Indignation quivered between us and I laughed softly. I didn’t share my amusement. Spy’s claws were not to be taken lightly.
Back on top of the snow, Spy showed me a hut with convenient signage telling me to use caution, that delicate electronics were inside.
Behind it was a much larger building, this one made of what looked like repurposed, multicolored aluminum siding on steel supports. Nothing on the exterior matched, and it looked as if it had been made to fit by an illiterate pre-Berger chip human with a rivet gun and a manual metal cutter. Inside this hut wasthe earth moving equipment I needed to create a distraction, attract attention, and maybe take down some enemies.
I set my armor suit for enviro camo and speed assistance. If anyone had time to focus on me, I’d appear to be shifting pools of darkness and pale light on snow. I raced through shadows and crouched by two big barn-type doors.
The building with the earth moving equipment was unlocked, unguarded, and I slid inside, into the dark. The smells of equipment and machine fluids and fuel made it through my helmet filters. Multiple kinds of earth moving equipment were parked with military neatness. The building and everything in it were absolutely perfect. If I could take the storage building, the tools that lined its walls, the dozers and movers and front-end loaders and baskets and boxes and all the other goodies with me, the junkyard scrapyard part of me would be in heaven. Instead, I’d use what I needed and probably have to blow up the rest of the toys.
If I ever said “fuck,” I’d say it over the destruction of all this good stuff.
I was drawn to the biggest machine, a prewar model Caterpillar already affixed with a pusher—a reinforced dozer blade for moving rock. The mustard-painted Cat wasn’t new, but it looked as if it had been fully restored and was well maintained, with only a few drops of hydraulic fluid on the concrete beneath it.
My Berger chip began to tell me all about it and I let the stupid thing talk as I climbed up to the silk-plaz-enclosed operator’s cage. “The Caterpillar D9T is a high-powered bulldozer with an operating weight of approximately 47,400 kilos unencumbered,” which meant with no blade attached, “and 436 horsepower. It is designed for demanding earthmoving tasks in construction, mining—”
I tapped off the annoying voice in my head as I climbed inside the cage and studied the set up. Too bad stupid Bergers worked when no other electronic comms did. But then, they were hardwired into our brains so there was that.
The dozer had no biomarker starter, only a key slot, sadly empty. Illustrations showing what lever, meter, and gear did what was typical of Cats. Straightforward. The cage had armored silk-plaz windows. They couldn’t stand up to massive weapons or stop a laser, but were suitable for rockfalls and work accidents, which meant they might resist small arms fire.
Wow!Dang thing came with a heater. I sat down. The seat wasn’t even sprung and had a new seat cover on it. Better than I had hoped. In fact, pure heaven to a chick like me.
Satisfied that I could operate it, I climbed down and began a search for keys, which I found neatly arranged and labeled on a row of hooks on the back wall. “Nice,” I muttered to myself. “Sweet of you to leave all these for me.” I scooped them up and stuck them into an ammo pocket. If we lost, my enemies would have to make new keys and, depending on their mechanical abilities, that could take days.
In order for my enemies to think I was one of theirs, the helmet would have to be down, exposing my head. Weighing the consequences of alerting DR guards to our presence, I scooped up ear protectors that didn’t look as if they contained too many man-cooties, and a hardhat, hoping the wearer didn’t have hair lice. Stupid time to go girlie, but lice had to be the devil’s evil brainchild. Hopefully, with the hardhat and earmuffs, they’d think a drunken DR was getting into mischief, not that they were under attack. And better me without cranial battle armor than my unarmored people getting shot.
The big Caterpillar was parked on the back wall near the keys. I’d have to take out that back wall to get free. Doable. Butthe moment I powered up, everyone in the compound would know something was up.
I closed myself into the cab and switched the key to “on,” checking the meters and the fluid levels. The last user had topped off the hydraulics, but left it low on diesel. Lazy, or they were expecting a shipment soon. There was enough fuel to get the job done. I hoped.
Spy and her lieutenants jumped into the cab with me, Pounce and Wrench took up places on the tiny dash. Spy climbed back to my shoulder and yawned against my cheek.
I pumped the manual fuel button the requisite three times on the label, and turned the engine over. The Caterpillar started with a roar that would have taken out my eardrums without the ear protectors. I was supposed to let it sit a while, so the fluids would be properly circulated, but after about forty-five seconds, the door opened. A man with a long rifle slung across his back stood there. I had made the right choice. From his vantage point, I looked like I belonged, wearing a hardhat and ear gear, and my armor was below his sightline. He didn’t touch the rifle.
I waved, throwing my arm as if I was an excited drunk.
He shook his head and gestured me down.
I gave him the finger, put the dozer into reverse, and backed through the wall. The top of the cage took a hit from the beam that held up the building’s roof system, but it didn’t fall, so I ignored it.
I braked, put the big machine into low gear, then high gear, and steered the Cat at its top racecar speed, 11.7 kilometers per hour, around the big equipment building and completely over the electronics shed. It crumpled like tissue paper beneath the pusher and as the treads crushed it flat, a feeling like joy fluttered through me. This was almost more fun than my Harley, though the vibration was enough to shake my teeth lose.
The man with the rifle appeared beside me, waving his arms, still thinking I was one of his men. I shot him the bird again and turned the Caterpillar toward the command building. That brought people running from everywhere. Some armed. Most drunker than skunks, though I had never seen a drunk skunk. I had seen a drunk dog once, when I was a kid, and some biker gave his dog beer for taking down an attacker. Skunks had to be cuter than that.
I looked back to see Tomika, camera in hand, on top of the heavy equipment building I had driven through. Filming. Filming everything. I raised my hand to wave.
A hole punched through the silk-plaz windows.
I jerked my hand back. “Well, I guess it isn’t bulletproof,” I said aloud, my voice hidden beneath the earmuffs. I inspected my hand, glad I hadn’t lost a finger. They took forever to regrow in a medbay and my medbays didn’t come equipped with limb regeneration. “Either they don’t care if I’m one of theirs or they figured out they were in trouble.” I tossed the hardhat and the ear protectors onto the scant floor space and raised the armor’s helmet for protection. That dislodged Spy, who dropped to my lap and sat high, balancing as I used legs and feet and hands to change gears and work the pusher blade.
My cage took more hits, and I paused long enough to open the door and let out the cats, with a final admonishment, “Don’t eat everyone. I need to question some.”
I closed the cage door and crashed into the back of the command building. I rolled through the conference room, over a bar, wishing I had time to snag a few bottles to sell, but seeing them shatter on the floor was nearly as satisfying. I took out a bathroom. Rolled through a strip club, currently unoccupied. My treads crushed the brass pole and took out the stage. I rumbled out the other side, leaving a demolished tunnel through the command center.
After that, all I could see was buildings to demolish and people shooting at me. Jacopo from somewhere high, was firing in a steady rhythm I recognized, taking down the commanders with non-lethal shots, for the most part. Mateo’s snow-camo-ed warbot suit hauled the injured away and left the dead on the snow. The ones Mateo took were Prisoners of War, but I didn’t figure the Geneva convention covered the treatment of traitors.
I took out what might have been a bunkhouse, but avoided the building marked Chow and the one marked UC, for Urgent Care, because they might have stuff I wanted to salvage. I was working up an appetite grinding the Dark Riders’ HQ to splinters and scrap metal.
Twenty minutes after we began, our enemies laid down their weapons and held their hands in the air. With the command structure taken out, the boots-on-the-ground were surrendering.
