I ended the connection.
Amos and Cupcake would mobilize the miners and handle things there. They would watch for Jagger. And I’d sit here twiddling my thumbs.Yeah? No.My nanobots didn’t like that idea. Not one bit.
I used my morphon and sent a message to one of the few men I called a friend. He wasn’t a thrall. He just liked me. I just liked him. It was weird. My message was one word. “Call?”
Ten minutes later, Jolene said, “Call in-coming from Bengal.”
“I’ll take it,” I said, and tapped the mic on my comms set. “Hey, Bengal. How’s my favorite, one armed Boozefighter?”
“I had a feeling you’d call,” he said.
As a president of one of the top five motorcycle clubs, Bengal had known about the request to store a Gov. hostage here. He probably expected me to call about that, but I didn’t ask.
He continued, “Little Girl, I’m doing fine. Looking for a fight. Feeling the urge to knock some heads together. Why? You got something going on?”
This method of communication was constantly swept by Jolene, so it was unlikely to be monitored by outsiders. I felt safe filling him in about the DRs heading to the mine.
“They your allies?” he asked. “The miners?”
“Allies of the Junkyard. Trading partners. Potatoes, vegetables, seeds from us. They dug some good coal out of the ground. I traded them. Nothing spectacular,” I said, lying about the last. Meta-ores had not yet been verified as something theycould get to. Coal was valuable enough on its own. “So, yeah. We have an agreement.”
“Jagger sent out a general alarm that there was trouble in the area.”
Asshole, I thought.
“And since that particular fight coincides with the clubs’ plans, some of us are in,” Bengal said. “I just got word that Marconi’s sending help from his new HQ, in the foothills. His son, Enrico, and a few men are on the way to join Jagger and Jacopo. Me and a few a my men were visiting with Marconi and are heading that way in ten. Three of the Sisters of the Cross are close and feeling frisky. We’re not sure yet where we’ll meet up, but I’ll let your bot know. You gonna be there?”
“Shining,” Jolene said, breaking in to the call. “Twelve more DRs just unloaded. If they head to the mine, even Cupcake, Amos, Jagger, and Jacopo will be outmatched. My drone is on the way back to power up, with another heading out, but that means we’ll have overlap time when there’s no observation. Whoever goes will be on their own until I get a new drone in place.”
“Well, hell,” I said. “Bengal, I’m gearing up now. See you there.”
“Rock ‘n roll, Little Girl!” Bengal sounded entirely too happy at the idea of battle as he cut the connection.
I started tossing necessities into a gobag and geared up, weapons, girlie stuff like clean socks and undies. A fresh shirt. My armor. Weapons and ammo.
I tried to reach Jagger once on the morphon and once on the new EntNu comms system. There was no reply. I wasn’t worried. If they ran into trouble, Jacopo could shoot the eye out of a gnat at a thousand yards, and Jagger had a way of terrorizing people into leaving him alone.
I wasn’t worried.I wasn’t.
Damn it.
As I worked, I had a thought, a treacherous one. Twenty-four Dark Riders. All in one place was too many to take on alone. Twelve, if they were relaxed and, say . . . eating . . . I could use that. If I was willing to take a risk.
I said, “Jolene. Can you and Gomez use the new EntNu comms to imitate a Bug communication signal? And if so, can you send it out from a different place if I managed to put equipment where I want it to come from?” She didn’t answer right away, so I added, “I might want to lure the Riders to a place of my choosing.”
“Ohhhh,” Jolene said. “Let us talk a sec.”
I didn’t know how long a sec was to AIs, but when she didn’t reply right away, I contacted Mateo and asked if he wanted to go for a ride and a fight in his dune buggy. It wasn’t a dune buggy. It was a weaponized, armored, four wheeling, Quadro ATV, like a small tank but twice as ugly, and he loved any chance to get out of the junkyard. He’d been cooped up here for years until he managed to get a means of transportation that would fit his warbot suit. As expected, he was all in.
Bags packed, I left the office.
Jolene said into my comms, “Sugah, we can mimic Bug comms and show a different origination location as requested. And we can fake some alien weapons out of things in the SunStar. Weapons that won’t register on sat-cams, because they don’t really exist and the AIs won’t recognize them. If we have time, that is.”
“You sound almost eager,” I said. “You’re getting something out of the trespasser, aren’t you?”
CAIT answered. “That is ‘need to know’.”
“Whatever,” I said. “Jolene get me the stuff I need and figure out how to pack it into the Quadro’s trailer.”
