Idly, I wondered if Cataglyphis bicolor fabricius ants, designed in a lab to eat anything biological, could digest it.
My Bug looked dead too, but not dead like the Logan pic. Mine looked empty. I tapped the carapace with a fist. It was hollow. No leakage. No soft squishy parts. I shone the flash inside, through an eye hole. Empty.
The ship around the other Bug, the mottled one near Logan, had mostly burned to slag when its engine exploded. The interlocking rotating rings were crumpled. Not much was left except the bits and pieces I had confiscated from Anse. I had it all with me in four decorative tote bags, one with a lot of bling and glittery things on it. Cupcake, the roadhouse’s VP and mybest friend, called it bedazzled and wanted it when I was done using it improperly to carry around Bug ship parts. Whatever.
The ship housing my Bug looked fine. Lights worked. AI worked. I’d been able to run pipe for water, lines for electric. Teach the AI English. Work with it. Him.
Jolene’s and Gomez’s AIs had developed personalities, apparently fallen in love, and were going to get married. Whatever that meant to them.
Something caught my eye. I looked up and stepped back quickly. The ceiling was glistening with a clear fluid. I knew for a fact it hadn’t glistened before.
“Bloody farting butt-cheeks. I have a leak.” I sniffed. It didn’t smell like sewage. Sooo, maybe clean water leak? That would be an expensive loss. I pulled over a . . . athingthat looked vaguely like a plastic box but was heavy enough to hold a full set of human workout weights. I stood on it and reached up to touch a wet blob. Rubbed my fingers together with my thumb.
Not water. Something almost oily.
Tuffs took a running leap and landed on top of PopPop, her claws trying to dig in on the smooth carapace. The claws on a back foot hooked into an empty eye socket and she stopped forward momentum. She was now higher than I was and she rose onto her back legs, front paws bent like elbows for balance, her nose and whiskers in the air. Quivering. All over.
I sniffed my fingers, and this time I caught a faint hint of peppermint. “That can’t be good.”
I stepped down from the heavy box and retreated another step. What had Gomez said about PopPop? That it was now in an ‘active, timorous, saturated, multi-level sponge state?’
Tuffs hissed, showing her fangs, a long, spitting. “Sisssss,” of fury. It was followed by the words, “Mrow Siss.”Danger. And sometimes, dangerous invaders.
I followed her eyes to a small glistening glob that hung a bit lower than the rest, as if it might fall. The globule was less clear, more milky than the other wet patches.
It wiggled.
Tuffs hissed again.
“Active, timorous, multilevel, satiated, sponge state, my sweet ass,” I muttered.
“Incorrect,” Gomez said over the ship’s comms system, sounding snooty. “Active, timorous, sat-ur-ated,multi-larvalsponge state.”
“Multi . . .”
Tuffs leaped to the floor and took off for the exit as fast as her damaged paw allowed her. I was wondering if a flame thrower would kill it. And if Gomez would kill me if I tried. Because I was pretty sure the sodding alien had babies on the ceiling.
Over comms, Jolene said, “Mina Marconi is approaching, two clicks and closing fast.”
I was still looking at the ceiling. Wiggling. Definitely wiggling. Made my skin crawl. Had to find a flame thrower. But Marconi’s psycho killer daughter had to come first. If she made me kill her that would solve one of my many pending problems.
I almost cussed, but followed Tuffs back up the steep stairs to the command level.
“Jolene, connect me with Old Man Marconi.”
“Puttin’ in a call right now, Shining Sugar.”
I pulled on a comms unit and my kutte, the one that represented the roadhouse, with roadhouse colors on the back. I also grabbed a forty-five cal pre-war semiautomatic. If I was meeting the crazies today, I’d do it with a fighting chance of surviving.
“Bike? Weapons?” I demanded.
“Mina is riding a Suzuki, streamlined and heavily muted. Bike is shielded. Has battery backup for stealth. Fast. Minimally weaponed. One hand weapon, likely her prewar H&K, one blaster, according to scans.”
Right. Scans could be fooled. “Mateo?”
“On the way to the front in full camo mode, weapons locked and loaded.”
Mina liked to hurt people. She called peoplepets. I tapped my headset and said, “Jolene, get the girls and the kid to the bunker.”
