by Faith Hunter
“Now that ain’t normal,” Jolene said. “Puffers talkin’? Dang. Next thang you know they’ll be having tea and crumpets.”
I had no idea what a crumpet was. It sounded like a good name for an insect, one I’d squash beneath my boot. Both Puffers crawled into the hole. The suit’s auto-defense system came on.
Jolene said, “Fully segmentin’ warbot suit. Isolatin’ Puffers.”
There was nothing I could do to help my friend, not from here. Not until the threat was averted and I could get to him. Then I’d dig the Puffers out and bash them open and stick them under the AG Grabber. “Good plan,” I muttered to myself.
But my heart was clenching. I’d found Mateo in a nearby town on the way here, when I was alone and terrified. He had been half-disabled, in the city lockup, behind bars. Somehow, he was able to act as the city manager’s AI and right-hand man, paid in nothing but food, minimal power for his suit, and Devil Milk. He was addicted and ignored and forced to work, deprived of the Devil Milk if he refused even the smallest command. No one had known it, but his suit had also been infected with Puffer nanobots and the critters had been eating him and the suit, cell by cell. Mateo had been fighting a losing battle with them for months.
I had rescued him. Stolen him, actually. Right out from under the city manager’s nose. Had brought him to the scrapyard and stripped what was left of him out of the warbot suit and stuck him into the med-bay. Saved his life. Now, my friend was in danger from Puffers again; his worst nightmare. And I couldn’t protect him.
“How long can you keep the Puffers in that segment of the suit?” I asked Jolene.
“You’ll need to hit him, his entire suit, and especially that limb, with AntiGrav sometime in the next eighteen hours, sweetie-pie.”
It flashed through my mind that Jolene knew how to kill nanobots, which was unexpected. Before I could ask, she went on.
“The Puffer nanobots are already chewing into that leg segment and converting the base components to weapons. Them scary li’l suckers are a new version. They ain’t the Puffers I got in my database.”
I didn’t know where Jolene got the programming for the southern accent, but it was becoming jarring. “Jolene” was one of Pops’ songs. Had CAIT gotten into his music and somehow made the transition to Jolene? I made a mental note to change the voice to a male baritone, with a nice Welsh accent.
“You try it and I’ll zap you,” Jolene said. “I was given permission to choose my own gender-based pronouns, name, voice, and wardrobe, by the CO. And I ain’t giving that up.”
Wardrobe? “Fine,” I said, shaking my head at the vagaries of AIs. And then I realized she had heard my thoughts, which was way above CAIT’s abilities. It was freaky scary.
“Use vocals only,” I said.
Jolene uttered a “Humph.”
I scanned the screens and saw movement near the Grabber. Battery levels were at eighty-nine percent. Using remote access, I powered the Grabber and activated it. The AG sucked two humans into the air, where they hung like magician’s helpers.
“Look ma. No strings,” I said.
“Spiffy,” Jolene said.
Tuffs chuffed. I looked back at Mateo. Still unmoving. Damndamndamn.
In a blare of light, the junkyard office came online. Its offensive weapons fired.
The SunStar’s floor shook. Things fell out of the ceiling tiles and peppered over me. The office fired again. A human sprinting toward its front from the entrance road danced and died as she was cut in two.
Seemed Jagger had woken up and decided to defend us. I double checked that Gomez had his more private defenses locked down, so only the modified, retrofitted US military systems would be available to my visitor.
I slid through the system and into the office’s internal cameras. Jagger was propped in the space-worthy, over-sized NBP compression seat, my command seat, scanning the yard. With a thought, I removed the ship sensors from his access. If he spotted me, he would think I was using a remote cubby somewhere on the property, not a spaceship command seat display.
“He’s a pretty one,” Jolene said. “You doin’ him?”
I checked to make sure Jagger couldn’t hear her.
“No. Not that that’s any of your business.”
“Shame. That’s a nice piece of eye candy. The invaders launched another drone, darlin’. You want me to take it down?”
“Affirmative.”
The new drone crashed and disintegrated.
Tuffs nudged me and I looked directly into her eyes. She dropped her leaf-green gaze to my lap. My blood had puddled there, was still dripping, where the ship’s engineering command-sleeve had stuck its sensors into my arm. A throbbing pain had taken over my arm, shoulder, across my back, and up into my head where the ache bloomed into a migraine.
“Yeah. I’m bleeding,” I said to her. “It hurts to defend this place.”
“It wouldn’t have if you had all your implants,” Jolene said, her tone stern and reproachful and way more human than an AI of her make, model, and age should be.
“Stop fussing at me.”
“Where the hell are you?” Jagger asked. He had heard me.
The invaders’ mini-tank broke free.
With a series of overlapping, augmented thoughts, I calculated my options and latched onto the closest of the junkyard’s ARVACs. I dived the ARVAC at the mini-tank’s missile system. Counting off seconds. The tank carried three small, specialized warheads, but all I needed to do was disable the firing mechanism or targeting system. Fortunately, the Spaatz tanks were older models and firing and targeting were side by side. The ARVAC slammed into the mini-tank roof and took out or damaged everything on top. Pieces flew. Even without it being a weaponized drone. Too bad they cost an arm and a leg.
“Nice shot, Honey Lamb,” Jolene said.
“I’m on the property,” I murmured in response to Jagger’s question. “Oh, lookee,” I said as a human got out of the first Tac vehicle and strode down the drive. I shared the screen with Jagger. The bearded man was huge, and he was wearing a headset with dual earbuds. Joleen and I tapped into his comms system.
“How deep?” he asked someone on his end.
“Eighty-six meters at the access point,” a female voice said. “Reading power output and steady sensor activity.”
I slid my awareness into the remaining ARVAC and hovered over the six-man team. They were near the back of the property, at the massive mine crack. There was nothing back there. Nothing at all. Unless I had missed something.
“McElvey will be pleased,” the bearded man said.
CAIT said into my ear, “Possible name match. McElvey. Ervin E. General. Combined Military Command, retired, at my last update.”
I said to the office AI, “Gomez. Initiate a background search into finances and current location of McElvey. Ervin E. General. Look for anything that relates to us. Or the OMW. Or the MS Angels.”
“Executing search. Authorization requested to expand parameters,” Gomez said.
“Affirmative. As needed,” I said, watching as the big man strode up the drive.
“Can I help?” CAIT asked. “That sounds like fun.”
“Knock yourself out.” I opened up comms through the office speakers. “Jagger. You know this guy?”
“Yeah. He’s the east coast enforcer for the MS Angels. He travels with enough equipment, firepower, and warriors to take down small cities. And it looks like he brought his entire armament and forces with him, just for you.”
Or something he wanted at the back of the property. Where nothing was except certain death in the mine cracks. I initiated a full scan for communication access and found an electronic crack I could use, though it was mostly only defensive sensors and suit readouts.
I turned off access to Gomez, so Jagger couldn’t hear me. “CAIT.”
“Jolene.”
I held in my frustration. “Right. Jolene. You, the command center, engineering, the frontal sensor array, and two of your hull weapo
ns arrays crashed here eleven years ago.”
“Ten years, ten months, twenty—”
“Stop. Request minimal information in response to questions,” I said.
Jolene stopped talking. I asked a question, one I had never asked before. Had never thought to ask. “Are there other parts of the spaceship SunStar on the ground?”
“Affirmative.”
“Where?”
“Please provide parameters.”
Now Jolene was just being snarky. “Within ten kilometers.”
“Affirmative.”
I watched the big man stop. He was behind a skid full of heavy equipment, looking at the remains of the woman lying on the stone. He was in range for the office weapons, but if I took him out now, I might not figure out what was going on. On another ARVAC screen, the six-man team at the back of the property reached the unstable ground. Two of the team stumbled and one tumbled into the ground and disappeared. There was a lot of scrambling around as a woman crawled away from the crack. The others secured climbing and rescue ropes and went down after the man. His suit readouts were redlining from panic, but they didn’t indicate a major injury. Sadly.
“Within one kilometer?” I asked Jolene.
“Affirmative.”
“That might explain some things,” I said, mostly to myself, watching as the team struggled to get the panicked man back to the surface. “What ship parts are within one kilometer?”
“I can only provide information on wreckage that has functioning sensors and that send out pings to my systems.” Jolene sounded snippy.
“Yeah. Fine. What parts?”
“Stern weapons array. Port weapons array. Starboard weapons array. Ship personnel backup WIMP systems. Ship personnel quarters. Redundant WIMP/MPP propulsion and power system. Redundant AI backup system. There may be other ship wreckage within that radius, but if so, they are no longer capable of sending out pings.”
“Jolene. Send me coordinates for all wreckage that still sends out pings, on or within one klick of the property. Pinpoint them on a 3-D map.”
Jolene did. The wreckage appeared on a screen. It was all near the current position of the small expedition team, but all the wreckage’s vertical coordinates were closer to sea level than we were.
“Bugger. They’re in the crack.”
“Affirmative.”
Other things came clear to me, as if a low-lying fog shrouding my brain began to blow away.
“Ohhh. The crack in the ground was made by the back half of the ship crashing directly above an old mine. Correct?”
“Affirmative.”
And the SunStar’s AI had known all this for over a decade. And we hadn’t known. Or . . . Or.
Other things began to resolve out of the fog of my brain.
When I first arrived here, there had been no mayday alert going out on the SunStar’s EntNu comms system. It was only when Mateo had been healed and put back in his suit that he had gone searching through the junkyard and had discovered the spaceship. Like, right away. Mateo had figured out how to get inside a space-going warship within hours. He hadn’t needed to disable any automatic alerts or distress signals; they had already been off. I had assumed Pops was the one who had turned it all off. But what if it hadn’t been my father? What if someone else had been here? And then Jolene’s comment about pings burrowed through my brain.
“List all forms of pings and alerts that went out when the SunStar was in distress, when the SunStar crashed, and”—my unease spread—“any that continue today.”
On the screen, the invading team pulled the man to safety. Debris crashed from the lip into the massive crack in the earth, an avalanche of boulders and rock. The man said he had crapped his pants. Everyone else thought that was funny.
Jolene said, “My programming broadcast maydays through standard EntNu channels until mayday was disabled at two minutes, forty-seven seconds post-crash landing. PAN-PAN was sent out on standard EntNu and radio waves. PAN-PAN was disabled at two minutes, fifty-two seconds after crash-landing. SOS was sent out on automatic recurring radio-wave broadcast. SOS on primary AI was disabled at three minutes, four seconds post-crash. SOS from AI backup continues, with limited range due to massive particle and WIMP particle emissions.”
“Bloody damn,” I whispered. EntNu was the engineering hardware and tech that comprised the instantaneous communication system based on Entangled Dark Neutrinos, particles that passed through anything and didn’t seem to be bound by unimportant things like gravity or matter or the speed of light. EntNu had been discovered in 2025 and it had been used extensively by the military during the war, in space. It worked for any currently measurable distance, and there was no way, no reason at all, that it should have been turned off. Ever. Especially not at two minutes, forty-seven seconds after crash landing, with the crew all away safely and no deaths to report.
And PAN-PAN should never have been sent. It was the international standard urgency signal that declared a vessel had an urgent situation, but not an immediate danger to the crew’s survival or to the vessel itself. The ship had been crashing, which seemed like a pretty immediate danger to me. And someone sent a PAN-PAN along with a mayday?
And part of the SOS was still going.
“Can you disable the SOS?”
“That is within my capabilities, Darlin’.”
Definitely annoyed.
“Can you disable all forms of emergency transmissions, including automatic pings?”
“Disabling emergency transmissions is within my capabilities.”
More annoyed.
I waited. Nothing happened.
“Have you disabled emergency transmissions?”
“Negative.”
I wanted to bang my head. “Why not?”
“Ship AI, CAIT, current moniker Jolene, does not have an order to disable all transmissions.”
And now she sounded a little malicious and a lot like she was pushing my buttons.
“Ship AI, CAIT, current moniker Jolene,” I ground out. “Disable SOS emitting from backup AI. Disable all ping transmissions.”
“Disabling SOS and ping transmissions requires CO’s authorization.”
Just pushing my buttons. Sarcastic, snide, spiteful, and enjoying it all.
Requires CO’s authorization . . . That bad feeling that had been hanging around pierced directly into my heart. CO was the commanding officer. The captain of the ship.
All those fog-shrouded possibilities came blindingly clear.
I remembered the access numbers set up by Mateo, giving me right of entry to SunStar. Mateo, who had been found only a few kilometers from here, as the crow flies. How bloody damn convenient. Mateo, who had been attacked by Puffer nanobots inside his warbot suit. It wasn’t even a guess. And I was so utterly stupid to not have figured this out already. That was why the ship crashed. It had been infected by Puffers and nanos. After it crashed, it had been hit with AG particles from its own engines, which killed the nanos. And then the ship had been left here, hidden in plain sight, on the junkyard property. Only one person other than me—and Jolene—knew that antigravity WIMP particles killed mech-nanos and that other person had taught me how it was done.
It was Mateo who had figured out how to kill them. By accident. When his ship crashed.
My brain put together facts and guesses and I said, “Authorization, Mateo, Captain, CO, four, eight, one, six, alpha tango delta.”
“All emergency transmissions are disabled,” Jolene said.
“Son of a bitch,” I whispered.
“Shame on you. Listen to that nasty tongue.”
Mateo was the commanding officer of the USSS SunStar. Puffers had gotten into his ship. He had gone down with it. Wearing a warbot. And he had gotten away, probably not knowing he had mech-nanobots inside with him. By the time he realized what was wrong with his suit, he was enslaved by the sheriff of Boone County, West Virginia. The Puffer nanobots in his suit had been a problem he couldn’t deal with. You couldn’t p
ut a person under WIMP antigravity for long without some serious brain scrambling, not that he had access to an AG. He had fought the nanobots as they ate him, cell by cell, piece by piece. The Puffers had nearly killed him before I showed up and brought him back here where he repaired the Grabber, crawled from his suit and let the Grabber kill the nanos. And I had put what was left of him in the med-bay to heal as much as possible.
The back half of Captain Mateo’s ship was in the mine crack, still emitting WIMP dark energy particles. And he never told me.
On the screen, the big man—who had stood next to a skid—moved, racing for the office airlock. Moved fast. Jagger fired. Fixed artillery. A well-grouped barrage. And somehow Bearded Guy wasn’t hit. Bloody hell. He was augmented. Had to be.
On another screen, the first guy from the team of six at the mine crack began to rappel down into the earth.
Then Bearded Guy began applying the bright purple third generation malleable explosives to the airlock seal. Military stuff. Somehow, he was managing to stay to the side of the weapons array that protected the airlock.
“Jagger?” I said.
“I see him. Gimme . . . Gimme . . . Now.”
He fired a pulse weapon. Bearded Guy went down in a splatter of boiling blood and viscera.
“Direct hit. Wonder where he got a pulse weapon?” Jolene asked. “Not bad shooting, there. And that butt? He’s a keeper.”
Ship AIs got over snits fast, it seemed.
Tuffs bumped my nose with a paw, and said, “Meep?”
I had forgotten she was there. “I don’t know what—”
Tuffs put her nose against mine. Her whiskers brushed like cat kisses, and she leaned in more, her forehead to mine. Everything she was seeing and smelling and hearing and feeling skittered into me and took over, a cross-sensory experience that slapped me with a severe case of vertigo. Guardian cat. Not words, but a concept I gleaned from her thoughts and feelings. Tuffs was a Guardian Cat. Like a title. Like Queen.