Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(89)

“Heron?” Kellen said, far too softly and in a voice that sounded like dust.

Angela dragged him the last few feet to the truck. She scrambled up over the tailgate, pulling him along, which must have looked nuts to bystanders and the viewing public, she being small and him so big. But she wasn’t going to let him have this conversation with his best friend from ten feet away, with all those people listening. It was a closer moment than that, and there was too much to say.

But first, this bit first. She crouched down in front of the machine, cupped the bloody mess of Dan-Dan’s jaw in her hands.

“Thank you,” she said. “And if there’s even a bit of Dan-Dan in there, thank you, too. You are good.”

The mech-clone lifted his arms wide, and Angela and Kellen both moved into an embrace. With the thing. Group hug, but without all the silly, fluffy connotations that phrase would bring if spoken aloud. Network hug, rather. Family hug. Home.

“He’s still here,” Heron said through Dan-Dan’s mouth, the quality crispy and metallic through the half-ruined voice apparatus. “His kernel is intact, archived as you instructed him to do. But I have, as Kellen guessed, appropriated this body to dig its way out of the tunnel. It was not an easy process, nor quick. I had lots of time to think of what you all must be imagining for our fates. I’m so sorry for that, for the scare. Now, is there a nodal relay anywhere nearby where I can plug this body in? I’d like to get some heavy equipment where we are, to dig us out. There are some among us who cannot climb.”

“The plane’s parked right over there,” said Garrett as he approached the truck bed.

He’d found them. Angela could have thwapped herself for not messaging him first, but somehow he’d known anyway. He hopped over the side of the pickup bed, almost like gravity didn’t apply to him. Angela peered at him wonderingly. Hadn’t Garrett been working alongside Kellen at the pile all day? Hadn’t he busted his knuckles earlier? She was sure she’d seen him with bloody, wrapped hands. Those hands now were smooth, though, long-fingered. Dainty even.

So there was more to Garrett than appeared on the surface. But that was kind of the story with all humans, wasn’t it?

“Excellent,” Heron said. “You may fill me in on the rest of it as we drive to the plane, then. I assume you three have been busy.”

Angela met Kellen’s eyes and smiled slightly. “Oh, we have a few balls in the air. Did you know Chloe could rig a whole army, or am I just the last to know all these fun things?”

? ? ?

Rescue and recovery went lightning fast once they got that heavy construction equipment in place. Limitless resources will do that for you. The volunteer camp in the desert stayed together for a little while after, though. Apparently there were rumors of treasure to be found in the pile, and Kellen refused to speak to that. If somebody ventured down there and happened to find a pink-diamond tiara or a priceless Russian egg, well, good on them. He was done with digging.

The reunions played awful sweet. The mamas hugged and hugged him, and Fan went on so fast rat-a-tat-tat that even Kellen couldn’t keep up, and his Spanish was pretty good. She said something to the effect of, “All our baby animals are safe, and my preciouses also, and all our enemies must die a giant flaming death, and can you make that happen right this minute?”

He could be off by a word or two.

Adele, nearing eighty if she was a day, didn’t run as fast as some others during the evacuation, and she’d had a tunnel collapse on her. She’d regained consciousness while Heron was out running that mech’s body eastward. Her head, she said, was still giving her gyp, which Fan said was a leftover Britishism and he wouldn’t understand, but basically, although Mama Adele felt like hammered shit, she was on the mend.

The attacks had stopped, but nobody knew if this pause would stick.

The dual houses of Congress had called an emergency session, but plans were still on to re-up Medina as president tomorrow at the Colina Capitolina. Shithead had hired a live band and everything for the party after.

There was some concern for the Chiba Station, which had left its geosynch sometime during the attack on the Pentarc and now could not be located, not on coms and not in the sky. Nobody quite knew where it went, and that worried Kellen a lot. The mech-clone queen of that station wouldn’t have left Heron if he was in danger, not if she’d had even a spark of choice in the matter. She was loyal. But there was no wreckage either, and she had a lot of power reserves in the station. Possibly she’d gotten bumped off course or something. He hoped the cause of her disappearance was that innocent. He hoped there weren’t orbit-to-orbit weapons in play.

Chloe, that little superstar, had drawn herself back together and was hanging out in Mama Adele’s recovery room, determined to keep her whole crew within grabbing distance, even though, without a solid body, she wouldn’t be doing any actual grabbing. She’d counted the refugees a dozen times and still seemed unconvinced they were all safe.

Garrett sat right there with her. Of course he did.

She could disperse instantly, whenever they needed it, she said. She knew the pattern for fitting herself back together after such a wide spread. She’d put all her borrowed bits back into the free-fae lights all over the country, but if the need arose, she’d round them all back up. Kellen didn’t think anybody would call that stealing.

There was a rough spell among those bright reunions when Mari realized her asshole father had come along. Vallejo had been out there digging in the pile with everybody else, and he looked a lot worse for wear after. His bouffant hairdo was sideways, and tears had left deep tracks in the dust on his face. Knowing Mari, Kellen had thought she might just shoot first and ask questions later. But you know what? That girl had a soul deep as a cenote and a capacity for forgiveness deeper still. She also wasn’t scared to admit when she was wrong. And she had been wrong about Vallejo. He didn’t have shit to do with her auntie’s situation.