Chapter One Hundred Nine - Action

"Ma'am, we've seen a fiftyfold rise in online traffic after the Road Rash initiative. Projections calculate an increase of profit from donations to the Department for Orphans of at least three hundred percent, and we've received…'donations' exceeding twenty-eight million credits from corporations requesting referrals to Road Rash."

"Excellent."

"It also appears that Road Rash's educational efforts have reduced accidental pregnancies among our teenage orphans by almost ninety percent."

"Has that improved our profit?"

"Negligibly, Ma'am."

"Irrelevant."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Have we been able to speak to Deus Ex? Has she shown any interest?"

– Recorded snipped of a conversation between the CEO of ChildProtect Corporation and her assistant, July 2056

 

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"Ready, Tinea?" Leah's disembodied voice floated through the living spaces of Daddy-Long-Legs.

I quickly gobbled down the rest of a tasty bar of nuts and chocolate, checked if everything was properly pinned down—including myself—for the third time, and then replied, "Yup. Go."

My hair floated around my cheeks for a second as I went weightless, and then gravity returned when the abdomen of the spider mech settled softly, half a meter above the grass. There was some crunching below us and some scraping. I gazed at ourselves through the eyes of one of the drones of our Scout's Quartet and saw that the gimbal of the 150mm cannon had extended a pair of telescoping legs against the ground. They had those spades at the end that were designed to redirect recoil into the soil. The muzzle traversed a few more centimeters, and then paused.

Two of the drones were running just ahead of a wave of almost three thousand Antithesis of various models two kilometers away, and heading straight towards us. They'd found us while we were traveling and had altered their course to chase us down, probably guided by the racket our electrolaser banks made as they fried the Ones circling in the air above us by the dozens every second.

Instead of trying to outrun them, we'd decided to stop in a large, open space good for fighting. The old highway had broken in two, here. There was a crevice in the ground right across, and grass had reclaimed much of the asphalt. Where the woods usually butted up right against the road, this place was too stoney for trees and Leah had a huge, rough circle several kilometers across to maneuver in. She'd placed the mech roughly five hundred meters from the edge of that circle, with almost all the open space at her back, and I'd run around the mech and made sure we were battle-ready, before I'd strapped myself in again.

Leah had said that she wanted to use tactics she was already familiar with—to draw the entire horde into a huge whirlpool and whittle them down as they chased her in endless circles. It had worked for her pod, and she thought it was the perfect strategy for this location, too.

It had been very effective, I thought, reviewing snippets of the recordings she'd sent me. Made good use of the penetrative nature of her kinetic cannons against soft targets.

"Firing!" Leah shouted.

A dull thump went through the walker's frame and I sensed the fringes of the shockwaves reach back from the muzzle and scratch the spider's skin with hot nails. The trees in front of us got minced, and the gimbal's spades dug into the ground and splashed water and mud against Daddy-Long-Legs' underside. I tensed as the entire mech twitched.

That…was probably Leah jerking in surprise, or something. The mech itself just groaned a little and swung back and forth on its legs to absorb the remaining recoil that hadn't gone through the struts.

Over the next two seconds, I heard Leah draw a breath and hold it. We were watching the feed of the forward drones, waiting for the impact of the shell. I could almost feel her palpable eagerness and a giggle hopped and skipped across my diaphragm. But before it could jump through my throat, a huge gout of earth and alien body parts erupted some two thousand meters ahead of us, and Leah cheered and yelled, "Hit!"

Our points counter jumped back up to 1522, and then continued counting every One cooked by the artificial lightning of Leah's Mk 2 Electrolasers.

Laughing at the excitement of her voice, I asked, "Good job, Leah. Another one?"

"Yeah! Gotta wait like six seconds or so. The gantry's reloading the cannon." I heard a clunk from up front and saw the maintenance drone lift free. It looked filthy from its trip across the swamp next to the splashing spider and probably stank as horribly, too.

Worse, urgh. That thing's got too many openings and detached panels for this environment.

Leah guided the thing around to Daddy-Long-Legs undercarriage and linked its sensors to me. I found several scanners and other tools to check on the integrity of equipment and materiel. Leah and Ypsi analyzed the gimbal they'd mounted the cannon to, while the robotic gantry removed one of three shells from the gimbal and loaded it into the cannon's breech with efficient motions.

"Hmm…" Leah hummed, "looks like we'll only get limited use out of this setup, huh?"

Yup! There's stress all over! It's not gonna last long.

"Oh well. At least the absorbers are taking the damage, and not the spider."

Yeah. It's working like we planned!

"Yes." I could hear the smile in Leah's voice. "A few dozen shots, maybe? What do you think, Ypsi?"

It's okay for this battle, but it'd be better to ditch it afterwards, definitely. Maybe buy something from Warforge Technologies that was actually meant for the Hatchet?

"Hatchet?" I asked.

"Ah," Leah laughed, "that's the proper Warforge Technologies name for this model of the walking scout tanks."

"Oh." I facepalmed.

I hadn't actually known that, but it probably should've been obvious that "Daddy-Long-Legs" was a nickname. Leah giggled at me and I kind of wanted to deploy my tail for tickle-revenge, but I figured I'd better let her concentrate. So, I went through our feeds instead.

Our rear was safe, the drone waiting at the distant edge saw no dangers. The Antithesis ahead of us, however, had been whipped into a frenzy by the exploding shell. I saw several of the Threes ping off of the scraggly trees as they raced along.

The larger variants, Fives, Sixes, several fast Fourteens, and even a few of the model Fifteens—winged artillery bugs that looked like alien grasshoppers the size of cars and could throw dangerous exploding wheels that would expel deadly spikes on touch or destruction—just splintered any of the trunks they ran through.

The trees out here looked even worse than those inside the swamp. But perhaps that was to be expected, I thought. The ecological collapse was killing our nature, and the flora of the swamp had been modified by a samurai to be extra tough and to deal with poisons.

Focus. Alright. Let's see.

"Tynea?" I asked via a call through the Quanta so that I wouldn't distract Leah, who was lining up the next shot.

"Yes?"

"I'm going to buy the wings soon, along with Class II Medical Utilities and that surgery kit thing that'll make them grow faster. I'll also want a new primary—let's use this battle to figure out what I'll need, yeah? If I'm gonna be supporting Leah's mech in combat."

"Understood. What kind of budget did you imagine?"

"What does the Medical Utilities upgrade cost?"

"Three hundred points and a token."

"Firing!" Leah yelled again.

Another shudder went through the walker. I watched as it flexed on its legs and wondered if Leah would even be able to fire the cannon on the move, considering that it had to let those spades dig into the ground to manage the recoil. Or maybe the momentum would actually help? Hmm.

I knocked a knuckle against my skull. Focus. Three hundred points.

"That's…cheap. A lot cheaper than I was expecting."

"That line of catalogs is a bit of an exception, yes. It has proven rather critical, and we can balance the point costs elsewhere, such as the prices of the more luxurious mods within. Those tend to be overly expensive as a result."

The shell's impact caught a Fourteen in the side as it swerved around a boulder, and ripped it in half. The rear segments merely twitched and bled the smashed and burned remains of Threes, but the front segments continued staggering onwards. Resilient buggers.

2242 points. I'd give Leah another round or two before I bought the wings, so we'd have more of a buffer. Especially since I wasn't relevant in this fight.

"Do you do that with other tech trees, too?"

"We could, but there's little reason to, most times."

"I…see. Um. Two thousand for the wings, another thousand for the upgrade and surgery-booster thing…and another thousand for the jump jets? That's four thousand."

"A thousand points for the jump jets will give you a lot of options. Would you prefer miniaturized ones, or more powerful ones? Extra functions, such as the ability to inject weaponized aerosols to be spread in your wake?"

Oh, right. A thousand points was actually a lot, huh? Maybe I didn't need that. Or maybe I did, if they were going to be the majority of my mobility for the immediate future?

"I'll need to see the Daddy-Long-Legs in combat, I think, before I can make any informed decisions. Let's table that for now. The new gun, too."

"Understood."

"Firing!"

"Whoo!" Leah cheered as the third whump went through the tank. "Woulda done this earlier, if I realized how fun it was!"

Laughing, I replied, "Addicting, isn't it? The boom."

"I'd better not let any of the kids near it," Leah said, snorting. "Okay, they're crossing about a quarter mile every minute-and-a-half. I'm gonna start using the seventy-fives, too."

Machinery whirred above and to the sides, and I saw the bottom of each equipped hardpoint rotate. They had transparent, roughly circular magazines on the inside of the abdomen holding twelve rounds each. High-explosive fragmentation shells.

The big brothers of my 40mm frag grenades, and equally as smart.

"Gotcha, Leah. I'll guide them."

"Mm-hm!"

I grinned. Leah was definitely having fun.

Combat Command, my second bud, connected to each of the chambered rounds and plotted high trajectories that would let the shells fall from the sky and—

Something heavy impacted the spider from below, threw us to the right, and then jerked us to the left. Metal screamed as my silk belts jerked me around and I yelled against a burning pain that wracked my sensilla after they smashed into the wall. I held my head and my legs came up.

The whole spider shook and nausea squeezed my stomach as we tumbled sideways with an ugly, crunching sound. I wanted to puke.

Leah shrieked, a piercing sound I'd never heard from her before, and the fear and pain in her voice chilled me to the bone. It gave me a sinking, sucking feeling in my chest, my hands shook, and I couldn't breathe. My mouth went dry as I tried to speak. But Ypsilon's mature voice thundered through the air: "Leah! Calm down! It's not your body! I've already disconnected the sensations! MOVE!"

The spider jerked, and my arm hit the edge of the cot as we suddenly went back upright and dashed to the side. We began moving backwards, but there was a noticeable, regular lurch every other second.

Leah's pained shrieking had calmed to a crying, and it broke my heart. Tears blurred my eyes. I wanted to hug her. My tail had wound itself around Leah's pod, but she didn't seem aware of it.

"Leah?" I asked, with a tremble in my voice.

As if on command, her crying got louder and she called my name, over and over. We were still moving, and the spider was still stumbling in a fixed pattern.

"Leah, hold on, I'm right here. I'll be right there, Leah. Hold on!"

I frantically cut the silk securing me to the cot and extricated myself all while trying to calm her. I felt the walker's gait smooth out a little as Leah reacted to my voice. Finally free, I knelt down in front of her pod, patting the hatch.

"Come on, Leah, open up. I'm right here."

"Tinea," Leah cried as the two doors winged open. "My leg! It took my leg!"

She was a mess. Tears and snot ran down her face and she looked so, so small in her creche. I crowded in and covered her, and she buried herself into my bosom as I hugged her and squeezed her.

Calmed by the physical contact and that Leah was present and able to react to me, I forced myself to breathe deeply and focused on assessing the situation.

I looked through the eyes of our drones and what I saw had my brain go ice-cold. Battle-trance, I realized. An old companion.

Thousands of aliens were pouring out of the final line of trees behind us, and where we'd stood just seconds ago, was a giant hole in the ground above which stood an Antithesis that could run down houses.

Four massive legs supported a long, heavily armored body. Our 150mm cannon and its gimbal hung impaled on a pair of massive tusks.

In its alien lamprey-fucked-cthulhu maw, it held one of Daddy-Long-Legs'...legs.

We don't have a weapon that can kill that thing.

 

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