Wednesday, August 19th, 2048

Back in Victoria, the first thing I did was to order three kilograms of titanium from my preferred raw materials dealer. It was fucking expensive, but as I needed only one new cuirass, the price was tolerable. Perhaps I would have to consider a mining operation of my own eventually.

In the meantime, I was meeting Pete to discuss a business proposal of his. He was willing to pay me a significant sum for one of my fabricators and some CAM software for feeding his own designs into the system. Apparently getting spare parts was a huge problem for people like him who were operating ancient aircraft.

I agreed, but I also told him that I could and would not guarantee exclusivity. After all, SHOCKS had a complete set too and could replicate it at will. On top of that, I was actually in favor of spreading the technology. But he was content with that, so we came to an agreement and I would build my first set of recycler, storage and fabricator for the civilian market. Which would take me a few days, but I wanted to stay in Victoria this week anyway.

Saturday, August 22th, 2048

I met with the guys from the militia at oh dark thirty, we were going on one of our semi-serious mini-maneuvers again. We were going to play with airsoft guns again, but in case of emergence I had also brought my new rail gun. People were quite curious when they saw the thing. Our chief gun nut Alan was the first one to say something.

“What kind of gun is that? I can’t remember ever seeing that model.”

“It is called the Shiv Mk III, a Protector rail gun design.”

“Aw fuck, that sounds like science fiction. Really?”

Apparently it had not sunk in last December what the Protectors really were. They were more or less the equivalent of the local Advent, an alien race that had saved at least some of humanity from extinction by the Macks. So far I had only access to a tiny fraction of Protector tech, but there was a lot more once I managed to earn the points. To Alan I said

“My alien sponsors. Like the Advent who are supplying the local Magical Girls with equipment and powers.”

Now people were looking at me with a mix of awe and suspicion. It was not the most pleasant feeling, I had enjoyed being just one of the crew. Even when I had pushed it before as I went artillery testing with Phil, that had not changed. But that weapon had been barely ahead of human technology. The Shiv drove it home that I had dangerous stuff.

Ellen asked “What else do you have, and why do we see it only now?”

“Potentially a lot, but I have to earn it. Either by fighting the Macks directly, or supplying others with weapons they use against the Macks then. I did a lot of infrastructure stuff lately, only now I’ve come around to invest in personal equipment again. But by tomorrow, I might be able to show you my new body armor.” My metals dealer had finally delivered the titanium.

Roger: “Infrastructure for what?”

“An old Mack base I restored to semi-functionality.”

Ann, a new militia member I had not met before, asked “Where? Can we visit the place?”

“For now, only one person at a time. Unless you have a helicopter with room for more than two people. Lodgings are very spartan with cots to sleep on, synthetic rations and pooping in the woods.”

Ellen: “Let’s meet on Monday again and you can tell us all over a few drinks. But you pay!”

Parasite. But it might be best to play along. Even if it had a bad taste of buying my place in the group back.

Monday, August 24th, 2048

19:00

Come Monday evening, we met at a cozy little bar in Goldmont, near to where the others lived. I was wearing my new armor and got quite a few looks doing so. And if I may say so myself, it was quite the eyecatcher.

On top a glossy layer of diamond, because that is what Lonsdaleite is. A form of diamond that is even harder than the common cubic structure. Below that, the silvery sheen of the titanium backing gave it an appearance of SciFi armor. Or maybe fantasy armor, considering the two small pauldrons on my shoulders.

These had not really much armor value, as they covered not all that much of my shoulders. Their real purpose was to house the beam emitters and high voltage electrodes for the Bot Scrambler, the aiming servos and the little cameras needed by the targeting system.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Just for shits and giggles, I had had Elya add some little LEDs that could give the beam emitters a baleful red glow. I had also bound my hair into a braid, so it would not get in the way of the beams.

Roger promptly welcomed me with “Greetings, my lady knight in shining armor!” Ellen shot him a dirty look. But she was not the only jealous one today. We had barely made ourselves comfortable, when a drunk guy at the neighbor table took offense to his girlfriend admiring my armor. “Hey, what’s to see there? Are you fucking gay?” he bawled at her.

I had to show some solidarity between girls here. So I got up and asked her if she wanted to sit with us instead, as her current companion was obviously not suitable for a nice evening. I might have been a little too snide with that, because that only made him more angry. Now he aimed his frustration at me. “You fucking slut, are you trying to steal my girlfriend now? I’ll show you what you can do and what not!”

I subvocalized to Elya: “Make the beam emitters follow my eyes, fire when I blink twice rapidly.”

The guy was working himself into a rage now. He grabbed a bottle from a nearby table, smashed it against a corner of the wall and staggered up to me with the jagged remnants of the bottle in his hand.

I looked at his balls and gave a quick double blink, followed by a crackling discharge from the laser-taser. He dropped the bottle and squealed like a pig being slaughtered. Elya kept the beams and the little lightnings going for a few more seconds, and his screams became even higher.

Suddenly his screaming was overlaid by more screams from outside. Through the open door a mass of people came fleeing into the bar. Through the gaps in the fleeing crowd I caught a glimpse of a Type One. There went our relaxing evening.

But perhaps I could stay ahead of the curve if I actively started hijacking Macks before they gained too big numbers. It would be fucking dangerous though as I had left my rifle at home. I grabbed a chair as an improvised shield and exited the bar. Roger followed me with his little holdout gun that he rarely left at home. Across the street stood the two Type Ones the people in the bar had fled from.

I subvocalized to Elya “Same procedure as with the drunken asshole, when I double-blink at a Mack, you zap it and try to capture it.”

At your command, Mistress

I could get used to that. But right now I had no time for dominance games. Or had I? I double-blinked at the One closest to me. Lightning shot out and played over its surface. After a bit of twitching on its part, Elya showed it as hacked and subverted on my augs. OK, playing dominance games after all.

The other one was more resistant. As Elya did not manage to zap it into submission within a few seconds, I told her to sic the other one on it. Which came as a surprise to the resistant Mack. Pointed feet punched through plastic skin and cut through hoses and cables. Oil spurted out of severed pipes and eventually the Type One collapsed.

For the life of me, I did not understand why the Macks had so many weak points on their light units. The Type Four was more reasonably designed, but even that one had too many easily penetrated parts.

From my left, Roger exclaimed “What the fuck, did you just made that thing switch sides?”

“Yes. My new armor has a Mack-zapper that can sometimes confuse them.”

Roger: “Lets hope you can confuse more of them, there comes a whole crowd!”

Indeed, on our left a dozen Macks came down the road, among them two Type Fours. It was like the first time I tested my EMP grenades, only then I had been standing safely on a roof. Perhaps we could repeat that somehow, but for now we had to deal with the current group. I fired my taser again, switching between targets as it seemed most urgent. The laser beams singed the surface of the enemy robots, and cracking and sparking lightning probed for chinks in their electronic armor.

To my left, Roger emptied his holdout pistol into the Ones. He was smart about it though, two shots per target, next target, re-engage the first one of it had not dropped. One of them got through though and speared Roger into the abdomen. With a pained grunt he doubled over and was out of the fight for the moment.

I had a grip on the situation by now, and Elya helped. She actively took control of two captured Ones and used them to hamper the rest. I was fending off another one with my chair, then the non-subverted Type Four arrived. I could barely duck out of the way of the tentacle aimed at my neck, then it punched at my seemingly unprotected stomach.

Which was not really unprotected, the spike from the Four bounced off my diamond and titanium armor. Meanwhile, Elya had overwhelmed the electronic defenses of the other Four, and it arrived to take my attacker from behind. I could see that Elya had already programmed the techniques we had developed a month before into the subverted Type Four. It expertly rammed its spikes into the base of my opponent’s tentacles.

One of the tentacles seized up with a broken joint, the other lost pressure in its hydraulics due to a punctured oil pipe. Now two simple steps back took me out of its range. My Type Four switched targets and executed the enemy Type ones from behind.

Executed because they were unaware that their former team members were now hostile. They died without fighting back. Even with the Macks’ recent improvements in security, freshly captured Mack units still had the electronic passwords to pass as friendly to their former teammates. I would exploit that to the very end today.

At this point I had three captured Macks. One Type Four, one intact Type One and one badly damaged but still mobile One. In total, Roger and I had destroyed or subverted fourteen Macks so far. I also had gained the IFF codes for the current emergence. These Macks were so fucked.

Talking of Roger, he needed first aid. I turned to him and said ”We need to get you some medical attention. Let’s get you back into the bar.”

To Elya: “Make our newly captured Macks play dead for a bit”.

That worked, now two of the bar guests dared to peek out of the door now and asked if we needed help. I told them yes, Roger needed bandaging up with a pressure bandage. One of them helped me to get him back into the bar, and the barkeep even had material for an improvised pressure bandage. We put Roger onto a bench next to Mr. Fried Balls, who was still whimpering incoherently.

This done, I remembered I had to take the offensive again. The need to shut down the Macks before they built up too great numbers had not changed. So I helped the bar guests to drag a small car in front of the door as a barricade and set out with my three Macks again.