"Junkyard Bargain" by Faith Hunter

"Junkyard Bargain" by Faith Hunter
    https://www.amazon.com/Junkyard-Bargain-Faith-Hunter/dp/1622681762/
Book number two of a four book novella science fiction series.  I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback published by Lore Seekers Press in 2023 that I bought on Amazon.  I have the other two books in the series.
The book is set in the not so distant future, probably 2060 or so.  In 2043, thousands of Chinese Mamabots advanced into Seattle from the ocean, creating and deploying Warbots to kill the population.  The Mama bots self replicated and spread across the USA and then the world, killing off most of the population with their warbots, starting "The Final War".  The Mamabots and the warbots have been mostly taken out, mostly, using antitank weapons and blasters, but there are many still in hiding.
2060 is highly different from our time.  There has been a severe population crash due to the bots and the lack of water.  There were dark matter WIMP engines for the space ships that the Bug aliens shot down. There are the Bug aliens that forced The Final War to stop.  And Shining has a crashed Bug space ship that the Bugs are looking for.
Shining Smith is going to Charlottsville to trade metals for other goods.  And dig up a rumored Simba tank that was lost in the swamp.  The Simba tank has a WIMP power generator with an AGR (antigrav) system that can hold it up to four feet above the ground.
Shining is one of the few known survivors of a bicolor ant swarm, who infected her with their nanobots.  And she is a survivor of The Final War that started when she was 12.  There is video of her killing a Mamabot in Seattle by dragging a bomb into it when she was 12.
BTW, the nanobots are freaking me out.  The fact that Shining Smith is infected and shedding nanobots all over the place is a horrifying concept.  And she has infected her junkyard cats who use the nanobots to communicate to each other and her.  And she has infected the people who work with her but none of them shed nanobots like her since she is a "nanobot queen".
BTW, the junkyard cats are motivated by protein.  In 2060, protein is short as much of the world has turned into deserts due to WIMP bombs ripping away the stratosphere.  Dead humans are protein according to cat rules.  Don't get jumped by five cats, you will end up as protein.
The author has a website at:
    https://www.faithhunter.net
My rating:  5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating:  4.7 out of 5 stars (2,475 reviews)
Lynn