“War is too important to be left to the generals.”

- Georges Clémenceau

Saturday, November 16th, 2047

16:00

I was at my new office and workshop, as Elya informed me of an emergence warning. No rude pop ups in the augs of a Vanguard, we have digital assistants who block those. This time the city administration managed to give us some early warning, which was far from guaranteed I had heard.

Two minutes later Roger called and suggested a bug hunt.

“Hey Cait, want to go hunting some Macks? Alan will come to handle the Fours with his new .338 Lapua, and we can run from anything bigger.”

That was a risky idea. I was not equipped as well as I wanted yet, but the desire to kill a few Macks and earn points was strong.

“Mmh, tempting. But the Victoria city region is pretty big, and the Macks could show up everywhere.” I was hiding that Elya had already told me where.

“This time, Sanctuary thinks it is a small incursion and it will come in the southwest.“

Roger seemed to have his own sources. I asked him “OK, do you guys want to come to my little shelter in Colwood? Close enough to potential trouble and if we bite off more than we can chew, we do have a shelter.”

Fifteen minutes later, Roger, Alan and Michael were at my place. Shortly after that, we stood on the roof of the fire department. Which we were not supposed to, but Elya had no trouble hacking the electronic doors.

Roger and Alan were sitting at opposite sides of the roof, looking out for movement on the ground. Michael was scanning the sky for Type Sixes, which were probably the most dangerous to us short of a Class Three. Equivalent to loitering munitions from the 2020s, these could really fuck up your day.

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I was monitoring the emergency directives and the communications channels of the security forces. The former was strongly recommended for all citizens. They even would get them on their augs unasked for. The latter were only accessible thanks to Elya.

We waited for an hour without much happening. Eventually, I heard frantic calls for help on the security forces network, apparently from police units around Esquimalt Lagoon. When I told the others, Roger said

“That’s what we came for, and we might even save some good men in the process. Let’s go.”

We jogged up the hill that overlooked Esquimalt Lagoon, but the sky was growing dark already. My augs gave me a modest improvement at low light vision, but not at the level of military night vision equipment. Only Alan had a scope with low light amplification on his new rifle. When we arrived at the edge of the wood, we saw a few figures retreating past the houses on the shore, perhaps 300 meters away.

Presumably security forces, sometimes they stopped and fired behind them at the dog-like forms of Type Ones and a Type Four that was more like a mecha-squid. A mecha squid with nasty spikes at the end of its four tentacles.

I hastily plugged in my ear protection before Alan started shooting. Three ear-shattering blasts later, the Four stopped moving. Meanwhile, a few of the Type Ones started to encircle the fleeing people. Their retreat was no longer an orderly retreat, it was more of a rout.

Next to me, a fallen branch was exactly the support I needed for precise shooting. I dropped behind it onto the cold November ground, laid the barrel of my rifle upon it and took careful aim.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Target eliminated: 1x Type 1.

Reward... 10 points.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Target eliminated: 1x Type 1.

Reward... 10 points.

Next to me, Alan killed one Type One per shot, only sometimes he had to shoot an enemy twice. Roger and Michael also did a decent job, albeit not on Alan’s level. I did not score a third kill.

Eventually five exhausted and terrified people reached our position. They belonged to the RCMP, had been nearby by happenstance and done their best to escort people to a shelter. Eight of them had been caught in the open. Five were left. All of them were out of ammo.

I was really getting dark by now. At a sign of Roger, we retreated towards the fire department and its shelter, escorting the RCMP survivors. I had just seen how fighting Macks was for regular soldiers, and it was not fun.

Behind us, the surviving Macks died to the energy barrage of a Magical Girl.

Persons saved: 5.

Reward... 5 points.