Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Sixty-Eight - Charred as the Wastes of Ozymandias

"We're happy to say that soon, North America's number one export may no longer be crude oil and wheat or corn products, but guns!"

--Opening speech at the 2035 Guncon NA convention, 2035

***

Our first pickup was Nya and Knight. I wasn't sure exactly what the two had been up to... but it wasn't too difficult to assume that their mission had been a success.

I brought the Bastion around, the wash of the engines pushing through a thick wall of smoke.

There was a... lot of smoke. Mostly because there was a lot of fire. Or there had been? The area they'd worked on was a wide open space, with a few rolling hills and a river that forked cutting between the hillsides.

The ground, everywhere, was charred.

Well, not everywhere. Nya (because it couldn't be Knight, she was halfway responsible) had left large cat-head-shaped areas untouched, so there were spots of green grass drawing across the hills.

Nya turned and looked up, then waved up at us. "Looks like they had fun," I said.

It was, in a way, kind of a waste to send Nya out against... well, anything, with Knight. Not because Nya, but because Knight wasn't actually a samurai.

She'd get some points for her sister thanks to using gear her sister had purchased, but that was it. A fraction of what Princess would get for doing the work directly.

Still, a fraction of a big number was still a big number, right? At least, that's about how I figured the math worked out.

We came down, I opened the side doors, then Nya and Knight boarded. As soon as they had something to grab onto, I lifted us off again, and moved over to where Grasshopper and Shy were working.

That area was a lot busier. The two were atop a small rise, surrounded by a dense carpet of Antithesis. There was a large... well, it looked like a drill of some sort? I wasn't sure. It was tall, stuck inside of a large housing, and it was spinning very quickly while the bit in the centre sank into the ground.

Grasshopper was nearby, taking careful shots at aliens, usually nailing two or three with a single round, or taking out higher-value ones with a critical hit.

Shy, meanwhile, was a blur of motion, exploding around the base of the hill with quick bursts of motion, her cloak fluttering with her twin shotguns poking out from beneath. Where she passed, aliens were turned to paste.

I had the Bastion hover around the hillside and debated opening up on the aliens, but then decided that I'd ask the girls first. It was only polite. "Hey," I said as I connected to Grasshopper and Shy. "We're above you now. Need any assistance?"

"Oh, hello there," Grasshopper said. I saw her tilt her head up a bit, the compound eyes on her helmet catching the light. "I think we're doing quite well. Though I never say no to a friend who wants to help!"

"Ah, well, that's cool. I'll keep an eye on things. If it looks like it's getting messy, we'll provide some cover."

There were a lot of aliens, but the two of them were wrecking their shit too. Shy was too quick to be taken out, and Grasshopper was being... mathematical in her culling.

"You guys have something set up to take out the hive?" I asked.

"I do!" Grasshopper said. "Shy and I combined our efforts. I've installed this handy little drill that is piercing its way into what I suspect is the main chamber of the hive, its heart, so to speak. Shy helped with the purchase. It's quite quiet, actually. Anyway, once it's at the right depth we'll set off a discrete high-yield explosive resonance detonation and that should take care of this infestation with minimal collateral damage to the environment."

That was... neat, I supposed.

I looked over, and the crater than Princess and I had made was still visible in the distance, mostly as a long plume of smoke some half-dozen kilometres away. We hadn't gone the 'protect the environment' route.

Shy and Grasshopper continued to put down the aliens rushing at them, but soon the number petered out, and then the drill reached its end. "Detonating now," Grasshopper said.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

There wasn't even a kaboom. Or much of anything else.

The aliens pouring out from under the ground slowed, then stopped. The last of them coming out of the holes that the hive had built came out half-melted, stumbling their way around as if they were punch drunk. Most didn't make it more than a few paces before flopping down.

"I believe you should be cleared to land," Grasshopper called out.

I took that as my cue to lower the Bastion down to ground level, side doors opening to let them in.

They hopped on, confirmed the hive kill, and then we were off to the next one. Since pairs had worked out well, we did the same thing again. This time I was on the second team, paired up with Shy.

I was just happy that I wasn't with Princess (who was with Nya this time, which left Grasshopper and Knight working together). It was... nice? Shy was quiet and competent, but also pretty good with stealth, so I used that as an opportunity to practice taking out a hive without stomping over to it in a big mech.

That second hive was stuck in some old abandoned barn, with walls painted red and some rusty farm equipment left out front.

We snuck in, took out some aliens with a few quiet shots, planted some big old explosives around the hive, which was rather small. Then we ran the fuck out of there once we were spotted, a trail of Antithesis following on our asses.

A few of them went up with the hive when we detonated it, and the rest we took out with plain old gunfire out in the open.

The Bastion returned, Grasshopper and Knight onboard already, and then we went off to pick up the others.

That basically repeated itself. I was with Nya next, who... was loud and annoying to work with, but undeniably good at killing things dead. She was purposefully killing any alien I aimed at a second before I could get a shot off, and I was ashamed to say that it took me a solid ten minutes to figure it out.

Still, we found the hive, and Nya took it out by cutting it up with a sword, because she could.

I left some resonators behind, to melt up the remains, then some nanomachine bombs as well, just in case.

My next was with Grasshopper. It was chill. We talked. Mostly I talked. I said some shit that I didn't expect to come out, and then tried to keep quiet, but she got me talking some more anyway, and yeah, I felt better when I came back.

Fucking... probably had some sort of therapy chip in her brain or something. I dunno.

Knight was next, and working with her was easy enough. She was quick and professional, and mostly safe. It reminded me of working with a soldier, only without the modern soldier gear. I didn't have to worry as much about keeping things even with her, so I got to do a bit more of the work and she killed anything that came close.

By the time Knight and I were done, it was half-past five. We'd been going around blowing up hives for a solid four hours or so and I needed a bathroom break and some grub.

We'd hit fifteen hives along the north shore, leaving several craters behind. I think we were appropriately unsubtle about it, because some high-flying news drones were starting to follow us along.

They knew better than to get close, but I made sure not to pick my nose while out of the Bastion because those things probably had lenses with great zoom on them.

If it was a slow news day, then our work would probably be on a few channels. It wasn't news worthy exactly. Samurai blowing up hives was like sanitation workers cleaning toilettes. It wasn't the funnest part of the job, but it happened.

We had lunch at some fast-food place. The Bastion parked out front and took up most of the space. We could have aimed for a nicer place to eat, but like... I just wanted a burger or something.

"So, we gonna keep going?" I asked as I took a bite.

"Sure, if you want," Princess said. "My AI drew up a list with combinations of three. There's twenty combinations!"

I considered it, then shrugged. Fuck it, why not? That'd mean thirty-five hives hit in one night. That'd make a dent.

"I like this, it's fun!" Nya said. "So many aliens, so many points to spend on fun stuff!"

***