Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Twenty-Five - Dinner is Served, and it’s You

“Never underestimate the will of the common man. Certainly, they will lie back and take any small punishment you give them as long as the pain comes slowly like an ache in the back, but push too hard, push too fast, and they will be roused from their lazy state with great violence in their hearts.”

--Letters to my Son, the biography of a West-African warlord to his son, 2029

***

I dropped to one knee, Bullcat placed on the edge of the cement barricade with the stock pressed up into the crook of my shoulder. I closed my fleshy eye and zoomed in with the other.

I could see the wave coming. The antithesis were clumped up, but those clumps were starting to spread out.

I didn’t have the patience to count them, but there had to be a couple hundred of the bastards. Mostly it looked like we were dealing with model threes. I noticed a few of those tentacle-faced model fours and those really big model fives.

A flock of model ones was spinning around above the main body of the wave. They never moved too far from the central group. I was actually impressed by the quick switches in direction the model ones were pulling off, all in sync with each other too. It reminded me of some documentaries I'd seen about extinct birds that flew in large flocks. Things like starlings and such.

“You’re sure you have enough AA to take care of the skies?” I asked.

I saw Jolly Monarch nod from the corner of my eye. “My pawns could likely take out this entire wave on their own. But I’d rather they not have to. I’ll take care of the enemies above and any that get too close. Just do what you can to thin out the bulk of the wave.”

“Right,” I said. “Myalis, you got the timing down for all those bombs?”

Everything is set up. We only need to wait for the antithesis to step into the right spots.

“So we just need to wait for the enemy to cooperate,” I said. “I’m not any sort of tactician, but isn’t that, you know, not a great idea?”

Incoming.

I refocused on the wave. It was obvious that the entire thing was starting to move hastily now. The aliens had our scent, I imagined. The civilians nearby started to mutter and curse as the entire formation of xenos started to run faster and faster.

Then the wave split down the middle, model threes scrambling aside to make room.

“Fuck,” I said.

The antithesis moving into the gap was a big motherfucker. A six-legged thing, about as tall as a hovercar. It had wings folded up against its sides, and a long body like a grasshopper, though its head was all wrong, angular and with a large mouth that was a bit too vulva-ish for comfort.

“A model fifteen,” Jolly Monarch said. “It’s a little early to be seeing one of those.”

“What’s its gimmick?” I asked.

The model actually stopped, the rest of the wave continuing on past it without getting in its way.

“It’s an artillery unit,” Jolly Monarch said. “If you have any bombs near it, now would be a good time to set them off.”

“I don’t,” I said. “Can you take out whatever it shoots?”

“I can,” Jolly Monarch said. He gestured forwards and two of his pawn drones shifted to aim down towards the model fifteen. “Masks on, everyone!” he shouted.

All down the line, civilians scrambled to put masks on.

I didn’t have time to ask why when the model fifteen fired.

I was expecting... something? A bomb, a bullet, maybe a large lump of acid.

What I wasn’t expecting was for the model fifteen to spit out a spinning green wheel. It was about half as tall as I was, with a distended middle and furry sides. The wheel shot ahead, keeping balanced even as it bounced over potholes and raced past the front of the wave.

One of the pawns shot a burst towards the wheel and hit it dead-centre.

The wheel exploded apart. I blinked as a cloud of pale dust filled the air before it. Then something rained down around me, a few plings sounding out as bits of the wheel made it all the way over to our position.

It wasn’t until I heard one of the civilians screaming that I realised it wasn’t just debris.

Model fifteens can produce a variety of projectiles, but for the most part they use a hybrid projectile. A wheel of tightly woven strips of flesh under incredible tension and lined with barbed hairs. That central wheel is wrapped in a cushion of soft spores which are in turn wrapped in a thin layer of plant flesh. When the wheel collides with something hard enough to break the flesh, a signal passes through it that lets go of the core projectile. The rapid unwinding of the core sends the hairs within it flying forwards and also releases all of the spores contained around it.

“Fuck,” I said.

A few of those hairs were stuck in the barricade in front of me. Just one every handspan or so. Long, narrow, with a bit of a barb on the end.

I imagined it sucked to get one jammed into an eye or something.

“How often can that thing shoot?” I asked.

The alien answered by lobbing another wheel out.

“I’ll take it out, no worries,” Jolly Monarch said. He just stood there, unconcerned while his drones shifted slightly. Then the air filled with criss-crossing lines of tracer fire and a cacophony of rattling machineguns. Brass clinked as it flew out of thin ports at the base of the drones.

The model fifteen was riddled through and through, its skin turning into a bleeding colander. Something burst apart inside the model fifteen, and its rearmost section basically just exploded.

The wave rushed around it, spreading out and speeding up. The drones widened their firing arc, taking out more of the models as they approached, but it was growing obvious that the weight of fire wasn’t enough to stop the wave in its tracks.

Then two more wheels flew out above the wave and the pawns paused, shifted, then sniped them out of the air.

The swarm of model ones above twisted and darted ahead, a violent cloud rushing towards our position.

“Brace for impact everyone,” Jolly Monarch said. “Keep your wits about you. Aim for centre mass. Kill them dead!”

Detonating the first row.

The garrote grenades I’d placed way out in the distance went off along the edges of the highway. The few models skirting the edge of the wave were instantly turned into puree by a twisting blending of angry monofilament.

I leaned forwards, squinting to take it all in. I didn’t know what the effective range of my gun was, but I was well outside it.

My railguns though... I shifted my shoulders, allowing the two guns mounted to my back to unfold. They twitched, then fired. Two model threes collapsed near the front of the formation.

Then the aliens reached the next row of bombs.

Zero kelvin bombs. There wasn’t a big boom, but instead, a wash of fog-like steam rolled across the ground. The antithesis wave crashed into the freezing effect and died by the dozens.

When the mist cleared, I could see a solid sort of ovoid sphere pressed into the ground. The asphalt was riddled with cracks, the nearest cars were warped out of shape, and the model threes stuck within looked almost crushed.

It was an ice cube, but made of solid, frozen air.

The nearest antithesis flopped as if someone just dropped a plateful of half-cooked sausages on the ground. Those coming in behind them tried to jump over the effect, but it didn’t do them any good.

I could feel it from where I was. A wash of cool air. The breath of some of the nearby civilians misted out of their masks.

The antithesis were tough though, and while that slowed them down, it didn’t stop the wave.

Initiating next stage.

Windows burst on either side of the street. Quick flashes of blue light darted across the road from both sides as the laser turrets I’d hidden away opened up on the wave’s flanks. They didn’t rip the aliens apart. They didn’t have the kick for that. They did burn into whichever aliens they hit though, sizzling holes that took out one xeno at a time.

The pawns opened up with another loud burst of fire. Model ones poured out of the air, plummeting to the ground like so many sacks of meat to crash onto the road with dull thumps.

The wave continued, because there was no stopping it.

“Open fire!” Jolly Monarch shouted.

The civilians, already twitchy, didn’t need to be told twice.

Old machine guns rattled and assault rifles barked. I tugged back the trigger on my Bullcat too. We greeted the front of the wave with a wave of our own. Lead met bone and flesh and the antithesis wave started to collapse.

Which was, of course, when everything went wrong.