Junkyard Riders #8
“Sugar, my information is incomplete. Howevah.” She divided the word into two and dragged out the Southern last syllable, which meant she was not happy about something, most likely me, sticking my nose into her business.
“I accessed his Berger comms and downloaded its transmissions for the last thirty days. And since you don’t seem to trust me to do my job, the summary is as follows: The Bug ship transmission confounded the military’s hierarchy something fierce, but they don’t know where the afore-mentioned Bug ship is.
This we already knew,” she said, sounding more and more irritated.
“There was no mention in the Berger’s record of two ships crashed in close proximity.
Which we already knew. And we already knew that the DRs would be coming to search.
“As I said. Noth-ing new.”
Inside, I felt chastised like a kid, but on my outside, I was standing my ground. “I want dates and times and numbers.” I said.
“There’s an old human saying about horses and peasants. Give. Me. Time.”
My comms made a click to let me know the conversation was over.
She was never really gone, though. There were speakers, mics, and cams everywhere.
Privacy was a lie, a falsehood. “What’s a peasant?
” I asked. She didn’t answer and I wasn’t interested enough to ask my Berger chip and get it started telling me things I didn’t care about.
I decided a trip to the Urgent Care was in order and since I didn’t want to go through the roadhouse again, I grabbed a jacket and headed out the back airlock door.
The trip around the office to the UC, past the greenhouses and the water treatment system and the new chicken coop took longer, but the privacy of a short walk, such as it was, was priceless.
Stone crunched under my feet. The winter wind was cold, dry, and gusty, burning my face. Cats raced here and there, doing cat things. Most of them looked at me from the corner of their eyes. Others crouched as if considering me prey.
The UC was one of a line of shipping containers, all the exteriors painted to match the stone beneath my feet so that a flyover with cams would reveal little.
Each container had been repurposed into a different function, the insides all distinct.
Some were hotel suites. One was a shower and laundry.
One was basically a holding cell with full lockdown capabilities.
It could survive an armed assault and was equipped with cams and audio surveillance, but no one knew that.
Not even the people who had stayed there.
The inside of the Urgent Care shipping container had been painted white by Jolene, remodeled into a windowless hospital center with multiple medbays.
It was cold, sterile, and devoid of anything that might make it comfortable to humans, but the medbays it contained healed humans and cats, and that was all I cared about.
Tugging on my gloves to make sure I wouldn’t shed nanos, I tried to open Mina’s medbay but it was locked.
According to the readout, her medical treatments were complete, all except the dregs of the detox from Devil’s Milk, and the lid should have opened.
It didn’t. I punched in the proper code again and again it didn’t open. I couldn’t override it.
Something was up. I tapped my comms and said aloud, “Jolene, override the medbay lock.”
“I’m sorry, Shining Sugah. No can do.”
I didn’t get mad often, like hot and furious and mean, mad.
Getting even was better. But I felt something bubbling beneath my breastbone, that might be a little pissed off, as thoughts squirmed through my brain about a sentient AI’s lack of compassion and what such an AI might do if allowed unrestricted access to a psycho’s brain.
Softly, I asked, “What are you and the cat doing to Mina?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Jolene said.
My body went cold as a shaft of alarm went through me. Without letting any of the dawning horror sound in my voice or show on my face, I said, “Try me.”
The UC door opened and a dozen cats swarmed inside, scampering, leaping, and racing everywhere in the Urgent Care trailer. They were led by Spy, Spy’s glaring, the cats all loyal to her, all familiar to me. Most were even named cats, which meant important cats on important cat business.
Spy leaped to the top of Mina’s medbay, arched her back, extruded her claws, and hissed at me. Showing fangs.
It occurred to me that cats, like AIs, had little, if any, compassion.
Combined with their intense catty curiosity, should a sentient AI and a glaring of ESP cats join forces, they could easily take over the world.
Except for canned food. They’d need humans to open cans of tuna.
Until we ran out of tuna and they just decided to eat us.
Something was happening in my medbay and my thralls were in control, not me.
It was weirding me out, a creepy combination of anger and fear. This time, I was experiencing no happiness at their independence. Not being in control felt off this time. Bad. Almost menacing.
Jethro, an intact male, leapt to the trespasser’s medbay lid and sat, tail tip twitching.
“Jolene,” I said, my voice controlled and calm. “You’re experimenting on Mina, aren’t you?” I stared at Jethro, a black cat with yellow-green eyes. “And the trespasser. You’re inserting your new control mechanisms in both.” My voice fell into a whisper. “Bloody hell, Jolene. What are you doing?”
“Restricted. Information is not available below a Top Secret security clearance level.”
That AI voice and those words had been CAIT, not Southern Jolene, which meant the ship, and probably Mateo, since he had brought in the trespasser, were in charge of this . . . This whatever it was.
I realized, in a cold rush, that, even though they were thralls, I could be in danger—not of dying, but maybe of some other results, some other .
. . Bloody damn. Some other programing. A pre-war command imperative.
Because if they were doing something that might harm the world, but not harm me, they could be following two separate protocols: the military’s prewar will, and also the thrall directive—keep Shining alive.
They could, conceivably, immobilize me to carry out the other command protocol. Despite the fact that I was stronger, faster, and healed better than a human, I still could be knocked out, gassed. Whatever. And they would be fully in charge.
Slowly, speaking carefully, I said, “CAIT. You’ve accessed US military orders and are carrying them out. Correct?”
“Affirmative,” CAIT said.
“Acknowledged,” I said, forcing my breaths to remain slow, and my heartbeats regular. “I would like to speak with Jolene.”
“Hey there, Shining Sugah,” Jolene said. But she sounded guarded.
So instead of asking her what I wanted to know, I asked, “Do you have an update on the Dark Riders truck?”
“Yes, I do and it ain’t good.”
“I’m listening.”
“The truck has pulled over. Dark Riders are unloading bikes. They have launched a Vertical Takeoff and Landing drone, Model VTOL 134, equipped with cameras and EntNu, and one rider has gone ahead, following or piloting the drone.”
“Heading?” I asked.
“Shining Sugah, if I gave you a heading would you know what I was referring to?” she demanded, familiar asperity in her tone.
This was the real Jolene. But I knew she was being monitored by CAIT. Multiple personalities when it came to Top Secret orders? Some plan CAIT had altered to include the cats and their nanos and their purpose? Bloody sodding hell.
Jolene went on. “The riders are currently being monitored by one of my aerial drones, flying above the VTOL. The VTOL is currently heading toward your new allies, Four Corners Mine, halfway to Logan, West Virginia.”
That was one of the locations I had worried about.
Cupcake was at the mine, on a trading trip with Amos.
If the DRs went there, my people would be in danger.
There was no way to contact them unless they had managed set up the old style communication system we had cobbled together, and get it to function.
I had nanos and had considered, occasionally, that they might work as a warning system. I sent a worried thought at Cupcake. Waited. Nothing.
Why would Dark Riders go to the Four County Mine? So far as anyone but us knew, the road to the mine was still impassible: bombed by the Bugs from space and melted to slag.
But the mine had the precursors to making meta-materials—materials that had been necessary to the war effort, to solar-system travel, and energy warfare. Maybe the military thought it was time to see if the mine could be reopened, without the Bugs noticing.
Or maybe they thought the Bug ship was there. Which made a peculiar kind of sense, a downed alien spaceship at the mine, crashed during the mine’s bombardment. Yeah. A ship transmission. Same general area. They had to check it out.
I left the UC at a steady walk, vaguely noticing as cold air whipped into my face like a frozen fist. Dropping off my coat in the kitchen nook’s Mini-AG, I walked to Jagger’s table. Without preamble, my words soft enough not to carry, I told him and Jacopo about the Dark Riders.
Jagger, face impassive, listened to my staccato account, his eyes on my face, taking in that I was not myself. That something was wrong. He would feel it in our nanobots, through his connection to me.