“Nguyen, what’s the situation? Who are we dealing with?” I asked sharply the moment I heard Alana had been shot.

“We don’t know. They’re just holding position and firing warning shots at anyone that gets close. We don’t have anyone we can spare to investigate further,” Nguyen replied.

“Juny, take the Eyebot ahead and figure out and get some scans of what we’re dealing with, please.” I switched the channel so I could speak to the pilots. “Take us back to Boone, there’s an emergency and I need to deal with it.”

“Roger that ma’am, taking off now.”

Before I could decide what to do next, a voice I wasn’t happy to hear came over the comms. There should have been no way for him to contact me since I’d asked Juny to block him, which meant he was about to say something she thought I needed to hear.

“This is Major Thompson to all Stalking Tigers personnel. Alana McIntire has been incapacitated and I am taking command as senior ranking officer on-site. Any forces involved in her reckless plan to cause a natural disaster are to stand down and return to base. All field officers are to report to the briefing room so that we can discuss-”

Anger rose from the base of my spine until my head felt like it was on fire. I was seething at this stupid, incompetent, pathetic man that had dared to pull a stunt like this before we’d even beaten back the Antithesis. I hadn’t known Alana or her team for long. And it wasn’t like I’d had a lot of time to speak to any of them either. But I felt a sense of comradery. We’d fought and bled together against unending waves of alien monsters. I didn’t have any proof, but last I’d heard of this man he was being locked up and put under watch. If he was out now, it was because someone had gone out of their way to free him, and that could only mean he was involved up to his neck.

“Yeah, shut the fuck up,” I interrupted before he could get any further. Surprisingly he actually obliged. I wasn’t sure why- he might have simply been caught off guard by the response and may not have even realized who was talking yet. Or maybe Juny muted him. “This is Samurai Erica Taylor. I’ve got good reason to suspect Tommy tried to assassinate Alana, so here’s what’s going to happen. Major Thompson is KIA as of this moment, his corpse just hasn’t noticed yet. I’m currently on my way to rectify that, so I’d advise all Stalking Tiger forces to stay out of my way and follow Alana’s standing orders.

“Thompson, you’re lucky I’ve never killed anyone before. I would like nothing more than to tear your still-beating heart from your chest and show it to you like you’re an Aztec sacrifice. Fortunately for you, I don’t think my stomach is ready for that yet, so instead I’ll settle for putting a bullet between your eyes personally. Keep your forehead clean for me.

“As for whoever is working for that zombie, you have until I get there to run. If you think you’re just dealing with a newborn Samurai, then I’d like to remind you that I’ve been in near-constant combat for three days straight. You have no idea what I can do and I’m not dumb enough to enlighten you, but I’ll tell you this much: stick around to find out and your own mother won’t be able to identify what’s left of you.”

“Samurai Taylor, Captain Lafayette speaking. The Boone militia is with you.”

“Lieutenant-Colonel Radcliffe here. I’m officially declaring in my capacity as chief medical officer that Major Thompson has been rendered unfit to lead due to suicide by Samurai. All forces, continue to engage the Antithesis.”

I smiled to myself. It looked like everyone had already chosen their sides and Thompson hadn’t been anyone’s choice. I had one last thing to add, though.

“Thanks for the support. Oh, and Thompson? I’m the one holding the detonator.” There wasn’t a physical detonator, granted, but that would have just been for dramatic effect anyway. I strapped myself in and cut all my connections. “Juny, can we trigger the sonic piles now or are we missing too much of the array?”

“Triggering them now will be sufficient to demolish ninety-four percent of the Antithesis-infested zone!” she answered in my head, her Eyebot no longer close enough to answer.

“That’s good but it’s still not everything. What’s going to be left?” I knew that if I didn’t trigger the landslides now it would probably be too late by the time I was able to finish the array, but I at least wanted to know exactly what we’d be dealing with.

“The intact area will consist entirely of the old university campus,” she answered quickly. That was good, actually. Those buildings were never replaced with skyscrapers, and most weren’t connected. Clearing them out on foot wouldn’t necessarily be easy, but it would be less complicated since we could establish a perimeter and constrict it as we advanced. We also might be able to just plant the remaining sonic piles and bury it, but without the rest of the array shaking the ground in unison I wasn’t sure it would have enough of an effect.

I sucked in a deep breath and opened the door in front of me. The copilot looked at me as if to ask if I were going to jump, but I shook my head and just activated the sonic piles. I was pretty sure this show was going to be worth watching and also a great distraction from my acrophobia. I focused my attention on the opposite side of the city, where I had a clear view of the peaks I’d seeded with sonic piles.

For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then I noticed the trees had begun to shake. The vibration was so intense that the entire mountain seemed to blur. At first I couldn’t hear much over the roar of the gunship’s engines, but then I began to hear it: cracking and rumbling as the earth itself heaved. The trees began to slide downwards, looking for all the world as if a forest was marching upon the city. Dirt, rocks, and wood sloughed off the mountainside and descended in what looked like slow motion from here but was likely much faster.

Liquefaction had set in, and it wasn’t going to stop, not with dozens of sonic piles underneath the ground continuing to shake the soil with intense sound I couldn’t even perceive. Soon the landslide reached the outlying skyscrapers, which were never designed for this type of stress applied directly to their bases. It didn’t help that the Antithesis had undermined the foundations to make space for their hives, leaving the buildings capable of supporting their own weight but removing anything that could have resisted the forces they were now experiencing.

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Mighty skyscrapers dozens of stories tall collapsed like giants whose feet had been swept out from under them. Some fell outwards, crumbling and contributing their wreckage to the ongoing landslide. Others toppled inwards, smashing into other buildings. The weakened foundations allowed each building’s support pillars to be wrenched out of the ground, cracking open the Antithesis hives below and exposing them to be crushed by untold tonnes of earth.

Every fallen structure contributed to a growing dust cloud that enveloped the entire valley until the destruction was entirely hidden from the naked eye. But even from within a gunship high above I could still hear the shifting and settling of the devastated concrete jungle below. Before my view was completely cut off, I saw that just as Juny had predicted, the inner city was untouched by the artificial landslide we’d caused, and the soldiers on the wall were picking off the Antithesis that hadn’t been crushed.

There was a lot of work yet to be done and the cleanup would be an immense undertaking, but for all intents and purposes the siege of Boone was broken.

“I have a report for you!” Juny eagerly chimed in. I would have said ‘as the dust settled,’ but I was fairly certain that would take a while longer. “The group that attacked Alana appear to be a private security force employed by the Appalachian Ventures umbrella company, which owns many of the corporations with investments in Boone. Their equipment is of significantly better quality than that of the Stalking Tigers but still falls well below that of a Class I Vanguard.”

“Their weapons were able to penetrate Alana’s armor. How much of a threat are they to me?” My plan, if it could be called that, depended on them being incapable of contending with Class II power armor. I wanted to send a message the corpos wouldn’t forget here.

“Alana’s armor was likely on the lower end of Class I. I have located the weapon used to injure her and it was an anti-materiel rifle designed for penetrating Model Fourteen armor. It would likely take at least one direct hit to disable your shields and one more to your bodysuit to penetrate; it is not sufficient for defeating your armor.”

“So, don’t be an idiot and walk straight towards them. Anything else?”

“Explosives may, in sufficient quantities, be capable of harming your body through shockwaves, but your bodysuit will mitigate them by design!” In other words, they came well equipped for a Samurai with access to Class I gear, not expecting Alana or I to have access to Class II gear yet. They’d underestimated exactly how intense the fighting we’d been involved in had been.

They were exactly as doomed as I’d declared them to be. Assuming I could go through with my threat. I’d said a lot of things in the heat of the moment, but I’d never killed a person before. My stomach churned at the thought. These people probably had families. They were just doing their jobs. But on the other hand, I was almost certainly on their hit-list as well, and they’d already tried to murder Alana.

I had to remember that it was me or them. I wasn’t going to go out of my way to preserve the lives of people trying to kill me. There were probably methods I could use, aug filters, that would make it easier, but…this wasn’t going to be the last time, was it? I would eventually need to kill more people in my capacity as a Samurai. Today I was going to make myself a killer and I couldn’t look away from that fact.

I would do it now, against targets I knew full well had almost no chance of harming me, so that I won’t falter if I have to fight someone that could kill me.

“Juny, I need a landing spot where their forces are thinnest. Send it straight to the pilots.”

“Of course!”

I settled in to wait, hardening my resolve for the task to come. When the gunship finally landed, I unstrapped myself and stepped off without a word. I unslung my assault rifle and made for the corner where the street we’d landed in intersected with an enemy barricade, glancing around it to see what I’d be dealing with.

Infrared was necessary just to make out their locations. They certainly knew I was here, but with a choking cloud of dust obscuring everything they were as good as blind.

“Juny, how tough are those barricades?” I asked, not wanting to embarrass myself by trying to shoot through their cover and failing.

“They are very thick!” the AI answered aloud, appearing from the dust cloud beside me. “You would likely require an anti-materiel rifle or similarly heavy weapon to shoot through them!”

In that case…up close and personal it was. I stepped around the corner and broke into a run, covering the twenty meters or so between myself and the corporate security troops so quickly they’d barely noticed my feet pounding against the pavement before I was on them. Even as they shouted in surprise I leapt over their barricade and struck a man full on in the chest with both feet, sending him sprawling.

Another man, a blur of colors in my infrared sight, swung towards me with his rifle at the ready. He fired and my shields barely registered the impact. I returned fire with my assault rifle’s rails active and blew a hole through his chest, armor and all, causing a spray of blood and gore that coated the guy behind him. Someone tagged me in the back with a shotgun and I hardly even noticed- but one of his buddies definitely felt the ricochet that struck him in the leg.

I grabbed the shotgun and kicked its wielder in the stomach. He dropped, clutching his bruised gut, and I stepped to the side and clubbed the blood-coated man over the head with the shotgun hard enough to crack his helmet. As he went down like a sack of potatoes the remaining soldiers rallied behind their squad leader and focused their fire, but even a volley of bullets from five different rifles to the back didn’t dent my shield nearly as much as a quill from a Model Five.

These guys were well trained. They reacted fast, were able to locate and target me even when they could barely see me, and operated as a single, well-oiled machine. While five of them were trying to suppress me with gunfire another snatched a grenade from his belt and pulled the pin, rolling it towards me instead of tossing it. He probably hoped I wouldn’t notice it that way, but it didn’t matter- when it exploded, my shields dropped by maybe thirty percent and I hardly felt the explosion.

All the skill in the world wasn’t going to make up the gap in technology. My opponents could likely point out a dozen things I’d done wrong already and I could tell my reactions weren’t nearly on par with theirs, but it just didn’t matter. Their armor was paper before my weapons and they may as well have been armed with airsoft rifles for all the good their guns were doing.

I finished turning and brandished my rifle. There was a chill in my belly as I held down the trigger and swept the barrel across their line, the flimsy and makeshift cover they’d been left with after I vaulted their barricade doing nothing to protect them. Railguns did ugly things to human bodies. Just like the Model Threes I’d first fought with my SMGs shortly after buying the rail-enhanced models, the people in front of me ceased to exist, their torsos obliterated by multiple rounds each.

Almost as an afterthought, I put a bullet in the last survivor, the man that had taken the ricocheting shotgun slug to the leg. When I checked the one I’d kicked in the chest I found his chest caved in, and the man I’d stolen the shotgun from hadn’t survived his squad mate’s grenade. Less than a minute had passed and eleven people were dead.

My energy shield hadn’t gone below fifty percent.

It took some effort to fight back the bile rising in my throat as I turned away from the carnage I’d caused. I could throw up when I was done. They’d picked this fight and I was going to show them one should never start a war with a Samurai.