Chapter One Hundred Sixteen - An Eternal Minute

"My boss told me I looked like I watched Star Trek.

And then, as I was leaving, she said, 'May the force be with you… Wait, no, it's Live Fast And Get Fucked, or whatever,' and held up the Vulcan V-hand salute.

I guess it was a good day at work."

– A meme from before shit went to shit, 2023

 

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I stared at the sea of slavering Antithesis chasing after us with a single-minded focus and gnashing teeth.

"They really, really should rename these assholes to Karen."

Pfft–

Whut?

Did I actually make Tynea laugh? I couldn't believe my…imaginary ears.

"Heh."

I'll have to admit, that was a good one.

"Right? It'd probably go viral if anyone was recording this."

…

"..."

"No, Tynea. We're not going to record this. That'd be…cringe."

That's out of my hands, I'm afraid.

"What?"

You're trailing a mechanical spider with excellent sensors, which it is using to keep track of the battle and to record everything for tactical analysis.

…

Everything.

"Ah."

I wasn't dumb. I knew perfectly well that she could probably delete this specific scene from those recordings. If Ypsi let her. Would she?

Oh, well.

It had been a particularly good moment.

Lighting flickered above me as Daddy-Long-Legs' electrolasers cooked the Ones one by one. There was a new wave of Threes and Fours coming at our spider from Leah's ten o'clock.

Mission Control set the Myriad to build hundreds of high-explosive micro-missiles.

Probably should've thought of that way earlier, huh? Then again, I'm a samurai. Always a solution to any problem.

"Concussion grenades, please. No packaging, and cut the tables during battle."

Grab it, please.

I carefully balanced on the spear, holding onto it with my tail since my other hand was still occupied with the jump jet stuff. Then I grasped at empty air, and came away with a large, smooth egg. It had a big red button right at the top that said PRESS. I grinned, already feeling the first fizzing of the battlelust.

Like it or not, I was home on the battlefield. Always would be.

I smashed the button with my chin, lobbed the grenade into the air so I could hold onto the javelin with my hand again, and then whacked the explodey egg with my tail as if it was a baseball and I was looking to score a homerun through the seats of the stadium.

The, uh, projectile—Yes, that is definitely what it was supposed to be by design—went straight like a laser past Daddy-Long-Legs, shattered and glanced off the skull of a Three with an audible thock, and landed in the nest of writhing tentacles of a Four. The wriggly alien grabbed the grenade and moved it in front of its face to examine it.

I blinked.

"I'm seriously experiencing an awful lot of deja-vus, lately, aren't I?"

The egg blew up beautifully and obliterated the Four and everything else in a five-meter circle around the tentacle monster. Its blast wave smashed into me and I laughed as I hung from my spear, flung backwards and tumbling in an arc through the air. Even the spider staggered slightly and Leah mumbled curses through our call, but it was way too heavy to be moved much by these weak shockwaves.

As a result, I found myself separated from the walking tank and out in the open, an easy target for the quills of dozens of Fives. At the first hints of their whirring whistles, I kicked the Raptor's Dance into a hard dive with a manic grin, and smashed right into the sea of Antithesis to find some…cover.

I really need some sorta device that releases an epic shockwave when I land like this, I thought, giggling. Superhero style, blast away everything.

The first Three jumped at me and I smacked it in the side of the face with a fist, grabbed it by the tail that came whipping around, and continued the motion to wind up and throw it at a Four that was already reaching for me.

"How much longer!" I screamed at Tynea.

Wings in one minute!

"How much longer!" I screamed at Mission Control.

Missiles in one minute!

Fuck. I thought more time had already passed.

"Gimme another shield! Same one! And a second Raptor's Dance!"

A second javelin appeared to my left and ignited its engines with a hiss. The two flying weapons whirled around me like tornadoes of death, stabbing, blending, and cutting the heads of any aliens trying to reach me. I crouched low and grinned at the sound of a Five's quills penetrating a row of Threes on my other side.

The large disc of burnished metal popped into existence at shoulder height, and I immediately grabbed it by the handle and let the straps snap around my forearm.

Shit, shoulda asked first.

"Can this thing's bubble block bodies?!" I yelled at Tynea.

This one can, yes.

Ah. Smart AI knew to adapt. Thank fuck.

I caught a weird shimmer out of the corner of my eye and whipped around. Nothing. What?

Big, meter-wide gap between aliens, heading right for me. Close. Nothing there. Aliens pressing against nothingness in the jostle.

What the fuck?

"Oh fuck," I whispered, comprehending. "Twenty-One?"

Likely.

Oh no. They come in packs. Leah's mech isn't meant for melee. If these guys catch her, she's dead.

The empty spot shot towards me and the Threes between us went flying in my direction. Heart in my throat, I curled my shoulder against the cushioned insides of my Aspis and leaned into the incoming attack. I couldn't afford to get flung away.

I held against the smaller impacts as several of the little aliens banged against my shield and broke against the unearthly knell it released in retaliation. Their bones cracked and gave, and my lips stretched in a rictus of a grin.

Then I waited, and the moment stretched like gum. I didn't really know what to expect.

Did I have the power to take the hit that was coming? Was it charging at me with its full weight? Was it going to swipe at me? How heavy was the thing exactly? How big? How strong? Did I use the bubble, or would the Twenty-One just blow out the shield's circuits with its might and leave me defenseless?

No bubble. Better get pushed back than risk getting thrown off the battlefield.

I couldn't let it go near Leah. I had to kill it. And then I had to hunt down its pack mates. Members? They probably didn't have mates.

Focus.

The hairs on my nape rose and time dilated. For a moment between moments my horizon widened and most of the emotional chaos drained away and left me clinical and precise.

I saw an almost invisible blur inch past the edge of my shield to my left and ordered a fragmentation grenade with a tenth-of-a-second timer to be spawned just on the other side of the Death's Knell, and began twisting my torso to catch the blur with its edge.

My antennae picked out a Three jumping at the back of my head. I started to duck more, very low, to let the quill tearing through the air from another angle pass me by and tear into that Three.

And my claws digging into the soil beneath my feet sensed four individual, powerful tremors. Mission Control thought they might belong to other Twenty-Ones. At least one was circling around, through the trees behind me.

– Warning: Twenty-Ones are adept at working together. It may be attempting to throw you at its pack member. –

Yeah.

Ah. I grinned nastily.

My sensilla were able to decipher the second monster's location once I knew where to look. It wasn't far beyond arm's reach. Eight meters?

I spawned another set of short-fuze grenades beyond the other Twenty-One. The first one was an electromagnetic one, and the second a directional fragmentation bomb. I set the timers so that the magnetism of the first would accelerate the shrapnel of the second.

Combat Command ran the calculations and showed possibly hypersonic splinters. Mission Control threw up an alarm and condensed the forcefield from Leah's gift at the back of my head and neck.

The rubber band tore and time caught up.

Stress and exhilaration punched my gut like a violent storm. I screamed laughter as several explosions mixed with the eerie gong of my shield's rim punishing the invisible hunter right next to me and a blast threw me hard onto the ground. I contorted to land on my side, to protect my back and the autosurgeon until it had done its job.

An insanely powerful electromagnetic charge washed over and past me. It frizzed my hair, the fur on my tail, and my sensilla. But it was already gone, so much faster than I could think.

The unbelievably loud crack of super- and hypersonic bits of metal blasting past just overhead collided with the dissonant screech of my force-field overloading as it caught multiple deadly shards that would've mulched my head.

I almost died. My eyes went wide and I rasped a strangled moan as the close shave hit my system. I friggin' almost died. My arm still holding onto the Second Wind came up and I bit my wrist as quicksilver shocks settled behind my navel and drenched my thighs. A little late to the party, you fucks. Don't fucking need that

now, piece a'shits.

But I shook and shivered anyway as I stared at the rain of green blood and bone splinters drenching the charnel house of a battle field around me, as it draped the Twenty-One in front of me in stinking strings of gore and meat.

It was a bigger Three, still blurry around the edges from its invisibility. Fading in and out as if I was looking through banks of fog. Tall enough to go almost up to my shoulder, and twice as long. Absolutely rippling with muscles. Six legs ending in alien gripping hands with murderous claws. The strong armor of bony plates on its back drew my attention. Those had a shade very close to that of the Twenty-Eight, just a lot thinner due the difference in size.

Probably exactly as tough, though.

The explosion had pushed it back a little, and the vicious bite of the Death's Knell had broken its offending claws. There were a few pits and cracks in the dense plates on its back. Several glowing bits of metal slowly cooked in small pools of blood, there.

More blood poured from a single puncture in its chest—something had penetrated deep enough to do real damage.

Hurt the organic invisibility thing, maybe?

But it was still moving, still prowling. Still strong and dangerous.

My antennae flicked back and licked the air. I couldn't detect any movement from the other monster. Just lots of guts and gore and a pervasive stink of cut grass and moldy sludge spilling from its utterly excavated belly.

Bombs are effective, huh? I thought, looking at the beast in front of me, with its damaged armor. Probably have to circumvent the plates, though, for a fast kill…

I considered the fact that my one successful kill against the Twenty-Ones would have been my own end without the forcefield Leah had given me. Or if I hadn't been so low to the ground.

Difficult to set up an ambush against ambush hunters.

The alien's legs and shoulders suddenly bunched and my hackles went up again. Adrenaline set my body on fire, and my muscles warmed and relaxed into buttery smoothness.

This time I had no trouble seeing the threat coming.

It surged forwards, and Combat Command sent both Javelins whirling to cut into its eyes as it reared up. I slammed the shield into the ground and threw myself to the side to dodge the hand grabbing for me.

It scraped against my ribs and blood thundered in my ears. I snapped around, curling around its grabby paw, and rammed the edge of the Aspis into the underside of its jaw.

Its head was flung upwards and bones snapped, but the monster's silence grated at me. It should've been screaming. It should've been reacting somehow.

But the Antithesis were more organic drones than animals.

Even as it reeled, its other paw flashed forward, from underneath me, and its claws caught me in the chest. Hot lines of agony ripped into my flesh like daggers and I howled as I was thrown upwards into the air.

I saw my own blood spiral around me and lightning sizzled at the base of my brain.

I started to fall again, and as I tumbled, I caught sight of the Twenty-One. It was right below me, waiting. Its eyes were ruined, but it was standing up on its hindlegs and spreading its two other pairs.

My brain went white for a moment as many, many things clamored for my attention. But one realization cut through everything.

The fucker's waiting to catch me, cause it can't see. But it knows where it threw me.

Anger coursed through me, cleared the cobwebs away. Ignited inspiration.

No.

I activated the Aspis' bubble at exactly the same time that both Tynea and Mission Control signaled readiness.

Wings ready, sort of!

– Missiles operational! –

The sudden jerk on my arm as the shield arrested my fall tore at my fresh wounds and pushed bubbling giddiness mixed with fiery wantonness through my bloodstream, and I giggled with glee.

I was antsy, so very antsy to keep moving.

But I was gonna get my wings first.

 

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