Chapter Forty-Two - Bonus Samurai Content For The Kids?

“Squirrel!”

– Every dog, ever

 

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A dizzy beat of my heart shuddered through me as adrenaline scoured my brain and I instinctively threw my arms up…and nothing happened.

Eyes wide, I saw a Four fling itself between two trees, where it scrabbled for purchase as it noticed my movement and fought to realign itself towards me, like a dog spotting a squirrel.

The sudden realization that I wasn’t about to be in pain, and the strange comical moment of the Four flailing in uncoordinated movements, ripped right through the flash of anxiety and settled me comfortably into familiar patterns.

My hands anchored the rifle against my shoulders, and a finger found the trigger for the Sentinel.

My first dart was already halfway to its destination by the time Leah began to take aim, and I hurriedly jumped several meters away in a single leap, nearly colliding with a tree along the way.

I forced myself to calm down a little more, to properly pay attention to what my senses were telling me. 

I watched as Leah’s finger tightened on the trigger, and I flicked my antennae to hide behind my back just before the inverter enforced its silence.

This time it felt more like somebody had dipped my sensilla in glue and flash-dried it, only for the instant to recede, leaving me in a much better state than the last one. No migraine, no queasiness.

Yeah, distance did the trick. I didn’t even need to be very far away, ten meters or so would do.

Just like the previous, this alien broke as it hit the ground from several meters up, and the taste of mold and cut grass filled the air.

A slow and steady drizzle peppered me with drops of water, pushed the smell down a little, and I wondered if maybe the humidity had an effect on my sensitivity to the muffler’s blast, or if it affected the technology itself.

Focus. That didn’t matter much, right now.

“Tynea, any idea how that Four remained undetected until it got so close?”

It was navigating very quickly at the time that you spotted it. I cannot say whether that was its first move, or if it had been traveling already, and the drone is still circling in the opposite direction. I’ve reviewed the stream of data from your antennae, but that, too, is inconclusive. 

Hmm. Inconclusive. That meant there was something I could’ve noticed, even if it wouldn’t have told me more than that there might be something. I focused around myself, and studied the effect the vegetation had on the air currents nearby. Eddies in the air were created or disrupted here and there, altered and channeled off their path. Every brush against a leaf or a branch killed momentum and changed the picture I could read.

Yeah, it would be easy to miss movement up between the leaves, at least without any experience to tip me off.

Experience. This was as good a time as any to start practicing.

“Leah?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to watch the trees above us. I should’ve been able to feel that Four coming, but I completely missed it. It’s difficult to read anything through all the obstacles up there, but I don’t think we’ll get very far if I don’t figure it out.”

“Okay. Do you want to leave the drone to me?”

“Maybe we should buy another two or three and leave them to Ypsi and Tynea?”

Their cameras have a viewing angle of one hundred and twenty degrees. Three would allow us to cover the surroundings fully.

“Three, Leah?”

“Um, Ypsi. Wouldn’t it be better to have actual scouting drones, instead? Even if they cost a bit more.”

“They can see more! With stuff other than cameras, too.”

“Oh, oh yeah. Good thinking. Thanks. Are there any specific ones you’d prefer? If not, I used a quartet of cheap, but useful, drones on my first day. Tynea took care of them for me, too.”

“My scout drones are less scout drones, and more light, exceptionally mobile combat drones. They’re also several hundred each.”

“Oh, yeah, let’s go with mine? We’ll need a few more kills to get them though, they’re a hundred total, if I remember correctly.”

You do.

“Could I buy the first two now, and the other two later?”

No, the four count as one item. However, you could just buy them individually. The total price for four individual drones of the same type would be a hundred twenty points, however.

“Let’s not waste points if we don’t have to. Can’t really afford it. Leah, I suggest we get a second spy drone now, which we would need anyway to leave backups at the facility.”

“Sounds good.”

“Alright. Tynea, if you would, please?”

 

Cost	x	Item
15	1	Stealthed Light Communications Drone
15		Total
61		Remaining Points

 

I held my hand out, and another one of the round little drones fell into it, this time without a box. It immediately vanished, and a moment later, its weight disappeared.

A new video placed itself next to that of the first drone, and markers on my minimap showed their locations.

“I think we’ll be fine for a bit. We need better drones to really detect any Antithesis that are hiding from direct sight, as soon as possible, though.”

Leah gave me a thumbs-up and a smile, and we started trekking towards the two Fours Tynea had reported earlier.

True to my word, I focused most of my attention upward, really exercising the senses my antennae gave me, and even the improved eyesight I had.

Which led to some tripping and stumbling. I nearly fell flat on my face, saved only through a reflex instilled by the combat maneuvering training I’d taken during my coma, and Leah decided that I needed to be led by the hand.

It was a little difficult to restrain my giggles while I was walking on a figurative leash, with my nose up in the air, trying to find anything out of place above us. But we did keep walking, and it took us perhaps five minutes of careful steps to arrive near the location of the hour-old sighting, with no further interruptions.

We split up and hid close to trees, while I scanned our surroundings with my antennae, and Leah and our AIs with the camera drones.

We didn’t find anything, except for a few broken branches where the Four had been.

“Think it was the one that came hurtling at us, Tinea?”

“Maybe? Are the cams showing any fresh damage to the trees in that direction?”

Yes, there is, and it is consistent with a Four traveling.

“Coulda been it, then, I guess.”

“Alright. Next one?”

“Yeah. Let’s have another look at their camouflage. And then I think we should stop bothering with single units.”

I didn’t feel great about having potential hidden Antithesis at our backs, but it seemed to me that slowing down to deal with those would be a strategic mistake. A few hundred points extra served to make us safer than preventing a potential ambush by single-digits.

Also, “That big swarm will cause a lot of damage eventually, if we don’t get on top of it. We’ll need a lot of points for that.”

Leah tilted her head, came to her own conclusions, and nodded at me. “Yeah. And there’s going to be a storm, which we don’t really have the equipment to fight in. We might actually run out of time to deal with it, I think?”

“Right, did you get that app installed, by the way? The Family one.”

“Yes, Ypsi sorted it out.” She said, with a thumbs-up, smoothbore resting in the crook of her arm. “I saw that low priority alert you sent out earlier. Think we should upgrade it?”

After another look at the map, studying the horde of aliens, I answered, “Nah. The situation hasn’t really changed. They’re not moving all that quick, and they won’t get close to any humans today or tomorrow. I think it’s fine.”

“‘Kay. Ready to go again?”

“Yup. One last Four.”

The drizzle picked up a little, and I had to squint against sprinkling rain drops any time I tried to look up, as we started walking again.

So instead I tried something new to keep track of anything above our heads, and to navigate.

I completely closed my eyes, and relied entirely on the spatial awareness my antennae were giving me.

That…wasn’t my best idea. Yes, it actually worked, I could see where to walk, and getting rid of visual distractions let me focus on stuff around me in more than one direction. But it left me very near-sighted.

I could tell what was right next to me, and even Leah a few steps away remained clear, but between the water droplets weighing down the air, and the currents themselves generally losing cohesion and mutating vibrations more the further they traveled, I had only the, literally, fuzziest sense of the world’s shape ten or so meters out.

Basically, I still needed my eyes to actually see.

But it was an experiment with interesting results. Eliminating one of my primary senses had allowed me a much better…resolution, so to say, in the other. It gave me better control over my antennae, and I could just do more with them.

So that’d be something to actually practice, when I wasn’t at risk of getting munched on.

“Tinea?” Leah’s voice brought me out of my musings.

“Hmm?”

“When that Four surprised us earlier, could it have seriously hurt you?”

“Um. No, not unless it got lucky and stabbed me in the eyes or something. I’m not used to thinking that way yet, and the thing actually scared me since it came out of nowhere, but my skin is tougher than your overall. Maybe it could bruise me a little? I’m not even sure about that. But that’s about it.”

“So, basically, we should be safe from much harm against the weaker Antithesis?”

“Well, a Five or Six can seriously injure either of us, I think? Tynea?”

Yes, they are heavy enough to suffocate you, for example. Leah’s armor is designed to absorb spikes of high kinetic energy, not the slow push of excessive mass. A Six could break Leah’s bones, even yours if the circumstances lined up in a particularly unfortunate way. A Nine has extremely sharp blades that could cut through her armor, or your skin, Tinea, though it couldn’t sever your bones. You are, with the exception of specific weak points, safe from models One through Four. Your active defenses offer additional protection against particular tactics, such as a Five’s projectile attacks, which would otherwise easily penetrate your passive defenses.

Leah breathed out heavily, and I saw her shoulders relax a little. “So being careful makes sense, obviously, but we really aren’t anywhere near as helpless as I feel we are, are we?”

“Yeah, we’ll be fine. We’ve got layered defenses, and solid weapons. And if there’s anything we can’t just simply shoot to death, well, there’s stuff for very few points that we can buy at a moment’s notice. We already outscale the immediate dangers we’ll face today, and for those of tomorrow, well, we just need to move fast enough to outscale those, too.”

“Mmm. I’m just feeling a bit unsettled. Sorry. I want to get home to my people, soon.”

“Yeah. I get that, and we’ll make it work. Just…you know. Let’s do what we need to do to make that a reality, yeah? And while we’re at it, we might as well get some bonus samurai content for the kids, hey?”

Leah giggled a little, and said with a smile, “Yeah.”

I checked our minimap, and we oriented ourselves as we slowly closed in on the other ambusher Tynea had spotted roughly fifteen minutes ago.

 

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