Junkyard Riders #14
“No,” I said, improvising on the fly. “Setting up the scene and getting the DRs there is part one. Part two—we go public. I’m still working out the details but I have an idea for part two.
” And, oddly, I did. If Gomez and Jolene .
. . and CAIT were really willing to help.
Yeah. I needed CAIT. Blast it all to hell.
I needed the super-secret AI program that had lain buried inside Jolene for years.
I had a feeling that CAIT would as soon fry me as scan at me, but I’d take what I could get.
Jagger chuckled under his breath. “We have a snowball’s chance of surviving the first appearance of anybody in military or Gov., but it does sound like fun.”
Bengal said, “I got some people who might be interested in it.” His tone said they would be interested and they’d show up for sure.
“Thing this big,” Bengal said, “potentially, this big,” he reconsidered, waffling his bot-hand side to side, “all the clubs might want a piece. We got our own egos, our own goals, our own territory to protect. Taking down the riders and the faction in the military going their way, and the Gov. members working with them? Yeah, Little Girl, that’s big enough to interest them.
Maybe. Let’s find out if the devil wants to come out and play first, and take a gander at the containment pond. Then I’ll take it up channels.”
That was fair. I called Devil Anse and shared the bare bones of Part One. “You in?” I asked.
What followed was a dicker-session between two junkyard owners about borrowing the rings of Bug alien ship number two. Anse said he wanted two truckloads of coal to borrow the rings, and he wanted the rings returned.
I was at a disadvantage. I wanted something from Anse more than he wanted what I had. I was about to pay two truckloads of coal to rent the rings when Cupcake butted in.
“One truck load,” she said.
Since Cupcake had just come from Four Corners Mine, I stepped away from the conversation. In a matter of minutes, she had charmed him down.
Anse said, “Cupcake, I’ll take one load of coal and a favor to be returned. For the outstanding favor, I’ll even deliver the rings and scrap.”
Too easy. The other shoe would fall at the worst possible moment and I’d pay the worst possible return. As an investment, this one sucked, not that I had a choice. Grudgingly, I nodded agreement.
Bengal sent word out what we were planning.
Together, as a group, not as a queen forcing thralls to do what I wanted, we fleshed out my plan and divvied up the list of the stuff we needed to make any kind of “Bug Ship Con” work.
Then we scoured the surrounding area for parts and scrap and whatever looked interesting.
* * *
We left for the Twilight Mine late in the afternoon, carrying the Bug transmitter and a new, patched together “Fake Bug Weapon,” made of scrap metal, commercial cast iron water pipes that had been half buried in a bombed plumbing supply store, slag, some huge batteries that had once stored solar power, some chlorine tanks from a pool supply store, and Anse’s Bug ship rings.
All of it had been loaded onto a flatbed by Anse, another favor I’d owe him.
I was also still carrying the slivers of the not-a-boulder in my lead tin.
I hadn’t shared the EntNu blocking principles of the slivers with the others, yet, and though I didn’t know why I hadn’t shared, I trusted my gut that I shouldn’t let CAIT know I had them.
Or that I had figured out what the not-a-boulder did with EntNu.
Because the more I thought about it, the properties of the not-a-boulder were bloody weird.
It was darker than pitch when we reached the Twilight Mine turn off. The wind had changed direction at sunset, and the air was barely breathable, harsh and sharp and coating the back of my throat and lungs with each inhalation—aerosoled metals, poisons, and the promise of a slow, polluted death.
Leaving the others to find a place to camp on the side of the road, preferably one protected from the wind and its stench, Mateo and I took a sharp right into hell, a winding way over boulders, through washed out ruts, and into a darkness so complete that the air was weighted with it.
Mateo’s warbot suit lights showed us as much of the land as the beams could reach. It wasn’t pretty.
What had once been a mountain was now lifeless bedrock, patches shimmering with liquid that wasn’t water, a few buildings here and there, falling in, rusting equipment, some bigger than the buildings themselves.
Twilight was more foul than the land Smith’s Junk and Scrap and my roadhouse occupied.
This landscape was barren, cratered, cracked, a place of toxic fumes and scree, devoid of anything that looked like life.
Except the eyes glowing in the warbot-lights, red and feral and hungry.
A few animals had adapted to the post-war world, rats, bats, roaches, coyotes, and some cats.
These eyes were too low to the ground for anything but rats, and since the war of Warhammer’s Nest, I had developed an aversion to rodents.
The cats, however still had a thing for rats, and Spy led her clowder on a hunting party, racing past my legs and wheels, and leaping from Mateo’s suit.
Aiming his lights around the scene, Mateo settled them on a cluster of buildings and said, “Small. But potential places to position our people tomorrow, once we check them out. Could be booby trapped.” He slid the lights across the stone and said, “Several smooth-ish landing sites for the DR’s military helos.
” He indicated another site. “If a pilot is crazy enough, that road might make a landing site for small planes.”
I made a, “Mmmm,” sound, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
Mateo said, “Evelyn’s bringing the backhoe in the morning.”
I made the noncommittal noise again. Evelyn can drive?
Last time I paid her any attention she had been looking out over the landscape with a thousand yard stare, jaw dropped, drooling a little.
Warhammer’s torture and the way the queen used her nanobots to enslave people had left the USSS SunStar’s number one mostly a vegetable.
Beyond the sound that might have been the grunting equivalent of, “Yeah?” I had said nothing.
Mateo and I seldom chitchatted, so I knew that whatever he was about to say was important to him.
When he didn’t go on, I realized that the statement about Evelyn coming might be the important thing, and I had no idea how I was supposed to respond. “Okay. I’m listening,” I said.