Chapter Thirty-Seven

Mission Menu

Mission

Difficulty

Status

Rewards

Security Patrol

Challenging

In Progress

2 Exp., 1 point in Vit.

Assault Whiffen Spit

Overwhelming

In Progress

2 Exp., 1 Sigil

Rescue the Magical Girl

Unknown

In Progress

1 Exp., 1 Sigil

“Yes, I’m serious. James already briefed me. Whoever that Magical Girl is, she doesn’t need to be on Whiffin Spit with two Type Twenty-Ones. So we have to get her back. And while we’re there, we should take out those big Macks before they cause all sorts of problems in Sooke,” Overclock said. She stopped and looked at me. “I know you’re thinking this is a bad idea.”

I remembered the Type Twenty-One at West End and shivered a bit. “Yes. We got our asses kicked by that one. Now you want us to fight two? It just…just seems impossible.”

“I dunno,” Li Mei said. “I don’t think it’ll be impossible. Did you have a plan for fighting a Type Twenty-One last time?”

“No.” All we’d had was a plan to sneak past it and return to the shelter. “And Overclock was hurt, and I didn’t have an Operator.”

“Let’s make a plan, then.” Li Mei spun in her chair and rolled over to a computer. She typed for a minute. “It’s too bad the Operators are talking through support stuff. It’d be way faster to ask them to do this instead.”

She finished typing, and a map popped up. She zoomed into it until the screen included the Prestige Building on the very north side, the spit on the southern side, and a slice of Sooke to the west. We gathered our chairs around the computer and watched as she pointed out things. “This is Whiffen Spit. Luciole, you and I saw the machines out there. They’re almost a thousand meters out there, though, and they put some Macks on the spit’s narrowest point here.” She pointed to where the spit bent southwest.

“We can’t attack across that,” Sam said.

“Sure we can. We just need to rethink how we’re going to do it. We have a lot more resources than you think.” Li Mei pointed far to the west, almost off the screen. A small dot glowed brilliant green. “That’s the surplus store. We can’t bring him across the spit with us, but that gun he keeps firing has the range to help us out. If he can bring the accuracy up a little bit, he might even be able to damage the Twenty-Ones.”

Overclock shook her head. “If we’re going to have a civilian help, we should have him target the little ones. The big Macks won’t go down in a shot or two, and they’ll start defending themselves with those thick armored claws.”

“Okay, we can have him keep the Class Twos off us.”

“So, he starts shooting, but at the small ones. You said there were Macks on the spit. He could target those to clear a path for us,” Sam hesitated. “If we sprinted up the spit with my shield up, we could close in with those Macks and finish off the survivors…”

I raised my hand. Then I lowered it. This wasn’t school. “If…when we get to the Twenty-Ones, do we have a plan for dealing with them?”

“Yes, actually.” Overclock pointed to herself. “As soon as we close in, I’ll Overclock you all. Luciole, you’ll blast one with Feu-Follet, then Li Mei can use her Mana Surge to get a bunch of free damage in on it. We’ve got a good alpha-strike team here. If we do it right, by the time I have to release Overclock, that Twenty-One will be crippled or destroyed. Then we can turn on the other one before things get too chaotic.”

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“What about me?” Sam asked.

“If you still have mana left after we cross a thousand meters of spit and fight a defensive line of Macks, you get between us and the other Type Twenty-One, and you keep it from getting involved. If not, you support the best you can,” Li Mei said. “Any other concerns? Weak points in the plan, other than the obvious that we should have support but don’t?”

No one said anything for a moment. Then I coughed. “What if the Magical Girl doesn’t want to come with us? She seemed pretty happy running around on the spit, and the Macks weren’t attacking her.”

Everyone looked uncomfortable. Li Mei stared at the floor, and Sam coughed and refused to make eye contact. Overclock cleared her throat. “We’ve never had a traitor Magical Girl before. We’ve had lots who’ve quit. But none who went to the Macks’ side. People don’t survive trying to do that.”

“Then why is she running around on the spit?”

No one had an answer.

“Look, kids, if we want to figure out this mystery, we’ve gotta get out there. I think the plan is solid. As good as we can do right now. While we’re moving out, Li Mei, brief your Operator as soon as possible. Everyone else, let’s go.”

She stood up and pushed her chair back toward the table. Li Mei closed the computer window with the map. We walked quickly out the door, snapping quick salutes back at the HANAF troops, who waited until we’d left to go back inside. Then we jogged into the shelter’s airlock and triggered the doors.

“Luciole, it’s a suicide mission, huh?” Bentley asked.

“No,” I whispered. “Li Mei made a good plan. We’ll make it. Listen to Charlie when he briefs you on it, and be ready to help out as much as possible. It’s going to be rough.”

“You’ve got it, Luciole. I’ll start looking at items. There’s got to be something we can buy to make this easier.”

The airlock went quiet except for Li Mei, who kept whispering the plan to her Operator until the door opened. Overclock jogged up the tunnel and into the pool room. We followed her up the stairs and through the Type Four’s hole in the window. Then we broke into a sprint toward the surplus shop.

The anti-tank rifle boomed, and something whistled over our heads. Clearly, I thought, the Macks hadn’t found the shop owner’s place yet.

As we got close, though, I realized how wrong I was.

Type Ones crawled around the building’s base. The window where the anti-tank rifle had poked from earlier was empty. Instead of another boom, a long barrage of higher-pitched pops echoed down the road. Armor exploded into flakes, and a trio of Type Ones stopped moving, though their eyes kept glowing.

“Get ‘em, Girls!” Overclock shouted.

We sprinted toward the Macks, Overclock falling back. I fired my crossbow. The taser bolt zipped into Type One and fried circuits. Then, as Li Mei reached the Macks, Overclock shouted, “Activating Overclock!”

The machines froze.

Li Mei didn’t.

Her swords flashed and glimmered as her opponents stood frozen for a few seconds. She tore through the Macks like a scythe, leaving behind shattered limbs, broken eye-lights, and drops of black liquid.

When the Macks started moving again, it was to fall apart. The black puddles below them showed how deadly that combo could be. And Li Mei hadn’t even used her own Mana Surge.

A Type Four clattered its way around the corner, legs lowering. Before it could even move forward, it caught a pair of bolts. Overclock’s hammer did the rest.

The road fell silent for a moment. The oil smells filled the air. Then a raspy voice from the roof started shouting. “Hey, down there! I had it under control! Why don’t you just zip on back to a shelter? I’ll take care of those two big’uns on the spit now that I’m not drowning in little ones.”

I cleared my throat. The other girls looked at me in surprise. “Actually, we wanted to talk about the spit with you. Can we come in?”

The man spat off the edge and stared at us for the first time. His beard covered his chest, and black smudges below his eyes and covering his fingers made it clear he’d been tinkering with stuff. But he was old. Old enough to have fought in wars before First Emergence.

He pondered us. Then he nodded slowly. “Front door. Don’t touch anything unless you’re gonna buy it—and none of that HANAF requisition bullshit!”

We stood outside the door while inside, the man moved something heavy. I stared at the street across the way. Something felt off. “The building next door? Does it need that many satellite dishes? And should they be blinking red?”

“No to both,” Overclock said. “No powers, girls.”

She charged toward the white-plated tower with a dozen dishes and antennae sprouting from it. Her hammer reeled back and slammed into it. It immediately started scurrying away until we shot it, this time with explosives. Its tiny lights faded from red to nothing.

“That was a Type–”

“A Type Thirteen. Thought you’d take care of it before I got the damn door open,” the old man said. Grenades hung from his vest, and he gestured with a giant pistol. “Inside, now. It’ll have called for backup. It’s what they do.”

We hustled inside. As soon as we passed the door, he pulled down a thick metal grate across the passageway, and I got my bearings.

Every surface seemed covered in guns, boxes of ammunition, or old, old army stuff from before HANAF. Where there weren’t guns, uniforms hung on the wall. Behind a chain-link fence sat dozens of things that looked like bombs—the door to the little fenced area hung open. Cigar smoke filled the air. And next to the window sat the anti-tank rifle, carefully set on a rubber pad.

The man sat down in an old rolling chair and squeaked his way over to us. He raised an eyebrow and spat brown sludge out onto the floor.

“Alright, you’re talkin’ ‘bout Whiffen Spit? So talk.”