Junkyard Riders #7
“Care to join a couple of lonely bikers?” Jagger asked, his voice like whiskey and smoke. He was holding a glass of Velvet Claws in one hand, gold rings on every fingers, like disconnected brass knucks. He knew how to do maximum damage with the rings. Every Enforcer knew how to dish out punishment.
I placed my glass on their table and spun the chair closest to the kitchen door around.
I swung a leg over and braced one arm across the back, sitting spraddle-legged.
That had the advantage of drawing Jagger’s eyes to places that couldn’t hurt him, much, and away from my hands and weapon, which could hurt him if needed.
I wasn’t particularly fond of sweet tea, but anything sweet was a treat these days. I took a long draw, set the glass down. I said, “S’up, boys.”
Jagger rocked back in his chair until the front legs came off the floor and the chair back touched the kitchen wall.
It gave me a full view of his torso and brought to mind things we had done in the office bed, but I shut that thought down.
We were both posturing, stupid grade school stuff, but I couldn’t think of a way to break our cycle, and wasn’t sure I wanted to think of a way break it. At least not at the moment.
“You break the chair, you pay for the chair,” I said.
“Noted,” Jagger said.
Jacopo leaned onto one armrest of his own chair and draped his other arm across the back of it, an amused expression on his face.
Yeah. We were posturing. Even a teenager knew it.
Jagger let himself down to all four legs and his business face fell over his features, the one that said he’d kill at a whim, and not to push him too far.
“The Prez of the top five clubs, and McQuestion, have uncovered the name of a high level Gov. official who’s potentially working with the Dark Riders.
They plan to acquire him and want to keep him at the roadhouse. ”
I busted out laughing. Bluster and pretension over. Bring out the guns. Got it.
“Acquire?” I asked, my tone a challenge rather than asking for clarification. “As in a kidnap of a Gov. official?” I waved away his answer before he could begin. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter. No can do, Enforcer, even if I wanted to go up against the Gov. I already have a full house.”
I tapped my morphon, as I said, “Jolene, put up the Urgent Care pics and adjust the medbay lids so the faces, and only the faces, of the patients can be seen.” Because that sounded too much like an order to a thrall, I added, “Also, please be so kind and put the pics up on the screen over the bar.”
“Sure, Sugar. Hey Jagger, Jacopo,” she said, though her bot-body was nowhere in sight.
“Jolene,” they said, together.
A moment later, Marconi’s son sucked in a breath and he started to rise.
“Before you get all pissed off,” I said, “your father has been informed. Jolene, run the vid from Mina’s arrival this morning.”
“Up and running,”
To give the kid credit, he sat down, pretended to relax, and didn’t look away from the screen.
He didn’t seem to react at all, which meant he had been learning from Jagger.
Jacopo watched the vid play through and then replay.
Jolene, watching on cams, shut off the screens and the music after the third replay, without me asking.
Her understanding of human psychology was becoming as ESP-ish as the cats, which worried me, but there was nothing I could do about that either.
“What’s she on?” Jacopo asked.
Adult question. I decided to give him an adult answer.
I hoped I didn’t wound him. “After she considered killing you in the battle at Logan, your parents put her on DM. They’ve tried to control the dose, but that results in a constant, slow state of withdrawal.
She came here thinking I had some. She’s sedated while your parents decide what to do. ”
“And the cat in the medbay with her?”
“No idea,” I said. Total lie. I had too many ideas, some of them scary, but Jacopo didn’t need to know that.
I shifted my gaze to Jagger, who was watching me with a weird expression on his face. It was gone before I could analyze it, so I said, “So. No room at the inn.”
“Literally,” he said. “And I didn’t know you were religious.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. We’ll find a place to store him. Her. Whatever.”
Over my private comms, Jolene said, “Shining, Sugar, we have distant activity.”
I stood up and returned my chair to its place.
Placed my empty glass in the tub of water where all dirties went, especially anything I had touched with bare skin.
Water and AntiGrav were the only things that killed nanobots, and while a prez shouldn’t wash her own dishes, I made certain exceptions.
“On my way,” I said aloud. Jagger looked at me in question but I didn’t respond.
Distant activity had to be from the new images she was stealing from an EU satellite.
“Enjoy your meal,” I said to the two men.
Four new customers walked in. I scanned the customers as they deposited their weapons in one of the lock boxes at the door.
Biker wannabees by the look of their clothes and gear—all newish, all clean, no grease stains, no patches.
The two men looked over the roadhouse, a little too eager, a lot too nonchalant.
The way they walked, the way their eyes moved, said they had paramilitary training and curiosity but no intent to hit the place, no immediate objective.
This didn’t look like a recce with intent to rob or kill.
Still. My nanobots flared with interest. I glanced at Jagger who took them in with a single glance and then looked away. He had reached the same conclusion. No danger. But my nanobots fluctuated higher, racing. Damn it.
I took my eyes off Jagger and back to the four. Something out of place. Or not. When Asshole was near I couldn’t trust my nano-intuition.
The four chose a table in the front corner, away from the windows.
Smart under ordinary circumstances, but in this case, it told me they didn’t know the windows were armored and protected against all outside surveillance.
They didn’t have biker connections and they hadn’t done any research into the roadhouse.
They were just customers showing off for their dates.
The women were gigglers with braided hair, vintage jean jackets, and scuffed cowboy boots.
I glanced at the screen over the bar, one showing the front lot.
They had ridden in on two old Kow bikes from forty years ago.
I checked the screen that showed their weapons in the weapon bin. Pre-war six-shooters.
No self-respecting biker would carry anything but a semiautomatic, a blaster, or both. My first appraisal had been right. Wannabees, not a danger.
Bloody hell, it was like being in heat when Jagger was around.
Jolene’s bot walked in through the kitchen door.
The four at the table went dead silent, all four with big eyes and shocked expressions.
Jolene wiggled her hips at them.
I held in a laugh at their reaction and hiding my amusement, I took the crooked hallway to the office, poured a cup of coffee that hadn’t scorched yet, and sat at the command chair.
Once upon a time the oversized chair had held the massive carapace of PopPop, who was now a multilarval whatchamacallit dripping on the ceiling below me.
I tapped a button and said to the alien AI, “Good morning, Gomez.”
“Good morning, Shining.” He had switched to a British accent, highbrow, not South London, like my father’s.
It didn’t quite bring tears to my eyes, but it did bring on a burst of grief, which I hid from him.
Not it. Gomez had identified as male, so, whatever.
I was being forced to learn how to socialize with people, cats, intelligences, and maybe larva. Larvas? Larvae?
I had been alone for years, until Jagger walked into my life, all OMW swagger and sex appeal. I had gotten used to my aloneness. More or less. The new constant and necessary interactions were their own kind of stress.
“Jolene says we have activity,” I said to Gomez.
A satellite view appeared on the alien-Bug-screen over the command chair.
I watched as it ratcheted down until it was a view of an eight square kilometer area, the roadhouse pinpointed as a red dot off to the west. To the east, toward Logan, was a blue dot.
Where the other Bug alien ship had crashed.
The visual clicked down, closer to earth, magnifying things on the ground.
A caravan of familiar trucks came into view, the kind the Dark Riders used.
The trucks, if they came from Charlotte, North Carolina, were either taking the long way to Logan, or the long way to the roadhouse, or the short way to the mine where Amos and Cupcake were headed.
Or anywhere else within biking distance.
Either way, this was the first time we knew where they were before they got to a destination.
I tapped on the screen showing me the UC, and two views of the occupied medbays appeared, side by side. One was opaque, its readouts showing it was in surgery mode, and the other was Mina. With a red cat curled around her head.
I tapped my comms and said, “Jolene. Do you have info from your prisoner? Not Mina. The other one.”
“I’m not a miracle worker, Shining, Sugah. He’s still in surgery.”
“I know. But . . .” I let the word trail off. Sometimes she let things drop, things that, in a human, would be considered opinions, but in her discourse would be called fuzzy probabilities.