball. Mateo might be able to use it someday. Back inside, I sniffed. My office smelled of cat and feverish man. Jagger was still deeply asleep, his fingers and feet and twitching, his face twisted in pain.
At the med-bay, I released the hatch. I removed my protective armor sleeve and placed my bare palm on the face of the damaged female. I let my bio-nanos go to work.
After five minutes I said, “Wake up.”
She didn’t. So I put my other hand on her, holding her face between my palms. I could practically feel my nanos entering her pores and her bloodstream. After another five minutes I repeated, “Wake up.”
This time, she did. I smiled. She smiled back.
“I’m Shining. What’s your name?”
“I’m Cupcake. I’m Red’s Old Lady.”
“Tell me about Clarisse Warhammer. And the location of Evelyn Raymond. And the plans of the Angels. Tell me everything.”
She smiled happily. She started talking.
* * *
Seventy hours and some minutes later, the entrance and the road out front were clear of scrap and bodies and anything else that might have made an uncomfortable new memory for Jagger.
Waggling his thumb and little finger at me in a gesture that was more Hawaii surfer than mainland biker, he took off on his One Rider, dust flying into the morning air. The OMW national enforcer had what he’d come for—the sensor from my kutte. He had a plausible story of what happened while he was here, believing that he had been followed by some MS Angels and that he had saved the girl—Heather—who worked in the front office from attack. The story would hold because he was mine. He’d come back when I called him, and when he did, there would be four fresh graves and parts of a tactical vehicle as evidence to support his implanted memories. The story in his mind would hold.
Well, probably. I clutched the pulse weapon he’d left with me, hoping I’d never have to use it, but grateful to have the totally illegal military weapon. A girl can never have too many weapons out here in the middle of nowhere.
His One Rider approached the road out front. He turned and looked back.
I frowned at him. Outlaws didn’t look back.
Before Jagger woke up, Mateo and Jolene had spent an entire day scanning and testing parts of the bike with special emphasis on the AntiGrav and the miniaturized Massive Particle Propulsion engine. The CO, his southern belle AI, and Gomez were happy as any tech-savvy sentient and probably-becoming-sentient beings could be.
Jagger turned to the front and pulled onto the road. As the familiar, muttered, soft snore putter of the One Rider engine faded into the distance, the cats lined up around me, sitting, watching where I watched. They looked abnormally well fed and would for quite a while. At Jolene’s suggestion, Mateo had carried the cooked bodies into the deep freezer in theSunStar. We’d thaw a body every month or so and toss it to the cats. Sadly, Clarisse Warhammer and One-Eyed Jack had never reappeared. I was fairly sure the queen and her main mate had survived and gotten away.
She now knew I had Bug weapons.
I knew this much about Warhammer. She would never share what she knew about me or the junkyard with anyone else because she would want my stuff for herself.
She’d be back. With reinforcements. Eventually. Depending on how long it took her to convert new people and grow a new nest. How long it took to obtain equipment. And generate a plan to take me. I knew what she was. She didn’t know what I was. All she knew was that I had something she wanted, something that would give her power, something that, in the wrong hands—her hands—would upset the balance of power and maybe restart a full-blown World War III, instead of the skirmishes and tech attacks and bot assaults currently taking place.
I wasn’t giving up the junkyard. No way, no how.
The airlock opened, and my thrall stepped out into the sun, one hand over her eyes, searching for me.
“Go back inside,” I waved at her. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Cupcake, who refused to be called by her real name, waved back and followed orders. I didn’t know what I was going to do with her. Outright murder wasn’t something I could or wanted to do. Keeping her around was going to be difficult unless I started raiding theSunStar’s stores regularly. There wasn’t money, water, or food otherwise and the loss of Harlan and the Tesla-23B engine had delivered a beating to my income.
I had worked to implant in Jagger’s memories a desire to take Harlan’s place as my boss’s agent between the OMW and the local black market. Jagger had agreed, which was why Mateo had allowed him to live and leave. But I didn’t know how long Jagger’s compulsion would last.
I looked back at the office, focusing instead on my current short-term worry. Clarisse’s nanos and my nanos in Cupcake’s body might recognize each other and go to war, taking her out of the picture entirely. Not that I was hoping for that. Except for talking incessantly, Cupcake was good company.
