Chapter Eighty-Eight - Xenocide Act VII; Seriously, Hella Weird Experience

There’s this crater with a ringlake several hundred miles north north-east of Montreal.

It used to be a mountain with a ringlake.

One month ago, samurai Fuck My Life discovered that the entire area, but especially the mountain in the middle, was infested with Antithesis.

He states there were too many critters to kill with conventional arms, and that he didn’t want to, quote, "just blow the whole place up", as that would scatter the Antithesis matter, spreading seeds large enough to start new nests around the area.

He used acid instead. A, quote, "big, huge, fuck-off flood of acid", that ate through hundreds of meters of rock and Antithesis nest to create a new crater. The ringlake still exists, but it’s been lowered by ten to fifty meters and has become a toxic swamp. The terrain still exists, but there is no mountain left.

The acid itself dissolved almost instantaneously, yet the byproducts remain toxic.

Don’t go anywhere near the place for the next fifteen hundred years. You’ll die.

He tried to, quote, "fix it by covering the whole place with millions of tons of fresh soil and seeding it with modified trees".

Scientists state that It appears to work, but the water is noxious, and so are the fumes around the lake-cum-swamp. They do not expect the trees to stay healthy, but claim that, quote, "they might end up cleaning the place up anyway".

Eventually.

– Alternative GarageNews, July 2029

 

***

 

The ground bucked beneath Leah's claws and the blastwave almost dislodged her as the one hundred and fifty millimeter shell tore a two-meter-deep crater in the middle of the circular clearing. Dismembered alien bodies were tossed around by the explosion, ever more pasted by this fifth shell.

"Let's see."

Leah lifted her belly from the ground and unlocked the spikes in her claws that had kept her stable during the detonation and the resulting winds, and trudged forwards through the muddy sludge.

The rainwater slowly flowed into the crater to fill it up again, but not before she saw green plant meat exposed at the bottom, shivering and twitching from the injury.

"Got it! Ypsi, I'm gonna need shells that can dig into that and do a lot of damage."

Um! If we ask Tinea for her acid missiles, then we can use chemicals that react with the acid to make it a lot worse!

"Oh?"

Yeah! It'd be like the bomb that made this crater! But, you know, smaller.

Leah's eyebrows jumped.

"Uh. The bomb that melted a good hundred meters of bedrock to turn a mountain and its ringlake into a crater with a ringlake, which then turned into a swamp too toxic for unprotected life?"

Yup!

"Whacky. Sure."

Okay! And Tynea's sent an acknowledgement, already! The, um, Third Degree is gonna get given, Tinea says.

Leah smiled at the wordplay, as a video began to play on the pod's inner wall. It showed Tinea twirling through the air in a horizontal pirouette, mincing a dozen Antithesis with her double-bladed spear as she jumped across them. Her Myriad flung several rockets from whichever tubes pointed upwards during the motion, like a human gatling gun.

Leah grinned wryly as she saw the absolute ecstasy on the girl's face as she murdered alien after alien. You'd think she's got a vibrator in her or something.

She cleared her throat as the unbidden picture pushed blood into her face. Leah decided she'd better distract herself from that particular train of thought.

"Alright, Ypsi. What are we buying?"

This! Um. Should I use Tinea's tables again?

"Yup!"

Okay!

 

Cost	x	Item
15	6	75mm Grenade; capsule: accelerant, extender, catalyst; core: low explosive, small charge, cartridge: ultra-low velocity
90		Total
8411		Remaining Points

 

"Ultra-low-velocity grenades?"

Mm! They'll plop into the crater after the missiles, and then make the acid from the missiles better!

So, no kinetic energy required, huh?

“Alright, load them up, please.”

Roger!

Leah smiled as she sank into her pod's virtual environment, and the sequential clunking of six shells falling one after the other into the magazine wells drew her mental gaze.

This sure is a hella weird experience…, she thought as she considered the dual nature of her physical existence with the prosthetics-controlling implant being connected to the pod.

There was her own body, sometimes with four limbs, sometimes without, and then there was the walking egg, full of sensors and tactile feedback translated into a cohesive, natural experience by the implant. It allowed her to use the pod as if it was a second body. 

But she still had only one brain. She could see with the eyes of the egg and her own at the same time, yet if she tried to focus on two different things, she found her attention narrowing to one. Two bodies, but only one brain. A limitation of the implant, huh? Or of the pod’s computers? Or…just my own? Hmm.

She opened her real eyes again and looked at the timer ticking down as it tracked the arrival of the acid missiles. She switched to the spherical field of view of the pod to check her surroundings and then studied the smallish bomb crater the shell had left in front of her.

"Ypsi, I'm gonna want a mental upgrade, I think. Something to keep up with all the possible input from the pod and the implant?"

Um! There's, like, a hundred different ways for that! It's, uh, difficult to narrow it down better. Sorry.

Leah giggled at the adorable contriteness in Ypsi's voice and could almost imagine the little girl wringing her hands sheepishly.

“Fair enough. I’m dealing with multiple inputs, right? Wouldn’t it be best if I could process all of them at the same time? I wouldn’t be playing catch-up constantly, even if I’d be really fast at it with the right upgrades.”

Yeah! Parallel thinking is good for that. Can I also suggest a, um, cerebral computer? It’ll feed you tactical suggestions all the time. Which is really useful with parallel thinking!

“Oh, is that like one of those AI trainers for real-time strategy games?”

Ah, yes! But much better. Because it’d be from me. And I’m much better!

“Aww, yes you are,” Leah laughed. “Sure, that sounds very useful.”

Um, you don’t really need it yet, though. Even Daddy Long-Legs will have his own computers to run that kind of thing on auto-pilot, so you can buy this upgrade afterwards. It’ll be a bit expensive though!

“I see.” Leah’s attention turned upwards as the pod’s microphones picked up the familiar hiss of Tinea’s micro-missiles.

They streaked in from overhead and before Leah could so much as take a step back, they’d already dived into the shallow pools of muddy water and liberated their payloads.

The crater started boiling immediately.

Leah, we can add the grenades now!

“Alright. All six?”

Yup!

Ypsi painted a circle of six equidistant spots around the crater, and Leah lobbed one grenade at each, and leaned in to watch.

Um! Let’s skedaddle now, please! Leah!

“Ah, huh?”

Now!

Ypsilon’s rather more somber and serious voice knocked the mental cobwebs loose, and Leah jumped several meters backwards, just as a pale yellow flashed through the bubbling crater to convert the water into more acid.

And then, the entire mass burnt through the ground. Heat plowed into Leah’s metallic skin as steam erupted from the new hole along with a whole lot of mud, and suddenly, the entire clearing shook as a stuffed foghorn blared from below.

“What the fuck?!” Stringy plant matter joined the mud being puked into the sky.

That’s the Twenty-Two!

“What? I thought the Antithesis made no sound in real life!"

There are exceptions! Anyhow, Leah, the acid’s burnt out already! You can check on the hole now.

The ground bucked again, but the expulsion of solids had ceased.

“Well shit.” Leah looked at the former crater. It had widened into an almost circular hole several meters across, with steam still billowing out from it. “Somehow, the thing is still alive, huh?”

They are rather large.

Leah hummed and gingerly stepped forwards, leery of the ground giving out under her.

Ypsilon cleared up the visuals and Leah finally saw through the rising water vapor.

“Whoa.”

She stood above the neck of a large cauldron. The acid had dug into the ground, and then spread to eat a huge spheroid a few meters down. There was still mud boiling at the bottom, releasing steam and cooking the surroundings like a fuck-huge pressure cooker, to which the hole was the valve.

Most of the cavern revealed just earth and dirt, but the top quarter consisted of a lot of shivering green plant flesh, and two huge plant legs riddled with holes where the acid had eaten into them. 

Leah studied the damaged limbs waving around weakly. The Twenty-Two, huh?

She felt the tremors through the ground and watched as part of the meaty wall flexed and the nasal foghorn hammered at her microphones again.

“Alright, Ypsilon. Looks like the thing's mostly dodged the bullet, so to speak.”

Yes, though fortunately, you’ve ensured that there aren’t any roots to remain hidden underneath it. That should make for a straightforward kill. May I suggest fire?

“Sure.”

 

Cost	x	Item
5	6	75mm Shell, Magnesium/Thermite Incendiary
30		Total
8381		Remaining Points

 

Another six shells clunked into the magazines before Leah moved all the way to the edge of the hole.

“Ypsilon, based on those legs, what’s the orientation and size of the monster?”

You’re standing on its back, a little to the rear. Its head and vocal organs are across the hole from you.

Ypsilon drew an outline onto Leah’s screen. The Twenty-Two was larger than a house and the hole drilled through it had destroyed barely a quarter of it. Not enough to kill it, but from how it was twitching and bucking under Leah, it had been injured rather grievously.

It appears to have lost its mobility already.

“Mmm.” Leah tilted her head as she studied the fleshy and muddy hole some more. “Might have to climb in there to really get all of it, I guess.”

That seems likely.

“Well, nothing for it.”

Leah tilted her pod downwards until her cannon pointed halfway down the opposite wall of the hole, and fired.

The recoil shoved hard against the egg and she nearly flipped over as her front legs left the ground. She scrambled to stabilize herself with her hind legs, taking advantage of their length to dig in far behind her center of gravity.

Leah oophed as the pod crashed back down and she caught herself with the front legs.

She groaned. “That was hella stupid. Forgot to lock down.”

Ypsi’s polite little girl voice answered her.

Um, I can remind you next time, if you’d like!

“Yup,” Leah giggled, “please do.”

Okay!

Leah crawled back to the lip of the crater, and checked out the results of the shell she’d shot.

It had penetrated several meters before its fuze went off and set the plant matter on fire deeper inside.

A brilliant white flame speared its tongue through the entry wound, which ejected more burning plant stuff from it like a fireworks rocket motor.

She could see the green flesh dry, wilt, and blacken from the heat around the impact site.

“Well, that does seem effective.”

It is! The fuel is the, um, long-lasting type. It’ll burn for about a minute! And really hot. Above three thousand six hundred degrees Fahrenheit!

“Oh my. Can my pod survive that?”

Uh, no! Better not try. At least not without more upgrades!

“Well, then. I’d better be careful, huh?”

Yes!

Smiling, Leah adjusted her heading and walked a few meters around the former crater to angle another shot. She dug in her claws and popped a few barbs into the meat to secure herself.

She raised her butt again, and fired the second round to much the same pyrotechnic result, but without almost sending herself flying.

Her barbs had ripped through several inches of Antithesis flesh, but she'd remained steady. Unperturbed, she moved another few meters around the hole, and shot a third, fourth, and fifth time.

The Twenty-Two heaved under her claws with every additional injury, but it couldn’t shake her loose.

Ypsi had drawn the trajectories of each shell and added shading to show the estimated damage each would do over time. The last remaining shell would complete the circle of flaming punctures sputtering with grilled plant matter, but Leah had other thoughts.

“Still looks like I’m gonna be climbing, yeah?”

You don’t absolutely have to! There’s other ways to kill it from up here. But they’ll cost more.

“I’m more worried about this whole thing collapsing on me, to be honest.”

Oh, that’s not gonna happen, no worries! It’s got so hot in there, the earth has turned into bricks!

Huh. That was worth checking out, Leah thought.

Once the first shell’s jet of fire sputtered out, Leah shot the sixth round, reloaded for another six, and then hooked her front leg around the lip of the hole and stuck it deep into the trembling meat.

She carefully transferred her weight to it, until she was sure the barbs would hold, and then repeated the same with her other limb.

Seriously, hella weird experience, Leah thought again as she began to climb head-first, down past the organic bits through the billowing steam into the huge cauldron of boiling mud.

 

***

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, here are two sketches of Leah’s egg. The first is a quick hand-drawn one by me, and the other one was provided by Rabiator, (shoutout for his story!) who had fun with it in Krita.

They’re not 100% representative of the real deal, especially style-wise, but they should give you a solid understanding of dimensions and proportions, at least. Imagine something more scarily elegant, but also more alien and uncanny. Warforge Technology is both the brawl and the dance, in a fuck-off alien package.