Wellbloody damn. Why hadn’t I asked that to start with? “So I can’t remove them?”
“Only by disassembling my structure at the molecular level or by applying a MAP deconstructing device from the outside. Should you begin a dismantling process, or initiate MAP deconstructing, or attempt to breech my power module, I should be forced to retaliate. I have been equipped with a failsafe self-destruct program. Please do not force me to initiate that program. I like Jolene and wish to continue my research and study with her.”
“No! No self-destruct program is necessary.” Disgusted with myself, I climbed back to the floor above me and, out of morbid curiosity, opened the panel to the burial room. It wasn’t really that—the purpose of the space translated as “Supplies and Health”—but it was where I had found the Bug pilot, at the bottom of the chute I used originally to get down here. The round doorway telescoped open to reveal the empty room. And the dead Bug.
Bugs came in several sizes and shapes. This one was about two-and-a-half meters tall, two meters wide, and was composed of three sections with interlocking exoskeletons. It had seven antennae—three on either end, and one on the center carapace—that together worked as eyes, ears, nose, and probably other senses. They all had multiple limbs, and the scant literature suggested that the number of limbs depended on age and specialization. This one had fourteen.
It had cracked one of its bulbous exoskeleton sections somehow, probably during the battle that had crashed both theSunStarand the Bug ship here. It had died. It was still dead, though Gomez always referred to it as “achieving maximum inactivity.”
I had never touched it before. Curious, I picked up one of its smaller limbs and considered it in light of the odd knob beneath the command chair. The limb ended in a foot or hand with a central pad and ten small claws around the pad. I pressed on the pad and the claws spread outward, sharp and needle thin. I released the pad and they retracted. I shrugged and dropped the limb, returning to the main area, and closed the oval door behind me.
“Gomez, what did the cats do when they were down here?”
“They explored, much as you are doing. But they seemed most interested in Garrouling PopPop.” Again, the smell of peppermint filled the air around me.
“You said your pilot liked the cats. How long after the crash did your pilot die?”
“Garrouling PopPop reached maximum inactivity three of your Earth days after the crash of the ship.”
“Did he call his people? Ask for help? No one ever came looking for him.”
“Yes. Jolene and I believe that my pilot’s distress signal did not work properly.”
Or, maybe his people didn’t care. Or maybe he was alone on the planet and the signal had to travel to his home world and help was still on the way. Or, or, or.
I started climbing my way out, and gave my shoulders a major workout pulling myself up each step.
I closed the hatch behind me and asked Gomez to air out the office. It stank of peppermint.
* * *
Someone once said that war was hell. They were probably talking about actual battle, with death and maiming and the horrors of people killing people because someone else told them to or to protect what they loved. That said, they likely had no idea of what logistics and transpo might be with Cupcake singing (when we weren’t hiding from aerial bots or being tracked overland by dogs and good ol’ boys with rifles, at which times she was blessedly silent) and our ATVs strapped to a wartank tracking its way across the excavated stone desert of West Virginia.
It took three nights and two days to get to the bunker. The daytime hours were spent in the elements, hidden by a rare copse of trees and half under the rubble of a disintegrating house, exposed to the elements, with no heat, no AC, no showers, no bodily or mental comforts at all.
The three nights were blacker-and-colder-than-the-pitch-of-hell travel with Cupcake and Amos cuddling (when she wasn’t singing), and that was engraved on the back of my eyelids to give me nightmares forever.
One thing was certain. I was never doing this again. Ever.
If I ever found another queen (except Warhammer, who would soon be dead at my hand, or I’d die trying), she was welcome to the world. Screw it. All I wanted was to sleep late, take a bloody damn shower once a week, and eat what I wanted, not run the blasted world.
When we finally arrived at our bivouac, about two klicks from the bunker, I was shaking with misery. The trip could only be described with Pops’s style of foul language. So, as I gathered myself to climb down from the ATV at dawn—stinking, wet with sweat, and freezing my butt off—I said into my comms system, “This . . . This was a murderous, pissing hell. You, Mateo, are the son of a motherless goat and a bum-buggering, sodding, rutting pig. If I ever have to ride your rat-arsed Simba again, I’ll shoot you with a blaster and laugh as your innards boil. This trip was not just bloody bollocks, it was buggering surgery without sodding anesthesia. I’d rather beat the bishop with a fist full of nails than ever go through this again.” My language went downhill after that.
When I was done comparing Mateo’s lineage with every disgusting creature I could think of, I jumped the last meter and landed on the ground. My teeth nearly clacked shut on my own tongue, and my knees gave way, as gravity without the Simba’s vibration weighed on me. “Son of a goat-buggering-bitch,” I said through my teeth.
There was a lengthy silence when I, at last, stopped raging, hanging off the Simba’s track, panting.
“Well, I never,” Jolene said, sounding all bristly and proper. “You, young lady, are in a foul mood.”
“Ya think?” I said.
Mateo, taking his life in his hands, said, “Actually, Shining, there is no physiological way that you can beat the bishop, as that is a male euphemism for mastur—”
“I know what it is!” I shouted, slamming my fist against the Simba’s track. “I havta pee, and this time I am not doing it into a cup and then throwing it off the side!” I stomped off into the darkness and found a tree.
When I got back, my team had already begun to unpack the ATVs and the weapons. The cats were running all over, searching for rats or squirrels, as there was some actual tree cover with living evergreen leaves. We had shade. I collapsed flat to the ground and guzzled a bottle of water before I dragged myself to my feet again and helped my team.
No one spoke to me. No one sang. It was heaven.
