I’m not—
“She wanted to come.” His metallic voice sounded surprised, a little more melodic than usual. “Alone,” he added.
In the distance, cats yowled and hissed and screeched. The glittering eyes vanished, but the sounds of the cat and rat skirmish grew.
He had stopped again, so I said, “Okay. Yeah.”
“I’m not—”
I waited.
“The nanos between us have weakened. You know that.”
“Yeah,” I said. Looked as if we were having a heart-to-heart. Mateo and I had never had one before, so I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say or do. I stuck my gloved hands into my pockets and rested fully on the bike seat, my boots on the polluted ground to either side of the Kow bike.
“I could leave,” he said. “Leave the roadhouse. Leave you. But I haven’t.”
I shrugged. We both knew if the military or the Gov. got their hands on him, they’d rip his damaged body out of his bot and take the warbot suit for themselves. And he’d die slow and painfully. But yeah, technically he could leave.
Softer than I’d ever heard him speak, almost gently, Mateo said, “I was in a position of command for most of my life until the end of the war. I understand command presence, command power. But you don’t have any of the qualities that usually pertain to creating loyalty and adherence to a structured military or orderly life. ”
“Thanks,” I said, letting a little of the sarcasm his comment deserved into my voice.
Mateo chuckled, and that was still the sound of grating metal. The sound eased the tension that had grown between my shoulder blades as he talked.
“Why do people come to you?” he asked. “Even people who aren’t thralls.
Why do they come and then want to stay? Why do they want to help you when you have plans or ideas or needs, no matter how stupid?
It isn’t money, because you’re broke most of the time.
It isn’t companionship, because you’re not that much fun to be around. ”
“Hell, man. Flatter me some more,” I said, insulted, yet wanting to snicker. But also knowing he was opening his heart to me for something that was important to him.
“You can’t be solely a relief from boredom to people,” Mateo said. “Your ideas are crazy as shit, so they don’t follow along because of your brilliance. You have no charisma. And you’re about as charming as one of your half wild cats.”
My sense of insult was growing, but I was equally riveted by his openness, his honesty. It was not thrall-like at all. “Bloody sodding damn, dude,” I said. “Lay the sweet-talk on a little less thick, will you? I’m drowning in the syrupy words.”
He swore, laughing. And maybe something else at the same time.
“Evelyn wanted to come so she could see you work. She wants to observe you. Jagger and Jacopo and Bengal are fascinated with you, and the last two have no nanobot ties to you. Some of the top men in the motorcycle gangs are coming to help.”
“Clubs,” I said automatically.
“And frankly,” he said, ignoring my comment, “so do I. You make life interesting. You make people feel as if they’re contributing to something important. And nothing has been important in this world since the Bugs came and shut us down for our own good.”
I wanted to pull my shoulders up again, but this time as a protective gesture. I didn’t know what to say to all that. Despite the negative delivery, it was a compliment. A bloody huge compliment. A small part of me wondered if he was softening me up so he could shoot me in the back or something.
“I want to thank you for getting Evelyn back for me,” Mateo said, as human as I had ever heard him.
“Thank you for the Battle of Warhammer’s Nest. I know it cost you.
Cost everyone. People died, and they died because you made them understand and believe that destroying the queen was something worth fighting for.
And even though Evelyn wasn’t the prime reason for going into Warhammer’s Nest, you didn’t forget her.
You didn’t leave her there. And you bought all the Berger chips to jumpstart her brain.
And now she’s coming here. On her own. Alone.
Because she’s finding her memories and herself.
I just wanted you to know. That is the best thing anyone has ever done for me. Ever. In my life.”
I tilted my head up and around and wondered what his expression might be in the dark behind the screen so many meters above me. “You’re welcome.”
Spy interrupted our chat, thank everything holy. She trotted up, eyes gleaming in the dark, her gray body a shadow. She was carrying two blood-smeared, very dead rats in her mouth. “Good work, Spy,” I said. “Impressive kills.”
She lifted her head once in acknowledgment, much like a member of a street gang might when passing another killer on the sidewalk.
Pounce and Wrench, named cats, were on her six, each with a mine rat. They were her top lieutenants and the second best hunter-warriors in Spy’s cat destruction.
* * *
It was a miserable, mostly sleepless night on the hard ground, beneath the tent flaps we had erected between a cluster of big boulders and a stone wall that had once been part of a building.
All I wanted to do was go to the roadhouse and curl up in the office bed in warm blankets and clean linens.
I was getting used to the comforts of home, but that was turning me into a weakling.
No one else complained, so neither did I. But I wanted to.
At sunrise, the foul air switched direction again as the cold front blew in.
I hadn’t brought heavy winter clothes, and my fingers were blue when I took the riding gloves off to see them.
I felt like bloody sodding shite, to quote Pops, but at least we were able to eat breakfast without gagging, coughing, and choking, thanks to the wind change.
We all needed time on oxygen and an hour in a medbay, which we hadn’t brought.
Because this wasn’t supposed to be an extended road trip.
Fortunately, we had backup coming and Evelyn was bringing a medbay from the roadhouse, a battlefield triage model, with specific supplies for inhalation injuries and chemical burns.
She was driving the junkyard’s old diesel cab truck, pulling the flatbed trailer I used when I hauled bigger scrap.
Most importantly, she really was driving alone, which was dangerous for anyone in this day and time, but especially so for women.
The truck was semi-armored and had weapons that would chew up any number of attackers, but that usually required a driver and a shooter, and both with fully functioning brains. Evelyn was solo and a few cards short of a deck. It was big step for her.
Before we could get a camp stove heated for breakfast, Anse’s truck pulled up and deposited the Bug ship rings, the gyroscopic-looking things that composed the outer hulls of their spaceships.
The driver and her shotgun, both wearing the uniforms of the Logan Wildcats Militia, unloaded the rings and scrap, not talking, not smiling, and clearly not happy to be making this particular delivery for their leader.
They were in camp less than half an hour, and when they took off, it was without a goodbye. Or any other words. Mine dust swirled in the wake of their tires. I decided I couldn’t care and returned to the main tent and the stench of fake coffee boiling in an old-fashioned steel percolator.
After eggy goo and thin, watery coffee, Jagger, Jacopo, and I reconnoitered the entire mining site on our bikes.
The place took the words grim, forbidding, harsh, and depressing to new lows.
No kind of land reclamation or remediation had been done by the mining company.
No pollution cleanup. Nothing. There were bones here and there, mostly not human, some that might have been human before they were chewed on and scattered.
It was an impossible place to live and a bad place to die.
But we did find the smaller pond and chose a location to dump the remains of the burned alien ship. We also set up lines of sight for filming, shooting, should that be necessary, and places to bury caltrops and plant mines.
“Mines in the mine,” Jacopo said.
It might have been a weak joke. What did I know about a teenager with old, old eyes, a hard face, and who shot like a wizard?
The motorcycle clubs began to arrive before noon.
Not every club made an appearance, but three more Boozefighters rode in behind three of the Sisters of the Cross, five more from Marconi’s chapter of Hells Angels, and five OMW bikes wheeled in soon after—two of the toughest made-men and three wannabees.
All brought equipment. Everyone rode club bikes and wore kuttes.
Which meant, for the clubs making an appearance, this was now official club business.
I put on the roadhouse kutte. So did Amos and Cupcake.
Jagger was wearing butt-stomper boots, his Enforcer OMW kutte with all the chapter house badges on it, and rings on every finger for smacking people around.
I loved those rings. Weapons rested in full view at his waist, both shins, spine.
Tattoos of his Outlaw Militia Warrior life and of the Last War ran up his hands, beneath his sleeves, and up his forearms, reappearing at the back of his neck.
Muscles lean and hard as the bedrock beneath his boots.
He had a reputation of wild brutality and intolerant viciousness on a daily basis.
But today, he lived up to and surpassed all that, taking that rep to new heights, and new lows.
When he walked to the sisters, sitting on their bikes, they catcalled and whistled.
He laughed and it sounded mean. His back was to me and his butt in those jeans did something wondrous and terrible to my body.
It wasn’t just violence that woke up my nanobots. Lust did the trick too.
I shouldn’t want the man in my life. It was stupid. But bloo-dy da-yum.
Fortunately or not, a coughing fit grabbed my lungs in its claws and drew my attention from the hormone drive.