Chapter Fourteen - Combustion Beam Flag-tillery OR; Flying Disco Balls of Death

Chapter Fourteen - Combustion Beam Flag-tillery OR; Flying Disco Balls of Death

Chapter Fourteen - Combustion Beam Flag-tillery OR; Flying Disco Balls of Death

"We haven't gotten permission yet.

It'll come. So, anyway, when you connect to the app you can have the figurine say a bunch of lines. My favourite is 'Putting the Fire in Firepower!'

Again, we don't have permission.

And I'm thinking of a line of lighters, matches, and maybe small blowtorches? Flashlights, maybe?"

--Overheard discussion about My First Gomorrah Dolls, 2057

***

The swarm came at me with its fastest little guys first. That mostly meant model ones, the flying fucks being way faster than all the rest. And a whole lot weaker too.

"Myalis, can we top-load a few of those air-explosion rounds, like Tankette used?" I asked.

Your internal magazines have four empty slots for rounds, but they're not designed to be filled from the top. You'll have to empty your current magazine to the level where the new rounds will be introduced.

I shrugged. Fair enough. I tapped through a few commands and then let my twin Gatling guns rip into the flying part of the swarm. It was the big-guns that I needed to empty, and that was just as easy. I took command of the guns, aimed them ahead, then let loose. 105mm rounds scythed ahead, curving slightly as I'd aimed a little high and over the front of the incoming swarm. They crashed into the ground some four or five hundred metres away then exploded.

"What do I have loaded in right now?" I asked as I glanced at a readout on the side. "Oh." They were anti-armour rounds. They had some explosive oomph to them, but nothing too satisfying.

What do you want for anti-air? I have a few options on offer. The size of the guns you have gives you a lot of space for customization!

I fired another pair of shots. "You have three more shots to convince me, I guess. Maybe only a few, I think we'll go for some HE after that. The Twenty-Twos shouldn't be too tough, right?"

In that case, I'll offer three suggestions. The first is a simple air-burst explosive round. It fires conventional fragmentation all around, with a shaped charge to ensure that local flying targets are prioritised.

Second! A little less conventional, but a mono-filament round is available. On discarding its sabot it deploys a series of spinning lines that create a moving space where everything solid is cut into and through. Very effective against light flying adversaries.

Finally, as a last option, explosive-powered lasers.

"You're not just going to leave that last one hanging, right?" I asked.

The Fury darted ahead and I cooled it with the anti-air fire. There were only a few model ones left in any case, and I figured I could sweep them with some Gatling gun fire.

"Switch me up to high explosive?" I asked. "I want to blow holes in the swarm."

Done.

My next few shots ended with satisfyingly large craters in the ground and pillars of kicked up dirt that were at least a hundred metres tall. I found myself chuckling in amusement as I pulled the trigger, watched a pair of big explosions, then shifted to aim at another group.

There were two great pleasure's in a woman's life: other women, and fuck-huge explosions.

I paused for a moment as Gomorrah found her own little pleasure, hosing down the carcass of that first model twenty-two with several hundred litres of lit napalm. The corpse barely had time to go all bonfire before it was turning into ash.

I settled back once the Fury was a little higher up and dropping spurts of short-lasting fire onto the bigger aliens below it. I didn't want to accidentally catch Gomorrah in the AOE of one of my hits. If I got her car muddy she'd definitely be on my ass about washing it.

I'd do a terrible job of it, of course, because there was no better way to never be assigned a job again than to do it catastrophically poorly the first time, but still, it would be a wasted afternoon.

The rest of the model twenty-twos eventually came around. They were like massive flies after a pile of shit. Not a gram of self-preservation between the lot of them as they ambled towards us.

I took a lot of pride in lining up a few shots of HE so that they rammed into the meat-sacs hanging from their sides. The explosions were even more satisfying when there was organic goop mixed into the mess.

It took nearly forty minutes for the last one to get within mech range. I watched Gomorrah swoop down and light it up, then she splashed some more fire all around. As she flew back, she dropped some explosive charges that lit the entire field up in a sea of low, smokeless flames.

"That ought to do it," Gomorrah said.

"It ought to," I agreed. "Should we go check up on the newbies?"

"We should. I've been glancing at my drone footage every so often. I think they're all safe and sound for now, but the situation has... deteriorated somewhat."

"Oh, well shit, that's not something I want to hear," I said as I started turning my mech around.

What kind of shit could a few newbies get into in like, under an hour of unsupervised time?

Fuck, who was I kidding, I could imagine a lot of crap they could get into, and the more I imagined, the faster I pushed my mech.

***