Chapter Seventy-One - Chlorine Trifluoride

Chapter Seventy-One - Chlorine Trifluoride

Chapter Seventy-One - Chlorine Trifluoride

Dont use explosives in enclosed spaces.

Especially when youre in those spaces.

--Someone with common sense.

***

I wiggled my head around to make sure my helmet was on snug. It slipped down a little more, and then held on tight. Good enough. Alright, so, just give me like, half an hour? We can still chat in the meantime, I think we dont need to worry about signals and such.

Very well, Gomorrah said. Do avoid setting any bombs off until were ready. Youll probably just kill yourself if you do.

Ill try not to, I said. I really want to use fuel-air bombs, but we might settle for some nanite bombs, or bombs that melt aliens.

I dont see why we couldnt mix it up.

I nodded. DDT on steroids or something, I said. I paused, looked at my mecha cats, then down the darkened tunnel I would be travelling down all on my own. I wasnt actually concerned for myself, but I did kind of feel bad about leaving Gomorrah behind. The cats will keep you company, alright?

Of course.

And if I bite the bullet, you take care of my kittens for me, okay?

The nun placed her hands on her hips, her flamethrower left to dangle by her side. You have no business being so fatalistic, she said.

I grinned as I stepped up and wrapped her in a quick hug.

I wasnt a hugger, no matter what Lucy accused me of, but... well, it felt nice. See you in a bit, nun-girl.

Firing off a sloppy salute, I took off into the darkness. My coats invisibility wrapped around me, then my cloak came on and I flipped my hood up onto my head.

I kept up a light jog, just fast enough to get my heart beating, but not so much that Id exhaust myself. Okay, lets talk bombs, I said.

I have two suggestions. First, seeing as how both yourself and Gomorrah are fond of large explosions and copious amounts of fire, an aerosolized agent might be a decent solution to clear out a majority of the mines.

So like, a gas that burns and hovers in the air? I asked.

Essentially, yes. There are many variations available, but I would suggest a rather stable one, one unlikely to be immediately detected by the Antithesis and one that will only ignite under very specific conditions.

So I dont accidentally blow myself up, thats always great.

I would suggest aerosolized chlorine trifluoride. Bonded with a chemical agent that stabilizes it until either introduced to extreme heat, or minute amounts of hydrogen fluoride, which is a by-product of the chlorine trifluoride reaction.

I frowned. So it wont go off until introduced to some chemical that it produces when its already going off?

Hence creating a chain reaction, yes.

Does it burn good?

The gun came in a little box. It was significantly smaller than my Trench Maker, and not much of a gun at all. It had a handle, ergonomic and rubber-y, with a trigger, but thats about where it ended. The entire thing just looked like a box with a pair of lenses on the end and a recessed tube on the bottom. There was a knob next to where my thumb naturally fit.

It was surprisingly heavy though.

My augs connected to it, and I noticed a new reticule appearing on the ground where the not-gun was aimed. It had a depth meter next to it. It didnt take a genius to figure out that turning the knob up and down changed the depth.

Neat, I said. Lets find something to blend real fast.

I found a crack in the wall around the next bend, a hole that looked like it had been melted out of the stone, with large, obvious claw-marks scrabbling at the stone.

Think theyre down there? I asked.

The hole is rather small.

I eyed it up. It was a bit of a squeeze. If I went in there, Id have a bitch of a time moving around. And if some alien came down the other way...

That, and it was smaller than some of the models Gomorrah and I had cooked. They couldnt have come from here.

Bomb, I said.

Chlorine trifluoride?

Yeah.

The canister was roughly energy-drink sized, made of some silvery metal and with little legs at its base. I set it down, then pressed the one button atop it.

The bomb synched up with my augmentations a moment later, labelled as bomb one. So, I could activate it at range? Made sense.

I continued down the main tunnel, trying to shake off distracting thoughts and focus on the path ahead. Couldnt help but imagine that Gomorrah was bored back where Id left her, but she was a big girl, shed figure it out.

Something shuffled ahead, and I stopped mid-step.

There were lumps, here and there on the ground, unmoving. I couldnt see them, not well. I figured they were rocks or something, but then one shuffled forwards, pulling itself along on one leg.

An Antithesis? One that was obviously very much injured.

The streaks across the ground, barely visible as more darkness against the dark, had to have been from dragged aliens.

I didnt know they could retreat.

Raising my Claw up, I shifted it around until the reticule sat atop the alien, then I adjusted the depth. Five centimetres seemed to be the max.

I fired.

The not-gun shifted a bit, losing some weight a moment before it sort of just... inhaled.

The Antithesis slumped.

Well, I muttered. I guess it is a stealth weapon.

***