Except for that one percent that doesn’t do that, or the rare Seventeen. One of those shows up, you're screwed.
--Major Jin Qiu, Mandarin Republic Army training memo, 2035
***
--Maybe the Fourteen passed some of the Rampage on to its passengers before releasing them? If that’s the case, it should be short-lived. There, see the Fourteen’s no longer attacking antithesis. It must have shunted the drugs to its passengers to get rid of the chemical. We might make use of that some time.
--Switch loader?
--There’s several options for that, depending on how permanent you want it.
I hit the M-14 with the rounds of Kill Me, but the armored alien shrugged off the attacks of its smaller brethren. I watched as it advanced, taking hits from a few of Gangnam’s missiles. That broke the armor enough that several M-4s could drill in with their longer tentacles and bring down the larger model.
At the gap, the first of the Model Twenty-Twos had arrived. Wide and squat, the massive beast straddled from the far bank of the river all the way past the railway-turned-bike path on the near side. The leathery skin bulged and pulsed as it churned the creative juices needed to make new antithesis. It stomped forward, one leg at a time, and trees fell at its touch.
“M-22 in the gap,” I reported in the Samurai Channel. “I’m holding off until it’s through so it doesn’t block everything.”
I replaced the power pack on the Deuce, which silenced the alert in the blinker in my visor, and then inserted the new mag.
[“How goes the back door?”] I asked in the Divine Chorus conference.
[“We have a plan, but Corie requires your permission for purchases.”] Ginny said. [“We need a recharge of the Scarlet’s lure and some aerosol’s of Kill Me.”]
I kept my aim on the Twenty-Two while all around me troopers fired off magazine after magazine or called for resupply. Tracers in bright yellow streaked out from the far side of the valley, painting the large beast with sparks. I could have taken the shot despite the long range; it would be hard to miss something that large. But if I attacked it now, it might block the gap, and nothing else would be able to get through. Instead I claimed it in CILS, and the tracer fire moved away.
[“I thought we were going with Rampage?”]
[“That ran into delivery issues, so we switched to the Kill Me.”]
A private text chat opened up on the side of my visor.
Ginny: Tara wasn’t comfortable with delivering the Rampage.
Me: Is she really good using Kill Me?
M: Or just accepting it reluctantly?
G: She suggested it herself.
G: There’s a difference in her mind, I guess?
G: Rampage is more directly affecting the antithesis, so…
G: *Shrug*
M: So long as she’s good with it.
[“The Kill Me caries farther on the breeze anyway, and as the lure brings in new antithesis, they will deal with the cleanup for us.”] Ginny added.
[“Go ahead and buy what you need.”]
[“You’ll have to install the new lure. Drone’s coming in.”] Tara said.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Two small clunks came from the log beside me. Since the M-22 still had a hundred meters before reaching the point I wanted, I stole a few moments to deal with the drones. A pair of small boxes balanced on the trunk, each decorated with a seven-sided, domed top.
--There’s no place to put multiple canisters, so it’s more convenient to deliver them in a container. And the recharge module has delicate connections that won’t play well with dirt.
Corie’s hurt flowed through with her response, and I immediately regretted questioning her.
--It’s the shape of the scales on your armor made large. It’s also related to the Valerian culture.
--The armor is designed to wick moisture for more comfort. Unfortunately, it wicks both ways.
I drew one blade and sliced a flat surface on the log, forming an impromptu work surface. The Scarlet Macaw came flying up from the valley below, startling several of the troopers, who aimed at it before I could reassure them.
“Easy, troopers, that one is mine. And I have several more coming. Try not to shoot them, please.” I had no idea how they could mistake the flamboyantly colored drone for a drab brown and green antithesis, but I noticed several scanning the treetops for incoming.
“You’re not going to lure them up here, are you?” Tarkan asked. I paused to look around and realized that I’d ended up among some of the same Recon troopers that I’d been with yesterday.
“No. This will keep the Anti’s coming up behind us off our backs.”
The pheromone recharge used plug-and-play cartridges for each ribbon. They slotted in easy enough while several Chibats settled nearby. I placed an aerosol canister near each and turned back to the main battle.
A purple arrow intruded on my visor, drawing attention back to the main battle. While my back was turned, more capital class models had passed the mobile hive and fallen to Gundam’s missile barrage.
Behind the M-22 came several smaller models, many of which I recognized from the eight legs and dorsal plates. These were the same Model Fifteen variants I’d fought last night with attendant Eights beside them. They had lined up facing the two high ridges forming the sides of the kill box.
One of the headless monkey-like Model Tens jumped from an Eight onto the back of a Fifteen at the base of the tail. The plates on the Fifteen’s back glowed as the Ten set a ball down and scampered underneath the tail. Moments later, with an actinic flash, the projectile launched out, flying towards the opposite ridge.
As much by reflex as by thought, I shot at the flying projectile, winging it and causing the round to burst into a fiery cloud.
“Nice shot!” said one of the troopers, Johnson, if I remember his name correctly. I didn’t respond; the off-the-cuff shot had been difficult, but once I’d taken it, I realized I still had Kill Me rounds loaded. Only by sheer luck did the non-lethal round have enough force to trigger the munition.
While I was distracted by the Fifteens setting up, the Twenty-Two had accelerated, and its massive bulk drew closer to the troopers on the frontline than I liked. I could see the closest troops clearing positions and starting to fall back in a disorganized panic.
A handful of smaller, faster missiles streaked into the Hive’s face, barely slowing it. In the space the soldiers had abandoned, I could see Gangnam standing, doing something with his large shoulder-mounted missile pods. “Not sure I can hold it. It’s gonna take me too long to reload,” he said in the Samurai channel, his voice strained with suppressed panic.
“I got you,” I said, fighting to stay calm and keep my aim true. “Incoming chaos, but it won’t hurt for you to go full defensive, Gangnam. This might get messy.”
I quickly fired three of the pheromone-laden rounds into the sides of the M-22, then finished the magazine on two of the outlier M-15e. As promised, chaos ensued. All of the Fifteens swung their heads to fire at their larger ally, even as clumps of smaller models jumped on two of them and started attacking. The small fry also attacked the mobile hive, slowing down its march by sheer quantity. More than twenty Threes and Fours leapt on board, clawing and biting into the hard flesh.
“Xenovir, is that you with the M-22? That's sick as fuck. But it's also kind of cool to see." Someone I didn’t recognize said in the command channel of CILS, their voice hushed with awe.
“Yes, and there’s more to come. Welcome to war, Samurai style; Corin edition.” I couldn’t help throwing a dig at the same commanders that had scoffed at my grandfather’s teachings. The mobile hive paused to release new antithesis, vomiting them out of multiple mouths all over its body. All the newborn antithesis took one sniff of the air and turned on their creator.
Seeing him working to reload, I realized why Gangnam’s fire had come so infrequently. His missiles hit hard when he had time to prepare but took a long time to reload, so he’d been using them strategically.
With the M-22s finally pushing forward, the pace of new invaders picked up everywhere. The frontline troopers milled in confusion, with some returning to the original line and others still running for the next position. The change and change again had confused the troopers, resulting in little fire coming from the center of the main line.
That section lit up in CILS, calling for all possible fire, but it was clear that the slower sharpshooter fire, no matter how accurate, could not save the disordered soldiers. To make matters worse, only two lines of machine gun tracers reached out from our hillside; the others were otherwise occupied or couldn’t get a shot. This called for something more drastic than killing the antithesis one by one.
--Oooh, someone’s tired of messing around! Three shots per magazine. Costs fifty-five points.