Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Fifty-Six - Le Bad Suck

"I see you, I feel you. You thought I was dead? You wish I was. But you forgot that I'm It. I will fuck you up in ways that no one's ever fucked someone up before. They will invent words to describe what I'm going to do.

I will turn your corporation into statistics.

I am a broken mirror and my shards are in your throat. I'm going to tear your reflection out of your spine... bitch."

--Mad Vlad to Calliope Corp CEO before their bankruptcy, 2045

***

"Alright," I muttered just low enough not to wake Tankette up. "Myalis, what have you got for me? Keep them under... call it one thousand points a shell? We need to fire a fuckload of these."

Certainly. Are we still going for variety first?

I considered it, then realized that I had two others to do the thinking for me. "Hedge, do we go for variety or just lots of what we think might work?"

He frowned, then nodded slowly. "Variety. But please don't grab anything wasteful. We only have a few dozen more shots to make this count. We can try new things--and we're probably better off varying the kinds of damage we deal--but we can't afford to waste effort and shots."

"Got it," I said. "Heard that, Myalis?"

I did. Let's start then! First, might I suggest something simple to whet the appetite?

"Go on." Was she trying to sound like a fancy server on purpose? Actually, scratch that, she definitely was.

The first is a Scrambler bomb. This one detonates and creates a field around itself that shifts items around. It's not quite random, but it might as well be. The Scrambler will remain active for a relatively long time after deployment and will continuously move atoms away from their current location and to a random one nearby.

"And that does... what to a person?"

It scrambles them, Catherine. That kills people.

"Oh," I said. "How big of an AOE are we talking here?"

"AOE?" Gros Baton asked, but it was aimed at Hedgehog. The man started to explain about video game terms like Area of Effect and how they ended up co-opted by the military.

The area of effect begins at a kilometre across, give or take a few bus-lengths. Then it shortens over time with the incident of atomic re-materialization increasing exponentially. I must add that this creates a lot of radiation, both as heat and across the radioactive spectrum.

"Fuck it, we won't have to deal with that, the aliens will. Add one of those to the shopping cart," I said. "Next?"

Next... an Electron Suppression bomb would have some interesting effects on the Phobos object. It would give all protons in a large area a negative charge.

"I don't know enough about physics to tell what that would do, but I can imagine it would be bad. Add it!"

Fantastic. A riff on a bomb that you've purchased before as a grenade might be interesting; the Full Stop is a device covered by a nearly unbreakable shell. Once activated, it stops moving.

"Why would a device that can't move be good?" I asked.

You misunderstand. It cannot be moved. It is spatially locked.

I shrugged. "What would happen to Phobos if it runs into a spatially-locked indestructible thing?"

Hedgehog perked up. "You should get that."

"Alright, add it. Anything else?"

Gluon bombs. I'd explain how changing the environment reacts to the Strong Nuclear Force could be destructive, but by the time you'd understand it, Phobos will have landed.

"Fine, fine, add your glue bomb too."

"That doesn't sound as destructive," Hedgehog said.

"I know, right?" I said. "Next?"

Short-duration black holes?

"Fuck yeah!" I said. "Nothing says 'fuck off' like chucking a black hole at someone."

"That sounds good, yeah," Gros Baton said. "Give them le bad suck."

Now I was second guessing myself. Did I want to be known as the samurai that gave the big mean moon le bad suck? The memes would be ruinous. On the other hand, footage of a small black hole opening up on the side of something the size of a moon and fucking it right up might do wonders in reminding people not to mess with me and mine.

"Okay, add a couple of those to the cart," I said. "Anything else?"

Keiretsu have been spending a lot of time combatting smaller models encircling the main body of the Phobos object. Perhaps something that would assist them?

"More than smashing big bombs into the side of the moon?" I asked.

Somewhat, yes. I'd suggest the Bee Bomb. It's packed with a system that allows its interior to be larger than the volume expected from its exterior dimensions. The insides are filled with small self-powered drones. Several thousand of them. On deploying, these drones exit the bomb and dart out towards enemy targets at high velocities. They're packed full of explosives.

"Add it," I said with a nod. It might help our Keiretsu buddies, and it just sounded cool besides. "Is that it?"

Of course not. So far we've only toyed with two of the fundamental forces. But if you want a capstone... perhaps a Cryogenic Anti-Thesis Stasis bomb? It'll sap the heat from the area where it lands. The Antithesis generally requires some amount of heat to operate, and the other bombs you'd been using have been creating plenty. This might reverse that to some degree.

I considered it for a moment before my eyes narrowed. "That spells out CATS," I said.

A coincidence, I'm sure.

I shook my head. "Alright, let's get... two of each? That should hold us up until the end of our shift."

Hedgehog, ever the helpful sort, moved to the back and opened up the access door into the shell storage compartment. There were two left, both loaded into their slots and ready to fire.

New Purchases:

Scrambler Bomb x2

Electron Suppression x2

Full Stop x2

Gluon x2

Black Hole Bomb x2

Bee Bomb x2

Cryogenic Anti-Thesis Stasis x2

Total Cost:

13,250 points

Point total reduced to:

32,530

Fourteen shells appeared in the racks, each one slotting into place with a satisfying

click-thunk

. They were all slightly different, with shiny exteriors covered in burnished steel.

"That's half a day's worth of shells," I said. "If we're lucky, we won't even need this many."

"If we're lucky," Hedgehog said. He glanced at his wrist, where an old-school watch was wrapped around his arm. "The Tesla collider should be firing within the next hour. We'll shoot right after. And then my shift will be over. I'll escort Miss... Tankette to bed."

"How romantic," I said.

"She's not interested that way," he said.

I blinked. Did that mean... he was? But Hedgehog had a poker face like a marble statue and didn't give anything away.

"Sleeping this way will give her a crick in the neck. You might be too young to understand, but once you hit thirty you'll know that sleeping crooked is unacceptable."

"I know what you mean, yeah. We used to get mil-surplus beds back at the orphanage," I said. "The mattresses were thinner than a slice of burger meat and you were lucky if you got one of those without springs. Knew one kid that died because of one of them."

"How did he die to a mattress?" Gros Baton asked.

"Tetanus," I said with a shrug. "Like, half the symptoms of that are shit you get from bad dieting, so it's not like it's easy to tell that he had something wrong going on, at least until it was too late."

Hedgehog just stared at me for a moment. "That's messed up."

"Happens. Anyway, are we good here?"

"We should be. Keep us updated on the group chat as things progress. And please make sure not to leave the site without at least one samurai present. Two is better," Hedgehog said. "The media is sniffing around, as proven by Gros Baton's interaction with them earlier, and that's not to mention the others liable to want what we have here. Any one of those shells would be worth millions to a corp."

Don't give the dubiously-moral corporation access to WMDs, got it.

I padded over to Tankette's side and touched her shoulder. "Hey, uh, Tankette, time to wake up?" I hesitated and almost called her ma'am, but that was too formal. 'Sweetie' swung the bar all the way to the other side, and 'dear' was right out because I wasn't born in the 1800s.

She blinked awake, then looked around herself with a start. "Oh my, did I fall asleep? Hedge, I'm so sor--" She cut herself off with a demure little yawn that she hid behind a hand. "Sorry... I guess I'm not fit for staying up all night anymore."

"Been a while?" I asked.

"I'll have you know I used to be able to party from sundown to sunup."

Somehow, trying to imagine Tankette as a party girl felt... inherently wrong. "Uh-huh."

"How do you think I ended up with my first child?"

"I really don't want to know," I said.

She laughed, then stretched her neck to the side. "Oh, I'm going to have a crick all week."

"Best get you to a proper bed, then. Come on, Gros Baton and I will take over while you get your sleep on."

***