Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Twenty-Four - Holding On

“Syncore is one of the strangest evolutions in musical history.

It started with 3d full-dive VR music experiences. Basically, a listener would be plugged into the music, feeling every note and visualising every beat. A fascinating but harmless way to enjoy music.

Then that evolved. Audiophiles discovered methods to literally tap into their own synesthesia via high-end brain-augs that allowed them to taste, smell, feel and be the music.

This, of course, became immensely lucrative for a certain genre of artists who discovered ways to create literally addictive music.”

--Synesthesia Core, a History, 2042

***

I dropped Lucy off at the mall after directing her to Second Lieutenant Smart who seemed appropriately overwhelmed.

“Here,” I said as a box appeared next to me. A cat drone started to unfold itself from within. I’d told Myalis to give me something with all of the bells and whistles to keep Lucy safe and what she provided was the size of a bengal tiger with enough armaments to make a modern main battle tank blush.

“That’s a big kitty,” Lucy said as she stared at the drone. Its head came up to her chest, and even though its weaponry was hidden, there was no hiding the fact that it was a high-tech bit of samurai gear.

“It’ll keep you safe,” I said. “Just in case. Plus it’s big and intimidating.”

“Are you saying I can’t intimidate people on my own?” she asked.

I grinned. “As intimidating as you are in the bedroom, no, I don’t think you’re quite as scary as you’d like to think you are.”

She pouted, which was very cute, so I took a quick picture with my eye-aug for posterity. “Fine. I guess we both need to get to work, then?”

“Yeah. I’ll see about keeping this city safer, you see about keeping it sane.”

We parted with a last, not-so-quick kiss that left my head humming happily. Then, unfortunately, it was back to work for me.

“Did I miss anything?” I asked Gomorrah once I got her back on the line. I was exiting the mall for what had to be the tenth time today.

The nun scoffed. “Not much. The General and some of his guys found a second entrance point into the hive network, about a block past our outer perimeter. We’re finding more and more of those. At this rate our defences are going to be a revolving door.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I said. “We can start by dumping more nanomachine drones in those nearer entrances.”

“That’s fair. There’s a militia transport heading to the mall, can you hand over more of those drones of yours with a fresh payload? The more we seed at the start, the better things will go,” Gomorrrah said.

“I can do that, yeah,” I said. I shielded my eyes from the sun--which was wholly unnecessary-- and glanced up at a militia-marked transport which was descending onto the road.

“I’ve been talking to Atyacus, and we had an idea,” Gomorrah said.

“I’m all ears,” I replied.

“When we start to attack the hive it might be a subtle attack, with the nanomachines propagating and chewing away at vitals, but they will notice eventually and we expect the hives to retaliate. What if we also prepare a second, immediate attack? The hives are all underwater from what I’ve seen. The water will make certain options complicated, but it does make others easier. I’m talking about setting up explosives and firebombs at key junctions to block them off entirely. A fluorine fire melting anything that approaches an intersection leading to the exit will definitely slow the antithesis down.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” I said. “We’ll have to be careful though. We don’t want big explosions that’ll knock the whole city down.”

“Fire isn’t that explosive,” she said.

I snorted. “Yeah, but we can’t use anything like that heat-bomb we used in New Montreal. Maybe... hey, does sound travel well in water?”

“Yes and no, waves travel further but most sound will be distorted. What are you thinking?”

It was probably because I’d seen Manic at work and her tech made me think of it, but I’d been using resonator grenades almost for as long as I was a samurai. They were... not exactly fast, but they were fairly effective at weakening the enemy without harming any nearby allies. Ꞧãℕȱ฿ΕŜ

“I have an idea. Let’s fill the hive with resonator bombs. They’ll vibrate the antithesis to the point that they’ll fall apart, and it might be even better with water around. The longer they spend in the tunnels, the faster they’ll fall apart. The nanomachines eating them up will only help.”

“That seems reasonable,” Gomorrah said. “And it doesn’t preclude the use of firebombs as I suggested.”

I laughed. That woman had a one-track mind sometimes. “Sure, let’s do it. Do you think the newbies have their own contributions to make?”

“Manic might have some of those resonators to give you, and Sprout has a few options of his own. Have you seen his plants?”

“I don’t think I have, no,” I said. “Not from up close, anyway.”

“They’re interesting. He’ll be one of the more unique samurai out there, I think. At least, if he survives long enough. Between you and me, he’s not great in a fight.”

That was harsh, but I trusted Gormorrah’s judgement there. “We’ll have to keep him off the front lines then? Or just keep him to places where militia and civilians can keep him alive?”

“That would work. He has potential, it’s just that his path is a huge point-sink that’s not giving him much personal power. Arm-a-Geddon is nearly the opposite. All personal power, no reach.”

“And Manic is a decent fighter overall, but she doesn’t work well with others. Why did we end up babysitting the most complicated bunch of weirdos out there?” I asked.

“Because if they weren’t strange, they wouldn’t be samurai,” Gomorrah said.

That was fair.

I jogged up to the transport after it landed, and after a quick exchange with the militiamen within, I bought a few crates full of cat drones with more nanomachine payloads. I also bought a large case filled with resonators which had their timers replaced with remote-controlled detonators that we could all set off at the same time.

From the sounds of it, Gomorrah was near one of the other holes and was slipping in her own payload with her own stealth drones. Hers weren’t cat-shaped. She described them as wheels within wheels, whatever the fuck that meant.

Things were progressing nicely.

We were dumping more and more shit into the underwater hives, enough that they were going to regret ever installing themselves so close to Burlington, and the city’s defences, even if they were a little rudimentary, were coming along.

I ordered up a few of those cat-drone operated mortars like I’d used in New Montreal. Of course, Myalis made it so that the mortar had wheels and one of the bigger cat drones had a yoke that they could pull the mortar with, but other than looking silly, they were still usable.

From the sounds of it, Gomorrah had installed a few turrets of her own over some of the more important parts of the city.

I got to see one hovering by. It was a ball with a sort of eye shaped flame-thrower in its middle and about a dozen wing-shaped hover engines attached to it. Were the extra wings supposed to be redundant? Well, whatever. By the looks of it, they also had integrated missile launchers--no doubt equipped with something like fuel-air bombs--and a few other toys strapped on.

I was feeling pretty good about our chances.

Which, of course, is when the news came in that everything had gone to shit ten minutes ago, and no one chose to inform me until now.

“What?” I asked the general, just to be clear.

He sighed over the line. “Ma’am, I’m afraid that the hive has become fully active just to the west of the River Heights area. The antithesis are pouring out of a hole next to some incomplete infrastructure and have begun assaulting the barriers around that part of the city.”

He sent me a package that I opened. Live-feeds from a few guard stations around River Heights. I recalled those big towers with the guns atop them easily enough.

Those guns were rattling out lines of fire into the accumulating bodies of model threes. The antithesis were charging the barbed-wire-covered barricades by the hundreds. A model six ignored some small arms fire and rammed into a cement wall hard enough that it cracked down the middle and buckled backwards. Someone clever tossed a grenade over the barricade and the explosion slowed the swarm down for a moment.

“Shit,” I said.

None of our newer defences were in River Heights.

In fact, I’d pulled back militia from the area.

“Shit shit,” I muttered.

“Ma’am?” the general asked. He was probably not enjoying hearing the person in charge mutter obscenities instead of doing anything useful.

“Alright, we can patch this up for now. We’re moving up the time table for that area. Myalis, any nanomachines in those tunnels already? Yeah? Launch them early. Same with any resonators in the region already. Hurry things up that way. I need a line to Manic and Arm-a-Geddon, I need both of them moved to River Heights right now. I need Gomorrah too... maybe she can send a few of her drones over. And let’s move some of our mortars towards that end of the city, they might be able to land hits from the edge of their range into the swarm.” I swallowed. “General, tell your boys to hold out for five minutes. That’s all I ask for.”

***

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