Chapter Sixty-Seven - Xenocide Act V, Resupplying

"Alien circuits entwined with human flesh; we became both the invasion and the resistance."

– Tales from the Wired Frontier, AI-generated novel 2055

 

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I exhaled slowly, embraced by Leah, my face snuggled into the crook of her neck. Felt tension unknot and breathing came easier.

With a good last squeeze, I released her and stepped back, happy to return Leah's smile.

"Let's get our stuff stocked up again."

Leah nodded at me, and I sent Tynea a message about that table of purchases.

Shall I add more materials for the Myriad to the list?

"Ah, sure, go for it. Uh, the smokeless fuel's only needed for mass launches. If it's just like a dozen or so, we can use the cheaper one. Let's talk about more blueprints."

Certainly. I should mention that the more variance in required materials you want access to, the more of your slots will be taken up. Eventually you'll need to switch to larger tanks, which require catalog unlocks to access. The technologies used change, and there is no way to pretend they're just inverted grenades anymore. Furthermore, the Myriad's functionality will truly suffer from splitting itself up so that you can ride the quadbike, if I can't stock with material redundancies.

"Ah. The ATVs are starting to drag us down, huh? Well. Me in particular."

Yes.

Leah spoke up. "We can't really use large vehicles in this forest, but once we cross the swamp and get on that old highway, we can just get something that can store the two quads, no issue."

"What kind of vehicle are you thinking of?"

"Right now I'd have to choose something tracked or wheeled, for under ten thousand. It'd be slow, sturdy, extremely tough. But if we can get past the ten-k mark, then there'd be single-seater walking tanks with a few cubic meters of storage and a tiny, tiny bunk space for a passenger. Not warmechs, exactly. Much more fragile, and far more complex. But very quick and nimble. Scouts, with esoteric defenses, meant to fight at range and be hard to hit. They can take smaller caliber projectiles for days, but not melee, not high-mass impacts. No cannon shells either, nor explosions." Leah grimaced. "Flying stuff is also an option, but I'd either need to unlock another catalog, or we need a lot more points to get the Warforge flying combat vehicles."

I chuckled. "You don't seem excited about that."

She groaned and said, "I hate flying. The hoverbusses make me puke, every time. But," she sighed, "there's stuff you can buy to help, to fix the brain. Which is why I mentioned it. With enough points we get some pretty dangerous aerial conveyances, but I'd have a lot more fun with, uh, ground pounders, I guess."

"Don't worry about it." I leaned against her shoulder. "I'll do the flying part. I'll also need either a lot of points for it, or just two thousand points and a lot of time. Which I'm leaning towards. It would let me get used to having large big things on my back as they grow in."

I sent her a picture of the wings as I'd designed them. It'd been about two weeks since then, huh? Time flies when you're asleep…

She studied the file and oohed and aahed at them. "Pretty! Fluffy, too. And no kidding about them being huge. How the hell are you going to keep them up whenever you're not flying?"

"Oh, they won't be very heavy at all, actually. They're ultra-thin. Not even half a millimeter. See," I shifted the display, "how I can fold them up into something as small as a fluffy coat? And that's not the limit of how tightly I can pack them. Sure they'll get in the way some, which I'll have to get used to, but it's not like I'll be carrying around a tent on my back, or something."

She grinned at the mental picture. "That would be an issue, I guess. Neat. So, how much do these let you fly?"

"How much?"

"Like, how fast, how long, stuff."

"Ah, I'll be about as fast as a hovercycle. So… roundabout two hundred kilometers per hour? That's…around one hundred and twenty miles per hour, I think? So, kinda slow for Protector technology, even at tier one. But instead they're good at instantly changing directions and go from zero to a hundred real quick. More hummingbird or dragonfly than fighter jet. And however long my metabolism lets me. There's energy and oxygen boosters, though."

"Hmmm… How are you going to, like, flap them? They almost seem too massive for that, to be honest."

I zoomed in on the picture, highlighting a single one of the specialized oscillating scales. "Won't need to. They're less aerodynamic wings shaped for lift, and more parachutes. Air brakes, I guess. Part of what allows them to be so maneuverable—easy to arrest all your momentum in an instant. Instead, look at these microscopic scales. They generate airflow with their vibration, and since you have, I don't know, a gazillion of these all across the surface, on both sides of the wings, they generate enough to lift a person and move them with some alacrity."

"Mmm. They're beautiful. Seriously. Look like they'd be amazing to touch." She giggled. "I could see the kids being all over them. Speaking of which," she said wryly, "how are you going to protect them? If they're that thin, they're probably not very tough, right?"

"They're a lot stronger than they look, but mostly against tearing. They can theoretically be cut, and fire's an issue. But it's not like somebody shooting holes in them is going to stop me—so little mass to repair makes healing quick, and losing some surface area to bullet holes won't slow me down. At least not as long as I don't lose the entire wing. But I'll need devices to defend them properly. Esoteric Defense Systems will have interesting ones." I replied with a reassuring smile.

Taking her hand and squeezing it, I continued, "But let's get back to sorting out our gear. We've gotta reload the turrets and maybe figure out a way to let them handle it by themselves. And I was going to talk to Tynea about more missiles." I followed up by sending Tynea a request to buy that ammo, and the table showed up again, followed by two heavy drum magazines falling out of the air in front of me.

 

Cost	x	Item
2	6	7.62x39mm 'Coffin Nail' Nanite Payload, Magazine of 200
2	2	7.62x39mm Guided HSRP, Magazine of 10
20	2	40mm 'Monster Hunter' Delayed Guided Gyrojet HE-frag/Nanite, Magazine of 4
3	2	20mm Delayed Guided Gyrojet, Magazine of 20
62		Total
5774		Combined Remaining Points

 

I scrambled to catch them, one with my free hand, the other with a foot. Childhood reflexes kicked in, huh…?

With a teasing smile on her face, Leah clapped and said, "Nice catch. Can you do that with more at the same time?"

Hey, I had a free hand now! And look at that, it shot forward and tickled Leah in her ribs!

She jerked away and giggle-laughed at me. 

I tossed the two 'Coffin Nail' magazines to her and said, "Give those to the single turret on your ATV. I've got another two each for the ones on your pilot pod thing."

Still laughing she chirped, "Roger!" And wandered off.

"Tynea, gimme the four remaining ones one-after-the-other, please?"

Will do. You'll be seeing a smaller group of Threes very soon, coming in from behind you.

"Small?"

Twenty units.

"Understood."

I tabbed up forty high-explosive missiles, with a thought to having them use the cheap kerosene.

When I got close, the egg lowered its butt end, making it easy for me to step up and hand the magazines to the little arms at the bottom of each robotic turret, ready to be loaded whenever the last few rounds in the old ones were used up.

"Four hundred rounds per gun. That should be enough for a big battle, right?" I turned around, in the direction the Threes would come from, and leaned against the egg while letting my Sentinels hold onto all the other magazines I'd ordered.

My rifle still had some HSRP, but the Sentinel would reload it as soon as I ran out.

They'll last for roughly three minutes of continuous shooting, and the nanite payload does make them deadly, even if the initial 7.62 caliber hit doesn't kill reliably. Which, if you remember your first fight, was occasionally the case even against those less structurally sound versions. The nanites will take a minute or two to dissolve a critical organ, though.

"Alright. Good enough. Say, the annoying and possibly impossible part of reloading these turrets is to get the magazines to those little helpers during combat. Could you just spawn the magazines right where they can grab them?

Yes, but only in close proximity. If you or Leah are nearby, then we can locate the teleport near enough that no further manual interaction is necessary.

"And if we're not?"

If you cannot make the time to dash by, then you could buy receptacles that allow Ypsi or myself to teleport additional magazines into it. That would also permit the turrets to order more magazines as they need them, automatically. It does cost a little more per bullet, and the reward is lessened.

My brows scrunched. "Lessened?"

The more steps, and especially distance, there are between you and your kill, the less it's worth. The formula is fairly complex and would take a while to describe with any detail.

"Huh. I see. So…it had better be worth it, I guess? Can you get diminishing returns to a degree where a strategy, even if otherwise successful, could get you hardstuck?"

Not really. It's very rare that a kill wouldn't get you more points than you had to invest in it. But there are some examples, such as a low class weapon that matches the power of an unavailable higher tier weapon and is abnormally expensive as a result. A kill might cost exactly as much as the kill was worth. But those are usually single-use devices and automating their delivery would require a rather more complex solution. There is no accidentally trapping yourself. As long as your strategy doesn't consist of not killing, you are safe.

"Okay. Well, the way it sounds, I'll just run by a turret and let you take care of it, whenever it becomes necessary."

Understood.

"That leaves us with two things. Materials and blueprints. I've got enough to build a few more penetrators, and a little less than two hundred high-explosive, if we don't count the five hundred already in production, so we need to replace what I've used up."

Breaking branches announced the presence of hurtling aliens. "There they are."

I quickly set my targets and watched as the Myriad slowly launched one missile after the other. They kept low to the ground and flew fairly slow, enough so that they blew their exhaust gasses into the water beneath and threw small trails of mud as they dashed ahead like surfers, constantly adjusting to find the best position for detonation.

A few got double kills, and I counted only sixteen rockets for twenty dead Threes.

"Alright. So, blueprints. The penetrators are great against Fives and Sixes, but carving long tunnels the size of my fist didn't seem to do much against something as massive as a Fourteen."

You could have used the penetrators to set up your high-explosives. It would require one or two hundred of these micro-missiles, but they would have been able to destroy the Fourteen, if you had sent a chain of them into those 'tunnels'.

"Oh. Yeah, I didn't think of that." I scratched my chin.

Alternatively, another twenty-four to fifty-six of the Javelins in critical locations would have destroyed all the nerve-centers of the creature. Your initial volley did hit most of those in the second segment, after all.

I did remember that segment being a little out of sync, and having more twitching legs than the rest.

Hmm… I should probably really familiarize myself more with my stuff, huh?

 

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