“Can Ishoothim first? I feel as if I done beenviolated. The nerve!”
She had gone full-on mad Southern female.
I held in my grin. “I’d rather you didn’t. Not first. Being blasted to smithereens would make him hard to talk to.”
“Can I give him a piece a my mind? A loud, purely disturbed piece? Maybe with some cussin’?”
“Would you be so kind as to wait until we see what he has to say?”
“Never let a man talk. Shoot first, talk later.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, but I’d like to talk to him. Please.”
Jolene made a huff of sound, and a moment later said, “Connecting to myself. Which sounds all kindsa strange. You can talk on green.”
A red light appeared on the comms screen, which let me know that Jolene, a US military spaceship’s AI, and Gomez, a Bug alien starship AI, were now fully synched. The light blinked while I debated how I’d introduce myself and settled on my name, not Junkyard Roadhouse. The light turned green, and my face in front of a forest scene appeared on the screen in front of me. I flinched. I hadn’t realized this chat was video. I was glad Jolene had hidden the background, in case someone had a way to recognize a Bug ship after all the reno I had done on it.
I said, “This is Shining Smith for Anse Hatfield. Or whatever your real name is.”
No one replied.
“Shining Smith for Anse Hatfield.”
“Hang on Shining Sugah. Idiot on the other end got no idea how to use my tech. I’m walking him through it. You humans are so slow, it’s a pure miracle you ever got me built.”
A rough voice came over the comms, followed by a bearded face. “Shining Smith? Oh, there you are. Your girl—ah, your, ah, companion, has been most helpful.”
He was good looking in a roughhewn way. Long hair parted down the middle and worn in lots of slim braids. Beard in braids and beads. Brown hair, blue eyes. Lean, as most people were these days, Clean, which meant he had access to wand tech or a water supply. Wartime camo, no wrinkles.
“Ma’am, can you hear me?”
I hadn’t returned his greeting. Wasn’t sure I wanted to. Feelings I had never dealt with gushed through me. Memories.
Pops sending me into a MamaBot. Sending me to die. That’s what this man had done to his kid in the med-bay. Maybe Pops didn’t feel he had a choice. Maybe this man didn’t feel he had one either. But there were always choices.
I had choices too. I could disconnect. Except for that kid in the UC still full of holes.
“I hear you,” I said. “See you too.” Which wasn’t particularly friendly.
“My boy got to you. He okay?”
“No. He is not okay,” I said, my voice hard. “You sent him through Four County Mine. He was attacked.”
I watched his face which tightened in the way a man’s face did when he got bad news that was his own fault. He opened his mouth. Closed it. His eyes went red. Hard things to fake.
I said, “He’s in a med-bay with broken bones, multiple stab wounds, and a cut up liver. He barely got to us in time. He’ll live.”
Anse swallowed. I could hear it through the audio. “He wasn’t supposed to go through the mine. He was supposed to take the long way around, the road near Blair Mountain.”
That made me feel marginally better. There were a lot of things to talk about, like how he got part of theSunStar, but first things first. “They still have your daughter?”
“Yes,” he said. “They contacted me with proof of life and their demands. They’ll return her if I give them the comms we’re talking on and anything else I removed from the bottom of a mine crack the year before you took possession of the property. I didn’t know the scrapyard had an owner. Soon as I found out, I quit raiding the place.”
They knew about the ship.Sodding hell.But I’d deal with that—and the fact that he hadn’t returned anything he hadremoved—later. After we got the girl back. “How much time do we have?”
“Less than two days. Her mama’s barely holding it together. So am I, to be frank.”
I could see that. Some of my mad drained away. “Tell me their conditions and where the exchange is to take place.”
