No one responded.
I lifted a hand, one finger pointing at Cupcake. “You all know Red’s Old Lady. She was taken over by Warhammer’s poison and forced to work with her. It’s like Stockholm Syndrome and brainwashing, but more. It’s a lot like being possessed. She and Red had no choice except to obey her. But Cupcake wanted out. When Red was killed trying to take me over, she came to me. My protocols brought her back to herself. I can save any of your people who get taken over by Warhammer.”
Before he could talk more about loyalty and vows, I turned my orange sunglasses to Charles Whip, on the other side of Marconi. “Your organization was in danger. Cupcake didn’t want to risk going to an HA chapter in case it fell too. And with the speed Warhammer has taken over your territory, it looks as though she made a wise decision.” It was a slap. It said he was weak. His eyes went hard and cold. “You want to bargain?” I said before he could reply or challenge me. “Then bargain for the death of Warhammer and help take back your chapters from the MSA. That’s it. That’s what you get from me. My help to destroy Warhammer and the MSA. You get back your land, your chapter houses, the spoils, the people.”
I looked at the Booze and the Sabbath. “You two can wipe the amusement off your faces. You need weapons. You’ve already joined forces in a loose confederation because your territories are under slow attack by PRC bots.”
The self-titled Bengal of the Black Sabbath blinked. Mama-Killer’s face went harder. They were pissed off that I knew their weakness.Tough.
“Word is you got second-gen Perkers invading,” I said. “Some say they’re a smaller version of Mama-Bots. Killing a Mama-Bot will be a lot harder this time. I’m sure the PRC AIs learned from the end of the war how to kill better. Faster. Probably the newer, smaller models will have no access from the outside, even for small bodies. No way to get a nuke in. And most people aren’t willing to sacrifice their children to get inside one.”
Like I had been. My own father had put me in major harm’s way to kill a Mama-Bot. I sipped my tequila, not letting them see my reaction to my own words.
“I have . . . let’s call themtrade goods, that will make your fight against the bots easier, even without official military support.” That meant I had military weapons. I waited until they looked at Amos and Cupcake, all decked out for war.
“Where’d you get military weapons?” Bengal asked.
I grinned enough to show teeth. “My supplier told me they fell off a truck. More important, I know how to destroy nanobots inside a Mama-Bot.”
Their faces, so good at poker and bargaining and killing, went still and cold. “You lie,” Bengal said.
“Nope. Even the military doesn’t know how.” I let the small smile widen. “I’ll share the tech and the methodology with you.”
Mateo hissed into comms, “You’d give that away?”
“In return for all that, all my help, my tech, I want two things: a prisoner being held in Warhammer’s bunker. One person. And then I want Warhammer dead. That’s it. The rest of the shit is yours.”
This time there was no reaction. But I knew what they were thinking. If they had intel and tech the military didn’t have, they didn’t need the military at all. They could cancel all the semisecret military contracts that kept them bound. They could take over.
It was working. I could see it in their nonexpressions. I took a breath, caught a scent, and my skin suddenly . . .itchedwasn’t the right word. More like my nerves crawled, my senses felt something toxic on the breeze. Something—someone—only another queen would recognize.
I raised my glass at Cupcake and said, “Your turn.”
Without missing a beat, Cupcake took over the negotiations. She had done enough research to know exactly what trade goods each person at the table wanted, needed, and would agree to.
I needed to watch the crowd. That whiff-sensation was the presence of enemy nanobots. It made sense. There was no way that this meeting and the reason for it hadn’t made its way through the biker community and eventually to Warhammer’s nest. The crawly smell-sensation told me that she had found access to members of the clubs.My enemy had thralls here. I needed to stop them from hearing the negotiations, stop them from leaving and reporting back to her.
How many? Where? What were their orders?My heart rate soared.
Cupcake offered her wares. Amos lifted trade items out of the flatbed for everyone’s perusal. The VIPs sent their quartermasters, armorers, and weapons masters to examine the trade goods while they sat, chatted, and drank, trying to show how important they themselves were and how unimportant my offerings were. I sat with them, silent, waiting, watching.
Just about the time their people started hard negotiations, there was movement in the crowd: three made-men from three different clubs walked slowly to the back of my truck and stood together. One was a Black Sabbath, his skin glistening with fever sweat in the mild weather. He looked as if he had been newly transitioned—flop sweat, a case of the shakes. The second man belonged to Whip—white guy, grizzled, a beer belly that hung over his riding leathers, his gray beard in multiple braids. The third was a woman—tough, hard as nails, clearly former military. I recognized her from long ago. If Harlan’s last info had been up to date, she was McQuestion’s number-two enforcer, who reported directly to Jagger. Razor McBride. Her head swiveled to me. There was a semiautomatic weapon on her right side, violence in her eyes, and a promise of blood in her body language.
With the nano detector, I could prove that the three had nanobots in their bloodstreams, hopefully without revealing that I was a nanobot queen myself. But I needed to get close enough to smell their sweat to determine for certain what kind of nanobots had taken them over—Warhammer’s or PRC nanobots. Either was a danger.
I set my tequila aside and started to push away from the table.
Left-handed, Razor pulled a blade and wiped it across her thigh, letting the sun glint across the steel. She wanted to fight me. I could feel that desire through the air between us. I wanted to fight her too, or my nanobots did. Shehadto be Warhammer’s.
Warhammer had gotten her claws in deep. How many more were there? And were they about to start shooting?
Razor flashed the blade at me. Beside her, the two male thralls reached for their guns.
“Gun,” I whispered to Jagger.
I shoved away. Backflipped. Came to my feet faster than any normal human ever could. Jagger, my thrall, had already turned and fired. As I rose upright, the Hells Angel thrall crumpled into the dirt, a hand on his abdomen.
The men at the table dove to safety.
