Chapter Fifty-Eight - Burn Silent Into That Good Night

Chapter Fifty-Eight - Burn Silent Into That Good Night

Chapter Fifty-Eight - Burn Silent Into That Good Night

"There's no such thing as an unprepared samurai.

Only a samurai who isn't prepared at the moment...

What do you mean, that's an oxymoron?"

--Longbow, to a new samurai, 2056

***

Walking towards mortar fire was... probably not the wisest thing I'd ever done, but so far the army had been pretty professional, and I trusted them to hit more or less where we told them to, instead of bringing down shells right onto my pretty head.

Gomorrah and I were at the front of the formation, which had stretched out to the sides with a pair of 'wings.' Some soldiers were running backwards towards the trucks and the edge of the forest. They were the ones laying quick traps with resonators behind us. Setting up a route that we could use to extract from when the time came to run the hell away.

I raised my Laser-pointer up and tapped a model four centre-mass with a trio of shots, which sent it flopping down, very much dead. Gomorrah and I were in the middle of the formation and a bit ahead of all the soldiers. They were moving at a very slow, steady pace. Gom and I were moving at a less steady, less slow pace.

"They make walking in the woods look so easy," Gomorrah muttered.

I chuckled. "I know, right? Fucking roots, man."

"Burn the whole place down. See how these bushes and stuff handle being turned to ash. That'll be easier to cross."

"Hehe," I said. It wasn't my most convincing chuckle. "Just... hold off on that until we're through, yeah?"

"We'll see," Gomorrah said. She stomped ahead, and I jogged to catch up. I popped a few more rounds into some aliens that my augs highlighted for me. The light from the soldiers behind and from the pilot light on the end of Gomorrah's flame thrower was useful, but it wasn't exactly lighting up the whole world out here. Some aliens were sneaky enough that I only caught sight of them as they moved.

"You have any ideas for how to get rid of the hive?" I asked.

"I figured you'd want to bomb it," Gomorrah said. "We don't want to alert all of the other local hives to anything going on here, so I'm afraid we'll have to be a bit more subtle with the bombing."

"Right," I agreed. Bombs could be subtle. Sure.

We crossed from the part of the forest that still had some vegetation into an area that was completely cleared of plantlife. Even the trees looked like they had been stripped of their bark, and a number of them had their branches pruned, with what looked suspiciously like little bite marks around the points where those branches met the trunks.

"Stop gawking," Gomorrah said over a private channel. "This is what normal hives look like when they don't have an environment to hide in. Check the entrances."

That made sense, I supposed. The dirt was clearly pulled from all around, and then piled up over the hill. There were small entrances and holes all over. Some were small enough that my closed fist would barely fit. Others I could crawl into without difficulty. Most had roots around their entrance, acting as supports of sorts.

There was some actual engineering going on here. Weird, fucky alien engineering, but engineering all the same.

And I was looking forward to blowing it up.

"Down!" Gomorrah shouted.

I leapt down, crouching on one knee almost too slowly to avoid something blurring past over my left shoulder. Gomorrah had dove aside, missing the blur altogether.

Some poor fuck behind us wasn't so lucky. I heard him screaming a moment before some spines rained down around me. An antithesis artillery ball? I noticed dirt raining down from one of the holes.

The damned hive could shoot outwards? "Is that artillery in the hive?" I asked.

It's likely that there's a model fifteen within, with enough space to manoeuvre. Notice the small wires leading out of the hive. A model seventeen is likely acting as a spotter for it.

I didn't know that was possible at all. Still, we had our own support like that. I sent the coordinates to the mortar team, then raised my gun and took some shots into and around the hole that they'd fired from.

Aliens started to pour out of the ground around us. Mostly smaller models that popped out of hidden tunnels and scurried our way. Some of them weren't the kinds of models I was used to seeing. Headless, monkey-like model tens scampered and tossed themselves our way. Some... tentacled things that I didn't recognize got some rounds punched through them as well.

I saw and heard a few resonators fly overhead while the night was lit up by muzzle flashes and swaying flashlights.

"Myalis!" I shouted as I reloaded in a hurry. "I need something that produces some light! And I need... fuck it, something that'll shake the earth a little. Let's collapse their little anthill right on their ugly heads."

"I like that idea!" Gomorrah shouted next to me before she opened up with her flamer and drew a line of fire across the clearing. "If you're gonna do that, please do so in a hurry."

"Hey, it wouldn't be so quick if I knew what we were getting into," I snapped back.

This whole thing was a disorganised mess.

Still... kinda fun.

***