"When the Antithesis showed up I thought we might have finally found the exception to Rule 34.
Boy, was I wrong."
-Anonymous internet commenter
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I excused myself from the table and grabbed my helmet, following the angry middle aged doctor somewhere we could speak in private. Though he didn’t bother waiting until we were actually there to begin speaking.
“I have no idea what you were thinking when you collapsed that building and I don’t care. What I do care about is the damage it has done and will do to my patients, a group which has now expanded to include the entire population of Boone. The local air quality has dropped to the point that simply breathing outside is hazardous to one’s health, which is going to cause a hell of a lot of cancer and lung damage,” he began as he stomped his way through the halls of the building.
“Yeah, I was warned that would happen, but it had to be done. I was planning on distributing medicine after the battle to counteract the effects,” I replied calmly, laying out my defense without being too defensive. He was not, after all, entirely wrong, although I still felt some degree of defensiveness towards his accusatory tone.
“We don’t have until after the battle. What you failed to consider is that the air quality will affect the front line, not just long term health. You think the corpos put the best, most human-friendly materials in those buildings? Hell no. They’re full of hazardous shit that would have been illegal if we still had a functioning government.”
The doctor led me into an office near the medical section of the PMC headquarters, which I saw down the hall way before entering after him. He sat behind the desk, but I opted to remain standing; the seats in here weren’t sturdy metal like the benches in the mess.
“I’ll cut to the chase. You caused this problem, so I want you to fix it. I need medicine for all the troops already effected, gas masks for all the troops period, and N95 masks or similar for the civilian population.” He stared me in the eye as he spoke, daring me to argue. A large part of me felt indignant receiving the dressing down, but I was an adult and I had to own up to my own mistakes sometimes. Refusing his demands out of sheer spite would hamper the defense of the town, which I was a part of.
“Juny, how much would that cost?”
“20,000 N95 masks would be 1,000 points at one point per twenty mask pack. Those are Class 0 and the price is accordingly cheap! Assuming Class 0 gas masks, it would be 1 points per mask, for approximately 500 more points. You will, however, need Class I ‘Breath of Fresh Air’ Lung Cleansers for 5 points each to handle existing lung damage, totaling around 1,250 points. That means the final total will be just 2,612 points!”
Inside, a certain words that starts with F rang out, with the middle particularly drawn out. Outwardly, on the other hand-
“That’s fine. I’ll throw in a medical drone as a bonus; just have someone retrieve it from the room I was in last night. Where do you want the equipment?”
“Leave it in the hall, please,” LC Radcliffe replied, mollified by the ease to which I agreed. I think he was expecting an argument or negotiation at the very least, if not outright refusal, owing to the fact he didn’t actually possess any authority over me. I turned to leave, but he wasn’t quite finished. “Hey. Good luck out there.”
“Thanks.”
I stepped into the hall and spent a couple minutes walking in the direction of the medical wing, letting Juny place boxes of supplies as I moved. By the time I was done thousands of boxes of masks and medicine were stacked high, and I was down to 3,581 points. Just as I was thinking about what to next, I received a communication.
It wasn’t Thompson, and it wasn’t Nguyen, and it wasn’t even my mom. It was, unexpectedly, Junychiro Watanabe, or in other words, my boss.
“Hello, Er-“
“Erica, do you know what day it is today?” I glanced at my HUD, where it clearly said ‘Wednesday.’
“Nope.”
“It’s Wednesday, and according to records, you haven’t clocked in since Friday, nor did you apply for leave.”
“Just curious: did it take you until today to notice?”
“That’s beside the point,” he said. So, yes. “I’m docking your pay for the next week, and you had better be in the office in the next hour. The only reason you’re not fired is that you are, technically, the Art Director, and that means you’re salary.”
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“Juny, do you have some way of sending him my new credentials?”
“Of course!”
“Who- wait, what?” I had no idea what she’d sent him, but I assumed it got the point across.
“Yeah, I have better things to do now. And let’s not pretend my job isn’t so asinine that you can do it yourself. I might come give you a visit when I’m done with the Antithesis here, though. Maybe you should think very carefully about how well you treat your employees until then.”
I hung up before he could reply. Having done that to two different assholes now, I realized I kind of enjoyed doing it.
“How nice of you to offer to visit your former boss!”
“Juny, I was threatening him.”
“Oh my! What for?”
“Eh, I just wanted him to think about how he treats people, I’m not actually gonna do it.” I stood there for a moment considering what to do next. I’d eaten enough of my lunch that I wasn’t feeling the need to rush back to the mess hall, and it wouldn’t be good to get caught up in anything I couldn’t drop at a moment’s notice.
I could work on designing some more armor and weapons, but after a bit of thought, I realized there was something more important I could do.
“Juny, can you direct me to Alana’s current location, assuming she’s not busy?”
“I will ask Dylta.” After less than a second’s pause, she continued. “Dylta has authorized the sharing of Alana’s location. She has just finished a briefing and will wait for you in the meeting room.”
Juny gave me a waypoint, and I followed it back to the meeting room I’d visited this morning. Alana was at a table, still geared up, snacking on a ration bar when I arrived.
“Ah, Erica. Good thinking with that hive. Hadn’t even occurred to me to cause that much collateral damage. Even though I got promoted to samurai, I was still thinking like a merc, but I suppose I don’t need to care about the corpos’ bottom line anymore,” she said with a self-deprecating head shake and wry smile.
“Glad you and Haley appreciated it. Thompson wasn’t so pleased,” I replied with a note of humor.
“You met Specialist Brown? Yeah, she would love that. As far as Thompson goes, that’s just his normal state of being. Anyway, you wanted to talk about something?”
“Yeah, I was hoping to discuss scheduling some time tonight for upgrades. I don’t know if you plan to modify your own body, but I’d like to buy some upgrades for myself, and they’ll put me out of commission while they’re installing. Should we each take a sort of ‘on call’ shift overnight just in case?”
Alana nodded, taking a moment to think it over.
“That would probably be wise. I wasn’t planning on it, but some additional cybernetics wouldn’t hurt. Are you going the organic or cybernetic route? I think the latter is faster.”
“Organic. I’d rather be more of a super soldier rather than the Million Dollar Woman, personally. You already have some cybernetics, though?”
Rather than answering, she wiggled the fingers of one hand in the air, obliquely confirming the rumor I’d heard about how she earned her metaphorical katanas.
“As Specialist Brown keeps reminding me, you’re supposed to throw the grenade. Cybernetics only take as long as you need to remove the original and attach the replacement, so how long will you need?”
“About four hours should be enough!” Juny chimed in from the side, startling Alana, who raised an eyebrow.
“Was that your AI?”
“Yeah, figured I’d look less crazy if she spoke out loud.”
“Huh. Not that I have much experience on the matter, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a samurai’s AI speak in the open like that before. Anyway, four hours should be fine. Just have your AI ping Dylta when you’re about to start.”
“Will do.” A moment of silence passed. Alana took the opportunity to polish off her ration bar, which might well be the only food she planned to eat for lunch. “Out of curiosity, what’s up with the squad thing? I’ve never heard of a samurai outfitting an entire squad before, seems like it would be expensive with not a lot of pay back.”
“They’re my people, so I’m not going to abandon them just because I’m a samurai now. And I may only get something like ten percent of the value of each kill, but every one of them is a specialist in their own field- Specialist Brown alone is worth her weight in C4; I’ve been getting way more points back than I spend on her relatively cheap conventional explosives.”
I noted that she seemed rather proud when speaking about them. She seemed like she was a born commanding officer.
“Wouldn’t they need to kill at least ten Model Threes for every magazine they get to break even on bullets alone?”
“There’s a bit of a loophole there. You still get points if you buy the weapon but source the ammunition elsewhere. That way there’s an upfront cost, but no ongoing charges. So I bought a small, portable ammo press, and I convert standard rounds from the armory into the specialized rounds their weapon use.” She was definitely proud of that exploit. “Once the gun is paid for, it’s all profit from there.”
“I’m surprised the Protectors left such an obviously abusable backdoor in the scoring system,” I commented, impressed and considering how I could make use of that idea myself. I went through magazines pretty fast in the field, but if I had some way to transport the spares…
“Oh, it’s intentional!” Juny chipped in. “Part of the role of a Vanguard is to gradually uplift their species with the technology they purchase, and this encourages sharing!”
“Dylta only said it was allowed, but he tends to only answer the exact question I ask,” Alana said with a shrug. I chuckled at that.
“I have the opposite problem. Juny loves a chance to dump exposition on me, though she has a tendency not to give me all my options if I don’t at least ask about a subject.” I gave Juny some side eye at that, and she changed the color of her Eyebot to imply blushing. Dork.
Alana was about to say something, but I got an alert of a call coming in and held up my hand.
“Erica, this is Nguyen. I just received notice of an apartment building attacked by Antithesis that went unnoticed earlier. Lieutenant Colonel Radcliffe let us know about the masks, and we’re in the middle of arranging to have off-duty staff equipped with them and distributing them to on-duty troops, so we don’t have a free unit. Can you fill in?”
So much for my break.
“Where do I need to go?”