To corrupt the great Sun Tzu’s most excellent aphorism, “On deadly ground, fight. And when it isn’t deadly, make it so.” The greatest tool we have in battling the antithesis is the ground we walk on. Their mindless determination allows us to manipulate the enemy in ways that no human would fall for. Use it to create an advantage in every battle, or give up a powerful force multiplier.
Commanders should be on the lookout for ways to use the terrain to your advantage. Whether as simple as funneling them into places you can focus your fire or more complex traps that roll up probes and misdirect hordes, commanders need to be constantly considering where they are fighting and for ways to make it better.
-- Presentation to the PMC Association’s Conference on Antithesis Threats and Countermeasures, Lt Col Corin, 2055
***
“Samurai, wake up. Please, wake up!” A woman’s pleading pulled me slowly back to awareness. “I did what the box said. Please wake up, Samurai. We need you.” A hand was gently rocking me.
“I’m ok,” I responded. Opening my eyes, I found a young woman with dark brown skin and delicate golden traces around her eyes leaning over me. Some form of vanity mod? Or was it a sign of high-quality augs? I wasn’t sure which. A beautiful smile crossed her face before she bent to hug me gently.
“What happened? Are we safe?” My back and belly tingled with a thousand needle pricks—intense but not painful. Since I seemed to be no longer hurt, I rolled out from under my hugger and froze as I came face to intimately close muzzle with a Model Three. Probably the one that tackled me. It's claws were still red with my blood. I stared at the beast, as one of the ladies said. "I got one using your pistol, but it's out of ammo."
"Are you OK?" The one kneeling by me asked.
“Yes, I’m fine,’ I said automatically, my eyes still locked on the dead alien.
After a minute's adjustment, I forced my eyes away from the beast and took stock of the situation. The catwalk was covered in alien blood and bodies, none of them moving. The combat knife I had asked for lay beside me, still covered in gore. Beyond the catwalk, the factory floor was still. My glasses showed a message from my AI: “Message on tablet.”
I pulled out my tablet and checked the messages from my AI, of which there were a number.
"Catalog Unlocked: Fixed Point, Lethal Transition Melee Weaponry
Cost: 50 Remaining points: 585
"Purchased: Simple Combat Knife
Cost: 5 Remaining points: 580
"Emergency request for AI-determined action accepted.
"Catalog Unlocked: Class I Medical Utilities
Cost: 50 Remaining points: 530
"Purchased: Class I Nano-Regenerative Suite
Cost: 20 Remaining points: 510
"Purchased: Hemo-Restore
Cost: 5 Remaining points: 505
"I labeled the medical supplies to ensure the people present could administer the healing, which they did.”
I winced as I read the cost of my healing. “Are the catalogs needed every time I buy something?”
"Only if it is something new and not covered by a catalog you already have. Once a catalog is unlocked, you have access to everything it contains. Some catalogs have a broader variety of options than others. They can also be combined. For example, purchasing a stealth catalog would combine with your Kinetic Rifles catalog to open up more stealthier firearms.”
“Okay, we’ll have to talk more about that later. I need to make this place safe for now.” I turned to the three women with me. “Hi. I’m Marcus, and that is... actually, I don’t know your name.” I looked at the tablet.
“My name is Andronymicusde’cor. But that’s way too long. Call me Corie.”
“That is a long name. Does it mean anything?”
“It’s randomly chosen. I think the RNG gods have it in for me.”
I could sympathize with her frustration. I spent a lot of time playing shooter or strategy games online. I was very experienced in the fickleness of random number generators. I returned my attention to the humans present. “So that’s Corie, my AI.”
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“I’m Ginny.” A blonde with short, curly hair extended her hand to me. She had a puzzled look on her face, as though trying to place something. As I took her hand, she gestured to my nursemaid, still kneeling on the catwalk floor. “You’ve met Tara. And Kaitlyn is the one with the big gun.”
The tall readhead was leaning on the console, half crouched over the AK-47 she held, and half turned to watch us. Kaitlyn waved, only to jerk her gaze back to the floor, momentarily alarmed by the ping of settling machinery. When it turned out to be nothing, she turned back to us. “Marcus sounds pretty normal for a Samurai?” She left it hanging, as if undecided whether that was a question or a statement.
I winced. “If it isn’t too clear, I haven’t been a Samurai for very long. But that doesn’t mean I’m not reliable.” I rushed to reassure them. No one wanted to rely on a complete newbie to save them. “I have years of training, and I’m a firearms instructor professionally. Don’t worry, I do know what I’m doing when it comes to killing antithesis.
“But that means that I’m not set in my Samurai name. Another Samurai came up with one for me, but I’m not sure about it.”
“What was the name?” Ginny asked.
“Umm, Xenovir.”
“How would you spell that?”
“With an X? Same as xylophone? He had this thing about mixing ‘alien’, by which I think he meant ‘xeno’ with something else. That was before he mentioned something about Latin, so?” I lifted my hands in an unknowing gesture.
Kaitlyn was looking off into the middle distance. “The Samurai forum has a post about a newly chosen, complete with a video link and a couple hits. That must be you… Yep, it looks like you in the vid. I like the name, by the way. It has a lot of social potential. Chats are going to love the spelling. Lots of ways to play around with it. X-man, Xeno, and Mr. Vir. It is just a bit exotic, but it still sounds normal. There’s been too many Sams with simplistic or normal names of late, in my opinion.”
I decided to change the subject. “Okay, let’s get organized. We need to hold the antithesis off for a while, and this looks to be a decent position.”
“Can you get us out of here?” Tara asked. The whites of her eyes stood out all the more in contrast with her dark skin as the fear welled up in her.
“I’m sorry, I can’t. That other Samurai I mentioned is working to close off the hive. But until they can do that, there’s a bus load of kids back that way.” I gestured back up the way I had come, “who we need to protect. While we have a break, let’s get organized. Tara, can you throw the bodies off the side?” She nodded, and she started to roll the corpses over the railing.
“Ginny, can you help her? We don’t want to trip on a body during a fight. Kaitlyn, you are out of ammo, right?” The red-head nodded, fingering the cartridge still in the rifle. “Gather up the firearms, and we’ll see what we have.
“Corie, can I get 3 magazines for each of the rifles except my P5-AT? I still have plenty loaded for that. And also for Ginny’s handgun.” Several boxes appeared on the console. I flipped open the boxes and quickly reloaded each weapon. The extra mags I set beside the weapon. I glanced at the tablet to see the total and frowned. Each magazine costs a full point. “Is that cost mostly due to the mag or the ammo?”
“The mag and having it pre-loaded. You can get the ammo cheaper in bulk, but you have to load it yourself.”
“Good to keep in mind. Thanks.”
I scanned the room and found an ideal choke point. The floor, meters below, was choked with machinery, perfect for slowing down the antithesis. The high walkway kept us out of reach, but it let us shoot down over the backs of the machines. I glanced up to find a twisted maze of pipes through which the lights dropped. Clearance wasn’t going to be an issue if we had to start lobbing anything like a grenade.
I turned to the door behind us and poked my head into the room beyond. Crates and warehouse shelves filled the room, which expanded in two directions. Fortunately, no antithesis were in sight. “Is there any Samurai magic that can close up this door?” I picked up the tablet and scanned the doorway with the camera.
“For 100 points, I can unlock the Combat Engineering Essentials catalog, which includes a number of devices to change the battlefield. With that, you can get a number of barricades whose durability varies with price.”
“What range of strength are we talking about here?”
“The cheapest would be a simple spike barricade for 5 points for a 2 meter length. From there, you can go up to a self-hardening foam bomb, which could fill the area, or even a self-standing hard wall for 10 points per meter.”
“Let’s do that. Get the catalog and one of the hardwalls.” The door was standard single door width, making it a little more than one meter wide.
"Catalog Unlocked: Combat Engineering Essentials
Cost: 100 Remaining points: 396
"Purchased: Nemani Self-stabilizing Barrier, 1 meter.
Cost: 10 Remaining points: 386”
The barrier appeared in front of the doorway with a loud thump. It looked like a corrugated fiberglass panel about 2 meters tall, embedded in a triangular stone base. I pressed my hand on it, and it flexed slightly but seemed stable. The gaps between the barrier and the doorway bothered me. A few of the spaces looked large enough for one of the smaller M-3s to reach through. And I wasn’t sure if it could be tipped over or not. “Is there an adhesive foam in that catalog?”
“A spray can of self-expanding adhesive foam is 5 points, but it holds enough foam to fill that space twenty times over.”
“I’ll take it.” A small box dropped onto the floor beside me. I had expected one of the large aerosol canisters, like those commonly used for spray paint. The can I found in the box was palm-sized. As a test, I squirted some on the floor between the barrier and the door, a ten-centimeter gap. A tiny drop, barely visible, impacted the surface. A second later, the tiny bit of fluid quickly expanded, engulfed the gap, and continued growing. After a few seconds, the growth stopped, leaving behind a ball of foam that filled several liters of space and engulfed both the door frame and the edges of the barrier.
I poked the foam ball, finding it still pliable. “Is this going to hold?”
“The foam takes a few minutes to fully harden. Once it does, it will easily hold up to anything we’ve seen so far. Use it sparingly. One milliliter will expand to around a kiloliter.”
Suitably impressed, I secured the barrier in six places. As I applied the last bit of foam, Kaitlyn called out. “Anti’s coming!”
“What? Do you have family on the way to help out?” Ginny asked.
“Those would be aunties,” she used the longer southern pronunciation, “and mine would faint if they saw a monster in real life. I mean antithesis, Anti’s.” She pointed out over the floor, where a couple M-3 sniffed around one of the pieces of machinery.