I’m not— #3
But worst case scenarios all said we’d have to kill.
I dug more trenches into the bedrock. The vibrations were horrible, and my nanos were working overtime to drain the fluid that built up to protect my joints and muscles. Operating heavy machinery was debilitating, all on its own.
By the end of the day, my muscles were quivering, my hands were swollen, and my brain buzzed as if an electric current ran through it.
I needed an inhaler, and Evelyn came to the rescue again, giving me her own private one, so I didn’t transition anyone.
It was a kindness I didn’t expect. Or it was a thrall protecting me. It was hard to tell anymore.
When I took a hit, the meds shocked through me and I coughed like a three-pack-a-day smoker from back before the war. My bronchial tubes opened up. My next breath of the thin, cold, contaminated air sent me into coughing fit. The air here was enough to kill.
The wind changed direction at sunset, bringing an even deeper cold, one laced with ice, sharp enough to dry out skin and make it bleed.
The sky in the west was gorgeous at the edge of the cloud cover, red, orange, and purple, with an overlay of green and indigo haze from the fumes emanating from the ponds.
Beautiful. Deadly. Humans had thoroughly ruined the Earth.
We didn’t deserve to still be alive, walking on its face.
Nightfall was easier to contemplate in the safety between boulders, a pile of slag ten feet tall, and the remains of a wall to protect us, tent tarps over us.
It wasn’t near as cozy as the small buildings that had been claimed by the Sisters, but the buildings were the most likely target for aerial attack if we were spotted.
Tomika didn’t seem worried about the possibility of bombardment, and her three bedded down there.
Some of us had sleeping bags and foam mats, there were blankets and air mattresses for others. The cats decided to curl up around me, Spy inside the bag with me, only the tip of her nose exposed. I’d rather have Jagger, but he wasn’t offering.
I fluffed the bag’s pillow. “You could have done this last night,” I grouched. “It was colder than a miner’s arse.” Spy closed her eyes and began to purr. Which wasn’t a bad way to fall asleep.
At dawn, Evelyn headed back to the roadhouse.
We divided up into groups, with one group once again scouring for useful supplies, another group testing cams and comms, and my group preparing the mine for trouble and placing the fake Bug weapon we had made on the ground near the smaller pond and the ship rings.
We had no idea when the Dark Riders would get their bowels sorted out and tell their upline people about the rumors of a Bug ship crashed in the mine. And we had no idea when the DRs would send reconnaissance to check it out. Could be today. Could be tomorrow.
When we inspected our work, following the third dawn, we decided that we had done a bloody fine job. We cleaned up after ourselves enough that the tracks and disturbances looked as if they had been there for decades.
If we got lucky, the Dark Riders would show up in force.
If we got real lucky, Gov. and real military would show up with them and get filmed and we wouldn’t have to fight.
Luck and I had a weird relationship. It liked slapping me in the face and then gifting me something nice, and before I could enjoy the niceness, slapping me again. Luck was a domestic abuser on steroids.
Jagger pinged me on comms. “Check the weather. Temps are about to start dropping fast.”
I opened my morphon and tapped on to Jolene’s EntNu, allowing me use weather trackers on electronics without being traced.
Into my ear Jagger said. “The winter storm changed direction and could be turning our way. If it does, when it hits, the roads will be impassable. No one will be able to get in or out. It’s moving fast, so wherever it turns, it’s projected to blow out within twenty-four hours, and after it blows through, it’ll warm to five centigrade.
Back to winter / early spring desert. If we get the brunt, and the Dark Riders don’t come before, we’ll be stuck here through a snowfall and—”
Jolene broke into the conversation. “A Gov. drone is headed your way. Five minutes to take cover. My drones are going down under cover so they won’t be seen. I will not be providing aerial surveillance.”
Jagger stopped talking and his comms went silent.
At a dead run to my earth mover, I tapped my comms, opening to everyone in the area, and shouted, “Get equipment and people under cover! Drone incoming!”
To Jolene, I said. “Razor, Big Dick, start the fires. Jolene, before your drones are down, are you able to send the fake Bug signal?”
“Affirmative, Sugah,” she said, “but it has to be fast.”
“CAIT sanctions operational actions,” a second voice said.
I swiveled on the front-end loader and moved it between two boulders. Keyed it off.
To my left, Mateo strode to the small containment pond.
He dumped oil over the surface and backed away.
Razor McBride and Big Dick McKracken ignited the fire.
Sparks whooshed out. Diesel and toxic fluids flamed high, burning together.
The two humans ran upwind for shelter. Mateo dropped down on his telescoping legs and activated camo. He looked like a rock.
The fire was meant to confuse the Dark Riders’ higherups. It was to make them ask the question: Why would it still be burning unless it had some kind of new of form energy that simply burned off and on forever. They wouldn’t be able to resist that.
The fumes could kill us, but we had all agreed. We needed the burn to galvanize them.
The moment Mateo was down, everyone else dove into trenches or ducked against rock faces. The ones close enough to the camp area raced there and opened auto-camouflaging ghillie cloth, hiding everything they could. It wasn’t much cover but it would do.
Last one down, I crawled on my belly under a narrow overhang, near my equipment, tension tightening my shoulders and legs. Fight or flight. The drone could be armed. There might be Marsies—micro drones that could go anywhere, see anything. They could be armed. Mini killer drones, to fight humans.
“My drones are down,” Jolene said, “but I’m locked on. My scanners specify one drone. Camera. No AI. Human directed via satellite. No IR or low-light scanning equipment.”
I relaxed against the stone face. If the drone had carried scanning equipment it would have picked up our heat siggies with infrared at the very least. My earth mover put off a lot of heat that I had hoped to hide between the cold rocks. Now I didn’t have to worry about detection.
Jolene informed us of its whereabouts. “The drone is flying a circuit around the mine’s perimeter.”
It was silent, its auto camo paintjob making it invisible.
“It has begun a spiral pattern,” Jolene said.
Minutes later she said, “It’s hovering over the ship rings, circling the pond. Not paying attention to anything that might be out of place.”
Later she said, “Drone is heading out, straight line. I am tracking to final location.”
“They took the bait,” I said.
“Ten four, front door,” she said.
“What?” I asked.
“That’s Southern trucker for Affirmative, Sugah,” she said. “I think.”
“Replica facsimile Bug signal sent,” CAIT said.
“Copy that,” I said. I didn’t want to talk to CAIT. I didn’t want CAIT to be a thing in my life. Or be a thing anywhere. But life, luck, and nanobots seldom let me have everything I wanted. Hell. They seldom let me have anything I wanted.
* * *
Two hours later, snow began to blow in on high winds.
The storm, fickle as a man, was heading straight toward us.
In half an hour, the snow had mounded up mid-calf high in places and was sticking to everything it touched.
The roads were indistinguishable from the ditches and the mine cracks.
Travel wasn’t just stupid, it could be deadly.
We were snowed in and no way would the Gov.
and military try to reach this godforsaken place in this weather.
All this shit had been for nothing. It was freaking cold.
And I was furious at myself for getting us stuck in this mess.
According to Jagger’s chrono, in four hours, we’d have two meters of snow.
While we were still trying to create weather-resistant quarters, Evelyn drove back down the mine road.
All by herself, she had made the decision that turning around gave her the best option for survival.
She had performed a ten point turn with an empty trailer, no mean feat, when the storm approached.
When the snow got too deep to see the roadbed, Evelyn had parked, walked ahead and then back, had then driven to the end of her safe route, and repeated the stop, walk, return, and drive procedure, all through a whiteout, drawing on my nanobots to keep her on course.
During the entire trip, the snow had filled in tracks and smoothed out the evidence of her presence, her movement. And she never drove off the road.
I hadn’t understood it, but I had felt her using me as a homing device.
Now, she was curled up with a couple of nameless cats in our makeshift HQ, keeping her nine remaining fingers warm in front of the camp stove.
Her eyes were blank, her head bowed. Everyone but Evelyn had a job to prepare for the Dark Riders or to prep to ride out the storm.
I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
Making sure I was properly gloved, I patted her on the shoulder and said, “You did fantastic, Evelyn. I’m proud of you.”
When she didn’t respond, I figured it was because I was a nobody in the world she had once inhabited, and she didn’t need my approval.
Or that she needed more nanobots, which I wasn’t willing to give, or more Berger chips, which I didn’t have with me.
I patted her again and stepped back into the storm.