Chapter Seventy-Four - Xenocide Act V; Debate's Resolution

"The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is boom."

– Mission statement of EAA, Explosion Addicts Anonymous

 

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"Tynea? How long will it take the fire to burn out?"

The payloads will be used up in thirty to ninety seconds. The wooden fuel adds some unpredictability to it, though. If the logs properly catch fire, they may continue to burn and smolder for hours.

"I see. Will the rain be enough to prevent a forest fire, considering that it has lessened?"

Yes, certainly. The entire area is rather soaked with water, so even if it stopped now, the fires would die down before long. The napalm won't generate the energy required to dry enough of the local forest to really get a fire going, and the logs aren't going to burn hot enough, either.

"Okay, then I won't need to stay here, will I? Ah, let's just use drones to keep an eye on the flames."

Understood. May I launch two of your UAVs?

"Go ahead. Let's actually launch all of them. They're much faster than the drones, right? Use them to scout further, especially around the areas where the aliens gathered first. I want to see if we can't confirm those mobile hives."

Not to mention that more vision would let me use my missiles across a larger area. I could go back to Leah and hunt down the stragglers.

Yup, me smort!

I imagined myself going Daaarling~ as I danced gaily towards Leah's fat egg.

I pursed my lips and shook my head. I was still safe. I didn't have the horrid makeup, after all.

Metallic clangs announced the ejection of six of the UAV missiles, and I watched as they rose roughly sixty meters into the air, well above the canopy.

I immediately commanded one to keep an eye on Leah, who was doing fine, just starting to engage the emerging aliens with her guns, keeping them at range. The Fives and Sixes would probably show themselves soon, and I asked AI-I to start queueing up penetrators to launch automatically if she called for aid, or if it looked like she was getting flanked.

Using the cerebral augment in a more direct manner, I zoomed in on the UAV missiles and studied them in good detail. They were about five centimeters longer than any other I'd launched.

Which made sense.

The Myriad couldn't increase the diameter of my missiles without altering the launch tubes, but adding more segments along the length during the catapulting? Well, that's what it was already doing anyway.

I wondered how long the things could get before aerodynamics and stability became a problem…

At the apex, they separated their butt ends, long and graceful wings unfolded, and new, quieter engines spun up. I probably wouldn't have been able to hear them without my antennae.

Hmm, these sounded more like jet turbines than the hissing rocket motors my missiles usually had…

Tynea, noticing the object of my attention, explained. The jet engines are far more fuel-efficient than the rocket motors. They'll be able to loiter for roughly an hour. Their time of activity suffers drastically from travel, of course, but they can fold up again and reposition quite quickly, if necessary.

Oh, right! I'd almost forgotten!

"Do you think you could get these UAVs past the Antithesis into the caves? Are they fast enough?"

Too fast, in fact. I could probably penetrate deeper, yes, but they won't quite manage the tight turns in some corridors to even get there. And if I slowed them down to get around those corners on wings, then they'd be vulnerable to attack again, and considerably larger and easier to destroy than the normal drones.

"What if we used a few normal drones to carry the missile to where you'd have a clear shot into the unexplored areas on rocket power?"

That still doesn't allow the drones past the guards, which we would need in order to pass the signal along underground. We'd lose connection around the first or second bend.

Ah, damnit. Right.

– Attention: Antithesis model Four approaching. –

Moments after AI-I's words, I sensed the fast movements of a Four traversing the canopy with its tentacles, whipping itself limb after limb towards me.

I centered my rifle on it, and let a round of HSRP rip the alien to pieces.

The hit was just a tiny bit off, not exactly where I'd aimed. Which, at twenty meters, was a problem.

I looked down at my rifle and traced the trigger and its guard with a finger, feeling how things weren't quite seated right anymore, how there was play where there shouldn't be any.

Yeah. Today was its last day. Hell, it'd be dangerous to use if I weren't defended against shrapnel and had to worry about it exploding in my hands or something.

I sighed, and reoriented myself. Time to move.

The whistle-bang of the HSRP had attracted some attention, and I armed my tail-mounted Sentinel with a magazine of 13mm nanite darts to take care of the smaller Threes, and relied on good old 20mm shredders to kill any Fours as I walked along the wall of fire to make the plant beasts go where I wanted them to, again.

Tynea continued our conversation.

My suggestion would be to flood the caves with every drone at your disposal when you're about to leave, and to call for an orbital strike once we've confirmed the existence and exact location of the nest. The destruction of these drones in the bombardment would be a useful result, too.

Alternatively, stealth drones are another choice. Something like the Scout's Quartet, but hidden.

Speaking of which, "What happened to the Quartet back home, actually?"

I've been able to connect to them intermittently and have logged everything that I could.

"Huh?" My brows pinched. Not again! "Why didn't you tell me?"

There is unfortunately no critical information, beyond the removal of the front wall of your apartment and some damage to the inside surfaces, which explains how your cocoon was taken. All the information I have is information you could've found yourself without any effort via the internet—or even the Family app—hence I thought that you were not interested in it. I would certainly have shared anything of importance to you or Leah. There is nothing. No hints as to your kidnappers' identities, no change in status. The neighborhood remains as it was days ago, unrepaired due to the global incursion.

Well, I had to admit that made sense.

I exhaled and relaxed. Yeah. My previous argument with Tynea, the things I'd learned about her, they had me a little…sensitive right now. I was looking for signs of…what? Betrayal?

Kinda. 

It's how I'd react to any human pulling that shit on me.

Tynea had wanted me to figure out that she wasn't. That if I was to use her properly, I had to understand that. 

But what did that mean, exactly, practically? From her explanations, it seemed that I should just trust that she wasn't going to…go behind my back in a way that would cause me harm. And from the decision she'd called herself a mistake, that I had to…prompt her appropriately.

Just like the AIs I used as a programmer…

I stopped. My body froze as a new thought formed itself.

Aaah. Now I understood.

I'd made the mistake of making her responsible for figuring out my less obvious wants. Those that weren't objectively identifiable. Those that would be both natural and obvious to another human...

Oh shit. Okay.

Absent-mindedly, I began to walk again.

The reason she could afford to make those decisions for me with samurai gear was because all of that was reversible. If I didn't like something, she could easily undo it.

She was kind of too smart to fuck that up, but even if she did, the consequences just weren't really there. Maybe some loss of points, but whatever, those were effectively infinite.

But that was not true in other areas of my life. The social, the responsibilities… That kinda stuff.

And she wanted me to take the lead on those elements. If I didn't, she'd try, because that's who, and what she was. A Class XII Personal Assistant. She'd try and do what she could to shore up my shortcomings, just like those AIs I used to create code. But she wasn't me. She'd do better if she had more guidance from me.

Yeah. Yeah, okay. I could work with that.

And suddenly, there was a connection again, between Tynea and I. I knew where I stood with her, and I knew what I was supposed to do.

A smile stretched my lips and a bounce lengthened my stride.

 

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Leah twitched her left gun-arm, and she sensed the head of a Three in front of her powder-blackened muzzle. Her pseudo-finger tightened on an imaginary trigger that primed the rear of a very real mass of soft brass, hard steel, and hungry nanites.

By the time the Three's skull exploded, she was already onto the next two, reaping Antithesis as fast as they came for her.

Leah was having fun. Lots and lots of fun. She hadn't thought she'd enjoy combat like this, ever, to be honest.

She couldn't just ignore the incoming attacks yet, she couldn't quite stand still and take it. Yet. 

But she was liking her first taste of giving harder than she got, face to face, without having to hide in a tree or riding an ATV on the run, constantly wary of making the mistake that would end up killing her.

Ah, here was the first of the Fives.

She flexed an imaginary muscle, and her right gun-arm ejected the current magazine, and replaced it with another one from a basket just beneath the gun's mount, full of recoilless 22mm cartridges tipped with bad temper and explosives.

Before the walking cactus could even point its quills at her, its brain had already energetically vacated the vicinity.

Leah! 

"Ypsi?"

Tinea's coming back! She made sure with lots of fire, that the baddies will be slow. She also said she has some of the stitchers for you, if you need them!

"Alright, thank you. Ypsi, could you show me a map with markers for the Fives, please? Tinea said they'd already gotten past her, so those won't have been crowd controlled."

Here you go!

A map popped up inside the pod, on the curved wall in front of her. She opened her real eyes to analyze her situation, and found that she had no issue simultaneously commanding the pod in combat. Which was awesome. It meant she could multitask effectively!

"Thank you, dear." 

Ah, she'd have to deal with all the rest of the Fives at once… And several of the Sixes.

Time to buy more protection.

"Ypsi, let's get something to deal with the quills. I'll probably take two or three salvos before I've killed them all."

Okay! Umm. There's two different options. They're both neat! And you could take both.

There she was again, little girl Ypsi trying to be serious with big words. Leah grinned.

If you borrowed Tinea's Esoteric Defense Systems catalog again, you could get more of the teleporting explodey plates. They'll blap the enemy projectiles!

And from your own Warforge Technologies catalog, one of the few esoteric things are the electrolaser banks!

"Oh?"

Um! They're a bit low power, but they have enough energy to mess with air currents around flying stuff and make them tumble and go elsewhere. And they work really, really fast! Even the weakest one can totally, uh, shut down all of the Fives coming for you!

"Hmm. Can it kill Antithesis, too?"

Not the weakest one. The mark II could kill model Ones, and the mark III model Threes and Fours.

"Hmm. What's the price difference?"

The electrolaser costs three hundred points once, and the other one two hundred, but each plate costs five points! They're a lot stronger and larger than the ones you used personally, and need to go a lot further to cover everything around the vehicle.

"I see. So, the cost would escalate pretty quickly, huh? Even if it starts out cheap. In that case, let's try the electrolaser, hmm?"

Okay!

 

New Purchase: Class I 'Volt' Mark I Multi-Channel Electrolaser
Combined Points reduced to... 5450!

 

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