Junkyard Cats

by Faith Hunter

  My perceptions shifted and I was inside several things. Creatures. Cats. Smelling the stench of gasoline, oil, old metal, decaying rubber, decaying hemp, live rats, dead rats, and invading humans, some still alive, some protein. Seeing in strange greens and silvers, much clearer than my own vision, less orange. Hearing metal settling, electronics buzzing, human invaders running, voices in the background. Feeling sun-heated metal beneath paws, dirt and stone beneath bellies.

  Two cats were near the back airlock, standing guard over two others that were badly injured. Two more were dead, ripped apart by Puffers, left to grow stiff and stinking of death. There were no humans back there. Tuffs bumped me harder. I knew what she wanted. Somehow. I knew.

  Punching my connection to the office, I said, “Jagger. Open the rear airlock and pull in the two cats. Put them in the med-bay. Set it to ‘triage’ so it can diagnose and treat them both.”

  “I happen to approve, but you’re low on medical supplies,” he said.

  Yeah. Supplies that were hard to replace these days. But they were my cats. Bloody damn hell.

  Tuffs put her nose to mine again. I saw through the watching cats’ eyes as the injured ones were lifted and carried inside, one cat in each of Jagger’s arms. As the door was closing, both of the watcher cats leaped in, tails pulled in tight to keep from getting caught in the closing seal. My vision went with them, flying in the air. One leaped across Jagger, paws pushing off from his back. Jagger cursed. I breathed out a huff of amusement.

  In a swirling, shifting, visual transfer, I was staring at the invading team, four of them gone down into the crack, the remaining two leaning against a skid of chrome bumpers, vaping something noxious. The view shifted again, and I was smelling and tasting the raw meat a half dozen cats were feasting on at the front airlock. Bearded Guy and the woman who died first were both a hit with the felines. No need to waste protein, I thought. Though they were not eating their own compatriots who were growing stiff with rigor, so some protein was more respected than other protein.

  Tuffs thought a concept at me that translated vaguely as we do not eat our people.

  Which meant cats were “people” to her, but humans were not. Okay.

  Another concept translated as ambush invaders in crack. And then I tasted my blood and realized Tuffs was lapping up the blood that had pooled across my legs and I was tasting it in her mouth.

  Guess that means I’m not her people. Tuffs didn’t disagree. The blood, filled with fresh bio-mech-nanos meant that Tuffs and I were more firmly bonded and merged than when she had lived with me after I healed her in the med-bay. Back then she had slept in my bed. We had touched. Too much. Back before I knew much about what I had become and that I could infect anything with a blood supply.

  “Stop drinking my blood,” I told her, trying to push her away with my free hand. She dodged my hand, ignoring me. “You’re going to be more bonded to me.” She ignored me some more. Damn cat.

  Tuffs lifted her head and looked at the next screen, making the “Meep,” sound again. Odd with my blood on her lips.

  “Jolene,” I said. “Human invaders are attempting to access the portions of your ship that are down in the crack. Did CO Mateo leave protocols intact to protect weapons arrays and AI backup?”

  “Affirmative,” she snapped sounding less AI and more severely irritated human. “If you want to rescind your order to only answer with minimal info, we can chat about that.”

  More human.

  I thought about all the parts of the SunStar I had touched when I came inside that very first time. My sweat on the controls. My breath circulating through the ship systems. When I survived the Mama-Bot, my bio-nanos had converted mech-nanos to their own purposes inside me. And those mixed-nanos were . . . everywhere. Inside the SunStar.

  Bloo-dy hell. What had I done? No wonder Jolene sounded so different. And now? My blood in the sleeve would make it much worse.

  “Consider the order rescinded and my apologies offered,” I said, hearing the sadness in my tone through Tuff’s ears. “Is there something like auto defenses that will take care of the invaders?”

  “Affirmative. Would you like me to twist their tails for info first or just shoot ’em dead?”

  They were MS Angels. My enemies. And they had killed Harlan.

  “I’d like to keep one on the surface alive, if we can make that work, but the ones in the crack I’d like to be dead.”

  They knew too much. They had seen too much. Everything else was a diversion. Even Harlan was a diversion. They might want me dead, but . . . what they really wanted was the ship. Which they had found out about by currently unknown means.

  “Fire at will.”

  Jolene said, “That’ll make the toxic crack rats happy. Dinner coming up ratties! Port weapons array, targetin’. Firin’.”

  I heard the sound of the shots through the watching cats’ ears. Felt them hunch down in fear, ears pressing close to their skulls, eyes staring at the remaining humans. Who were shouting, leaning over the edge of the crack, slapping their comms equipment.

  Back to the vision of Tuffs as seen from behind me. She was sitting on my knees, nose pressed to mine, her front feet in my blood, her nose covered in it. She licked the skin below my nose, and it was a tasting moment, not a bonding moment. That view swung from cat to cat until I knew where each of the other three cats in the SunStar was sitting. All behind me. Most of the visuals coming from Notch.

  My visuals swung around from cat to cat as Tuffs touched base with each member of her current clowder and with the other pride leaders outside the SunStar. It was disorienting, more intense than motion sickness, a bilious, queasy, upside-down and backward sensation that made using Mateo’s screens seem like child’s play. She made a soft, “Heh,” breath of amusement.

  “You know the cats are eating the man at the front door,” Jagger drawled.

  “He’s dead, right?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “He’s good protein and moisture for desert predators and scavengers.”

  “Long as you don’t expect me to eat him.”

  “You won’t be here long enough to get that hungry,” I said, pulling away from Tuffs’ nose. I thought my way back through the screens, to the edge of the crack where the two remaining humans had backed away and were trying to confer with the invaders up front—unsuccessfully, suddenly.

  I directed the ARVAC to the front of the property and divided my attention to see a new vehicle out in the road, a massive war machine like a huge Tactical Vehicle—a truck that was brought up on steroids and Devil Milk and growth hormones and then had a growth spurt. That sucker was big. It had to be a late model, heavily modified, Mammoth Tactical Vehicle, with weapons and armor and a crap-ton of shielding. It was pulling the damaged, lighter-weight vehicles free of the tread spikes. If it wasn’t stolen, the MTV was evidence that my attackers had military and Gov. contacts.

  To the side of the road a man stood, visible in silhouette, hipshot, sucking on a vape, tiny clouds escaping his nose and mouth as the desert night sucked the heat from the air. This guy was smaller than Bearded Guy had been. Compact. Wiry. Low-light vision showed his hard hands and knobby, swollen joints. Black hair and a full black beard that fell to his chest. A single tuft of white ran through the beard, at the center of his lower lip. Every bit of skin I could see was tattooed including his face, dark blue teardrops under both eyes like dual fountains. Enemies killed on one cheek, enemies hurt on the other. Jagged dark blue lines rose like lightning from his left eyebrow to his hairline. I had no idea what they meant. Red lines ran along the fingers of his left hand.

  A slim foot extended from the Mammoth Tac-V. The rest of her slithered out, and she dropped to the ground, a controlled fall down a meter and a half—slightly less than her own her height—to the stone. She landed like a gymnast, knees bent, arms loose, and stood. She strolled over to the tatted Vaper. She took his pipe, put it to her lips, and puffed several times. His body language suggested tha
t he was pleased. They weren’t wearing comms systems, so I couldn’t listen in on their chatter.

  “Tuffs. Can you get a cat in there?”

  “Say what?” Jagger asked.

  Bugger. The office camera was way back, too far for me to have seen the woman.

  “Can you see in there? Make out that woman? The one who just jumped from the troop transport?”

  “Got a glimpse. How did you see—?”

  “You’ve been with OMW a while,” I interrupted. “Tell me you don’t know your enemies, who, I believe, are these people.” I was being less than subtle when I suggested, “I’m just a junkyard receptionist. They appeared after you got here. They followed you in.” I pushed a little, a very, very little, with my blood. “You put me in danger.”

  “You think they . . .” He stopped. “They followed me,” he agreed easily, because the timeline worked. “I know some of ’em. The guy I took out at the office front airlock was Rikerd Cotter, number three in the Angels. The woman . . .” He went silent.

  I watched the woman and the Vaper on camera. There was something personal, intimate, way more than friendly, between the two. Even in the dim light, he appeared to lean into her, to mirror her movements.

  I opened a screen to watch Jagger’s face as he watched the couple out front while also skimming through his Morphon. He was looking at photos and documents, his expression faintly perplexed. The set of his jaw said he wasn’t going to tell me whatever he was thinking or looking for.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” I said, agreeing with his thoughts. “I understand. There’re things an enforcer knows and never speaks about. Ever. Military Intel. Unproven intel. Gossip and lies. But . . .”—I let my voice go slow and soft—“you did bring them here.” Which left off any mention of Harlan, who arrived first, before Jagger, but still. The suggestions were enough and might even be too much if he realized he was being influenced.

  Jagger said, “I have a report of a badly-scarred woman who joined the Angels as an Old Lady, six-plus years ago, riding with a newly made-man, the guy with her on-screen, moniker One-Eyed Jack.”

  My heart thundered through me. The breath I took hurt. One-Eyed Jack had shot Harlan. His note said so—the note, addressed to me, which he’d written after he sealed himself into the Tesla.

  Jagger said, “One-Eyed Jack bears a striking resemblance to—”

  He stopped. He was flipping back and forth from picture to picture, the office camera set too far behind him for me to see his pics clearly as tears gathered in my eyes. The tattooed man with the black and white beard had killed Harlan. My friend.

  Jagger studied several pics, his eyes going back and forth from his Morphon to the screen where the woman and the Vaper stood.

  “Yeah . . . Yeah,” he muttered. “I have a feeling that’s a woman who died—officially that is—over seven years ago. Clarisse Warhammer.”

  “You mean like, ‘Hello, Clarisse, are the lambs screaming?’” I paraphrased. “‘Pardon me as I have some liver, fava beans, and Chianti?’ From that old movie? And Warhammer? Not a real name.”

  “If she’s who I think she is, the names were assigned by the military, and appear on at least one set of her official IDs. She’s real. She’s also listed as presumed dead by the military. And it appears she’s also number two in the Angels. A female made-man, listed in their contacts as CL Warhammer. But. If I’m right, she’s had a lot of nano-plaz work done to restore her features. The woman out front looks like she did before she was wounded.”

  Jagger’s statements covered a lot of overlapping, contrary possibilities, things I’d think through later if we survived this. On the office camera, two junkyard cats leaped smoothly to the back of Jagger’s chair and reclined, watching everything he did. Which was weird, but not weirder than anything else that was happening.

  On the office screen, the woman gestured to the office in the distance, but spoke too softly to be overheard on the property’s security sensors. One-Eyed Jack, the Vaper, put an arm around her shoulders, a companionable gesture rather than a claiming one. It was odd; women in the OMW and in the Angels tended to be viewed as possessions, not equals. There were exceptions, and the war had changed things. Little Mama and Little Girl had proven that. But we had been the rarities.

  “I get that she’s a female made-man. But a woman is number two in the Angels?” I clarified.

  “She took that spot two years ago. She fought her way up, taking out a line of made-men in personal combat.”

  “Augmented?”

  “To hell and back,” Jagger said, his eyes on his Morphon, scanning documents. “Yeah. Here it is. Augmented by the military, trained and used extensively as an assassin, under another name, in another life. When the war ended, she proved too violent and uncontrolled to follow orders, so she was tossed out on her butt, along with thousands of warriors like her. No money, no usable skills, no temperament for civilian life. Instead of trying to integrate as a citizen, she hit the road. Killed three civilians when a mom-and-pop power station refused to provide free power for her stolen vehicle. Military tracked her, found her, and jailed her in a Class Five disciplinary barracks. That was seven years ago. After less than six months, she busted out, killing a number of guards and destroying a significant section of the prison’s physical structure. There was vid of her taking off with several wounded, kidnapped guards. She was so badly injured that they figured she had died of her wounds. But . . .” Jagger went back to skimming photos.

  A Class Five disciplinary barracks meant an underground prison with no access to the surface except through a lot of heavily armed guards and sealed off sectors. Escape-proof. I watched the woman move. There was something odd about her weight transfers and muscle shifts, something controlled, utterly self-assured. Like a spider in the center of her web, waiting for prey. She puffed several more times on the Vape and handed it back to One-Eyed.

  “One-Eyed Jack bears a striking resemblance to one of the injured, kidnapped, missing prison guards, Jack Seyer. Makes sense. She had to have inside help. But,”—he shook his head, swiping through more pics, putting some up on the screen—“this attack squad has top of the line military equipment.”

  He was just now coming to the same possibilities I had. I asked, “Could she have parlayed her position in the Angels to get government contracts? Say, with someone from before her prison days, someone who didn’t disappear, who moved on up in the military or the Gov.? Maybe she used that shared past to blackmail or forge a relationship? Maybe she got in with General Ervin E. McElvey?”

  “Aiming to replace the OMW and contract with the military; a sub-rosa agreement. Made while the Angels also forged an agreement with PRC.” He cursed, a single harsh expletive. “Might explain a lot of things.”

  On screen, the Mammoth vehicle pulled the mini-tank and the first of the trapped lightweight Tac-Vs out of the drive. Within minutes, the next two were out of the drive and the entrance was wide open. One-Eyed Jack and Clarisse were standing just out of direct line of fire from the road, around the curve of the armored cement embankments that protected the office.

  Closer in, the cats were feasting on the dead humans.

  “The office’s fixed array has antitank missiles,” I said to Jagger, knowing I was giving away way too much. “Gomez. Jagger is in the Com seat. He’s my temporary third in command, authorized for the office’s US Allied defensive measures for the next twelve hours.” That order removed Jagger from command of the other weapons in the office but still gave him control of way more than I wanted him to know about. “I’ll be in the yard itself. Jagger is authorized to monitor my suit sensors. Jagger is not authorized for control of or tracking of the warbot or its sensors. Gomez, assess intruders and prepare optional responses for military incursion. Fire upon Jagger’s orders.”

  “What about me, Sweetpea?” Jolene asked on a private channel.

  “You are reserve forces.”

  “Optional responses for military incursion?” Jagg
er repeated. “What kind of AI and systems do you have in this thing?”

  “It’s been heavily retrofitted. If we live through this, I might share,” I lied.

  “What are you going to do?” Jagger asked me. “Why will you be in the open?”

  “I’m going after Mateo. And I’m going after two intruders at the back of the property, who got in when we weren’t looking.” And I was going to drop the two prisoners who were still hanging under the Grabber. If their brains weren’t totally scrambled, I was going to ask them some pointed and not very nice questions.

  “Copy that. Be careful,” Jagger said. “Gomez AI, glad to make your acquaintance.”

  “Welcome, Jagger,” Gomez said. “I have prepared four responses, each containing offensive and defensive measures and potential bombardment progressions, all based on the intruders’ armaments we now believe to be in play. We are aware that the intruders may have armaments that differ from our expectations, and therefore, each version has additional options as needed. Please note options one through four on my on-deck screen.”

  I could almost feel Jagger’s surprise through the screens and through the cats. No junkyard should have such sophisticated weaponry.

  “That AI’s smarter than I thought,” Jolene said into my ear, speaking of Gomez. “Smart is sexy.”

  Listening with half an ear, I pulled back from the SunStar’s screens and found Tuffs’ face up against mine, cross-eyed close. She was also inside my brain, showing me pictures of Mateo. His warbot suit was quivering very slightly. Two cats were sitting on top of his chest, heads tilting back and forth, ear-tabs flicking, eyes on the suit, as if listening to something inside.

  The vision shifted to the Grabber where two people were dangling three meters off the ground. One was singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” The other was crying softly and calling for his mama. Both were signs of prolonged exposure to WIMP AntiGrav tech. It was too late to get anything useful from them.