Chapter Fifty-Seven - In Space No One Can Hear You Buzz

Chapter Fifty-Seven - In Space No One Can Hear You Buzz

Chapter Fifty-Seven - In Space No One Can Hear You Buzz

"Top 8 best selling AUG games of 2057

1. Reality Runners [AR Collector Game]

2. The Family [Samurai Gacha]

3. Silly Starlight Symphony [Rythme Gacha]

4. Galaga 2 [Fixed Shooter Arcade]

5. Quantum Heist [Party Game]

6. Minecraft [Sandbox]

7. Verseforge [World Creator]

8. Catastrophe Clicker [Clicker Game]

--Game News Networld, 2057

***

I thought being on watch would be boring, and I was mostly right. It did have a few highlights, though.

A dinky little alarm clock went off a few minutes after Hedgehog carried Tankette away. It was one of those small red ones, with the two big bells on top of it, and the purely analogue clockface. I wasn't even sure how to read the time on it, but I did figure out that smacking the little knob on the top shut it down.

"Okay, I'm guessing that means it's time to shoot something," I said.

"Ça l'air pas mal ça." Gros Baton said. "What're we shooting?" There was a whole menu with all of the loaded shells on it on one screen that he was flicking through, each option highlighted one after the other.

"Good question," I said. "Uh. What's the situation over around Phobos?"

I eyed the consoles and realized that there were a lot of blank buttons. I pressed one at random, then some part of my less stupid brain realized that I'd just pressed a random button on a kilometre-long gun's control station and that was probably a bad idea.

Instead of pushing random buttons, how about you just let me handle things and leave the poor coolant control system alone?

"Yup, sorry," I said as I drew my hands back from all the buttons. "Just... can we throw up Phobos' status ATM on the big screen?"

Certainly.

I felt Gros Baton eyeing me, so I half turned to meet his gaze. That gave him the push he needed to ask me a question. He even bothered to ask it in his accented English. "Why do you talk to your AI, uh, out loud?"

"You mean Myalis? How else am I supposed to talk to her? Text?"

"Yeah," he said with a nod.

"Oh. Well... isn't that impersonal?" I asked.

The usual hair-rising thing happened as the Big Gun fired, followed by the hiss of coolant working to keep the gun intact. "Myalis," I said once the noise died down a little. "Can you show me how to run diagnostics? I'd like to shoot more than once an hour. Even just ten minutes sooner every hour would be one more shell every six hour shift, right?"

Ten times six is sixty, yes. I can help you with that. It should be possible, though it will increase wear slightly. Given the time constraints, the increased wear shouldn't interfere with operations.

"So we can keep shooting and shoot a little faster and shit won't blow up in our faces? Yeah, I'm down for that." I reached up and rubbed at the spot where my cybernetic cat ears met my head.

Gros Baton nodded, then pointed to the screen. The Bee Bomb was arriving. It looked like a streak across the monitor as it raced towards Phobos.

We watched in glorious HD as the bomb exploded and sent a thousand pinpricks moving across the screen. They intercepted just as many model elevens in mid-flight, turning the birds into statistics.

"Nice," I said as I leaned back.

The keiretsu didn't waste too much time. Some drones continued to mop up. More of them flew right into Phobos, slipping between the cracks which were soon illuminated by laser fire. I wasn't sure what was going on in there, but I figured it wasn't pleasurable for the aliens.

I blinked as I got a notification from Myalis. It had me sitting up a little straighter.

Targets Eliminated:

Model Eleven -

278

Model Twelve - 41

Points earned: 31,900

Points distributed to Vanguard: 3,987

New point total: 46,517

Holy shit, that was a lot of points. "We're eating good tonight," I said. I resisted the urge to rub my hands together. Didn't need Myalis switching me from Cat shit to Racoon shit. That role was taken already.

Gros Baton grinned. "I'mma buy the loudest skydoo," he said.

"Yeah, you go bud."

To be fair, though, that last bomb had targeted small, easy to eliminate models instead of the moon. It wasn't actually helping directly except to farm points. That eight percent wasn't moving so easily.

But more points meant I could afford more shells, which was nice. I'd just filled my budget for the next day and a bit. The Tesla Collider was going to fire soon too, so that would hopefully leave us with a nice gap where we could fuck up Phobos before it would have time to recuperate.

It was going ot take some time to fuck the moon up, and I was legit afraid that it would take more time than we had left. But hey, Keiretsu and the Nightwatchmen weren't freaking out as far as I could tell, so that was probably a good sign.

"Right... so uh, we've got another fifty or so minutes to wait, huh?"

Gros Baton shrugged. "Ouien?"

"Yeah... got any games on your augs?"

***