Chapter Fifty-Two - Mission Impossible

“The base measure is that one bar of force is required to push water to a height of 10 meters.”

– The Complete Guide to Bathroom Water Pressure

 

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I dragged Leah up the stairs, all the way to the torn doorway, and found that it was still dark outside, and raining. Would have a hard time detecting any creepers nearby. No go.

I dragged Leah down the stairs, all the way to the facilities, and found that there was no spot meant for washing. No go.

I dragged Leah further down the stairs, all the way to the pantry, and found that there was no hidden door, no hidden niche for washing. “Fuck!”

I pouted.

Leah laughed so hard she snorted while trying to talk through a lack of air, until she even teared up.

I wondered if I could somehow hijack her squirt gun…

No. The shower was more important. Escalation might lead to no showers. De-escalation was the correct move. Hmph.

I took a water bottle in one hand, Leah in the other, who was still giggling helplessly, and dragged them both back to the guard room, decided I needed a chair, and juggled everything and everybody around a little.

Bottle of water under one arm, chair in one hand, Leah in the other, I marched us up the stairs once more, trying very hard not to let the flailing legs and sleeves of Leah’s Sleeve distract me from my mission. Shower.

I put the chair in a corner of the room that was already trashed from my explosions the previous day, kept the Hummingbird, told Tynea to scout for aliens near enough to detect Leah’s clowning about, tossed the bathrobe into the opposite corner, positioned Leah behind the chair with her hand up like a showerhead, sat on the chair, and pouted mightily at her over my shoulder.

My shower had broken. Obviously. I didn’t think showers were supposed to be doubled over, laughing hysterically.

Time to call the plumber? Would they provide service out here? Probably not. Should I plumb her myself?

Uh, bad choice of words.

I decided to buy two more juice boxes, watching my points counter drop to three hundred thirty-five. One for me, one for Leah, falling into my waiting palms.

I carefully steered my antennae to hide behind my back and concentrated on smushing all the sensilla close to the stem, to drastically reduce the amount of sensitive surface area. Then I took my box, pulled on the straw with my teeth to unseal it, and blew the billowing cloud of fragrant aroma towards Leah.

She froze for a moment as her stomach growled loudly, which forced a giggle from me, before her eyes fixated on the box in my other hand, the slit pupil of her Warforged eye making it look like she had sighted her prey.

Yes, this stuff was certainly that good.

I stretched it out towards her, she immediately snapped it up. With a quick movement, Leah sat herself sideways on my lap, and huffed juice. The laughter in her eyes arrested my attention…only for my sniffing puppies to distract us by making her sneeze.

Part of me reeled from the overpowering scents, and another watched as juice sprayed out of her nose, and idly considered if I should try pinching it shut.

What was that about plumbers, again?

“Sorry, Leah. Here, let me help.” I said unsteadily, as I drunkenly braided a small, rather fuzzy handkerchief and handed it to her. Didn’t want to accidentally poke out her other eye while I was seeing double.

I once more took my antennae behind my back, and this time I fixed them there with my tail. The soft fur on it was a lot more gentle than my hands, and even served to isolate some of the direct contact between the sensilla and the air.

Leah wiped her face clean, and calmed down a little, we worked on our meals in a companionable silence with only the occasional snicker. I explored Leah’s new legs with my free hand, massaging the outside of her thigh, tested how the artificial muscles differed topologically from natural ones, marveled at the normal body temperature the legs had, and enjoyed Leah’s bliss when I copied her earlier massaging between those fibers.

Eventually, Leah got off my lap, tossed our empty boxes to those from yesterday, and moved behind me. She tilted my head backwards a little, and began softly washing my hair.

I was a little nervous—this situation reminded me a lot of the one that caused Leah’s flashback yesterday. It made it difficult to just relax and enjoy the kneading. Leah seemed to pick up on that, and whether it was because she thought the same, or perhaps to relieve my tension, she asked, “Tinea, is this your natural hair, or was it designed? The black, and how straight it is makes me think you have some Asian in you.”

I blew air and forced my shoulders down. Put my soles properly on the ground to feel more stable.

“Mhm, yeah. My mother was Asian. Korean, I think? I never met her, but that’s what my father said, when I was really young. Said I had her hair.”

“Oh? Ever see any pictures of her? Was she pretty?”

“I haven’t, no. Everybody seemed to hate her, but they didn’t say why. The hair thing was literally the only fact I know. When I skipped out, one of the first things I tried was to see if I could chase her down, but that quickly got much too expensive. Huh. Maybe that’s an option, now? Haven’t thought about her for a while, to be honest.”

As my thoughts drifted off towards that last attempt that had forced me to accept that I simply didn’t have the resources for a search with nothing but my own DNA as a starting point, Leah slowly rinsed the lather out of my hair, and shook me out of my reverie when she deposited a dollop of soap into my hand, with the words, “Here, Tinea. Wipe yourself down. You’re still rather muddy from yesterday, and your trip outside didn’t help any.”

I got to it with a thank you.

Leah’s overall had gotten dirty and she was kneading it with her feet to get that off of it. The Sleeve and helmet had kept her clean, if not dry, from the mess outside, but still, she hadn’t seen a shower for days. I wasn’t really surprised she’d splurged on the comfort of having one built directly into her body…

The soap was some sort of alien mix that made scrubbing super easy, and I was done before Leah had finished washing herself, so I spent the rest of the time waiting for her admiring her beautiful red hair, with that rich vibrant look you’d usually only see in commercials or expensive ads, not on people. At least not on people without a lot of money.

“Is your own hair natural? That shade’s amazing.” It reached like half-way down her back, too, totally with that wavy bounce you’d expect. At least where it wasn’t wet, yet.

“It does grow like that, but I’m very sure it’s not natural. Lily…she had the exact same hair, and a couple years ago I had my DNA checked. There’s some patterns that are typical for cosmetic edits, you know, the expensive kind. Made me wonder what happened to my parents. I have no clues as to their identity, or where they are, or where I might have been born. Or why we weren’t with them.”

“Oh? How expensive are we talking?”

“Well, they’d have to have been CEOs of a middle-sized corpo, or high-level managers of one of the big ones…”

“Okay, that’s a lot… Oh.”

“Hmm?”

“Figure that had anything to do with your getting kidnapped?”

“Ah… Shit.” Her expression displayed her hate for that idea, but then Ypsi’s voice sounded through our skulls:

That’s really unlikely! If your parents had enemies that wanted to take you out, then they could’ve found you years ago, especially since you had your DNA tested! And the kidnappers, they treated you just like a random unknown Vanguard, not somebody they had a vendetta against, or any special interest in. They didn’t seem to have any questions about your appearance. Didn’t even comment on your hair, or anything! And also, Tinea got kidnapped, too!

That, I did.

Leah relaxed visibly and sighed, “Yeah. It isn’t particularly reasonable to assume a link between my kidnappers and my parents, beyond the idea that they’re probably all filthy rich, huh? It would’ve been a hell of a coincidence for me to become a Vanguard just as they prepared to take me.”

An even uglier idea sprang to mind, but I killed that one before it could fully form. “There you go. Case closed. Want me to do your hair for you?”

“Nah, I got it. Thanks. Maybe when I don’t have a shower installed in my own hand anymore?”

I giggled at her and said, “Sure, sure. Hey, sun’s about to come up, in, like, twenty minutes or so. I’d like to get to killing Antithesis again. Also, I have reason to believe there’s a nest somewhere nearby…”

“Oh. Um, yeah. Ypsi, how long’s the rain going to last?”

The entire morning! Maybe even until after twelve.

“Ah, that’s going to be annoying. So, are we still going with ATVs?”

I thought about that a little. It’s not like we had points to throw around, and it seemed to me like ATVs were a solid investment. Oh, but would they also allow us to cross the swamp?

“How large are these?”

“Oh, really just the size of motorbikes, but with four wheels.”

Small, then. They’d get stuck…

Unless of course, they were ridden by a pair of samurai.

“Tynea, what’s the cheapest addon or whatever, that we can buy to cross the swamp with them?”

I would actually suggest a class 0 supersearing foam. One that engages its drying reactions when in contact with water, and considering your need for stealth against your kidnappers, one that also decomposes within hours. If you still intend to get smart turrets, a foam gun could be installed that will spray a rough but usable “bridge” in front of you, as you go. The gun would cost twenty points, and one hundred meters’ worth of foam two meters wide, twenty five.

“Supersearing?”

It’s essentially a low explosive triggered by water, and the byproduct of its detonation creates the bridge. The material is instantly hard, stable enough to lift roughly one ton per square meter, and floats on water. One of the more useful exploration tools invented by Earth scientists, designed specifically to allow usually landbound vehicles to engage threats in shallow waters. It’s a little on the expensive side, so the only places that use it are upper crust corporation-owned towns next to infestable lakes.

That did sound very useful. Still, we’d have to invest about…two hundred points, maybe? If we selected the right spot to ford the swamp.

“And that’s cheaper than getting an add-on for the vehicles to, I dunno, skim the water?”

Yes, very likely so. I would have to adapt one from a class 1 catalog, which you would of course have to buy first. The combined price of that would be one or two hundred points higher than my estimate for the above method. As the maps indicate no further need to cross water or swamp, it seems likely that this investment would not pay for itself before you outgrew the ATVs. Or perhaps, before you wrecked them—they are not combat vehicles after all. You could just buy a small boat and purchase another two ATVs on the other shore, but that would cost about as much, and leave behind evidence.

“That…all makes sense. Alright, I don’t see an issue. Uh, Leah. Are we going to hunt that nest?”

“Uh, maybe? I’d suggest we try to locate it at least. And get a few dozen kills for points. If it’s above ground, then maybe we don’t need full–on samurai gear for it, right? If it’s underground, we’d need armor and everything, in which case, just getting a load of kills is probably the best we can do.”

“Tynea?”

Leah is correct. Underground nests tend to be fairly consolidated, and often adapt to the lack of space by building fewer, but much stronger units. Above ground, nests tend to sprawl and hide parts of themselves away in hidden crevasses and such, and though it is disproportionally more difficult to fully kill one of those as a result, it is possible even with lacking gear.

My nails lightly ran over my cheek as I considered the implications of that. More sprawl meant more reach. More reach meant more resources. More units, more…scouts.

A danger, but also an opportunity.

One that we would need a lot of automation to really exploit.

I caught Leah's eye. "If it's above ground, we could use lots of drones to map out Antithesis movements in the area, and locate the nest that way. We'd also get a really good idea how our presence affects them, when and where they'll come from, and how many."

She pursed her lips and said, "That sounds horribly expensive… How many drones would we need?"

Tynea jumped in to answer, The technology usually used for these endeavors are of the radiological variety. Active scanners, detectors, and those of less mundane means. Such, we would need only five to ten of, but they are quite expensive, and neither of you have the catalogs required. If we relied on stripped down versions of scout drones available to you instead, or even cheaper, stripped down versions of the Light Communications drone, we would want several hundred at least, close to a thousand if the nest were large enough. I do not believe it to possess much territory however, as we aren’t seeing nearly as much activity as we should for a hive that has been active very long. There is one more factor to consider—even if you started with only a few drones, if they were efficiently used to locate Antithesis groups, and you focused on taking these down as efficiently from your ATVs, your point gain should not only support the purchase of an ever increasing number of new drones, but even outstrip it quite quickly.

That…was a lot, but it lined up nicely. Okay. I leaned back to properly consider that.

 

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