Bengal sent word out what we were planning. Together, as a group, not as a queen forcing thralls to do what I wanted, we fleshed out my plan and divvied up the list of the stuff we needed to make any kind of “Bug Ship Con” work. Then we scoured the surrounding area for parts and scrap and whatever looked interesting.
* * *
We left for the Twilight Mine late in the afternoon, carrying the Bug transmitter and a new, patched together “Fake Bug Weapon,” made of scrap metal, commercial cast iron water pipes that had been half buried in a bombed plumbing supply store, slag, some huge batteries that had once stored solar power, some chlorine tanks from a pool supply store, and Anse’s Bug shiprings. All of it had been loaded onto a flatbed by Anse, another favor I’d owe him.
I was also still carrying the slivers of the not-a-boulder in my lead tin. I hadn’t shared the EntNu blocking principles of the slivers with the others, yet, and though I didn’t know why I hadn’t shared, I trusted my gut that I shouldn’t let CAIT know I had them. Or that I had figured out what the not-a-boulder did with EntNu. Because the more I thought about it, the properties of the not-a-boulder were bloody weird.
It was darker than pitch when we reached the Twilight Mine turn off. The wind had changed direction at sunset, and the air was barely breathable, harsh and sharp and coating the back of my throat and lungs with each inhalation—aerosoled metals, poisons, and the promise of a slow, polluted death.
Leaving the others to find a place to camp on the side of the road, preferably one protected from the wind and its stench, Mateo and I took a sharp right into hell, a winding way over boulders, through washed out ruts, and into a darkness so complete that the air was weighted with it. Mateo’s warbot suit lights showed us as much of the land as the beams could reach. It wasn’t pretty.
What had once been a mountain was now lifeless bedrock, patches shimmering with liquid that wasn’t water, a few buildings here and there, falling in, rusting equipment, some bigger than the buildings themselves. Twilight was more foul than the land Smith’s Junk and Scrap and my roadhouse occupied. This landscape was barren, cratered, cracked, a place of toxic fumes and scree, devoid of anything that looked like life. Except the eyes glowing in the warbot-lights, red and feral and hungry.
A few animals had adapted to the post-war world, rats, bats, roaches, coyotes, and some cats. These eyes were too low to the ground for anything but rats, and since the war ofWarhammer’s Nest, I had developed an aversion to rodents. The cats, however still had a thing for rats, and Spy led her clowder on a hunting party, racing past my legs and wheels, and leaping from Mateo’s suit.
Aiming his lights around the scene, Mateo settled them on a cluster of buildings and said, “Small. But potential places to position our people tomorrow, once we check them out. Could be booby trapped.” He slid the lights across the stone and said, “Several smooth-ish landing sites for the DR’s military helos.” He indicated another site. “If a pilot is crazy enough, that road might make a landing site for small planes.”
I made a, “Mmmm,” sound, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
Mateo said, “Evelyn’s bringing the backhoe in the morning.”
I made the noncommittal noise again.Evelyn can drive?Last time I paid her any attention she had been looking out over the landscape with a thousand yard stare, jaw dropped, drooling a little. Warhammer’s torture and the way the queen used her nanobots to enslave people had left the USSS SunStar’s number one mostly a vegetable.
Beyond the sound that might have been the grunting equivalent of, “Yeah?” I had said nothing. Mateo and I seldom chitchatted, so I knew that whatever he was about to say was important to him. When he didn’t go on, I realized that the statement about Evelyn coming might be the important thing, and I had no idea how I was supposed to respond. “Okay. I’m listening,” I said.
“She wanted to come.” His metallic voice sounded surprised, a little more melodic than usual. “Alone,” he added.
In the distance, cats yowled and hissed and screeched. The glittering eyes vanished, but the sounds of the cat and rat skirmish grew.
He had stopped again, so I said, “Okay. Yeah.”
“I’m not—”
I waited.
“The nanos between us have weakened. You know that.”
“Yeah,” I said. Looked as if we were having a heart-to-heart. Mateo and I had never had one before, so I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say or do. I stuck my gloved hands into my pockets and rested fully on the bike seat, my boots on the polluted ground to either side of the Kow bike.
“I could leave,” he said. “Leave the roadhouse. Leave you. But I haven’t.”
I shrugged. We both knew if the military or the Gov. got their hands on him, they’d rip his damaged body out of his bot and take the warbot suit for themselves. And he’d die slow and painfully. But yeah, technically he could leave.
Softer than I’d ever heard him speak, almost gently, Mateo said, “I was in a position of command for most of my life until the end of the war. I understand command presence, command power. But you don’t haveanyof the qualities that usually pertain to creating loyalty and adherence to a structured military or orderly life.”
“Thanks,” I said, letting a little of the sarcasm his comment deserved into my voice.
Mateo chuckled, and that was still the sound of grating metal. The sound eased the tension that had grown between my shoulder blades as he talked.
“Why do people come to you?” he asked. “Even people who aren’t thralls. Why do they come and then want to stay? Why do they want to help you when you have plans or ideas or needs, no matter how stupid? It isn’t money, because you’re broke most of the time. It isn’t companionship, because you’re not that much fun to be around.”
“Hell, man. Flatter me some more,” I said, insulted, yet wanting to snicker. But also knowing he was opening his heart to me for something that was important to him.
“You can’t be solely a relief from boredom to people,” Mateo said. “Your ideas are crazy as shit, so they don’t follow along because of yourbrilliance. You have no charisma. And you’re about as charming as one of your half wild cats.”
My sense of insult was growing, but I was equally riveted by his openness, his honesty. It was not thrall-like at all. “Bloody sodding damn, dude,” I said. “Lay the sweet-talk on a little less thick, will you? I’m drowning in the syrupy words.”
He swore, laughing. And maybe something else at the same time. “Evelyn wanted to come so she could see you work. She wants toobserveyou. Jagger and Jacopo and Bengal are fascinated with you, and the last two have no nanobot ties to you. Some of the top men in the motorcycle gangs are coming to help.”
