Softly, Jolene said, “Yes. I sent the video. Is this what it feels like when a human has a conundrum and all potential outcomes are horrible?”
“It’s called being between a rock and hard place.”
On the general channel I said, “Strip the bodies, remove any tracking devices from them and the bikes. My people will take half of the bikes, half the weapons, and the truck as our share. Anse. We need to talk.”
“My daughter needs me,” the militia leader said.
“Your daughter needs her mother,” I said, my voice like stone. “Jagger, bring him to HQ. Bengal, you’re in charge of cleanup and body disposal. Make sure we get our share ofbikes and gear. Amos, keep an eye on Cupcake. Mina, Jacopo, take up positions in the crossroads and take out any late dark riders.” Enough of my enemies had gotten away to let the black ops group know they had been beaten and badly. The guy with the fake comms device would tell Jolene exactly where their headquarters were and give her total access to their communications and electronics before she destroyed the device with the tiny explosive charge we had placed inside it.
Soon we would know everything.
I didn’t want another fight, but history taught us that war never ended. I would protect my people, even the artificial intelligences among us, from all enemies.
???
The cats were on the bar in HQ, eating a double portion of the diner’s fried fish, but positioned so they would miss nothing. Jagger stood in the corner, a potent threat. Anse was sitting at the main table, a glass of rye whiskey, neat, in front of him. I had a double shot glass of tequila. We all looked like hell, but Anse was cold eyed and steely, and with good reason.
In front of the militia leader were all the devices from the safe.
Anse tipped his glass to his mouth, swallowed, and pursed his lips as he studied the Bug alien devices.
I had said nothing. Not a word. I’d simply dumped out my findings, sat, and sipped. I let the silence build between us. Companionable. Just two compadres looking at the spoils of a war that had been ended by outside forces. The People’s Republic of China was an enemy we still fought because its bots were still active in a lot of cities, chewing up the rubble and making new bots. The alien Bugs? They had defeated us in space and on the ground, driving us back into the stone age in places.
I had a Bug ship. Did Anse?
As if with an effort of will, Anse tore his gaze from his most valuable gear and met my eyes. I had my glasses off, letting my orange irises hold his. We both sipped again. Studied each other.
“Eloise is . . . not okay,” he said. “But she will be. She’s safe now. I thank you.”
I inclined my head about a millimeter to show I’d heard.
“According to Beckett, the riders are part of a drugs, weapons, and human trafficking ring, located near Charlotte.” He slid the base of his glass in a small circle. “Army base is in Charlotte. Could be a coincidence.”
I tilted my head again.
Into my ear Jolene said, “Jagger ran an ID viber over all the dead and prisoners. None of them were in the system, except one woman, who was AWOL and listed as up for dishonorable discharge. Things are little different for the viber results on Beckett; he’s active military, but his sleeve is totally empty.”
He had been wiped. He was a deep plant, embedded with Devil Anse for years. That gave us two reasons why the dark riders had come back to Anse’s property—to retrieve Beckett, and the Bug gizmos. Anse had Beckett. I figured that info sealed Beckett’s fate. I had the guy who had tried to rob Anse’s safe. I wasn’t sure about his fate yet.
Jolene said, “I’m doing a deep dive on Beckett to see if I can find connections to the intel we took from Warhammer.”
“Hmmm,” I said. I was sure that all the evidence would point to a group with deeply entrenched military ties, ties to members of the Hand of the Law, and the Gov.
Unable to hear Jolene, Anse frowned at my “Hmmm.” “What do you want?” he asked.
I set my gaze back on him and asked, “Where’s the Bug ship?”
“Crashed into an old stone quarry north of here. Energy source exploded.” He put his rye down as if it had lost flavor. “Not much left of it. Rotating rings are crumpled. There’s a tech school in Tennessee that got started back up, maybe two years past. Not as sophisticated as before the war, but beginning to take hold. Has a metallurgy department. My people took them some of the unburned bits of metal to see if they could reproduce it.”
Jolene murmured, “Searching for the school. Will infiltrate their system and discover what they found.”
“And the Bug itself?” I asked Anse.
His mouth twisted. “Dead. Carapace cracked open. Leaking. We took what tech we could and left the dead and the burned stuff there.”
“And I’m guessing that Beckett showed up a few days after that.”
Anse scowled.
