Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Sixteen - It’s Technically Not a Nuke

“Oh, for fuck sake. No! You can’t use a nuke on American soil, I don’t care who you think you are!”

--Live Open-Broadcast message from US Army General to Samurai near the Oklahoma incursion, 2029

***

Gomorrah was probably frustrated at the speed we were moving at. It was little more than a crawl.

In fact, I was pretty sure that I could run faster than we were moving, at least for a couple dozen metres.

The Fury stayed just above the canopy of leaves that made up the patch of woodland next to the Crop Corp facility. We weren’t exactly brushing past the topmost branches, but it was a near thing.

The screen before us was showing a detailed image of the ground, taken from a few cameras on the car’s underside and reconfigured so that it looked as if there weren’t any branches in the way. Some clever bit of software pointed to tracks in the ground that looked obvious when outlined in yellow but that I was certain I would never in a million years spot otherwise.

“Looks like this is where the groups split,” I said. The tracks went off in a few directions. We were maybe twenty or so metres into the forest.

“That seems probable, yes,” Gomorrah said. “It’s possible we’ll run into a number of tracks. We’re going to need to be a little lucky to find a path heading back to the hive.”

“They all head back eventually, right?” I asked.

“They should, yes,” Gomorrah said. “I’m worried that there are a good number of antithesis that aren’t going to be at the hive itself. Scouts and models sent out to gather biomass.”

“They’ll return to a crater,” I said.

She shook her head. “Each one that returns is one more that can restart a new hive.”

“Ah, right,” I said. “Well, we can at least set the big one here back a day or two. I think we’re going to have to deal with a lot of rampant mini-hives in the coming days.”

Gomorrah didn’t comment, too focused on slowly steering the Fury along so that we continued to follow the tracks below.

I leaned back, idly watching as her software highlighted more tracks. I bet there were some samurai with better tech to track hives down, but... well, we didn’t discuss it, but I had the impression that Gomorrah and I both wanted to take out this hive ourselves without outside help. It would mean more points for us, and with things ramping up, we were both greedy for those.

“Hey, Myalis,” I muttered. “What’s my point total looking like?”

Your current point total is 1,524 points.

“That’s... not a lot,” I said.

You spent a number of points purchasing disposable equipment to kill a relatively small number of antithesis. To be entirely fair, I think you did the right thing. You could have saved points by manually killing all the antithesis you ran across, but that would have been at the expense of more time spent killing them, and a heightened risk of injury.

“Hmm.” I shifted in my seat while I considered it. What was done was done, of course, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t think of better ways to handle things the next time. “I think I’m going to need some better tools. More cost-effective ones.”

There are plenty. Though generally speaking, your propensity for using explosives and single-use items does allow you to punch significantly above your tier. Gomorrah is doing the same by specialising heavily in one field, but she lacks some of the versatility your catalogues afford you.

“That's fair, I guess. Still, I do need a new main weapon. Maybe we can look into shotguns or something. It’s Gomorrah’s idea, but I’d give it a try.”

I think I have a few options that might interest you there. With specialised shells you can even deliver interesting payloads with little difficulty. Also, the larger spread of some shells could overcome your projectile dysfunction.

“Projectile... Myalis, are you mocking me because I can’t aim again?”

Yes. The joke is old but I still find it amusing.

“Cat,” Gomorrah said. I glanced up, then narrowed my eyes at what was on the screen. A single model three, sniffing at the ground and following after the same tracks we were following.

“Should we blow it up?” I asked.

“We should, but it might alert any others in the area.”

“Your Fury isn’t exactly the stealthiest vehicle around,” I pointed out.

Of course the model three chose that moment to look up right towards us. Its jaws opened, then it spun around and darted away.

“Christ’s saving grace,” Gomorrah... cursed? Was that a swear?

She turned the car and drove after the model three, keeping it more or less in the middle of the screen that took up the car’s windshield. “You think it’ll head back to the hive?” I asked.

“Model threes aren’t all that smart,” Gomorrah said. “I don’t think it’s wise enough to lead a threat away from the hive if it can’t just run right at it.”

We followed the model three for a good couple of minutes, the alien crashing through bushes, then bouncing over rocks as we arrived in a more clear patch of forest.

Something beeped, and Gomorrah spun us to the side. I just saw something black dart by before I was gripping onto the handle above the door to keep from being thrown out of my seat.

“What was that?” I asked as we gained speed and circled higher.

“Model ones, I think,” Gomorrah said. “They came out of nowhere.” Her hand twitched through the air, and the screens all around us returned to showing the world outside, though this time with large red circles all over the place where little black forms were flying around. A whole flock of model ones, the little bird-like aliens were forming into a larger flock that seemed determined to head our way.

I glanced down, then pointed. “There, those rocks. There’re model threes coming out from between them. I bet that’s our hive.”

“Give me a minute,” Gomorrah said. She flicked a few switches on the dash and a hole popped open on the Fury’s hood so that a large gun could slide out of the front.

The gun twitched, fired, twitched, then fired again. A constant shuddering jerk that resulted in model ones falling from the sky in ones and twos.

“Think you can find a spot to land?” I asked.

“You want to get to the hive on foot?” Gomorrah asked.

“Well, I can’t throw a bomb in there from the passenger seat,” I said.

Gomorrah shook her head. “You can totally just bomb it from up here. It can’t be that deep, can it? Atyacus, has anyone ever conducted a survey of the region? Are there any caves for a hive to hide in?”

A survey was conducted in 2034 at the behest of the same corporate entity that owns the nearby Crop Corp facility. The area is geologically stable. That is one of the requirements to build a greenhouse facility composed of hundreds of narrow, tall towers. There should be few naturally occurring caverns in the region.

It was weird hearing an AI that wasn’t Myalis speak. Atyacus was a lot more posh sounding. “So not a natural cave. We could be dealing with just a big hole that the hive snuck into.”

“There are normal trees nearby,” Gomorrah said. “They’re unaffected, which could mean that they’re being tapped for resources. We’ll have to burn this area down entirely.”

“Fine,” I said. “Fly us over the hive, I’m going to drop something special on top of it. Hopefully we can clear the whole thing out in one boom.”

What sort of explosion are you looking for?

“Something that’ll reach deep into those rocks or whatever. Would one of those thermobaric bombs work? Or is that too surface-level?”

“It could be pretty deep,” Gomorrah said. “I have some missiles if it’s only on the surface.”

Might I suggest a bunker buster then? With an artificial mass core, a relatively small projectile can weigh several tons. It will bury itself into the ground to a set depth, then detonate. As for the warhead, seeing as how the detonation will occur in an enclosed space, something like a low-yield fusion explosion should clear out a small hive. Five terajoules should create a crater approximately a hundred metres wide.

I glanced at Gomorrah and she stared right back.

“So, we good on the nuke idea?” I asked.

It’s not actually a nuclear device. It will appear as a small disk that, when activated, will teleport in a large bunker-buster bomb. The yield should be similar to the smaller nuclear devices humanity once built though.

“I... yes,” Gomorrah said.

“Neat,” I said. “How much is that thing?”

Three hundred and twenty points.

I winced, that was kind of expensive. But then again, I was expecting a pretty spectacular boom. “Fuck it. Gomorrah, I want this on film though.”

“I loathe to imagine what you’ll do with the video,” she said.

“Very inappropriate things,” I said.

New Purchase: 5 Terajoule Helium-Fusion bomb with Mass-Altering Bunker Buster Deployment System
Points Reduced to... 1,204

The box that appeared on my lap was tiny. It had a small disk inside it, with a screen and a button labelled “Start Timer.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s nuke shit.”

***