Chapter Fifty-Eight - Xenocide Act II; Jailbait

“That moment when you prepare for a big fight and buy all these new toys… Oh yes. Makes your heart beat faster. It’s like you’re a child again, with a free pass in the toy store.

Well. A toy store of violence and destruction, I guess. Even better.”

– The Hog, during an interview with Samulyfe, 2038

 

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Another Three poked its head into the large clearing and just like the others, immediately lost it when it saw me. It quickly rushed at me with gnashing jaws, but not as fast as the subsonic dart that broke through its skull and pasted its brain. It slid to an unceremonious stop next to several other corpses barely a few meters from the tree line.

At the center of the clearing, I stood next to the Class I ‘Jailbait’ Wide Area Audio-Scent Lure, fifty points, a device with multiple moving parts. I hadn’t turned it on yet, but it sat there in front of me, half as tall as I was, on a thin telescoping staff that would elevate it above canopy level for maximum reach.

It had an inverted turbine to spread an attractive scent in all directions. According to Tynea, while that part of the lure was extremely dependent or vulnerable to wind conditions, it was a scent that required very little concentration to get the attention of the Antithesis. It was the pheromones exuded by a nest under attack, after all.

But since it was raining, that whole thing would be minimally effective past twenty or thirty meters, anyway.

We’d be relying on the audio lure instead, which mimicked the call of a higher-tier command unit over a rather large area. We’d be having Antithesis racing to ‘join’ us from up to a kilometer away. That range extended well beyond even the suspected new nest. Tynea had warned me to reapply the painkiller spray before I turned it on. She’d about come as close to speaking in all-caps as an AI could.

And finally, it had tremor detection, which allowed us to read underground approaches as well.

A full package for fifty points - excluding defenses. All those moving parts and thin sticks, they wouldn’t be able to bear the brunt of Antithesis attention. Which is why we needed to set up defenses.

Of course, the designer had thought of that as well, and their design featured a very useful tool for misdirection: The lure could produce scent pockets to attach to anything. These were highly concentrated versions of ‘attack me’ pheromones. Effectively, the machine would smell like a nest to be defended, and Leah and I would smell like intruders.

Not utterly foolproof, but close enough. 

Another Three came investigating, another unit that had split from the big horde chasing Leah, and another corpse that joined the lineup.

“Tynea, share this location with Leah please. And maybe begin to focus your scouting around this place as well? As much as is reasonable. I want to make sure that we have optimal awareness of incoming threats and their nature.”

Understood. Shall I offer tactical advice during the coming battle?

“Absolutely. Make it visual where you can. Say, a ring around us with shades from green to red based on incoming danger from that direction? With floating timers in minutes and seconds until those hit.”

As you wish.

The overlay I’d asked for appeared, just in time to warn me with a small yellow spike of another Antithesis coming by to find itself skewered.

I turned back to the lure, tilting my head. I would activate it soon, but first, weaponry. 

I flicked my tail in front of me and studied it, almost absentmindedly killing yet another alien.

They were dropping by and dropping down like the tick-tock of a clock. Hmm. Was I being lulled into a false sense of security? …Neither I, nor the Lure, could detect any threats tunneling below. So, I was really just seeing the overflow from the disintegrating gathering of Antithesis lacking leadership, wasn’t I?

It…probably wasn’t going to stay that way forever, though. Better sort out my gear then, and get this show started.

I gave Leah a call, which she answered with a happy and slightly out-of-breath “Hey!”

Oh my. Whatsoever might she be doing?

“I'm in the mood for pizza. A pizza you, that is!”

A gale of laughter crashed through my brain. Mental tinnitus. Worth it.

“Okay, okay, Tinea. Fine. What do you need?” She said through her giggles.

Barely not succeeding in keeping the smile out of my head-voice, I explained, “I’m about to get shopping for real, but I keep having pests show up, so I can’t put my weapons down. So I was wondering if you had a solution, maybe?”

A short silence, Leah too busy driving to think. I heard her engine rev hard, then her quad landed heavily on something, before tearing off again. Then, “Where are the strays coming from?”

“I’m pretty sure they’re from those chasing after you.”

“Oh, then I should do something about those, huh? Uh. A lure? I’ll have to unlock a new catalog. One moment, shifting stuff around.”

I facepalmed. “Sorry Leah, I’m dumb. I already unlocked a lure catalog. I’ll have Tynea share it with Ypsi, alright?”

“Sure! That all?”

“Yes, I’ll be done in a few minutes. Just gotta buy some toys, then we can switch, or get started killing the fuckers, if you don’t need to stop.”

“Cheers!”

I ended the call with a last smile at her portrait, and talked to Tynea instead.

“Okay. I want stuff to mount on my tail. I’m thinking of two or three different weapons; one near or around the base and my lower back that is basically an autonomous turret and can shoot in all directions around me. I think it needs to be able to give Leah some breathing room to buy her armor and whatever else she’s getting. Then, a weapon at the tip of my tail that’s maybe melee? And one that either sits behind the melee part, or is integrated, that’s a gun kind of like my sentinel.”

That is all doable, especially as you are still gaining points by the minute. How do you wish to control them?

“Oh! Definitely with the cerebral aug. Thinking’s faster than speaking. Additionally, I want to make sure that the turret won’t get in the way of the roots of the wings I’m going to get sometime soon.”

Shall I start with that one, then?

“Sure!”

For nearly five hundred points: The Class I Minor Dimensional Shunting catalog, Class I Matter Recombination catalog and the Class I Esoteric Missile Systems catalog would unlock the Class I ‘Myriad’ Regenerating Micro-missile Hive. This is a device you would wear around your hips that can launch hundreds of miniature missiles per minute, and build a full complement over the course of five minutes, given access to the necessary materials. While it would be one of the largest pieces of equipment to be worn on your person short of full power armor, it is in fact rather compact for what it can do.

“That does sound interesting. What do the missiles do?”

They are why I would suggest the item in the first place. They can be bought with variable payloads based on catalogs you already possess. Better yet, the Myriad can craft these itself from raw materials, though you require blueprints for each version. Doing so would save you a lot of points over time.

“Blueprints?”

They’re item designs, rather than the item itself. Usually not useful on their own except perhaps in trade—you require the raw materials and a means of production to build the blueprinted item, after all. The Myriad is exactly that. It already comes with three basic blueprints unlocked. One, the micro missile itself, and two and three, a nanite payload for corpse disposal and a high-explosive load.

Blueprints tend to be more expensive than the item in question. In the case of ammunition, they’re worth as much as several loads of that ammunition, which is still quite cheap, all things considered.

“Okay… So, what kind of blueprints can I get?”

Anything that your bombs or specialized bullets can do, you could also do with these missiles. They are smaller than your grenades or bombs, though.

“Um. And I need the blueprints so that I can build those missiles, instead of having to buy them all?”

Yes. It’ll be cheaper to buy the materials and produce the product yourself in the long run. By a factor of zero point four, at least. Likely even better, depending on the particular design.

“Can I use those blueprints to have the Myriad build me grenades and bullets?”

No, unfortunately the designs and technologies differ. They’re merely adjacent, and the Myriad is a rather limited factory, since it is so cheap.

“Cheap?”

Even a handheld matter reconfiguration machine that could craft all ordnance that you use, would cost you up to a thousand points. The less specialized it is, the more expensive.

“Okay… How powerful are those basic missiles? Like the high-explosive one. What will it kill?”

Of the single-digit models, only the Five, Six, and Nine would require more than one missile. A Nine may destroy a small number of inbound missiles with its many blades, but it would be overwhelmed by a dozen or so. Of the double-digit and higher Antithesis, The high-explosive can exploit weak spots, but much like the Five or Six, most of their bodies are impervious to these small weapons. Esoteric payloads can fully fix that issue, however.

“So it’s not like the system isn’t future-proof. Alright. It won’t get in the way of wings?”

Not so long as you do not cover the launch batteries. The missiles are catapulted from their bays by magnetic means. They then engage their motors at a safe distance to execute their mission, much like your twenty millimeter rounds. Even if you caught a full brace of micro-missiles at launch, they would not harm you, and the missiles should mostly be able to recover themselves after such a collision. The missile bays are located in recessed, gimbaled launch batteries, so the direction the missiles are ejected in, is vertically variable.

Hmm. Smart-fire weapons… That meant they could jink around the lure and not kill it by accident. And maybe I could set them to prioritize anything threatening the thing? 

I liked it.

“Put it on the list. We’ll talk about those catalogs and what else they get me, later. And the tail gear?”

I would suggest a three-part design. A very cheap Class 0 plasma cutting/welding torch, with certain safeties removed or replaced, will serve as a melee weapon—and is of course still a usable tool. An adaptation of your current Sentinel to be worn on your tail, and finally, a cybernetic enhancement to your spinneret to increase its usefulness in combat. The latter is the most expensive and uses the points the first two elements saved on, and requires the Class I Moonsinger Technologies catalog, which offers a variety of auxiliary enhancements designed to work seamlessly with their organic upgrades.

More stuff for the spinneret! And the wings, and…everything else I got and might yet get from them. Oh, that made me positively giddy.

“What would that enhancement do?”

It can weave non-organic material into the strand while it is being extruded, mostly in the form of wires, or small geometries.

Geo— Oh! Thorns and such. So I could create, what, a whip? Or rather, a garotte? Other stuff, too. My silk was rather more flexible. Wait. Inorganic?

“Does that include chemicals?”

Certainly.

Oh shit. Okay.

“How do I supply it with whatever materials I want it to use?”

Due to the lack of points at the moment, I would suggest sticking to minor shunting plug-tanks, similar to the grenades Leah uses in her arms, with those same sockets for the tanks installed unobtrusively near the spinneret. These sockets and their tubing would deliver materials, solids in powdered form, or non-solids in gas or liquid form, to the spinneret itself, and as it happens, the Myriad makes use of exactly these plug-tanks. At a later point, you could upgrade your tail and body to contain reservoirs, matter recombinators or reconfigurators, and even more esoteric support systems.

“Alright. Let’s…yeah. Let’s put that on the list, too. What about the Sentinel? It wasn’t that expensive, right? Do I buy another one, or do you want me to move this one?” I asked as I hefted the rifle.

Either option works. The first would require you to dip into your emergency fund, and the latter would require the use of the new welding torch to permanently break the connection between the Sentinel’s scope and the rest of its housing. It would be replaced by a new sensor module that you would patch in before you could attach it to the tail element.

“That sounds a lot like it could go wrong.”

Certainly, though it isn’t a difficult procedure and I would guide you through it. More importantly, you would not have another gun barrel.

“Mmm. Let’s not waste time on that. It won’t use up my entire emergency fund either, unlike all the other stuff we’ve been doing lately, will it?”

No, not entirely. As you wish. Do you want to purchase the new equipment now?

“Yes! Uh, start with the tail cybernetics first!”

This may be uncomfortable for a moment, Tinea.

Uh-oh.

 

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