There was only one diner in these parts, and it happened to be on the way to the mine. It was a perfect place—the only place—to stop for a meal so it made sense the DRs had stopped there. Finding Jagger and Jacopo would be easy enough. Without another word, I fishtailed the screamer bike around again, put on the muters and camo, and gunned the engine for the diner. My armor was in the small trailer. My larger weapons were there too. I bent into the wind I made, and rode like hell.
Twelve clicks later, I rounded a random boulder and comms came clear. Like instantly, totally clear. I slowed and circled back to the boulder. It wasn’t made of stone. It was pitted, weathered slag the size of school bus. Or a tank. I pulled off a riding glove and touched the slag with my bare fingers. The touch didn’t feel like the visual representation.
It was camo-ed.
Maybe not slag? Maybe sophisticated camouflage.
Maybe, some piece of alien tech left over from the Bugs that interfered with EntNu?
That wasn’t possible. Not that we knew.
I wasn’t totally sure I could trust Gomez with the info about the slag. Except that he probably already knew it was here.Unless he didn’t know and I had discovered something I could use against the Bugs. Or . . .
Maybe this was a way to curry favor with the alien species. Bargaining was something I did, something I was.
Silently, I rolled away from the boulder. Thinking. Deciding.
Regretting it but knowing it was the smart thing to do, I tapped comms and said, “Jolene. You copy?”
“I do, Sugah.”
“I have a hunk of melted slag that blocks EntNu. You have my location?”
Gomez broke in. “We do. Thank you for the return of the Brrrpt-shlmmmm, Shining Smith.”
I figured he had just stunk up the office with some disgusting scent but I didn’t say that. “Consider it a gift from humanity to the Bugs.”
“Hmmm,” was all the Bug AI said. It had learned to sound skeptical. I bet that stank up the place too.
“Jagger,” I said into comms. “You copy?”
“Roger that. Sending my coordinates.”
Best as I could figure Jagger was on a low hill north and west of the diner. Diners were a rarity in the badlands, which were any place outside of a well-armed, well-defended city, and the food, while basic, was better than awful, if customers liked roadkill cooked in lard. The décor was very Earth 1950s mixed with retro construction site. Sort of homey.
Flipping the thumb switch, I put the bike in full stealth mode. I could still be seen, because I wasn’t in camo-capable armor, but bent over the bike, the light-diffracting paint and war-time tech gave me partial invisibility. Muters drinking the bike’s battery power, I raced for the hill near the diner.
The hillside where Jagger and Jacopo were waiting came into view and I peeled off the road before the diner was inmy sights. Moments later I was behind the hill. I killed the bike, kicked the Jiffy stand down, and took off my helmet, repositioning comms and headset and putting on my orange lensed 2-Gen sunglasses.
Thrusting themselves out of the saddlebags, the cats leaped from the panniers in wild arcs of youthful acrobatics. “Spy,” I called, my voice pitched to not carry. The gray cat stopped and turned inquisitive eyes on me. “Bad guys at the diner. Good guys on the way. Anything y’all can tell me would be great.”
She showed me her teeth and raced out of sight.
Belly crawling to the crest of the low hill, I took my place, stretched out on the ground between the guys. My nanobots settled into near quiescence at Jagger’s nearness. This was good. This was where I was supposed to be.
Jagger was monitoring the diner through his binocs. There was a pair in front of me. And Jacopo was observing the diner through the scope of a long-range rifle, the kind snipers use, with distance gauges, wind estimators, and all the bells and whistles the war effort had given to industries dedicated to killing humans.
I focused on the diner. Out front were twelve riders, sitting on their bikes. The front door of the diner boasted a closed sign, no lights, and, through the front window, a rat sitting on the table closest to the entrance.Lovely.
“Why aren’t they open?” I asked.
“Saw a hint of motion out back when the riders showed up,” Jagger said. “I think the cook took off out of self-preservation.”
“Smart move,” I said.
The high-tech bikes were sleek, matte black, and had built-in weaponry. The riders were all dressed in black riding gear. Not military uniforms. But not-notmilitary. Like, theyscreamed trouble and danger and hard-core machismo, the dark kind that didn’t know how to lead or think, only how to follow orders blindly and kill as needed. The kind that enjoyed hurting others because they could.
I said, “I have an idea.”
