I accepted a bottle of water and drained it. Brushed the snow off me and tucked the empty into my kutte. “Thanks,” I said. “I need to borrow a camera.”
The weapons aimed my way again, as neither of them seemed to find my request acceptable.
“Fine,” I said. “Then you crawl through the snow, avoiding the mines, to the helos, and film the people inside.”
The weapons still didn’t drop.
“Tomika and I have a deal on other matters,” I said. “If I damage the camera, you can charge it against—me.” I had almost said, “against my chocolate.” That would have spilled the beans in front of Enrico.
The Sisters looked at each other, then one looked at Enrico. “She trustworthy?”
“In every way. Yes. I trust her with my life.”
Not that there was any way he could have said anything different. Still, it was nice to be affirmed.
The one I assumed was Shashina lifted a camera from the carpet and placed it in my hands. It was heavier than I anticipated and I let it drop a few centimeters before my muscles caught up with it.
“You know how to use it?” Sashina asked.
“No clue,” I said.
“Quick tutorial,” she said.
It was quick. The camera was AI backed, and along the lines of, “Tap here for the menu. Tap for snow and temp here. Tap for natural light here. Tap for enhanced here. Push this red button for video. Take care of my damn camera.” Her eyes went harder than I expected as she said, “And take care of my man. He talks too pretty to lose and he’s good in the sack.”
“I am excellent in the sack,” Enrico said.
Shashina grinned. “Yes, you are, boy. Yes, you are. Don’t get shot out there.”
“I will endeavor to keep myself safe and will give my life to keep Shining Smith safe from all harm.”
It sounded like a solemn promise against his own life, like a knight errant promising to his queen. What the hell was a knight errant, anyways? Rather than deal with that orthe Sisters’ continued disapproval, I pulled on my helmet and tucked the camera under an arm. “Lead the way to the helos,” I said.
The trip was brutal. Even with my gloves, helmet, winter riding gear, and nanobots, I was half frozen, teeth chattering, by the time a helo appeared from the blinding whiteout. Enrico pointed to the left and to the right, mimicked guards with guns. Just two, in the cold. But they’d have headgear with infrared, at the very least, and we would show up if they looked our way. The helos had far more sophisticated scanners, but . . . Equipment used energy and they would need all their energy to survive the storm, so why waste it on something that would be perceived as useless and unimportant.
I ran a hand up the fuselage of the helo beside me, found a place where light came through, and figured it must be the corner of the front window. Or, to use Jagger’s sexy talk, the corner insert of the “cockpit transparency.” I placed a small stick-on microphone and, beside it, cleared a small place for the cam. Unfortunately, I had to remove my helmet to film. Crystalized ice shards hit me like nails, stabbing into my ear, combing through my hair like frozen talons, cutting into the skin of my cheeks and nose. I gasped and forced myself to breathe the mess with my mouth open so I could filter out the ice. I braced myself against the wind and began filming. In ten minutes, I had good footage inside the powered down Sikorsky: weapons and enough snoring soldiers to bore a dead man. The helo was literally packed with humans making use of the body heat, to say alive through the blizzard. I saw no armor, that would protect them from the cold so they were waiting until the storm blew out to start work. Smart. I wished I had been able to wait, but here I was.
I made my way to the next helo, where the cam showed me it was dark as pitch inside. Then the auto lens found anearth mover, brand spanking new, probably brought to pull the Bug ship they expected to find out of the containment pond. It was strapped in with huge, high-tensile strength chains and synthetic flex webbing, with binders, chocks, and wedges to prevent movement. Sucker was so new, I bet it smelled like the factory. I also was suddenly betting that they had never checked the fluid levels, the hydraulics, or the starter.
This helo was unmanned, lights dimmed, which explained the number of people on the other helo. The brass wanted to save power. Like the other Sikorsky, this one was powered down and batteries were at minimum pull.
Too good to pass up.
I turned to call Enrico, and discovered him standing to my side, body steadied over me, arms out to his sides, with a pup tent around his back, stretched in his hands. He was blocking the worst of the wind from me. I had no idea where he got the pup tent.
I didn’t want to feed his thralldom, or whatever it should be called, butdamn. “Thank you,” I said. “That was nice. And very helpful.”
His ice-caked helmet nodded once. He handed me my bike helmet and said, “Please. Put it back on.”
The ice would melt in my hair, on my skin and I’d be colder, but what the heck. It made him happy. After I put it on, I said, “I have a more difficult job for you.”
Once I got him inside the powered down, unsecured helo and its earth moving equipment, I made my way to the third Sikorsky, and, because Enrico was busy, I pulled the helmet back off so I could see better through the camera lens. This helo was full of people too, but unlike the others, it was using battery power at awesome levels. Inside the cockpit area, where the comms equipment was, techs were elbows deep trying to get asignal out. They looked a little worried and a lot frustrated. That made me happy.
When I moved back along the massive fuselage and stuck the cam to a patch of snow-free, unfogged window, I saw what—and who—had come to the mine, chasing Bug signals and a Bug ship. The cabin had a small table with rounded corners, crystal bottles with whatever booze they were drinking in the lowball glasses on its top. Leather flight-style seats surrounded the table, filled with people, some in suits and most wearing US military uniforms: Army, Air Force, Space Force, and Marines. The highest ranking brass was an Army woman—a two-star general.
I also saw two men in different uniforms.
Post-war People’s Republic of China uniforms.
