Chapter Twenty-Six - Breach, Load, Charge

Chapter Twenty-Six - Breach, Load, Charge

Chapter Twenty-Six - Breach, Load, Charge

Plans never survive first contact with the enemy.

If thats true, then the best trick is to have no plan at all.

--Longbow, about the Navajo Nation Incursion 2051

***

Shit, Jolly Monarch said.

I dont like putting people into little boxes, but Im human, so sue me. The little box I put Jolly Monarch in didnt include suddenly swearing aloud.

I snapped my head around towards the older samurai. What? I asked.

He glanced off to his right somewhere. We have a breach. Ive got two pawns working on it, but I think they might be outnumbered in the next few minutes.

Did the wave split off? I asked.

He shook his head. I dont think so. Another smaller group, maybe. Theyre pouring out of a drainage ditch on the other side of our barricade. Thats closer to the civilians than Id like.

I stood up, glanced down the highway and at all the carnage there, then started heading back. Gimme your video feed, I bet Myalis can set the bombs off without me here. Ill go kill the xenos and plug the hole.

Thank you, he said. He snapped his fingers, and I flinched as a drone burst into existence next to him. It was either moving really fast, or it had teleported in. Either way, it caused a burst of air to wash off of it as it appeared. My knight will escort you. Come back quickly if you can.

Yeah, yeah, I said.

The knight drone buzzed out ahead of me, floating on three disks that hummed as they cut through the air. Other than the three disks, the drone looked like a teardrop, longer than I was tall, and nearly as bulky on the big end. No visible guns, or anything else really, just a smooth white material with a marble-ish finish to it.

It looked expensive though, and had lots of glowy bits, so I imagined it was a pretty good weapons platform.

I jogged after it with the occasional glance back to the road where the bulk of the fighting was going down. Myalis, will you be able to take care of the bombs?

Ive contacted Jolly Monarchs AI already. I am piggybacking over his pawn drone sensors. There wont be any issues when it comes to well-timed detonations.

Cool, I said. Those drones worth anything? They dont look that fancy.

They are versatile. More so than any drone youve purchased before. Destroying one would be a hassle, even for higher-tiered antithesis, and they can self-repair. Some of his pawn drones have been active for multiple years.

Nice, I said. Well need something to seal the tunnel too.

An expanding foam? Its nonlethal to the antithesis, but it will prevent them from breaking out.

I nodded. Thatll do it, I said.

Myalis summoned a large cylindrical bomb, with some 80s movies glowing liquid inside them and a large display on one side with a timer. The nanite bomb, I figured.

The knight drone hovered behind me and parts of its surface slid open to disgorge some spotlights which lit up the inside of the pipe.

Then my shoulder-mounted railguns fired and took out the aliens lurking in the dark.

I climbed up into the pipe and walked in, bomb in one hand, shotgun in the other, with the strap acting as a third point of contact. Walking in a ways, I paused next to the first intersection, kicked aside a model threes corpse, then placed the bomb down and set the timer to a minute thirty.

Easy as operating a microwave, these things, I said. I pressed start, then waddled my way out of the pipe.

Myalis summoned a small, round grenade. I pulled the pin and rolled it in until it bumped against the body of the tentacle monster bleeding a few metres in.

Laserjack called me just as the grenade went off and the pipe started to fill with off-white goop that expanded up and out. Stray Cat? he asked.

Hey, Laserjack, I said as I started back to the road. The muddy ground made it kind of tricky, and I didnt want to faceplant in front of a bunch of strangers. A few of them had to be filming, because if you werent filming something that could kill you, then were you even human? Im over next to Jolly Monarch, were defending some shithole little city, but weve got antithesis pouring around our blockade through the storm drains.

I see. That sounds unfortunately plausible. They can be like rats, he said.

Yeah, that tracks. Look, I just dropped a nanite bomb into the storm drain, and Im going to bully some volunteers into plugging all the exits with these goop grenades, but that probably wont stop all of the xenos. Theres a fuckload of houses here, and they look occupied.

You want the area evacuated? he asked.

Dont know if I have the authority to tell normal folk to leave their homes, I said.

Youre still new. Youll discover that no one has more authority than a samurai running away from something.

I frowned. Dont like the implication that Im running from something, but I get what you mean. Look, can the Family or whatever get this area evacuated before the locals get turned into fertiliser?

Were on it already. Can you keep the antithesis out of the city for another few hours?

I paused as an incursion siren went off, a loud, undulating wail that was impossible to ignore. Yeah, I said. Ill do what I can. I got a lot of points to make up for, and there doesnt seem to be a lack of willing targets around here.

***