Chapter Sixty-Six - Xenocide Act IV; Bye Fourteen

"There are currently about 10 billion people alive. We estimate there are 120 billion guns on Earth."

– recorded snippet from a discussion between Antithesis-devotees

 

***

 

Leah glanced up at the huge honker of an alien to better line up the tank buster, but movement in her peripheral vision distracted her.

Her heart stopped for just a moment when she recognized the front-down stance of several Fives readying to loose their quills. At her.

Blood drained from her face, and she felt faint. Time slowed down, everything seemed to pause. 

Then a thought popped free: You've active protection against that. You'll be fine.

Followed by several more: Bad idea. You just spent an eternity turning the gun. The explosions will upset everything. Oh, shit. Would the quills damage it? No way. Metal's too massive. 

Duck, you dumbass. Duck behind the armor. No 'splosions.

She ducked down.

Hidden behind the thick blinds of her cannon, Leah heard the fwip of darts whipping by above her head, along with several tock-vrrrs of impacts against the fingers-thick metal sheet in front of her as the needle tips got stuck in the dense metal and the organic projectiles vibrated from the force. The was the fast ratatat of three turrets gunning down targets ahead; Fives, Sixes, and a bunch of Threes that had come in riding the Fourteens' backs.

Four massive booms pounded against her ribs as they splattered mud everywhere, along with Antithesis parts.

Leah focused on the view from a drone high above them, surveying the clearing.

Several of the Fives had gotten ripped apart by four blasts that were probably concussive versions of Tinea's forty millimeter frag-grenade shells.

The remaining ones were still reeling, disoriented from the forces they'd been hit by, trying to pick themselves up.

Not one was aiming at anything in particular. Leah went back to work, slowly shifting the cannon in the right direction.

Suddenly, Tinea was there, trailing smoke, coughing until she sprayed a fine mist of…water? Into her mouth with her tail.

Oh, new shower? Leah recognized cylinders roughly similar to her own customized grenade-tanks, snug along the tip of Tinea's tail, and indeed, there was one with a H2O marking.

Aw, Tinea wouldn't need her for washing her hair anymore, would she? Oh, well. She'd have to rope her in anyways.

In seconds, Tinea had grabbed the end of one of the struts sticking out from the cannon's wheeled base, and lifted it up so she could rotate the whole thing. Leah was glad to borrow her strength—she herself had to let her artificial parts do all the work and bear all the forces, careful not to strain the stumps too much.

Meh. She'd solve it in the future. After all, weren't the points she'd need for that kind of stuff the reason for her presence?

The Fourteen was picking up speed again, and Tinea had to run. But the job was done, Leah'd already loaded the shell, the cannon was ready, she'd jumped back on the tiny platform with the gunner's seat, and all she had to do was wait for the big piece of basically-already-dead plant meat to crawl the last few meters and line itself up.

Tinea threw a glance at the Fourteen that was chasing her, another at the cannon, clearly studying the angles and line of fire.

She ran a tight curve, and just before she crossed the barrel, she threw a glance at Leah, who'd already tossed up her hands to signal trigger safety.

Tinea shot her a smile that lit something up deep inside Leah, something that drew her lips into a grin of her own, and then Tinea was past, and the Fourteen was wheeling around to chase her again.

A motion that would give Leah a perfect shot through its face, into the second segment.

A different sort of silence filled her mind, one that wasn't panicked or even fearful. A moment of complete focus and purpose. Time stretched just a little, just enough, as she waited for the thing to happen.

The Fourteen's front slowly slid across her sights. Its momentum lifted its inside edges slightly, and the legs on that side scrambled for traction.

Leah's thumbs smoothed themselves over the butterfly trigger, pressing gently.

They overcame that resisting click, and time turned into a rubber-band, contracting with the violence of a 150mm shell enthusiastically pressing its nose fuze against the facial armor of an alien monster.

So fast they were as one, the detonation mated with the barrel's blast and birthed the explosive demise of the remaining Fourteen along with all its passengers.

Leah's veil thickened to solidity and turned the kinetic energy of the blastwave against itself, while the cannon whipped a little on its wheels.

Tinea found herself flung halfway across the clearing, whooping as she skipped full butt over the muddy rainwater as if she were water-skiing.

The scene forced a snort from Leah. I know just where to take her too, once we get back to the city…

There was a sudden snarling, hissing susurration above the forest, and Leah jerked her head up.

 

***

 

From the corners of my eye, I saw Leah twitch as a blanket of tiny fires lit up above us. They rose higher, another hundred meters up. There, they spread out and staged in an intricate dance of whirling circles. Then, all of them at once flared bright, and sibilating engines pushed specks of destruction towards the earth on tails of flames and smoke.

A part of me, an element of my self stuck within, or perhaps born within, the cerebral augment, knew exactly where each single one was heading, could count down the milliseconds to impact, how many Antithesis of what types they would kill. Could've even packaged all that information into a nice, easily digestible advisory for me-me.

But most of me? Most of me was enthralled by the five hundred not-so-little explosions that wrecked all the shit, shredded the smaller bodies of Threes and inflated the larger bodies of Fours until they burst.

I felt the mad grin on my face, knowing that I probably looked a little like I had a screw loose, but what the fuck, I didn't mind the addicting dopamine dumps from utterly roflstomping Antithesis.

I lifted my rifle and tail, and began systematically mowing down the remaining Fives and Sixes nearby with HSRP and twenty mils.

Tinea, would you still like to receive the ammunition you ordered earlier?

Oh right, I'd forgotten about those.

And one of the turrets was out, too.

"Um, lemme see."

I turned off the lure for the moment. We'd need a few minutes to sort ourselves out, use the points we'd made.

The battlefield, and this time it really looked like one with gibbets of plant flesh and splintered trees and two big craters, was quiet. The smoke slowly washed away with the rain and the mild wind, no moving Antithesis anywhere. Not even a fire from all the detonations. Just a wet, serene—

"Fuck!" Leah banged on something behind me.

—uh…battlefield. Yes. Very serene.

I turned around and saw Leah hammering away at the joint that held a plate of steel thorns, which would dig into the floor and anchor the overgunned wheelbase against the recoil of the high-caliber cannon.

I knew the things were pretty good at that, because I'd had to use about all my strength to remove them from the ground going with the grain.

"Fucking 'protector-made precision', my ass!"

Leah was cursing up a blue streak, trying to get the joint to do what joints were supposed to do.

I moved closer and studied the thing. It was actually bent a little, along its swinging axis, and quite stuck. Leah's metal fists weren't budging it.

As I ordered a class 0 sledgehammer, I commented on the design, "Those aren't usually present on these things, right? Just the plows. Also, usually they don't have hinges around there."

Leah huffed and said, "I'm aware. This thing wasn't really meant to carry a one-fifty barrel! It's an ugly compromise of a jungle weapon Ypsi and I came up with." 

"Oh?" I looked at her with interest. "You created it?"

"Sort of? Mostly just took an existing wheelbase-carriage combination and resized and reinforced part of it to hold a much larger cannon assembly. Ypsi did all the math, I just had the idea for something we needed, and needed cheap."

She banged the spike-plate again, and I stretched out the sledgehammer for her to use instead, which she gratefully accepted.

Leah continued, "Normal spades wouldn't be enough to stop this cannon from propelling itself backwards, according to Ypsi. They'd skip right off the ground if the cannon's fired at a low angle. These spikes dig in against the motion and force the spades to actually follow suit. Usually it'd work fine. Except this side took all the force alone, 'cause it hit a rock, and the other one hit water."

It didn't really look like the spikes had to be folded up or disappear inside the struts, not even for transport. But I could see a risk of injury, or more likely, underbrush getting caught up and dragged along…

The sledgehammer wasn't helping either. I had a feeling that if I tried, things would break, rather than bend. Or smash.

I tilted my head and said, "Maybe ignore it for now? I was going to suggest we stick around here for a little longer, fight a few more waves. Might need the cannon again. We could get some kind of cheap cover or shroud for those instead of trying to fix the joint, once we're moving again."

She straightened up with a sigh and let one of the slender robot arms from inside the egg's cube hold onto the hammer. "Fair enough. Ypsi, how many did we kill anyway?"

Lots! There were the two Fourteens, ten Sixes, twenty-three Fives, eighty-nine Fours, and more than three hundred Threes! Oh, and fifty Ones. You made 5836 points, combined!

"Well!" Leah lightened up at the news. "Ain't that something!"

I gave her a cheesy thumbs-up with a cheesy grin.

She pinched my nose. "Hmm. That's enough to get us out of here with a fast fighting vehicle."

I nodded, but said, "We can easily get a few more thousand points right here. There's also what I figure are mobile nests dug in not too far. And there is wherever the Fourteens are from, which I suspect is that underground nest we're guessing at. Speaking of which, Tynea, have you been able to actually get eyes in there?"

No, the drones are too noticeable. I would need proper stealth drones. I have however seen biomass head in, and a number Antithesis head out. I'm very confident that there is indeed a nest, and that it is still very young.

"... Would it have birthed the Fourteens, then?" I asked, dubiously.

Possibly. It is unusual, but sometimes young nests do produce double-digit units right from the start. Especially if there is plenty of biomass around. We're in a swamp. There is.

Which meant it would probably have really strong defenders. The kind we didn't have the gear to deal with, nor even the points to get enough gear for.

"Shit. We might not want to take this one on." I said, looking at Leah.

Leah replied, "I'm quite happy to just prep the facility and get gone. Get a few thousand more points, sure. This lure thing, making them come to us, that's a really fast way. But honestly? I'm quite done wasting time."

"Mmm. Yeah. Alright. Farm them for a little, make sure it doesn't look like Antithesis have taken over the facility even if they broke in and ate the food. And, I think it's fine if we don't hide any of the combat sites. They know we're samurai, they shouldn't get weirded out by a few bomb craters." I tilted my head one way, then the other. "Which also means we could just ask the orbital bombardment people if they're able to kill underground nests…"

"Which I'm sure they'll be happy to do if we tell them that double-digits came out of it way too early."

I nodded my agreement. Shifting gears, I moved on to our logistics. We'd need the ammunition I had Tynea list earlier, additional stuff for the turrets so they could reload by themselves… Leah'd probably want an upgrade to her armor, and I needed more stuff for the Myriad. Maybe another blueprint or two?

But first of all, I needed a hug. Which Leah was perfectly happy to provide.

 

***