Bloody hell, it was like being in heat when Jagger was around.
Jolene’s bot walked in through the kitchen door.
The four at the table went dead silent, all four with big eyes and shocked expressions.
Jolene wiggled her hips at them.
I held in a laugh at their reaction and hiding my amusement, I took the crooked hallway to the office, poured a cup of coffee that hadn’t scorched yet, and sat at the command chair. Once upon a time the oversized chair had held the massive carapace of PopPop, who was now a multilarval whatchamacallit dripping on the ceiling below me. I tapped a button and said to the alien AI, “Good morning, Gomez.”
“Good morning, Shining.” He had switched to a British accent, highbrow, not South London, like my father’s. It didn’t quite bring tears to my eyes, but it did bring on a burst of grief, which I hid from him. Not it. Gomez had identified as male, so, whatever. I was being forced to learn how to socialize with people, cats, intelligences, and maybe larva. Larvas? Larvae?
I had been alone for years, until Jagger walked into my life, all OMW swagger and sex appeal. I had gotten used to my aloneness. More or less. The new constant and necessary interactions were their own kind of stress.
“Jolene says we have activity,” I said to Gomez.
A satellite view appeared on the alien-Bug-screen over the command chair. I watched as it ratcheted down until it was a view of an eight square kilometer area, the roadhouse pinpointed as a red dot off to the west. To the east, toward Logan, was a blue dot. Where the other Bug alien ship had crashed.
The visual clicked down, closer to earth, magnifying things on the ground.
A caravan of familiar trucks came into view, the kind the Dark Riders used. The trucks, if they came from Charlotte, North Carolina, were either taking the long way to Logan, or the long way to the roadhouse, or the short way to the mine where Amos and Cupcake were headed. Or anywhere else within bikingdistance. Either way, this was the first time we knew where they were before they got to a destination.
I tapped on the screen showing me the UC, and two views of the occupied medbays appeared, side by side. One was opaque, its readouts showing it was in surgery mode, and the other was Mina. With a red cat curled around her head.
I tapped my comms and said, “Jolene. Do you have info from your prisoner? Not Mina. The other one.”
“I’m not a miracle worker, Shining, Sugah. He’s still in surgery.”
“I know. But . . .” I let the word trail off. Sometimes she let things drop, things that, in a human, would be considered opinions, but in her discourse would be called fuzzy probabilities.
“Sugar, my information is incomplete.Howevah.” She divided the word into two and dragged out the Southern last syllable, which meant she was not happy about something, most likely me, sticking my nose into her business. “Iaccessedhis Berger comms anddownloadedits transmissions for the last thirty days. And since you don’t seem to trust me to do my job, the summary is as follows: The Bug ship transmission confounded the military’s hierarchy something fierce, but they don’t know where the afore-mentioned Bug ship is. This wealreadyknew,” she said, sounding more and more irritated. “There wasnomention in the Berger’s record oftwoships crashed in close proximity. Which wealreadyknew.Andwealreadyknewthat the DRs would be coming to search.
“As I said.Noth-ing new.”
Inside, I felt chastised like a kid, but on my outside, I was standing my ground. “I want dates and times and numbers.” I said.
“There’s an old human saying about horses and peasants. Give. Me. Time.”
My comms made a click to let me know the conversation was over. She was never really gone, though. There were speakers, mics, and cams everywhere. Privacy was a lie, a falsehood. “What’s a peasant?” I asked. She didn’t answer and I wasn’t interested enough to ask my Berger chip and get it started telling me things I didn’t care about.
I decided a trip to the Urgent Care was in order and since I didn’t want to go through the roadhouse again, I grabbed a jacket and headed out the back airlock door. The trip around the office to the UC, past the greenhouses and the water treatment system and the new chicken coop took longer, but the privacy of a short walk, such as it was, was priceless.
Stone crunched under my feet. The winter wind was cold, dry, and gusty, burning my face. Cats raced here and there, doing cat things. Most of them looked at me from the corner of their eyes. Others crouched as if considering me prey.
The UC was one of a line of shipping containers, all the exteriors painted to match the stone beneath my feet so that a flyover with cams would reveal little. Each container had been repurposed into a different function, the insides all distinct. Some were hotel suites. One was a shower and laundry. One was basically a holding cell with full lockdown capabilities. It could survive an armed assault and was equipped with cams and audio surveillance, but no one knew that. Not even the people who had stayed there.
The inside of the Urgent Care shipping container had been painted white by Jolene, remodeled into a windowless hospital center with multiple medbays. It was cold, sterile, and devoid of anything that might make it comfortable to humans, but the medbays it contained healed humans and cats, and that was all I cared about.
Tugging on my gloves to make sure I wouldn’t shed nanos, I tried to open Mina’s medbay but it was locked.According to the readout, her medical treatments were complete, all except the dregs of the detox from Devil’s Milk, and the lid should have opened. It didn’t. I punched in the proper code again and again it didn’t open. I couldn’t override it.
Something was up. I tapped my comms and said aloud, “Jolene, override the medbay lock.”
“I’m sorry, Shining Sugah. No can do.”
I didn’t get mad often, like hot and furious and mean, mad. Getting even was better. But I felt something bubbling beneath my breastbone, that might be a little pissed off, as thoughts squirmed through my brain about a sentient AI’s lack of compassion and what such an AI might do if allowed unrestricted access to a psycho’s brain.
Softly, I asked, “What are you and the cat doing to Mina?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Jolene said.
