Enemy nanobots, Clarisse Warhammer’s.I didn’t care if it was one of our military, it was infected. I fired. Again. Again.
When Warhammer died, it left her thralls undirected, but still full of nanobots, still being driven to make a nest and rule.
I understood it then, as if the knowledge bloomed inside me. The undirected thralls intended to take over the world even though Warhammer was dead. If there wasn’t a queen, then they would take over the world and rule together. Or . . . find a new queen? Did they wantme?
OrAlex? Unprotected at the roadhouse.
“Bloody sodding hell!” I shouted into the teeth of the wind.
Faster than thought, I was face down in a snow drift. Frozen misery and snow caked into my mouth, more in my ears. Someone was shooting me. Pointblank, midback. My suit took over, full power, full recoil-anti-recoil activated. Power flooded my immobile sleeve. I couldn’t move it forward but I could slam it back. I flung my fist. Hit the shooter with the power of a jackhammer.
The damaged sleeve caught again, my shoulder fully twisted behind my back, my arm outstretched. But the shooting stopped and I made it to my feet, spitting snow, shaking my head.
An unconscious form sprawled at my feet, too deep in snow for me to tell anything more than it was human and it was an enemy. Two cats landed on its face. Started eating.
Okay. Not unconscious. Dead.
“Kkkkk,” they all said as they chewed.Dead humans, good protein.
Jagger appeared out of the snow, his armor as coated in white as mine, the layers so thick he didn’t really need the enviro-camo that hid him, making him part of the snowstorm.
He was laughing. At me, I assumed, standing in the snow with an arm stretched straight, fully back behind me, my face plastered with snow.
His helmet ratcheted back. He grabbed my nape and yanked me to him. Kissed me, quick and hard on my snow-plastered mouth. Just as fast, he pushed me away, hardened his finger armor and picked the round out of the seam it blocked, tossed the flatted round into the blizzard. My arm returned to normal position.
Jagger pulled me back and I steadied us together, arms at his waist. He brushed the snow off my face and his foreheadmet mine, much like the cats do when they talk that ESP stuff. “We got ’em, Little Girl. We got it all on tape. We can take this public.”
All the tension slid from my body. “That’s sodding great,” I said.
“Only one thing left to do,” he said to me. “We have to commandeer a Sikorsky and send it to the DR’s HQ, filled with our people, and take down the rest of the cabal. Shut it down completely.”
I pushed away and sat flat in the snow. “Bloody sodding freaking hell,” I shouted to the storm. “Bloody sodding . . . sodding . . .” I stopped.
The man was right. It was obvious. I just hadn’t wanted to see it. I had hoped we could just send the vid to the right people, maybe make some money off the military gear, and other people would take care of the Dark Riders and the traitors.
Enrico landed in my lap, a clumsy graceless heap, wrapping his arms around me. I grunted an awkward, “Ugh,” and caught him to me. “What?”
“They wantme. They want me to help them.”
I tightened my arms around him. Enrico had been Warhammer’s before he was mine. It should have occurred to me that they might know, might feel him, and that, if so, he would need help.
Looking at Jagger, I managed a crooked smile. “Ride or die.” It meant I was all in. I’d never let one of my people, my friends, be taken away. And if I didn’t stop this now, I might not be able to stop it tomorrow.
Jagger gave me neck-breaking hug, a thumb up, and disappeared into the snow. I held onto Enrico, keeping him safe as the blizzard caked snow and ice into my open helmet.
* * *
Repairing, commandeering, and flying a Sikorsky required several things: the ingenuity of the only rider in our group who had a modest mechanical knowledge of helicopters from the war and uploading a few helpful chip tutorials found on the command flight into his Berger unit; my earth mover, to pull their vandalized earth mover from the fuselage of its damaged transport; and the necessity of dividing up our groups—one part to properly restrain and care for the people we had shot and injured, get them triaged in our medbay, and the other part to charge our armor and load our equipment into the empty Sikorsky.
We also had to rip out the pilots’ flight seats and toss them into the snow—because, our pilots?—a brain damaged spaceship CO and his brain damaged captain, both sitting in a warbot suit perched where the pilot seats used to be.
And then find some way to drop off the Sisters of the Cross—without crash landing—so they could hit the internets, sat-nets, and military and Gov. nets live with the video, names, and crimes of the cabal—at the exact moment we hit the Dark Riders’ base.
If I had known we’d be flying out of here and trying to land twice, I’d have asked for less initial damage to the helos and their cargo. Hindsight and all that. It was night by the time we had completed the repairs and gotten our gear strapped down. We weren’t taking our bikes because no matter how we might try, there was no way to make a stealthy approach to a battle while riding a Harley.
By dusk, the storm was blowing itself out, heading east. Right where we wanted to go. Because that’s the way life works. Silently, I cursed Murphy and all his stupid laws.
Like everyone else in the seatless helo, I used silk-plaz flex to strap myself down, and if I’d had the ability to claw myarmored fingers into the cabin floor to hold on better, I would have. There was no way to trust Mateo and Evelyn. Between them, they had about five hours total time in helicopters.Total.
