He tensed all over at the transformation in my body language and position. And my speed. And the fact that I was now wearing a functioning section of military Dragon Scale exoskeleton anti-recoil armor, a war-sleeve with a Smith & Wesson XVR 460 Magnum now poking out the end. His expression said he recognized that the S&W’s auto targeting system had acquired the target. And the target was him. Which was way more impressive to warriors than the big, in-your-face Para Gen.
My visitor was a dead man smoking. Double dead. The two weapons trained on him would churn him to hamburger. The Asshole puffed, squinted, and grinned.
“Defenses,” I said to Mateo, now not caring that Jagger heard. “Anything?”
“Nothing followed him. Scanning vids and stills from perimeter cams. Searching everything from the past week.”
“We got problems,” I said to the OMW enforcer as the female hunter cats leaped or belly-crawled to join the fighter cats. They were in two groups, staring in two directions. We hadtwoPerkers? “You know how to fight, Jagger?”
“Happy to make your acquaintance,” he said, relaxed, still amused. “But you have me at a disadvantage.”
He puffed. A perfect smoke ring left his mouth.
A disadvantage? Oh. I knew his name. I hadn’t given mine.
“I asked you a question,” I half-growled.
“I do okay. I survived the Battle of Mobile.”
Mateo laughed harder than I’d ever heard him. It would have been a belly laugh, if he had a belly. Anyone who survived the Battle of Mobile with all his limbs and his mind intact was a miracle man with the luck of the Irish.
“I like this guy,” Mateo said. “Ask if he’s ready to rumble.”
His breathing had sped up. Mateo was getting ready to go to war.
“Update,” I demanded of him.
Jagger’s eyes narrowed. He flicked them everywhere, seeking out the location of my confidant. Or his war-time instincts had finally gone on alert.
Mateo said, “I got nothing. Nothing on scans, but the cats’ body language says we have more than one Perker. Behind the Outlaw and behind you. Attempting to pinpoint positions.”
Behind my glasses, my eyes darted, searching, seeing nothing. My body tensed to make the rush to the airlock door and the armored-and-weaponized office. But between my position and the office there was a wide-open space, no cover, and Jagger.
Mateo needed to detect the Perker Crawler, or Crawlers,before I moved. To Mateo I said, “Do a stills comparison. Look for something that didn’t get caught by the perimeter motion sensors, moving too slow for the monitors, a Crawler, something that’s in a different place every time an auto shot is taken.” The sensors were set to go off if anything moved more than two centimeters an hour. The security system took pics every fifteen minutes no matter what.
Jagger’s body didn’t change, but his eyes narrowed as he took in my demand about a Crawler warbot.
“Anybody cansurvive,” I said to Jagger, pushing him, needing to push something, fight someone, my body flooding with chemicals and adrenaline. “You know how tofight, Asshole?”
“I was born fightin’.”
“Yeah? You fight many Crawlers when you were wearing diapers?”
“No sign of Crawlers,” Mateo said, “no sign of entry point.”
Asshole puffed once more, but he didn’t look so amused or relaxed now. “I’ve taken on a Perker Crawler. It’s been a good five years since I saw a slow-bot.”
The Mama-Bot Perkers had made thousands of Crawlers. No way had they all been destroyed.
“Same for me,” I said. “Crawlers don’t have good hiding space here.”
“No soil,” he agreed. “You got mine cracks. Makes it hard for them to travel.” Mine cracks were deep narrow drops into the earth, formed by the caving-in of old underground mines or by mountaintop removal. “Arsenic, toxic coal dust, benzene, and carbon monoxide never stopped a Perker Crawler, though,” he said.
Mateo cursed.
The fact that Jagger knew the terminology and the chemicals in the local earth made my insides clench. Asshole knew too much that was info only a local would know. Or he had a better Berger-chip silicone implant than I’d ever heard of and had accessed local info.
“Update,” I demanded of Mateo, panic setting in. The cats’ body language said this was taking too long.
