Chapter Forty-Seven - Kami-Can't

Chapter Forty-Seven - Kami-Can't

Chapter Forty-Seven - Kami-Can't

"Drone warfare is changing everything.

A soldier costs millions to train. A drone can be produced for cheap. American explosives, parts made in a Chinese 3d printer, motors made in Vietnam, with Taiwanese chips, running off of Indian software.

Give me a million dollars and I'll hand you a thousand flying bombs worth more than ten times their cost in soldiery."

--Former Naytheon CEO Jim Jimmies, moments before retired US Marine Tucker Bison assassinated him, 2031

***

Just before I returned to our... cinema tent, I got a message from Grasshopper. The Big Gun was ready to fire.

Before that, however, we had time to sit back and watch the Keirestsu's kamikaze run. I was looking forward to it, actually.

Seeing a nuke go off in space was going to be neat, I figured, and seeing multiple was... probably going to be pretty awesome. I wasn't going to miss that. A sudden pang hit me as I walked back in though. I missed Lucy. Bet she would have loved to see this, but it was a little late to run back and fetch her.

"Myalis, are we recording these streams?" I asked.

Of course. For data analysis, if nothing else. There is also a possibility that these streams may serve as propaganda pieces later.

I frowned, but... yeah, that was very possible. People needed to know that shit wasn't hopeless, and what better way to give people hope than to show their enemy being peppered with nukes.

"Hey," I said as I returned.

"You're back," Princess said. "How did it go?"

I shrugged. "Not so bad, I think. Doctor Radikal calls it a seven out of ten on the shit scale. So it could have been worse. We'll have to see how this next hit goes, and then give it our own shot."

Gomorrah nodded from her seat nearer the front. "That seems reasonable. Are there any changes in the plan? New tactics or the like?"

I flopped down onto my seat and stretched a little. Damn, it was kinda comfy. "Nothing too big. We're switching to a sort of... war of not-quite-attrition from here on out. The Keirestsu can keep ramping up, and we'll be in charge of smacking Phobos every hour on the hour. Our nerdier friends will crush the moon four times a day, so I think, overall, things will work out."

"Oh, I see," Grasshopper said. "A war of attrition rarely works out against the antithesis, but in this particular case, the antithesis are playing a zero-sum game. They only have the moon's resources at their disposal. And the ambient energy from the sun, I suppose. They can't claim any more biomass than they have. Every piece of Phobos we carve away is part of their foundation gone forever."

"That's the rough idea, yeah," I said. "Do we have any idea when the Keiretsu's thing—"

Grasshopper looked at one of her four wrists. There was an old-fashioned watch there, without even a digital screen. I didn't know how to read clocks with the little arms like that, but I supposed she did. "In about five minutes," she said. "Enough time to warm up some more popcorn!"

"I'll get it," Tankette said as she hopped out of her seat. "No no, please. I'm feeling useless." The last was aimed at Hedgehog who had started to stand, presumably to help her.

Two more drones blinked out.

"Engaging evasive manoeuvres," the woman's voice said. She didn't sound quite as calm. "Nuclear warheads primed. Contingency twelve active. Sacrificing drones one through six."

Four of the screens went white.

From the viewpoint of the other drones, there were suddenly four suns floating in the void of space out ahead of them, growing balls of brilliant light that they just barely skimmed by a split second later.

The plot showed the explosions as balls the size of marbles next to Phobos, which, comparatively, looked like a beachball on the screen now.

Two more drones were lost. Then six more.

The plotter started to fill with hundreds of contacts out in space. Winged monsters, black and nothing, some of them were discorging spines and spikes and exploding balls covered in thorns that caught some of the drones mid-flight.

It was thinning the drone swarm.

But not enough to prevent some from striking the moon's surface.

On the screen for those, it looked like Phobos went from a distant baseball-sized lump of rock to the moon suddenly being right up in their face. I jumped in my seat at the suddenness of it.

Every screen went white.

They switched to what I presumed was another observational drone, and we got to see nine growing spheres of bluish smoke expanding in front of Phobos. Their edges curled and twisted, a fractal that soon splashed across the moon's surface.

When the dust settled, there were expanding craters pock-marking the front of Phobos' surface.

"Nine successful detonations," the woman's voice said.

"Out of thirty-six kamikaze drones," ninja-guy said. "We will send the data now. Prepare for initial observations."

The plotter grew to take up the entire screen, with notated information around each location that was struck. The shockwaves from the nukes were still travelling through Phobos' surface, and the chunks blown off the moon were coming back down, crashing into it to leave even more cracks and dents on its all-grey surface.

"Was... that a complete flop?" I asked. "What were those things, in space?"

"Space-capable antithesis," Grasshopper said. "And I wouldn't call it a flop. Rather... let's call it a learning opportunity. We'll have to do better, next time."

"Next time is our turn," Gomorrah said. She stood. "Come on. Let's try and see how well we can do."

***