Chapter Sixty - Xenocide Act II; War Crimes

"Yes, well, you see, I thought this crater could use a new extinction event."

– Tinea, probably

 

***

 

Tynea reminded me, Shall I list your purchases and remaining points, now?

“Oh! Yes.”

Your personal points, after sharing half-half with Leah, were six hundred and fifty. You bought the Lure and have killed a number of Antithesis since. Partially ignoring the emergency fund, this was the price for your new equipment:

 

Cost	Tkn	Unlock
40		Class I Antithesis Lures
30		Class I Moonsinger Auxiliary Technologies
20		Class I Minor Dimensional Shunting
75		Class I Matter Recombination
50		Class I Esoteric Missile Systems
205		Total
780		Remaining Points

 

Cost	x	Item
50	1	Class I ‘Jailbait’ Wide Area Audio-Scent Lure, incl. tremor sensing
95	1	Mark VII Adapting Sentinel, customized sensorium and attachment point
15	1	Class 0 Civilian Welding Torch, customized, reinforced and improved power
50	1	Class I Segmented Harness, customized for Tinea’s tail, attachment rails
100	1	Class I Moonsinger Technologies Auxiliary Enhancement for ‘Chrysalis’ Lepidoptera Spinneret
350		Class I ‘Myriad’ Regenerating Micro-missile Hive
660		Total
120		Remaining Points

 

“Oh nice, I still have plenty of points left over, then. Let’s get one or two blueprints for the Myriad, more materials, and uh, let Leah know we can get started on her signal, after. And let’s keep twenty for emergencies, again.”

There are blueprints of varying complexity, and different pricing. One of the least complex costs forty points, and it strikes me as quite useful to you. The Myriad has a weakness against well-armored targets, and this design solves its issues with rather penetrating panache.

Tynea threw up a schematic of a micro-missile. It was very stocky, which I guess made sense? The panels were all quite thick, but not that thick. There wasn’t going to be too much space for long bodies. So they had to be squat and wide, instead.

Then Tynea animated the missile and showed how the body elongated, new parts being added even as it was launched out of its bay. Or, I guessed, feeling stupid, they could just do that. And that explains why these blueprints start at forty points, I guess.

Once the launch/fabrication animation had finished, the missile had a long rocket-propelled dart through its middle with stabilizing fins at both ends, facing backwards.

This missile will try to gain some distance from the target and then break apart to free the penetrator, which has its own short-lived and extremely powerful motor to generate the energy required to overcome double-digit armor. This acceleration requires at least five meters’ distance against the tougher single-digits, but the penetrator’s fuel lasts for a burn across twenty meters, giving it more power the longer it can travel.

Another animation followed along. The dart burned to reverse its momentum, the large stabilizer wings at the front fell off once they weren’t needed anymore, and finally, the projectiles dove at the heavily armored target that the missile had oriented it towards.

Heavily armored, huh? Bigger, tougher, meaner enemies were heavily armored. In other words, I’d need this kind of blueprint more the longer we stayed and let the nest produce units. Or if we left and went after the swarm. 

“Okay, sure, that’s probably a necessary purchase. What about the stuff to build it?”

Shall I take care of purchasing a balanced load of materials?

“Go ahead.”

 

Cost	x	Item
40	1	Blueprint: Javelin Self-propelled Sabot Penetrator Payload, 20x200mm Micro-Missile
20	1	Malleable Alloy, liquid, heated, plug-tank
5	1	High-Explosive, paste, plug-tank
5	4	Hardened Alloys, powdered and sinter-ready, plug-tank
5	2	Kerosene, plug-tank
5	1	Suprapulse Rocket Propellant, plug-tank
100		Total
20		Remaining Points

 

A bunch of cylinders plopped onto the grass in front of me. Plug-tanks, apparently. They, at least superficially, looked quite similar to Leah’s water and soap grenades.

As I bent over to pick the first one up, Tynea said, I will highlight where each one goes, Tinea.

“Thanks.”

Colors lit up above each of the items, mirrored by the same colors in various spots along the hard, segmented panels flowing down the fronts and sides of my hips, where the socket-covers sprang open for access.

Once I was done slotting the tanks in, the count of craftable HE missiles gained two hundred, the new penetrator rocket things showed a count of three hundred, and the nanite ones remained stuck at ten.

I’d have to check if building those missiles was cheaper than directly buying nanites to destroy bodies… Later. After the fight.

Tynea automatically queued up twenty of the Javelin Penetrators, and five hundred high-explosive ones.

The first of these will be ready for assembly and launch nigh immediately, but the entire arsenal will take roughly five minutes. You are ready for combat.

“Thank you. Is Leah coming?”

I have just sent her your status update. She’s pulling the mob around and will enter the clearing in two minutes. Would you like to test your mobility with the Myriad, and perhaps how it fits on the ATV?

Good idea.

I experienced no issues with jumping and skipping around, and even running at full tilt across the clearing didn’t make the skirt get in my way. Sitting on the ATV was uncomfortable, though—the rear and front were too stiff to lay properly, until Tynea commanded a reshuffling of a few of the panels to create seams that could open and close and make like terribly uncomfortable trousers. She complained about supply lines being cut off, and warned me that I may need to buy extra material tanks to keep each half of the Myriad supplied in this state.

Or remain on my feet instead of riding the ATV, which I might have to look at later. Maybe we’d get a shared vehicle next, one where I didn’t need to straddle the saddle?

For now I parked my ATV next to the lure. We’d be fighting stationary, anyway.

“Alright, Tynea. Can you give me a test launch, please? I want to see how these missiles work, and I don’t seem to be getting any visitors, now that I need them.”

As you wish. Please use your cerebral augmentation to mark a target.

I looked around myself. Trees. Lots of trees. Ah, there was a particularly scraggly and sick one. It had survived the storm, somehow. I marked it.

A tiny pling sounded somewhere below my waist, and faster than I could react, a silver blur shot forward from my right thigh. It ignited two or three arm-lengths from me, searing a trail into the air as it tore towards my target, and blew up in a surprisingly powerful detonation, splitting the small trunk right down the middle like a lightning strike.

“Oh wow! I thought these were going to be weak, like the Hummingbird micro-missiles!”

Certainly not. These may not match the power of a grenade, but they considerably out-mass those of your sidearm. You will find the payload throw-weight large enough to be useful, and where one doesn’t suffice, a volley might.

“Neat! Okay. I’ll have to mind my arms a little when launching volleys, won't I? And my tail, I guess.”

And your wings once you get them. But again, the missiles aren’t ejected with enough force to cause you harm or hurt. You would merely knock them off course. The missiles will then delay a few additional seconds before they are permitted to engage their engines. The Myriad, and of course I, can scan your surroundings and disarm the missiles if they would cause damage. And certainly, I can manage the launch sequences to work around your motions.

“Alright, good to know. Uh…” I looked around myself.

Yup. I was ready. Nothing else to do, but to wait for Leah. I could already hear her engine in the distance.

“Leah? Will you need time to shop? Or rather, how much time, and how uninterrupted do you need to be?”

“...”

No answer, but I heard the revving of her engine, hard enough that it created echoes in the trees behind me. A multitude of shots rang out. And some whistling followed by explosions.

“Tynea, put Leah on cam!”

The window that had shown the blueprint details popped back up, but this time it displayed Leah on her ATV. Consternation ripped my breath from me, as I watched her turret blasting away at a number of Fours slowly boxing her in, both with bullets and a new underbarrel grenade launcher, a large group of Threes still chasing behind her.

If the Fours caught her, they were strong enough to tear her from the vehicle. Overall or not, she wouldn’t make it against that entire horde of Antithesis.

Her turret was constantly swiveling from side to side, pressed to keep the aliens off of them, and Leah focused fully on the path ahead, careful not to trip up.

She’d make it. There weren’t any particularly bad obstacles along her path. All she had to do was keep it up.

Anxiety crept up, laid clammy hands around my throat.

Shit. How much of my desire to help was normal, and how much of it was a need to make sure she’d return to me? Did that even matter?

…

Not right now. This was battle.

With an angry growl, I marked targets for every weapon I had.

Mental commands sent my remaining three 40mm fragmentation shells arcing into the mass of Antithesis behind Leah, guided twenties from beneath my tail shredded branches and footholds to widen the gap between the Fours and Leah, and a tiny storm of tinier missiles jinked through trees on a murderous hunt for xeno monsters in the canopy that sought to reach her.

With the torch I quickly cut into two trees at the very edge of the clearing, forcing them through sheer muscle to crack the rest of the way and fall in a V-shape with a resounding boom. The V’s tip had a breach just wide enough for one Leah on a quad, and not much else.

“Tynea!” I yelled as I stood in the breach, “Send Ypsi an updated path to this location!”

I have done so.

Leah was already visible through the trees, a look of pure concentration on her face as she maneuvered for the gap. I jumped atop one of the trunks and let my HSRP rounds speak for me, relying on the Sentinel to load a fresh magazine into my rifle every ten shots just as I kept feeding twenties to the auxiliary weapon itself, and frag shells to the Sentinel on my tail.

I laughed as Leah passed me, I was the Bullet Hell personified, I was the Iron Wall. Leah braked hard, reversed to stuff the back end of the ATV with the turret into the gap, and jumped onto the other log to join me in this lethal expression of cathartic stress release.

 

***

 

Leah caught herself on the wood with her heels, breathing hard and feeling rather exhausted. 

Her arms ached for relaxation, her back screamed from the constant exertion, but seeing Tinea stare down an easy dozen dozen Threes, only to break out in greatly amused laughter and just not give a fuck? That was hella energizing.

Aside from the one married to her turret, Leah didn’t really have much of a weapon, yet. The Foxteeth was surprisingly useful, sure, and her three arms let her play whack-a-mole with grenades, but the raw volume of fire to her right let her know just how little she’d dipped into the capabilities of a Vanguard so far. Even the micro-missile module for the turret would merely be a one-off salvo meant to deal with a great number of ultra-soft targets, like a flock of Ones.

Speaking of salvos, what was that skirt-armor-thing Tinea was wearing? Even as Leah glanced at her, constant magnetic plings from it launched a series of small objects which bloomed into blinding flares and lit her up like a starry halo, leading twisting and twirling trails of fire that zipped off to blow up in the center of clusters of aliens, often tossing two or three mulched bodies around.

Leah took a video of one of those mid-flight, and froze the playback to take a better look.

Some sort of rocket? Or missile, considering the things were clearly guided…

So, the skirt thing was a missile launcher? How many could it fit? Tinea had already fired two or three dozen, and the barrage didn’t seem to slow down at all!

And then there were the rest of her guns. That weird clunky rifle/Sentinel combo that somehow worked fine despite the fact that it should’ve shaken itself to pieces long ago, another, newer, gun attached to the tip of Tinea’s tail, which was curled above the slaughter-happy girl like a scorpion’s stinger and lobbed those devastating fragmentation shells like a mortar, and of course the shitty little Hummingbird that was probably not even worth using anymore, which nonetheless was made to squirt out a mini-volley of micro-missiles whenever Tinea’s free hand wasn’t busy grabbing suddenly appearing magazines to reload one of the other guns.

Oh yeah, that was a good trick. Much better to grab thin air and end up with a magazine, or perhaps a grenade, than trying to catch them without dropping them…

Leah turned forwards again, and saw that in a matter of seconds, most of the aliens had been wiped out.

Wow. She wasn’t needed here at all, huh? She heaved a relieved sigh.

Adrenaline crash.

Leah swayed tiredly after the last cactus kissed the ground with an artistic rendition of a triple flip. Her eyes felt heavy, and she really, really wanted a nap.

Fuck the rain.

Forcing herself to focus again, she carefully checked her surroundings, and asked Ypsi if there were any more beasts nearby.

No! The nice walking war crime blew everything up!

Despite herself, Leah broke out in laughter, flopped over the tree, and let her arms hang down like limp noodles. When Tinea came over moments later, she waved with a loose hand, yawned, and murmured an exhausted “Hey.”

 

***