"You really think the Antithesis are aliens? Of course not! They're a secret government project meant to get rid of all the evidence that they turned the frogs gay!"
-Flori Daman, Misinformation Wars, 2024
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Had I not been knocked back moments ago, I would be dead now. A chill ran down my spine as I realized that the Antithesis horde had been stalling me while Model Eighteens dug a path around me, just as I’d feared- although I still didn’t see any way I could have prevented it, even now. But because I had been thrown out of position, the Eighteens emerged from newly dug tunnels directly on my flanks, rather than behind me.
As stone and dirt cascaded off my armor, I backed up, exchanging my shotgun for SMGs. Now the flanking tunnels were between me and the hive, and they had lost their advantage before it could even really be gained. I snapped off a couple bursts at the Eighteens, killing them with negligible point gains in return, and then refocused on the combat models now coming through the tunnels they had made instead of down the one I’d been defending.
With the Antithesis now emerging only meters in front of me, I backed up as I fired. Reduced to killing my foes with SMGs rather than a machinegun, my efficiency dropped greatly, not helped by the fact that I had left the magnetic rails offline to avoid causing a cave-in.
It was hard on my nerves. My reflexes had to be as perfect as humanly possible, aiming and firing in the same thought and swapping rapidly which hand I was favoring. Some of my targets died mere inches away, giving their allies time to close in just as much.
The worst part was the Model Nines.
“Why didn’t this thing appear on my tracker!?” I yelled out as a blade ripped into my shoulder, cutting around the armor and between the exoskeleton. With one hand I reached over and tore the Nine off me, dashing it against the wall while my other hand continued to lay down suppressive fire, hitting a whole lot of nothing, because doing shit with both hands is hard.
“Model Nines are capable of baffling most sensors with the scales they shed!”
“Just what I need when I’m fighting them in the dark.”
I had several more moments of time to fire at approaching Antithesis before another Nine leapt from the shadows, its blades sparking as they scraped against my chest armor and helmet. I barely managed to drop my chin in time to avoid decapitation, and the Nine wrapped its limbs around my head in response, holding it in place.
The approaching wave was getting closer- I had no choice but to focus the bulk of my attention on choosing targets, my fire becoming sloppier as a result, while the moving burr strapped to my chest continued to seek out gaps in my defense. With one tiny corner of my mind, I drew my other weapon and raised it, ignoring the pain of a growing number of minor wounds. I pressed the barrel of an SMG to the Nine and opened fire, and its limbs went limp as it died, losing its grip and falling to the ground.
“Would you like some assistance? I believe I can recommend several useful combat drones!”
“Yes please! Skip the cost and deploy them!” I made a note to look into whatever the hell catalog she just bought later as two new drones popped into existence to my flanks and added their own firepower to the mix. The tunnel I was in was wider than any hallway to accommodate the Model Fourteens it was built for, but Antithesis were big enough that it was still hard for them to apply their numbers effectively.
The drones made it even harder. I could tell at a glance that they were shaped like Eyebots- apparently Juny really liked the design- but they were armed with something a lot more powerful than a laser pistol. Only my suit’s sensors allowed me to detect them firing, tracing coherent beams of invisible energy as they lanced out into the darkness and bored holes in approaching monsters.
Rather than bolts of energy, these were sustained beams, and the Eyebots were accurately holding them in position while they bored right through the thick, green flesh of the oncoming aliens. The tougher models took several seconds, but every one they killed gave me more leeway to target the faster ones, and when there were no Fives or Sixes nearby, they were able to slay Model Threes nearly instantly.
Suddenly, I registered a rapid motion deep within the oncoming hoard and ducked. A vertically-oriented disc went right over my head and detonated somewhere behind me, and my back was suddenly whipped by countless thin, sharp hairs. Most of them were repelled by my armor, but I could tell a few had gotten through as stabbing pains registered across my body.
Nothing lethal. I was still in the fight.
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More importantly, a shower of sparks erupted from behind me as one of the Eyebots took the brunt of the attack for me. The other shot forward an instant later, hovering above and in front of me as I dragged myself back to my feet.
“More Eyebots, please!”
“Of course!”
Another seven Eyebots filled the space before me, draining a considerable chunk of the points I had just made to buy me precious seconds I needed. As they opened fire in unison, I reached back and plucked the first spine from my body. The bleeding wasn’t too bad with the Dainsleif squeezing the wounds, but every movement I made came with the sensation of my muscles tightening around a foreign object, obstructing their movement.
I pulled a second spine out, and one of the Eyebots went down with a quill through its face. As I removed the third, another projectile from a Model Fifteen exploded, shot down somewhere above the Antithesis and raining down friendly fire. Number four came out as a wave of Model Sixes advanced, tanking laser beams long enough for the Model Threes behind them to approach to melee range and destroy two more of my defenders.
By the time I had finished struggling through the pain to yank out every spine in my arms and legs, I was down to just two Eyebots. I slipped my helmet up just enough to bring a Nano Regenerative Suite to my lips and inhaled, the fire in my lungs barely even noticeable over my many other wounds. Apparently spotting an opportunity, one of the remaining Eyebots lifted itself up to the ceiling and fire deep behind enemy lines, and I saw a notification indicating it had slain the Model Fifteen just as a Model Nine burst into motion and sliced the flying orb to pieces.
I killed that Nine myself as a fresh wave of nanobots began to tend to my wounds, then redirected my fire a moment too late as a Model Four’s tentacles reached out and seized my final robot companion, dragging it closer and piercing it with a spine-tipped limb before I could react. I couldn’t afford a moment of silence for their sacrifice, but I could afford a burst of 9mm to avenge its loss.
A Model Three vaulted off the corpse of the Four and I ducked, leaving it to sail right over my head. Not good. It came around and leapt onto my back. I felt it gnawing on my helmet, but I was a bit tied up killing other Antithesis and couldn’t do much about it right now.
“Do I have any explosives I can survive, but they won’t?”
“That sounds dangerous! Standard handling procedures for explosives preclude detonating them from within the blast radius!”
“One of them is literally on my back right now.” As I spoke, I pistol whipped the nearest Model Three and crushed its skull with my foot, then put a few rounds into the leg of a Four, halting its advance.
“True! Your armor can withstand a standard fragmentation grenade, but you lack the required catalog. Would you like to purchase it?”
“I would also like whatever I buy to not collapse the tunnel on my head.” A quill from a Model Five impacted dead center on my chest plate before I retaliated with lethal force.
“That significantly reduces your options. Perhaps a cryogenic fluid grenade? Your life support systems should be capable of compensating for the low temperatures, but only just barely.”
“Good enough!” I returned one gun to my hip and saw my points drop for both the grenade and a few new magazines. It seemed I had burned through my armor’s stores of ammunition already. I took the grenade in hand as it appeared and primed it, but instead of throwing it, I smacked it right into the head of the monster on my back.
Instantly, the grenade popped like a water balloon, scattering cold liquid across myself, my hanger-on, and everything in a good five meter radius. The Dainsleif’s heating systems kicked into overdrive to counter a piercing cold that penetrated the undersuit for a brief second and momentarily locked up my joints, while the cucumber on my back froze solid and shattered when I moved.
The handful of Antithesis closest to me were frozen as well, but were quickly knocked aside and destroyed by the ones at their back. I had just enough time to swap SMGs before they closed the distance, but I chose not to. I had a better idea.
“Give me an incendiary this time!”
“Your suit is not capable of-“
“I’m going to throw this one, I promise!”
“Aye!” I barely even looked at the new grenade before I lobbed it forward, then turned and sprint the way I’d come from. My surroundings lit up, white and red, as the explosive coated the walls and Antithesis in a layer of burning alien napalm, coating the few in caught in the blast so thoroughly I could tell they were dead from their lack of movement.
It didn’t stop even more from suicidally rushing through the flames and catching fire, of course, but the injuries slowed them down, and that bought me time. When I spun around, I had a good few dozen meters of clearance between me and the next wave.
“Another machinegun, already on the tripod, please! Keep the ammo coming.”
I grinned as I gripped my fresh lawnmower and squeezed the trigger, once more throwing a hailstorm of metal down range towards some woefully under armored aliens. It wasn’t the most creative option, I’ll admit, but it was damned effective, and I could tell from Juny’s telemetry that they were running out of bodies to throw at the problem. I think whatever primitive intelligence was behind them had intended to finish me with their flanking maneuver, and when that failed, they were screwed.
No more advanced models appeared to stop me, and even the higher numbered single digits dwindled rapidly. I only had to reload a handful of times before even the Model Threes stopped appearing, and then I had to contend with both the weirdest and easiest attack of all.
The entire breadth of the tunnel seemed to be moving towards me, and it wasn’t until a cascade of notifications appeared that I understood what was going on. In the absence of anything substantial, the Antithesis had thrown a murder of Model Ones at me. Model Ones. Against .50 caliber rounds. They exploded in droves, like pigeons facing anti-air batteries, and in seconds all motion ceased.
Again, the tunnel fell dark, no longer lit by the flash of a muzzle. I took a deep breath and fell to my knees, panting heavily from sheer adrenaline.
“I would recommend destroying the hive as soon as possible! More Antithesis will begin to ripen in about twenty minutes.”
“At least let me catch my breath first…”