Chapter Seventy-Five - Xenocide Act VI; Facepalm

"Warforged: Armor everything. If it is armor, supports armor, or heals armor, Warforge Technologies has it.

Warforged: Guns everything. If it hits hard, goes fast, or explodes, Warforge Technologies has it."

– Digital pamphlet somewhere else in the galaxy, probably not in English. Is it in English?

 

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I sort of skipped, sort of splashed through the forest, and checked in with the me keeping track of Leah's surroundings.

She wasn't getting flanked, but she'd have to fight seven Fives and six Sixes at once. Hmm.

I called Leah and greeted her with a huge smile, "Hi! Want a hand with those Fives?"

She showed a great deal of enthusiasm. "Nah, I got 'em. I bought lightning guns!" 

"Lightning guns?"

"Yeah! Electrolasers. Controlled lightning."

"That sounds very samurai. How do they work?"

"Powerful laser creates a plasma channel, and then a weak current at billions of volts is sent through it! Lots of heat!"

Oh! Plasma! That stuff was conductive. Right.

"That sounds nasty. How deadly is it?"

Leah shook her head. "Not very, actually. Ypsi says stronger versions can kill, but the one I have is really just a defense against bullets and such. Projectiles. It's meant to act extremely quickly against a lot of targets and disrupt trajectories. It's also supposed to be paired with armor, which is why my Warforge catalog has this stuff at all."

Between my UAV drawing circles above the clearing and several drones nearby, I could see Leah's egg from all sides.

It had gained a new crown, or perhaps a halo, of black, gold, and white. The irregular black circle followed the contours of the pod, and was lifted on three short legs above Leah's shell. 

Jutting from its circumference sat eight golden tubes on gimbals. High-powered laser pointers?

Then it had sixteen golden, bony claws tipped with an ethereal white, each projecting from the upper and lower surface of the halo above and below each tube, and pointing slightly past the front of the tubes. The, uh, cathodes? I thought? Whichever ones would supply the current to be run through the laser-ionized air.

Suddenly the loud crack of echoing thunder drowned out the lure, and I saw straight lines paint the glade an actinic white. The beams of lightning flickered through a cloud of quills, and with the muffler's aid, I heard the spinning vibration of objects beating the air like whisks beneath the rhythmic drumming of the electrolasers.

AI-me tracked the quills, watched as they lost most of their kinetic energy to the tumbling, saw how the lightning touched and glanced past the ends of each quill in such a way to control the rotation with whirling air and pockets of sudden vacuum, increasing their drag until the quills harmlessly clattered against the shell of Leah's pod.

The pod's right turret twitched towards the Fives, and with one hissing exhalation each, released self-propelled rounds that buried themselves in alien heads and torsos, shredding Antithesis tissue and breaking bones with explosive finality.

Thirteen seconds after the group of heavy plant beasts had engaged Leah, their torn bodies lay on the ground and she had suffered not a single scratch.

Leah showed a satisfied smile and settled deeper into her cradle, as I clapped my appreciation. 

"That was beautiful. Stunning in the most literal sense!"

She laughed and said, "Job's done!"

I could hear the thumbs-up.

Giggling, I asked, "Should I kill the remaining units? They're just a bunch of Threes and Fours, now."

Leah nodded, "Yeah, go ahead. I've got a good feel for this thing. Figured out some other stuff I want for it, too." Her smile widened and she shifted a little with her excitement.

"Oh?"

"Yeah! I'll give it a cannon under the belly! Nothing too large. Say, seventy-five millimeters? That'll really give me teeth."

I swear she had sparkles in her eyes.

Oh fuck me, she was so cute.

I pinched my thigh a little, to clear my head. "That does sound like a good idea. Guess it'll delay the vehicle, though?" I asked.

Leah nodded. "Yeah, but I went over our calculations a little. I don't think we'll get enough points before we cross the swamp, which means we'll risk running into more large units like the Fourteens, soon. And we won't have the time to set up the towed cannon, either. We need a big gun, and the pod gives us a solid platform."

"I see. And that level of firepower would really give us a leg-up with getting points too, right? Which means we probably don't actually need to skimp right now."

"Yes. We actually don't want to skimp. If you've got ideas that'll accelerate your ability to get points, I'd say you should just go for them."

I did have a few ideas… Damn, I really wanted those wings, but they'd take a while to develop. Couldn't claim they'd accelerate my earnings.

Urgh. Soon. Very soon.

I pouted, and Leah giggled.

With a sigh, I said, "Okay, I do have some stuff I need to replace."

She winked at me and returned her attention to the aliens filtering in from the front.

I decided to roll them up from behind, using drones and UAVs to mark each unit I could find, and launched about a hundred high-explosive micro-missiles. Most went for a high up-down trajectory, and a few wended their way through the trees to our sides, catching several Fours smart enough to try a flank.

My point counter ticked up to an even eight thousand, combined.

Eight thousand… Should I just go for the wings? Those were two thousand… Nrgh. No, I really wanted to, but I just couldn't justify it. If I wanted them instantly installed, I'd basically use up every point we'd made so far for the adapter. And if I let them grow, well, they weren't gonna be of use for… Hmm. A week maybe? Tynea said they'd need like a month to develop. Might be able to run faster on the ground before they were strong enough to carry me…

A week was too long. It'd have to happen today.

Vehicle first, wings after. Dang it.

With another exhalation, I dedicated my selves to an analysis of the datastreams from the drones, which showed that there weren't any large groups around anymore, and the slow trickle of individual units we'd get wasn't worth the time.

"Leah, the lure's pretty much useless here. Should we go check out if those mobile spawners exist, kill 'em, and then prep the facility?"

Her face lit up a little with excitement. "We're getting close to being done here, huh! Sure, let's get to it. Ah, let me buy that cannon first, though. Mobile nests sound like a good target for a mobile cannon." 

"Alright."

My fingers once again stroked along the rifle's barrel. It'd do one more battlefield. I should probably start thinking about its heir.

Hmm. Did the Sentinel have a big brother, or something along those lines?

Meanwhile, there was stuff to pack up. I took stock, and got busy.

While Leah got busy shopping, I deactivated the lure and turned to her towed cannon. It really had a massive barrel—one hundred and fifty millimeters. On the positively tiny wheelbase, it looked awfully top heavy.

I unlocked the legs of the thing and folded them up, so they pointed backwards and formed a triangle with the wheelbase, with a ring to tow it with at the tip of the triangle.

We didn't have a tow truck. Maybe the egg was strong enough to move it? I shoved at the gun a little, and found that I moved myself, instead of the cannon.

Well, shit. Um. Right. I was too light.

It was easy enough to turn the cannon, where the forces would anchor me against the ground. But if I tried to push or pull, I'd just slip on the wet soil.

Time to get creative!

I sat down on the arms of the cannon and whipped a few silken webs around my feet. I'd just begun attaching some previously mentioned small geometries from steel wire, when I remembered something.

And facepalmed.

With a groan, I dissolved the webs, and just poked at my feet. 

"Tynea?"

Yes?

"Didn't you say the battle skin can grow thorns and such?"

Indeed.

I hid my face behind my hands.

"Fuck! I'm an idiot."

Leah had opened her pod and the little robot arms were busy reattaching her limbs. She heard me in the silence of the deactivated lure and asked, "What?"

I peeked at her between my fingers in playful embarrassment, and she smiled at my antics.

"Nothing. I just feel really dumb right now."

Freshly limbed, no longer legless Leah came over and hugged me to her chest, the squish of which I happily accepted in my face. She squeezed me tightly while cooing at me, before she sat me back down and asked with a giggle, "What's up?"

I snorted at her and pointed at the stubby little spines growing from my soles. "I just realized I could've gone considerably faster the entire day today. And yesterday too. With a lot less exertion over distance."

Her eyebrows jumped in comprehension, and she uttered a quiet "Oh."

Then she continued on, "Did you forget to use your skin's gimmick? What was it called again?"

"Battle skin. And yes, I did. I don't think I've even used it once since waking up." I tilted my head. "Well, actually I did, when I peeked around a tree at that first huge gathering of Antithesis. But otherwise, I just thought of it as armor."

"Hmm. And what can it do, if you really go for it?" Leah stroked the base of my antennae, a delicious frisson ran through them, and a blush heated my cheeks. I closed my eyes and drew my knees up to lock my arms around, lest I return the favor. That was, apparently, an erogenous zone. Liquid slowly pooled in my core.

Leah didn't know.

Leah also didn't relent.

Tease.

I stared at her out of the corner of my eye, wetted my lips, and put every last iota of trembling heat her nimble fingers left me with into my voice. "I can imagine some very…fun stuff. Small geometries, let's say, on my fingers. With tiny little muscles on them so they move. Fast. Tiny little vibrations. Where you'd usually never feel them." I pointed up to my shivering antennae. "If you keep doing that, anyway."

Leah caught the implication in less than an instant, realized what she must be doing to me, and froze with her jaw dropped. The spot where her fingertip still lay against me warmed up. I enjoyed the blush blooming all over her cheeks and marveled as it reached even the tip of her ears. It tinged her throat when she swallowed.

Her mouth snapped shut as she yanked her hand back, and cradled it against her chest. She almost strangled herself with a croaked "Sorry."

I ignored the echoing sensations still chasing each other through my body. Instead I poked her nose with a giggle to relax the mildly awkward tension, and answered her earlier question seriously.

"Well, there's the obvious I missed, like increasing my traction against the ground, or even hooking into surfaces while climbing. But I can also release clouds of irritating saeta, or lacerating shards. I could probably even modify my skin to be able to inject toxins through spikes, or some other special effects."

That is certainly possible.

Leah was still calming down and shifting a little, not quite looking me in the eye. Her blush slowly receded as she sat there next to me.

She was just entirely too adorable. Not sure I could hold a candle to that, I thought and smiled, even while I struggled to keep my eyes off of her.

And then Leah, finally calm and completely off in her own imagination, crashed my own thought processes. "Wouldn't you have to be naked for that? I mean, wouldn't the sheddings get stuck in your clothes, otherwise?"

My brain tripped no alarms, and engaged. I saw myself in naked glory in front of Leah, shedding rainbow dust. With special effects to it.

I whipped around to her again, my mouth flapped, and without even thinking about it, both my hands jumped up to cover her mouth.

I tried to say something, but all I got out of my blushy mess of a mind was "Whuuuuu!"

 

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