Chapter Ninety-Eight - Cleanup, The Other

"If it is worth doing, it's worth doing properly.

…

Bullshit. The real version should be, 'If you didn't do it properly, you didn't think it was worth doing.'

Maybe figure out why, yeah?

Now blast the fucking fuckers properly."

– Recording of Superkill speaking to a fellow samurai, who failed to protect civilians as he attempted to reduce collateral damage to buildings during the Global Incursion of 2057

 

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I'd woven myself two new pieces of slightly raggedy clothing to distract Leah with: A tube top that was a little fuzzy, but also kind of sheer and see-through, and a tube…miniskirt of sorts. Also kind of sheer. And see-through.

For the bottom tube-skirt-thing to properly work as a, ahem, distraction, I'd had to discard all the little scales covering my genitals and thighs, though. Now I looked like I was wearing black, glittering overknee stockings. There was a little gap of bare skin between the silken wrap and the first of the scales.

Everything was kept in check, both up top and down below, but also squished in a yummy way. At least by the interested glances Leah kept throwing me, which just…had me blushing and flushing and smiling the entire way.

I was bent over, giving Leah an eyeful and in the middle of cutting our cocoon apart to be burned topside, when I suddenly jerked straight.

"Oh, right!"

Leah twitched and looked my way with wide eyes, then held a hand to her chest as she calmed her breathing again.

"Fuck, Tinea! You scared me!"

"Uh, sorry." Feeling a little bad I went over to Leah and hugged her, looking up at her face to see her relax bit by bit, but the simmering heat that'd been there had died away.

Oops.

She put her chin on my head and sighed as my tail wrapped around her leg. It was a familiar thing now, the warm, slightly ridged artificial musculature of her prosthetic legs.

"So? What'd you scare me for?"

"Urgh. Sorry."

Leah squeezed me and giggled lightly. "No worries. What was it?"

"We gotta prepare the Antithesis we wanna kill. Should I try catching one with my silk?"

Her eyebrows jumped. "Is it strong enough for that?"

"Oh yeah, absolutely." I nodded. "I don't even know if I could break my silk with my own hands. I'd probably catch friction burns in the process," I said while raising a hand to show a diameter of about two centimeters with my fingers. "With a rope

of the stuff, at least. Say, an inch thick?"

"Okay. Any ideas where to find one of the critters? More than one, even?"

I nodded once more. Tynea and my AI-I selves had been working together to manage the spy drones.

"Tynea?" I asked while inviting both her and Leah into a groupcall through the Quanta.

The underground nest has been sending an increasing number of Threes into the forest, likely to answer the destruction of every large gathering as well as the Twenty-Twos. The closest units are only a few hundred meters away.

I caught Leah's eyes. "Should I go catch one or two?"

"Yeah." She chewed her lips, busy thinking. "Say, do we wanna record the things eating and dying from the jars? As additional bait?"

"Um… Maybe?" There were some problems with using such footage though. "Creating believable videos shouldn't be difficult with some creative editing. But I don't know if we can actually use them? If the release just seems accidental, then our kidnappers might become suspicious and avoid this area just in case. If we release the footage intentionally and make it look like it was just something funny we didn't think about more, then we'd kinda have corpos racing each other to get here first. No way to tell who'd be our kidnapper."

"Oh. Shit." Leah suddenly looked pissed. "Uh, that's gonna happen anyways, isn't it? Considering our battles. There's probably already salvage teams on the way, right?"

I kicked myself. The big explosion had been mine. Fuck.

Pacing back and forth I thought frantically, trying to figure out a way to make things line up again.

"No wait, let's not be hasty. Tynea, Ypsi, could you please check through the uplink if there's any news about samurai being active in this location?"

Oki! I'll help!

Certainly. One moment, please.

I looked at Leah with probably an awful expression. I felt guilty about not staying stealthy. Of the two of us, I wasn't the one with cannons, yet I'd been a whole lot more…bombastic. Old habits…

She looked at me, snorted, and mussed my hair with an amused smile. "You look like one of my kids after they did a bad. Don't worry about it. We're samurai. I think super-size violence kinda comes with the job. We didn't think of it. That's all."

Then she drew me in, probably to escape the attention of my antennae in her face, spooning me from the back in a nice, cuddly embrace. Her arms went under mine and I caught her hands to hold against my belly, while my head leaned back on her shoulder. I sighed happily and gave her more access to my throat when she kissed it.

Leah! I looked at everything! Super closely. The space cameras did catch you both and the salvagers are aware, but there's too many samurai fighting everywhere!

Ypsi is correct, Tinea. None of the teams are heading this way, not while there are many rather closer and larger sites to be plundered. That may change once you start killing the massive wave to the south, though. They'll assume higher-classed tech is being used.

"Okay…" I hummed.

Leah said, "That wouldn't be a problem, I think. The people we're after would either beeline for this facility instead of the big battle, or if they do let independent scavengers approach it first, piggy-back off of them. Either works for baiting them."

Right. Nodding, I thought further and absentmindedly played with Leah's fingers. "That's the good thing about contaminating your enemy via concepts. They can travel via human minds in a way that an electronic hack cannot… But…

"Tynea, can you hack your way into any networked gear our potential scavengers might use?"

Absolutely. Your Quanta offers more than enough computing power for that task, and additional geneware will make penetrating networked gear a non-challenge.

Grinning, I looked at Leah and was instantly distracted by the beautiful blush on her cheeks and ears, until I realized that I'd moved our hands against my jigglies at some point. Which were doing jiggly things with the stimulation from the gentle movements of my fingers twiddling Leah's fingers.

I was utterly seducing Leah without even noticing. And teasing myself in the process.

I groaned. Ever since I'd…played with Leah, there had been a steady heat below my navel that I hadn't quenched yet. And it's been hours.

Oh god, I am so fucking blue-balled. Uh… Clam-jammed, I guess it is now?

The thought had me snort and Leah's gaze snapped up to mine. I freed her fingers from temptation and tempted her in other ways with a rather wet kiss on the lips.

I wanted more, and my fingers definitely wanted more, but I sighed instead. Later, Tinea. You'll get your satisfaction as soon as we're home. You promised. I pushed the desires to the back of my mind as I addressed Tynea again.

"What would it cost us to add drones that can do more than just observe anybody searching the place?"

For full penetration they'd have to be capable of e-war. These drones would of necessity be considerably larger than any you have stationed here, and larger than your Scout's Quartet, too. Drones the size of felines or canines. That in turn requires true stealth measures if they are to remain hidden. AI smart enough to operate autonomously when cut off, or your Quanta would just make them redundant. The combined price would very quickly run into the thousands due to the unlocks required to build that tech-tree. Even more points if you want to advance enough to miniaturize again.

Leah shook her head. "Not really worth it, Tinea. Not yet. We'll notice anyone heading this way, and if it's necessary and they don't have anything we can hack into, we can send more drones after them once we start harvesting more points on the way home." Then she tilted her head as she looked at me. "Why would we want to hack them anyway?"

"Oh, I was thinking of mixing in the footage of the infected Three, once we have that. I'm sure they'll be equipped with cameras and such. I just don't know if they'll be networked?"

Leah shrugged and looked around, squeezing my hands. "We'll see. For now, let's just keep packing up. Go get the Three?"

I squeezed back and let go, put on the Myriad again, gathered up several of the thick silk-pieces to take along, and turned to leave with a last look at her.

"Okay, Leah. Be right back."

She smiled at me, slightly tense. The separation anxiety thing wasn't as bad as the last time, but it wasn't easy either. I sighed, a little stressed, a little tired. Things were getting to me, too.

On the way out, I also picked up a bottle of water and emptied it in one go. I was enjoying the invigorating sense of full-body hydration when I arrived at Leah's old cell and saw the two corpses in there.

Once more my fists clenched against the ghosts of crushed heartbeats.

Fuck.

With an angry breath I grabbed the very, very slightly stinky bodies and stacked them on top of each other, binding them with silk for transport, and glued them atop the largest piece of silk.

Thank fuck for all the preservatives in today's food, I thought, appreciative of the minimal decay despite more than a day having passed since their…demise. I've had enough of the smell of death to last me five lifetimes. At least they'll be useful to Leah, indirectly as it may be.

"Tynea, mark the closest group of two Threes and nothing else, please?" I asked as I emerged from the building and took a moment to reattach the harness with the Sentinel and plasma torch.

Done, and the path is marked. Three hundred meters.

Indeed, a line in green appeared at my feet, leading off into the trees and following a path that would allow me to drag the two bodies along. On the way past I set the pile of silk refuse on fire for Leah, then quickly scampered off when I heard her huff her way up the stairs with more of the cocoon.

I didn't want her to see the two dead assholes if she didn't have to.

I jogged along, slowed by having to check the silk for integrity and patching the grim ball and chain occasionally, but I did make it to another clearing close to the critters after a few minutes.

The trap was quickly built. I placed the corpses in the middle and strung a series of sticky strings between the trees, then hid myself in their crowns. After a quick check for any nearby Antithesis I wasn't ready for and finding none, I called to warn Leah before firing a low-caliber round.

The two Threes' heads perked up at the supersonic crack and set off to chase the source down. AI-I continued to track them, and I saw the moment they caught the scent of the dead. From there I only had to wait seconds for the beasts to touch the first line of sticky silk, get entangled, and wrap themselves up in a messy bundle with their attempts to keep moving.

"Well, that was easy." I said with a snort.

Fangs suddenly gnashed in my direction as the aliens heard my voice, but they remained immobilized and merely wriggled hard as I dropped into the muddy grass. I walked over, secured both with another few firm bits of spun rope, then removed all the sticky silk to burn with the corpses.

"Come to think of it… I've left some silk lying around here and there, haven't I? Will they be able to use it to get a genetic profile of me?"

No, not likely. The silk itself might be an interesting study but it carries no markers. And the rather acidic rain will have washed away or otherwise messed with any other residues.

"Good."

Feeling a bit down, depressed, and generally not great with a vague annoyance plaguing me about blood on my hands again for the first time in many years, I torched the bodies and quickly grabbed the double delivery to return to Leah.

At least, I pondered with a slight smile, I'll have a beautiful, gorgeous, and sexy wifey to hug in just a second. Yeah. That'll make everything better.

 

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