Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Fifty-Five - Cutting To The Heart of The Moon

"Are they hiding something from you?

Top Secret News says... yes! Exclusive street-side interview with two samurai reveals hidden truth! A Conspiracy is at play! Subscribe now!"

--Top Secret News, 2057

***

"Hey, thanks, eh? You saved my ass back there," Gros Baton said.

"Yeah yeah, just don't get too comfy about it," I grumbled.

I didn't mind the kid. He was polite enough. Hell, he was just a good bloke as far as I could tell. He tried, at least, and that was more than I could say about a disconcertingly large portion of the population.

My only problem with him right now was that he had his arms wrapped around my waist.

I didn't have any issues with Rac holding onto me. She was a kid, and a girl, so it was fine, but I was getting all sorts of squicked out by this guy. I mean, it was objectively stupid. I was wearing several layers of armour. None of his disgusting boy germs were gonna escape his hairy arms and get to me, but it was still uncomfortable.

Fortunately, we didn't have to fly far.

I shot across Saint-Jérome, then down to use some of the taller buildings to cut our line of sight from the media sorts we'd left behind. Then I gunned it, rushing out of the city at an angle and slowly curving around westward until I was aiming more or less towards where the Big Gun was.

A few minutes later we were being scanned by a dozen AA positions that looked ready to tear us apart until something pinged us as friendly. I really needed to upgrade my bike to something that could take a few flak hits before the inevitable happened, but the inevitable wasn't happening today, and I landed in the open space before the command structure a few dozen metres from the big Gun.

"Alright, enough clinging to me, off, off," I said.

"Yeah, yeah," Gros Baton said as he rolled off the side of the bike. "It wasn't comfortable for me either. Didn't know where to put my hands. Christ, you need 'andles or something."

"Keep talking and I'm getting a sidecar," I said.

"That sounds kinda fun?" he said. "I was thinking I'd get something too, ya know? Une genre de skidoo qui peut voler ou ben quelque chose d'même?"

I wasn't sure what he was saying there, but I kinda got the mental image from his gesturing. "Uh-huh. Just make sure it's got a good auto-pilot. Real lifesaver that shit."

"'Kay," he said with a nod.

I checked the time on my augs. I was only twenty-minutes late to the start of my shift, which really didn't explain the 'why did you shit on my bed' look Hedgehog was giving me as I got closer to the command centre and he stomped out.

"You finally decided to show up?" he asked.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Had to save the kid from the big bad journalists. I think I've given them enough to talk about that they'll leave us alone for a minute."

He sniffed. "There's no such thing. They're insatiable."

"Well shit, I was hoping some of them would at least be a little distracted," I said. "So, how's the gun?"

He uncrossed his arms and shook his head. "It's doing well enough, but we're short on ammunition."

"Can't you buy some?" I asked.

"Tankette has been supplying us, but her ammunition is mostly... standard. Her armour-piercing shells have had the best effect so far, but they're not nearly as efficient as some of the more... creative ammunition you left behind."

Hedgehog started walking towards the little room at the back of the gun, the one I'd loaded the shells in last time. "Are we out of creative things to shoot, then?" I asked. "I can buy more. Hell, I can buy a lot more, I upgraded my catalogues for just this occasion."

"Good, good," he said. "Phobos has been pounded all night."

"That makes one of us," I said.

Gros Baton choked, then started to laugh until Hedgehog turned and gave us both the stink-eye. "We're talking about the end of the world here. Some level of seriousness would be appreciated."

"Sorry," I said. "Go on?"

"The Tesla Collider has fired twice more, both times dealing some substantial damage. And at the moment there is a constant swarm of smaller Keiretsu drones harassing the... we're calling them point-defence models. Smaller space-capable models that can fly around Phobos and who are harming our targeting and attacking any drones."

"Damn, alright. And our shots? What's the damage?"

"Moderate at best," he said, which was... not something I was keen on hearing, to be honest.

"Can you give me something more... tangible? I don't know, a percentage? An HP pool? A nice round number my small pitiful brain can wrap itself around?"

Hedgehog paused for a moment, then nodded. "We'd managed to successfully detach seven percent of the moon's mass from the surface."

"That's nothing," I said.

He made a so-so gesture. "It's more than you'd think? That's several hundred thousand tons of mass. But in order to eliminate the danger that Phobos poses, we'd need to reduce its mass to something like a hundredth of its original mass. If Phobos hits Earth as scattered debris, we'll have won."

Right, right, that sounded decent. "So we're more than seven percent of the way to victory?"

"If you put it that way, we're closer to twenty?" he said. "My AI suggests that it's not a very precise way of looking at things."

"No, that's fine. I just need something ballpark-ish to wrap my head around the whole thing." We arrived at the command room and Hedgehog gestured for us to go in first, so I did. It was just as cramped in there as I remembered. I instantly quieted down when I noticed Tankette on one of the seats.

She was holding a large, quilted-looking blanket close, and had her head leaning to the side against one of the consoles. Someone had snuck a pillow under her, and judging by the little hedgehog pattern on its cover, I had a good guess as to whom.

"She's... a very heavy sleeper," Hedgehog said, but he was keeping his voice lower too.

"Uh-huh," I replied. "So... what worked?"

He frowned, and I had the impression he'd pulled something up in his Augs. "The most successful round so far was the deployable monofilament bomb."

"Really?" I asked.

Hedgehog seemed to take offence at the question. He turned towards the consoles behind him and tapped a few buttons. At least he seemed familiar with the Big Gun's controls now. A few moments later one of the big screens lit up.

It was a visual of a projectile moving across a plotter. The usual thing now for visualising one of our shells zipping out towards Phobos.

Then it cut to what had to be a sensor drone's point of view. The time code on the bottom of the screen slowed down, so we were seeing things one fraction of a second at a time instead of replaying things in real time.

The camera caught sight of the shell and started to zoom in, only for the shell to unfold and break apart.

The casing flew off into the void of space, but what it revealed looked like... "Kinda butt-plugish, huh?" I asked.

Hedgehog sighed.

The... I was gonna call it a dart for now, was spinning through space at what was probably a ridiculous speed even as six smaller darts flew out of it.

Then it crashed into a rocky outcropping on the edge of Phobos, a sort of mountain that took the impact with barely a puff of dust rising from where the dart hit.

At least, at first. The camera zoomed out, then zoomed right back in as a slice of that mountain shifted. It was a perfect cut, being pulled downwards slowly before it gained momentum and started a small avalanche. It became clear that the dart had basically six long slices right out of the mountain, and they were all moving now that they were separate.

"It's hit or miss," Hedgehog said. "The cuts go deep, but just because something is cut doesn't mean it'll detach itself."

"Right," I said. Tons of stone like that didn't just move away so easily. "But the damage is good, otherwise?"

"In combination with the Tesla collider? It's significant. It seriously weakens the moon's structural integrity, and the monofilament wires can stretch out for hundreds of metres. It's the widest-range weapon at our disposal right now."

I nodded along. That made sense. It was small as hell, so it was easy to pack a ton into a single shell.

"Not bad," I said. "But let's see if we can't try something else, huh? I got my hands on a new catalogue and I need to test out what sort of trouble I can get up to with it."

Tankette snored in approval.

***