“Will the Law object to us going after them?”
“Not a lick. They might even cheer us on.”
“Okay. Let’s get out of here.” I looked around. “Poor Marty died in a terrible fire.”
“Got it,” Jagger said.
I frowned. “Did Marty have family?”
“A grown daughter somewhere. Wife died in the war. A girlfriend who dances in the Pink Bunny Gentleman’s Club,” Cupcake said.
I glanced at her. “Make sure they each get something in the mail. Anonymously.”
“Will do,” she said.
I left the building, turning my back on Marty on the floor. If local officials did a proper postmortem, they would know he had been dead for hours before he burned, but I was betting on the city not having a proper forensics med-bay. And not wanting to spend the money on a dodgy character.
With Marty gone, I’d have to rebuild all my contacts in this city, not something Jagger could do. But once Clarisse was dead, maybe it was something Wanda could do. If she had a job to serve me, that might keep her away from me. I wrapped a fist around the grab handle and swung into the diesel cab’s passenger seat, almost landing on Spy in my chair. She gave it up with ill grace. “Don’t you give me that look,” I said to her. “Now I’ll have your cat hair all over my butt.” She sniffed at me and jumped onto the dash.
Amos climbed into the back of the bed, which was loaded with I-had-no-idea-what, beyond the Antigravity Grabber, except he had claimed a recliner from somewhere and strapped it in. He stretched out the footrest as he got comfy, guns in his lap.
Cupcake placed Marty’s food and water supplies in with our growing stash of confiscated items, climbed into the cab, and started the diesel, the thrum a cat call, literally. They came from everywhere. Leaping and running and stinking of rat. Spy slithered into my lap, curled up, and closed her eyes. It took maybe two seconds and she was purring.
Barely avoiding jackknifing, Cupcake wheeled us around and out of Marty’s. As we pulled away, I watched the view in the overlarge side mirror, and saw the burst of flame as it shot out the open door of the storefront. The entire building was in flames in moments. Against the glare of fire, I saw Jagger silhouetted in black as he and his bike pulled out behind us.
As we drove, I went through Marty’s shipping manifests and discovered that one of my new containers, 374, was dedicated to brand-new armored suits. I wasn’t acquisitive by nature, believing that all things were to be bartered away if the price was right, but . . .armor. Brand-newmilitaryarmor.Oh, yeah.My covetous heart wanted armor. My armor at home had been top-of-the-line space armor before the end of the war. It was excellent, but it was a decade from new and not designed with explosive weapons, atmosphere, and full gravity in mind. If the manifest was right, these would be better.
We dropped off the unnecessary gear at the hotel and showered again. My mutated nanos lived only a few minutes in water, and seventy-two hours on dry surfaces, so being clean was vital. Plus, any excuse for a water shower. Out back, in the overflow-parking security area, I found container number 374 at the back of the lot, hidden from prying eyes by the other containers, and used Marty’s special key to open the lock. The high-tech lock made a tiny whirring sound as it released. “Oh, yeah. Come to mama,” I whispered.
I pulled on the door, and it rammed outward against me, loud noises banging inside. Only Jagger’s quick reflexes saved me; he was instantly there, his bigger body mass holding the door open only a crack as things slammed against the inside. His arms were over me, bracing the door, making a cage of protection around my body. He smelled like sweat and woodsy cologne, sandalwood maybe.
“Thanks,” I said, suddenly breathless, trying not to respond to his straining body, his chest an inch from me, his arms quivering with stress, and that amazing scent. I pulled a flashlight and shined it into the crack. Boxes stamped with Uncle Sam’s seal andMAII 2050. Military armor for sure. Box after box. I swept the inside with the light.
Each armor suit had its own box, and the 12-meter container was stuffed full. The boxed suits had shifted during transport. I slipped out from under Jagger, though being under him sounded pretty wonderful right now.
“It’s like a rockslide in there. Let it go, but jump back. And by the way. It’s all armor.”
“All of it?” he asked.
I grinned at him in the darkness. “Chock-full.”
“Little Girl, I like your luck today.” He gave me a devil-may-care flash of teeth in his scruffy late-night beard, and sprang away. The door banged open, boxes tumbling to the ground until the pile below was tall enough to stop the rockslide. Box-slide.
As if the universe was my buddy again, I spotted a suit for a female body type, adjustable between 1.5 meters and 1.8 meters and 45 to 90 kilos. It would fit me. The label said it was automated, actively repositioning Dragon Scale exoskeleton armor with anti-recoil sleeves and legs, heat and cold resolution, Chameleon-skin visual shielding, and was formatted with fourteen different enviro camouflage patterns.
I might have made a cooing sound as I dragged it to the side, tore open the box, and pulled the suit out of its molded hemp-plaz packing. I held it up to me. It was a peculiar matte gray that seemed both iridescent and full of shadows, like a black pearl at sunset. The scales overlapped like snake scales, almost organic in the way they moved when I bent a sleeve. “You are so pretty,” I whispered to the suit. I wanted to be in it, but the box was otherwise empty, no donning chamber within.
Before I could ask, Jagger called out from inside the container, “There’s a bigger box at the back. Looks like a portable donning station.” Jagger shoved the bigger box across the tumbled boxes, and it landed with awhompand a puff of dust. Jagger dropped down beside it and tore it open. The donning device was stacked in easy-to-assemble sections, could armor up to eight people at one time, and came with a Berger plug-in to walk him through the setup. I was beginning to think the military had gotten this one right. The donning station assembly was idiot-proof. Just in time, Cupcake and Amos showed up to help, and the cats helped by getting in the way. Despite the cats, the station went together, forming an eight-sided circle.
An octagon,my Berger chip started. I touched it off.
The donning station’s power source was in the middle, the stations facing out. Its batteries showed green, and it powered up fast with a nearly painful hum of electronics, casting long shadows and flickering lights in red, green, and blue across the secure parking area.
Each of the eight narrow niches was numbered—one through eight. They had stubby arms that stuck out straight, a neck rest, and a crotch wedge for rough measurements. I lifted my armor suit and held it to the back of number one. Nothing happened. After a moment, I looked over my shoulder at Jagger, who was listening to the Berger plug-in and said, “Try tapping the pads there with both index fingers to initialize.” He pointed near the suit’s hands. I pressed the tiny bumps, and, with a soft sucking whoosh, the armor was yanked away from me, molding to the back of the donning unit. It opened with multiple clicks, like a lobster shell cracking open, the interior a shimmery silver that was hard to focus on.
Jagger, Cupcake, and Amos placed their suits into niches two through four. The donning station clicked, whooshed, and they snapped into place too. Amos walked around the entire system and stopped in front of unit number four and the shimmering, open, outsized suit there. “I’mma be badassin this shit.”
I stripped down to undies and tank top and stepped onto the low mounting pedestal, my feet centered in the outline. Turning my back to the armor suit in the same way I did at the scrapyard with the armor I’d taken from theSunStar, I sucked in a deep breath, held it, and began a mental countdown. I closed my eyes and my mouth loosely, forced my muscles to relax, and held utterly motionless, hands down and out to my sides. I began to blow out the breath. “Initiating auto-donning,” a tinny voice said, coming from near my ear.
