Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Eleven - Getting Ready to Get Hot

“Megacities have their place. We need them. Workers need to be close to factories and offices, homes need to be close to schools. Utilities and electricity are simpler to route when everything is close together, and of course, concentrating security makes it more viable. Shelters and overlapping gun emplacements mean that, even with a higher concentration of people, a city is a safer place to be in during an incursion.

That’s not to say there aren’t any problems. Notably, how do you feed a hundred million people?”

--Opening Text from Megaurban Development 101 textbook, fifth ed. 2039

***

I found a loveseat tucked between two plants in the hotel lobby and sat back onto it. If I had to wait for Gomorrah to show up, I might as well be comfortable during the wait. “Alright,” I said as I looked over the map of New Montreal. “Looks like... Cause Player, Nomad and one other who doesn’t have an icon are dealing with that big orange lump along that highway there.”

There were more and more yellow stains appearing around the map. Mostly in areas that looked like forests or the like, but a few were showing up on the borders to some towns. The biggest, and the one where the map indicated three samurai were already waiting, was along the old Trans-Canadian that led into the northern end of the city. A splotch of orange in the middle of the lump was using the road.

“I think three samurai should be able to take care of that without our help,” Gomorrah said. “We should focus elsewhere, I think. There are two of us, we could go after some of the larger danger zones.”

“I don’t want to get swarmed in,” I said. “Biting off more than we can chew wouldn’t be nice, I don’t think. I’d rather not have to call for help before the timer’s even ticked down to zero.”

“Not the greatest timer if the aliens are active already.”

I chuckled. “It’s an estimate, I guess.”

I noticed a ping on the map, a small yellow-green circle that appeared over a spot some ways outside of the city. It was pretty far out, near the outer edge of the map. The area was only just on the edge of one of the smaller yellow zones. Focusing on it opened a pop-up.

CropCorp LLC - A subsidiary of Soil is Green - Facility 658-NM
Facility currently being relocated. Low-Mid priority.
Location holds several hundred tons of fertilisers and plant-materials that could pose a risk if captured by xeno forces.
Samurai volunteers needed for guard duty during facility move.

“Did you see this one?” I asked Gomorrah. There was a handy share button to ping others about a location on the map. “Guard duty seems a bit easy right now, but we could fly over and check it out?”

“There’s some orange near it, we might run into a few antithesis on the way. We’ll be far from the city though.”

“Close to some other samurai,” I pointed out. There was another orange splotch next to a little town with a marker for... Buzz-Buzz? That wasn’t one of the samurai who’d been at the meeting.

“I’m down for it,” Gomorrah said. “By the way, I’m pulling into the hotel now.”

I climbed to my feet, tugged my coat on straighter, then glanced around the room. A few folk were looking my way, but more of them were looking at their phones. A TV against the far wall of the lobby was presenting an emergency broadcast. Laserjack was there, nodding seriously while some reporter asked him questions. A bullet-point list was taking up some screen-space next to his head, telling people to keep on doing as they’d normally do.

Couldn’t have people staying home from work just because the world was ending.

I headed out of the lobby. I didn’t have time to stare at bad news or doomscroll with the rest of them.

The Fury slid into hotel’s parking tunnel and slowed to a gentle stop right in front of the doorway. A few other cars had to shift lanes to get out of the path. The driver’s side window lowered with an electric hum, and I saw Gomorrah looking out to me, maskless for once. “You getting in?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said as I jogged around the car. The window went up and the passenger side door rose. I flopped into the seat and shifted around. Gomorrah had just removed her mask from the seat and was placing it onto the dash. “You’re not all geared up?” I asked.

“I have my things,” Gomorrah said. “Just had to get changed and I didn’t bother equipping everything before I left the church. I like my suit but it could use some more breathable materials. It gets hot in there.”

“Really?” I asked. I tapped the chestpiece of my armour. “No problems here. Not that I’ve noticed at least.”

Gomorrah shrugged as she put the car into gear. “Mine’s designed to be resistant to my own weaponry. I use a lot of burning liquids, so I can’t really have the suit be porous or anything. My next upgrade will be a better undersuit, something with built-in cooling. I should have spent a few more points when I first bought it.”

I nodded along. “Yeah. I’ve got to start shopping for gear too. I left my grenade launcher at home. It’s too... clunky? Like, I like it as a weapon, it’s versatile, but at the same time it feels like it’s too niche. I don’t know if that makes sense?”

“I think I know what you mean. We should be making some decent points soon, it should be enough for you to try a few things. Both of us are still really new to this, I think it’s kind of expected that we’ll try a few things before settling into a niche.”

“Wait, does that mean you’ll move away from lighting things on fire?” I asked.

“No. I meant that you can try different things to find the gimmick you like the most. I’ve found mine. It’s got issues and downsides, but I can work around those.”

I snorted. “Alright then. So, that Crop Corp place, or did you find somewhere more interesting to visit?”

Gomorrah tapped a few buttons, then let go of the wheel even as the view out of the window was replaced by the Family’s map interface. “It looks like most of those yellow spots are very low-risk places. There might not even be any antithesis there, or if there are, it’s likely only scouts and maybe workers. The orange spots are where there’s proper movement.”

I hadn’t looked at the map in maybe three minutes, and already there were a few more swatches of yellow. “They’re multiplying fast,” I said.

“That’s what they do,” Gomorrah said. “I've been talking to Atyacus, and he says that most hive incursions like these will generally search for threats around the hive, then if they find any, will start producing en-masse with the goal of eliminating that threat. It kind of makes sense, if you’re willing to think like a plant.”

“Willing to think like a plant,” I repeated.

She shot me a glare. “You know what I meant.”

The city shot past, Gomorrah’s auto-pilot taking the speed limit as more of a vague suggestion, and using the clearly marked roads was just not going to happen.

“Fine, fine,” I said. “So... what, the xenos like murdering people? I think I noticed as much already.”

“It’s more that we can expect things to ramp up towards violence first, and growth second. If the antithesis only has ten... units I guess, it’ll send six of them to attack the nearest town before using the rest to grow the hive.”

“And if there’s no threat around?” I asked.

“Then it’ll only grow faster. But as soon as an unthreatened hive meets one that is threatened, it’ll turn its attention to that threat too.”

“So, we’re going to have to deal with pitiful hives at first, then big, mean motherfuckers later?”

“That’s how it’s worked out, historically, at least,” Gomorrah said. “I’m still of the opinion that we should just drop air-fuel bombs on any patch of greenery that looks at us funny.”

“Isn’t that a bit of a huge exaggeration?” I asked. “Plus it sounds like it wouldn’t be great for the environment.”

“We can plant new trees once the world stops being on fire,” Gomorrah said.

I couldn’t help but laugh.

The Fury flew lower and closer to the ground, following atop a wide stretch of highway that cut across the suburbs around the city like a plank over a ditch.

I leaned against the door, taking in the world outside of New Montreal. I had seen all of this before, probably. On the days when the smog was thin and the sun warm, when Lucy and I snuck out to a mall or a roof-top shopping district. You could see the greenery and the fields all around the city, past the towns and suburbs that clung onto New Montreal’s sides.

I’d never really been able to see it from this angle. Maybe on the flight to Black Bear, but I had been preoccupied then.

“That’s the place,” Gomorrah said some five minutes later.

I glanced up and took in the facility. “Well, shit,” I said.

This was going to be more complicated than I’d hoped.

***