“I suppose attaching an angry murderbot to someone is a form of diplomacy.” Bushey chuckled. “Okay, stand back a ways, Jane.”
“I can handle myself.”
“No doubt, but I’d prefer you watching our six and directing that killer-bot swarm of yours. If you get shot here, the mission’s toast and we won’t be able to get chief out of that compound.”
Jane relented and hung back with the cart as the other two approached the door.
The man guarding the door stood, picked up a bat, then walked over to block them, a frown on his face. “No soliciting.”
“We’ve got an appointment upstairs,” Katze said.
“You’re mistaken.”
“We’re here for Preacher.”
The man obviously knew who they were talking about, and did a terrible job pretending otherwise. “This ain’t no church. Nobody here by that name. Now move along.” He slapped the bat in his free hand. A nice menacing gesture. “Or else.”
“All yours,” Bushey said, sounding amused.
Katze walked up to the sneering man.
He tightened his grip on the bat’s neck. “It’s your funeral, chica.”
But Katze simply smiled, moved inhumanly fast, and kicked his knee out from under him. He cried out in pain, sagged to one side, and clutched at his broken leg. The bat clattered to the ground.
“Nap time.” Katze struck him in the side of the head, hard enough to knock him out, and picked up the bat. She nodded toward the door. “May I?”
“Feel free,” Bushey said.
She turned around, kicked in the door, and strode inside, bat lifted.
“That girl needs to work out some aggression,” Jane said.
“She’s just been cooped up too long,” Bushey replied.
There was an entry hall. Inside were two more toughs, one of whom immediately reached for the pistol stuffed in his waistband. Katze hurled the bat, end over end, and struck him in the head. Clonk. The other one rushed her, but the former Marine easily dodged his attack, and put a single well-placed punch to his jaw just below the ear. He went down and smashed a flowerpot. The door began to swing shut, but Katze caught it, and politely held it open for her companions.
“Thank you,” Jane said, as she sent two of her beetles zooming up the stairs. She left another outside, taking a bird’s eye overwatch position. She left two others guarding their gun cart. Woe be onto any street scum who tried to steal that cart! The rest of her army clambered out and followed her inside.
Her scouts were quick on the scans, and she reported what they’d found. “Lots of the apartments are occupied. Two more armed guards on the stairwell entrances, one at the third floor, last on the fourth. That’s as far as they can go without being spotted.”
“That’ll do.” Bushey took the pistol from the dazed man with the fresh dent in his forehead, hid it in one of his pouches, and started up the stairs.
On the third floor, they met a woman with a shotgun, Asian eyes, and straight dark hair. “This is private property,” she told Bushey when she saw him climbing. “Turn around.”
Bushey raised both open hands, trying to look innocent. “We really need to talk to this Preacher guy.”
“You’ve made a serious mistake,” she warned, shouldering her weapon.
“Choots,” Jane said over her net. A sister to Fifi sprang from Jane’s shoulder. One leap took her to Bushey’s head, and then another to fling herself at the woman. Her eyes went wide as Choots landed on her cheek. She tried to bat Choots away, but he was an aggressive model. A little meaner than her sister. She shouted, fell back, flailing wildly.
Bushey appeared to be a little on the dumpy side, but that was an illusion. His mods might be old, but they still worked. As the guard fought Choots, Bushey leapt up the last six stairs and shoulder-checked the woman hard into the wall. He immediately ripped the shotgun from her hands, tossed it to Katze as she bounded past, and then left the poor woman on the floor.
“Contain, don’t mangle,” Jane instructed Choots.
The last of the guards must have heard the commotion, because footsteps sounded above on the stairs.
Jane turned. A man was there, raising a little subgun in one hand, but Katze surprised him and knocked it aside with the shotgun. Then she grabbed him by the back of the head, slammed his face into her knee, and sent him careening back down the stairs. Jane had to flatten herself against the wall to keep from getting knocked down as he bounced past.
This was as far as her scouts had seen, so Jane sent them speeding ahead, faster than the supersoldiers who were practically flying up the stairs could go. It was a good thing Bushey had asked her to hang back, because her unaugmented legs wouldn’t have been able to keep up anyway, and that would have been embarrassing.
Through her beetle’s eyes she saw a short, very pale man coming out of apartment six. He raised a gun, but Bushey was already on him. He dodged to the side, as the muzzle flashed, caught the man’s wrist, twisted his arm, and threw him face-first on the carpet. Somehow the man pulled a knife, seemingly out of nowhere, but Bushey stomped the knife hand.
The lone bullet that had been fired during their confrontation wound up buried in the wall about twenty centimeters from Katze. Jane’s bots recorded the trajectory, and Jane was happy to see that no innocent bystanders were on the other side. That was nice. Jane hated injuring innocent bystanders. Hopefully the sound would have been muffled enough that Big Town security wouldn’t be able to triangulate the gunshot.
By the time she arrived at their destination—a little out of breath, she had to admit—Katze had secured the apartment and had the shotgun pointed at the lone human occupant, a very large man whose hands were raised to the surrender position. He matched Baby’s recording.
Jane checked for Tui’s bot and found that Baby had hidden himself in the ceiling tiles. He obediently dropped down when called.
“Preacher,” Jane said. “We’re here to pick up Red and Blue.”
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” From the looks of things he had been packing a bag. There were a bunch of files and storage chips thrown in a metal bucket. From the can of lighter fluid, he’d been about to burn the evidence.
“It looks like you’re getting ready to get out of town.”
“I’m going on vacation. It’s a free orbital. Or it used to be.”
Back in the stairwell there were shouts and the sound of a number of people mustering a response. Bushey took up position on the door and looked down the hall. Jane’s bots told her that there were several bodies moving up the stairs, all of them armed.
“Stand your people down,” Jane warned. “We really don’t want to hurt them.”
“Who are you?” MacKinnon asked suspiciously. His first thought must have been that they were with the Guard, but that obviously wasn’t the case.
“You left two of our compatriots out to dry. We’ve come to collect them. Now call off your men before anyone else gets hurt. You really don’t want to see us in fight mode.”
MacKinnon nodded toward Katze. “How about she lowers that scatter gat?”
“How about I blow your friggin knee caps off?” Katze responded.
“Hold your horses. I’ll tell them. Okay, everybody, relax. Stay where you are. We’re going to have a calm, rational discussion in here.”
Jane confirmed that he sent that over their comm link, and her bots indicated that the goons had stopped on the stairs. If they started again, they would immediately alert her. “They’re holding position,” she told Bushey.
MacKinnon was pretty cool, considering that Katze was really convincing in her desire to shoot him. “You’re from the Tar Heel.”
“This isn’t a two-way street. You’re going to help us get Jackson and Tui back.”
“They’re in the Warlord’s compound. One of the most secure places in the orbital.”
“I know where they are.”
“Then you know there’s no chan
ce of getting in there. Not with just three of you. No matter how good you are.”
“But there is a chance when there are people on the inside.”
“You have people on the inside?”
“No, but you do. And they’re going to help us.”
MacKinnon laughed. A big deep rumble. “I don’t know who you think I am, but I can’t help you.”
“You’re either the leader of the Originals on this tub, or close enough for my needs.” Jane didn’t have time for this. “Liesel.” A two-centimeter-long bot climbed up on her shoulder. “Grab him.”
Liesel shot toward the big man, but he caught her midair. Held her between his thumb and forefinger. Impressive, Jane thought. MacKinnon must have combat mods too, but he really needed his own squad.
“Gang,” she ordered. More bots climbed out of her pack and various pockets. “Go.” Five bots launched at him simultaneously. He caught Jose. Caught Seth. Batted away Pilgrim. But Bubbles made it through, landed on his neck, and stuck him. He cried out and reached for her, but Bubbles had barbed legs and dug in. She was also designed to inflict pain. When he touched her, she shocked him.
As MacKinnon yanked his hand back, Boris, the last of the five, flanked him, landed behind his left ear, and dug in. MacKinnon had spectacularly quick reflexes. Not many would have been able to catch one of her crew, much less three of them. With his size, he must be hell in a fistfight. Regardless, she had him.
He grunted in pain, then glowered at them. “What is this?”
“A little incentive. Kind of like the awful thing you guys did to Jacky down on the surface.”
“That wasn’t my decision!”
“It was your tribe, so own it. Boris and Bubbles are now your best friends. If you don’t help us, they’ll explode. Their charges are shaped. Bubbles will destroy about two inches of your jugular. Boris will blast through your ear canal and savage your brainstem. That would be a really nasty version of a double tap.”
MacKinnon winced as Boris adjusted his position. “We have jammers.”
“We just walked into your hideout. Do you think your jammers worry me?”
“What you’re talking about is nuts. As good as you are, the Warlord has more guns.”
“We’ll take our chances,” Bushey said, never taking his eyes off the hall.
“I still can’t help you.”
“Well, that would be unfortunate,” Jane said. “Because that means you’re going to lose your brain and I’ll have an annoying delay. Do you really want that? I know you told Jacky you had some sort of distraction in place to pull off the guards while he went for the mech. Now you’re going to use that to help us instead.”
He paused, thinking. The silence stretched, and then he sighed heavily. “Okay. Tell me what you want.”
“You draw off the guard and use your resources to help us get inside. Bubbles and Boris will remain with you until twenty-four hours after the operation is over. Then they will detach themselves and self-destruct. So the quicker we get to work, the quicker the party on your head moves to other ground.”
“When?”
Jane hated to rush, and she didn’t like depending on amateurs like this either, so that was two more things to dislike about this mission. “Immediately.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Make it possible. If you waste my time, and Jacky’s brain gets fried because I wasn’t there to save him, Bubbles goes boom.”
He let out a slow appreciative whistle. “What we could have accomplished in the Big Town wars if we’d a close-quarters system like yours.”
“Oh, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” said Bushey. “Her little teddy bears will give you nightmares.”
“Clock’s ticking, big fella,” Jane warned. “No funny stuff.”
MacKinnon rumbled, “I’m currently disinclined toward levity.”
* * *
They made their way swiftly through the tunnels beneath Big Town. There had been a forgotten access hatch beneath MacKinnon’s apartment building, dating back to the old colony ship.
MacKinnon held up one fist to stop them, listened to something only he could hear, then said, “Quickly, this way.”
“What’s wrong?” Jane asked.
“Security forces are on their way to my place. My cover is blown.”
Bushey snorted. “No great loss. It looked like you were getting out of town anyway.”
“Yeah, except I’m missing my ride because I’m here helping you maniacs.”
They hustled down several dark corridors, most of which weren’t on the schematics that Jane had stolen. This area wasn’t just off-limits, it was forgotten.
“This is the only approach that isn’t covered. This back door into the compound was our ace up the sleeve. Don’t waste it. At our signal the cameras and comms will go out for one minute. That’s all I can give you. You’ll need to use explosives to breach through, but there shouldn’t be anyone on the other side.”
“If there are people waiting for us,” Jane warned, “Bubbles will go off like a hand grenade.”
“Then I really hope my intel is good.”
Jane sent her beetles up the corridor ahead to scout and had one follow behind to make sure they weren’t being tailed. Her bot squad walked, hopped, or flew along with her, like an adorable murder cloud. As for the crew, they’d all switched their suits to active camo, so they looked like whatever their surroundings were at any given time, twisting colors, mostly dust and rust here. Katze and Bushey both had guns in hand, and not just for Warlord’s patrols, but also because they were waiting for MacKinnon to betray them somehow.
“Tell me about your distraction.”
“There are a few of us who work at the CX processing plant. They’re causing a scene right now. That’ll draw off a bunch of the guard.”
“Define ‘scene.’”
“Sudden walkout strike that should be turning into arson right about now. I’ve got saboteurs hitting the exterior of the plant to add to the mess.” MacKinnon checked his comms. “Right on schedule.”
The ID Jane had stolen got an automated warning that all Big Town citizens who were currently off shift should stay away from the section with the processing plant due to technical difficulties. So he was probably telling the truth.
MacKinnon removed the side panel of a large duct system and motioned for them to enter. Once they were inside, he closed the panel behind them, then held up his finger for them to be quiet. There was a grate above them, and voices could be heard. Their guide carefully opened another panel. Jane shone her light into the darkness. It revealed another room that was empty, silent as a tomb. At the far end was a ladder.
Jane’s beetles flew in and inspected the room. No hidden cameras. Nothing out of order. She stepped in and moved forward. It was musty smelling.
“This is where we part ways. That hatch is locked. You’ll need to blast through.”
“On it.” Bushey started up the ladder. He’d lost a bunch of his gear with the pod, but still had enough on his person to deal with that.
“The fight at the processing plant has begun. Give my guys about fifteen minutes to draw off as many of the guards as possible.” MacKinnon sent her the countdown. “That’s when the compounds cameras will go down.”
Jane was acutely aware of Jacky’s time ticking away, but if they went now, failure was assured. She checked the Big Town news feeds and found live video of smoke rolling down the corridor that led to the processing plant, and then a troop carrier blasted past on its way to the disturbance. The distraction was working, but that left an unknown number of hostiles in the compound.
“I wish you luck,” MacKinnon told her. “And I’m not saying that because of these things you left on me. Warlord’s reign is a cruel one, so if you get the chance to assassinate him—”
“Oh, don’t worry, I will,” Katze said as she chamber-checked her autocannon. “That dude gives me the creeps.”
“He should. There’s more to him than
meets the eye though. His story? It’s a con.”
“What do you mean?” Jane asked.
“I was here during the food riots and the gang wars. He came out of nowhere, kicked all our asses, and made all the factions fall in line. He became our great unifying leader, but I never bought it. He wasn’t some imported child soldier who came here to fight caliban. That’s a sham. I’ve watched him for years. Warlord’s too smart, too educated, and his mods aren’t some third-rate leftover from a bush war. He’s a top-tier, elite, highly trained operative. He’s not one of us. Never has been. He’s a plant, sent here to rule us Big Towners, without us ever even knowing we got conquered.”
“By who?” Jane asked.
“Yeah,” Bushey said as he carefully applied gel explosives around the hatch. “You got any evidence for that conspiracy theory there, bud?”
“No. I don’t. And I don’t know who sent him. But I do know he’s really, surprisingly hard to kill. Believe me, we’ve tried. So if you get your shot, take it, but don’t be surprised if it don’t stick.”
Warlord being some kind of secret plant with a fake backstory made sense to Jane, considering Grandma’s secret messages.
“Now I’ve got to go. My people need me. Things are about to get crazy in Big Town. There aren’t that many of us left, and after this, they’re going to be hunting us down.”
“Understand, Mr. MacKinnon. Good luck to you too.” Then Jane thought about it for a moment. “Boris, Bubbles, release. Come to momma.”
The little bots immediately let go of their captive and flew back to her.
MacKinnon seemed a little surprised. He rubbed the sore spot on his neck. “Thank you.”
“Unlike your friend down on the surface, I don’t get off on forcing people to do things against their will. Sorry it came to that. Now get out of here.”
MacKinnon nodded respectfully toward her.
“Dude, better run before she changes her mind!” Bushey said.
MacKinnon saluted and then hurried from the room.
“I’m surprised you let him go,” Katze murmured.
“Honestly, if we make it through this alive, I thought we might need their help to get off this dump. Better to keep the hard feelings to a minimum.”
Gun Runner Page 40