Chapter Eight - The Bridge Incident (DX)

"If brute force doesn't work, then you aren't using enough of it."

--Isaac Arthur

***

As the trio made their way deeper and deeper into what Myalis called the "red zone" of the incursion, Ash had to scold herself for thinking it felt a bit like a casual stroll. They weren't maintaining any rushing pace, or even a hard march. Apparently, Myalis didn't think Cat would have been able to maintain anything strenuous for that long.

Her comment that the girl needed more cardio was poorly received.

Instead, she and Myalis took their time asking each other questions, mostly about their respective organizations and threats. Occasionally, Cat would chime in with a question or comment of her own, but Ash got the distinct impression she was more what her own father would have called a doer, rather than a thinker. She kept that observation to herself, though. Cat seemed more than clever enough to guess the description wasn't entirely complimentary.

"Wait, so there's no meat at all?" the Samurai asked at one such time. "Just nothing but salads and pasta and shit?"

"Your regular diet consisted of no real meat until after you became a Vanguard," Myalis snipingly reminded her. The two definitely had a snark gimmick to their relationship. "And could have done with more actual salads and pasta and shit."

The girl rolled her eyes, along with her whole head. "We at least got synthetic meat. And I don't know if you've noticed, but fresh fruit and veggies aren't exactly at the corner store anymore. Not real ones, anyway."

"Synthetic or authentic," the drone returned flatly, "you could have done with more of anything and everything. Even a multivitamin should have been cheap enough to be affordable for the orphanage. Instead, malnutrition was the universal medical condition across all of the kittens."

She scoffed. "The hole in your logic is that you're assuming they gave a crap about us. We were the crippled and infirm orphans. The imperfects. We were a money sink they had to put up with in exchange for selling the pretty children off to the highest bidder like it was a fucking pet store. They only kept us around because they had to, and only made a show of caring when it was to roll us out just long enough for a publicity stunt, and then back into the box we went. We got nothing more for food than the bare minimum they were told we had to have to survive, and they pushed that shit down at every opportunity."

Cat lowered her gaze to the asphalt and kicked at a random plastic bottle as they passed. "Before we got caught in that museum incursion, they were even talking about pushing our required cals to seven-fifty. Their dietitians figured what with half of us being runts anyway, and the rest with only half our body functioning, we just didn't need the same nutrients as a full human being. Actually said that, too. We didn't even rate as fully human to the bastards."

Ash shook her head. "How was that even legal? Weren't there inspectors from child services checking in on you, making sure the orphanage was compliant?"

Cat threw her head back in a laugh that was bitter and full of old hurt. "Blue, the corpos are child services. They're the government, too, making and judging and enforcing all of those pretty little laws you love so much. Anything that's still elected is just a figurehead they hired, if even that." She made a fist in front of her with her prosthetic limb and stared at it. "But that's all over now. Not everywhere, but at least for the kittens. Nobody's going to fuck with them ever again."

The Defender sighed in turn. Corporatocracy had infested the entire planet, it seemed, as thorough as any Antithesis hive could ever hope to be. For the only real escape to be getting selected as a child soldier by aliens was an injustice that couldn't be solved without radical, fundamental change that those in power would fight all the way.

Instead, she turned her attention back to before the segue. "To answer your question, I was prescribed a supplement that provided synthesized versions of what I wasn't getting from the meat. It's not uncommon. All sorts of races evolved in completely different environments. More than a few need some random mineral or vitamin that just doesn't show up in sufficient quantities on the galactic stage. My chief's secretary eats a special yogurt every day for neural cultures she'd die without."

Cat eyed her like she'd mentioned eldritch horrors. "Neural? Isn't that, like, brain shit?"

Ash couldn't help but grin at the Samurai's masterful scientific description. "Yeah. That and the nervous system. Bacterial colonies line her people's neurons, clustering around the electrical discharges. They've been symbiotes of each other for so long that her nerves have stopped sheathing themselves for protection."

The girl gave her head a vigorous shake, no doubt to clear that mental imagery. "Don't talk about that ever again." She turned toward Ash again. "But I wasn't talking about the nutrition. I didn't even know there was anything you could only get from meat. I just couldn't imagine never being able to eat anything but leaves and grass."

The cop chuckled good-naturedly. "It's a bit more of a selection than that. Leafy greens and basic grains are a thing, sure, but so are fruits, vegetables, cheese, nuts, tubers ... It's actually pretty diverse." She decided it was best not to mention farming bugs for food was a big thing. Cat didn't seem open-minded enough for that. "And if I ever want actual meat, I can always head into the docks district if I leave the cop jacket at home. There's no specific rule against selling meat so long as it didn't come from anything sapient, there's just no market for it in the greater population. Gotta eat it there, though. It's taboo to bring it back home if you live in a shared space like an apartment complex."

Cat clearly took a moment to process all that. "... Well, at least you still have pancakes, I guess."

"Pancakes, yes, I can get the things to make those," Ash replied with a wry grin, "but they don't have syrup."

The Samurai literally stopped in her tracks and stared at her like she'd just said the world was about to blow up. "What the fuck do you mean, they don't have syrup?"

"No history of eating tree sap, apparently," she replied, clearly enjoying Cat's reaction, "so they never developed it. They look at you funny if you even try to explain it. I had to make do with a simple syrup from a reduction of sugar water."

"STOP!" Cat shouted, holding up a hand toward her. "Stop! I don't want to hear any more! Ash, you live in a deprived, disgusting hellhole that must be burned to the ground."

Ash threw her head back and laughed a good, long belly laugh. She couldn't have asked for a better reaction. Maybe ending up in Canada wasn't all bad after all.

... Of course, that was when they rounded the bend to see two dozen Model Threes rooting around under the supervision of several Model Fours. Oh, right. Red zone.

She looked to Stray Cat to see how she wanted to handle it, but the girl was hesitating as the pack turned their attention toward the two young women and their drone. So she pulled the automatic pistol off of her hip and started soaking them with lead like it was a fire hose. The Threes fell faster under the barrage of 10mm shredder rounds than the Fours, but they weren't far behind them. The gun barely sounded like actual shots, more like the world's longest, loudest fart.

It was over in under ten seconds, and Ash raised the weapon out of a firing position with the barrel still smoking from the gunpowder.

"Very efficient, Miss Apex," Myalis noted, then glanced over at Cat. "You even seem to have practiced aiming."

"Fuck off, Myalis," Cat bit back. "You know I prefer explosives."

"Yes, because their required accuracy is satisfied by, Close Enough." The drone's back end had a cord that was swishing like an actual tail of a cat amused by prey. "Might I suggest purchasing a few?"

"What for?"

"Why, for the rest of the incoming Antithesis we've alerted, of course."

Cat hissed, in the completely human fashion and no doubt completely unintentional, and drew her own gun from the holster underneath her jacket as Ash exchanged the partial drum on her machine pistol for a fresh one.

"Lead with that next time, you damn bot!"

It wasn't long before the alerted Antithesis would be on them, but it was long enough for Ash to see Myalis and Stray Cat at work. The AI's sass had gotten her Vanguard's head back in the game, and the Defender had little to do but to keep an eye out while Cat hustled around planting enough ordnance for a small army. Half of them were tossed in vague general directions, but there was enough of them that deploying them fast was more important than deploying them with maximum efficiency. Every time Cat lost track of what positions she still had to cover or hesitated in self-doubt, a quip from Myalis quickly put her back on track.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"You two are actually a really good team," Ash commented to the drone as Cat was placing the last of the surprises.

"It may seem an unusual partnership," Myalis hummed back proudly, "and perhaps it is, but the Protectors pride themselves on only assigning precisely the AI a Vanguard needs to do their best."

"... What would mine have been like?"

The drone tipped its non-face to one side in a thoughtful expression. "Lymnis. Sweet, peppy, really good at guilt trips. Presents as some military officer, but as one would do so as cosplay."

"Hm." Ash closed her eyes in thought. "Yeah, I can see how that would work. Little creepy you could pick it out when I hadn't even been on the planet for an hour."

"We're very good at our jobs," Myalis answered with a deep aura of smugness. "I could connect her if you'd like to meet her."

But she shook her head. "It wouldn't be fair to her. I don't have any intention of staying longer than it takes to capture Forgah. I don't belong to this Earth. Besides, what your Vanguards do for people here, I have people counting on me for the same back home."

The drone nodded. "The very traits we look for already chain you somewhere else. It's why we didn't press the issue."

"Tell her I'm sure she'll get a great Vanguard someday."

"Consider it passed along." The drone stood to its feet. "They're here."

Amusingly, Stray Cat retreated from the impending front line in a series of panicked backward hops that kept her facing the incoming threat, not unlike an actual cat. She drew her Trench Maker and pointed it at the rise they could see a slight dust cloud from. "Half the stuff is proximity, get ready for some fireworks!"

Ash had opted to open with her shotgun this time, and calmly raised it with a ready stance, her eye unblinking as it stared through the holographic sight. Her trigger finger was calm, just outside of the guard. She only moved it over when the cloud grew more pronounced. She half-depressed it only when she saw the first Model Three head poke over the edge.

Cat fired first, a burst of bullets that completely missed, followed by another burst that tagged one in the flank.

Ash's first shots followed soon after, the deep boom of the eight-gauge shell mixing with the higher-pitched sound of a dozen small explosives detonating as soon as they penetrated. She felt like she was getting accustomed to the massive weapon. Even with a horde like this, she got the best results aiming, not for the Antithesis on the far edge, but the one next to it. A target with two more bogeys on its flanks. She didn't know what the Protectors packed their pellets with, but the blast was big enough from the grand total of little balls that the splash damage was vicious.

She fell into a quickly familiar rhythm. Pull, boom, turn, pull, boom, turn. Each blast took out or heavily injured several threes or even a four. Nearly four times a minute, she was letting the massive, much lighter empty magazine drop from the bullpup as she called out for a replacement from Myalis.

"They are approaching the first mines," the AI announced. "Normally, we would be safely outside of the blast zone, but as our miner was Cat ..."

"Seriously?!" the heterochromic cyborg shouted indignantly over the din.

"Fall back," Ash called between shots. "Maintain fire! Let them chase us right into Hell!"

That gave the younger girl a grin. "That sounds like something I can do!"

Verbal communication quickly became impossible, however. Cat's mines hadn't just been fragmentation mines. Monofilament wires launched into the air and spun like blenders. Sonic mines screeched into life at frequencies that literally caused nearby Antithesis to start melting. Acid clouds bloomed like green, gaseous flowers among the aliens' ranks. And even the fragmentation mines, themselves, seemed to be packed with whatever they used in her shotgun shells, causing big, dramatic blasts with every one.

The horde seemed endless, which made the sudden slack they got after several solid minutes of being rushed all the more obvious.

Ash took another couple shots to empty her magazine. "Are they giving up?"

"Antithesis do not give up," Myalis answered gravely.

Then a large form became visible even over the hordes of threes and taller fours, pushing and shoving the lesser models aside as it forced its way to the front.

"TANK!" Cat shouted a moment before a xeno like an armored bear burst into the no-man's land. She was already directing her fire to it, but that seemed to do fuck all to it and took heat off of the smaller enemies her shoulder-mounted guns struggled to compensate for. It even ignored what mines were left.

They couldn't spare the time for this. Ash held out one hand toward the drone. "Gimme a HEAP I can throw, Myalis!"

What almost looked like some sort of large throwing dart appeared in her outstretched palm. She took one quick glance at it, flipped it around to make sure there was nothing she had to press, then pulled back and threw it right for the Antithesis. Like a bottle rocket, it hardly left her hand before the back ignited and multiplied its speed exponentially. It buried itself deep into the side of the tank's neck like a rocket-powered stiletto.

And then the bear's head exploded with enough force to take the surrounding xenos with it.

The horde pushed for several minutes more before it finally petered out. No more large models appeared. When a whole ten seconds passed without anything black and green coming running at them, Ash finally let her shotgun lower.

"Well, that was fun ..."

Cat's response was very different from Apex's sarcasm. "Blue! What the fuck was that?!"

The cop looked to the vanguard, then to the field of bodies, and back to her again. "... Uh, a horde?"

"Not that," the younger girl protested. "What the fuck did you do to that Model Five?!"

She guessed she was talking about the tank model. "Oh, that. Armor-piercing high-explosive. Didn't know they came in Rocket Dart flavor, but I'm not complaining."

"How did you know it could kill a Five like that?! Or that it even existed?!"

Ash blinked at her. "Because it's what you use to kill tanks. And because Myalis has everything."

"It's true," Myalis agreed as the drone seemed to preen.

"And you just thought, hey, let's get a handheld one?!"

The Defender sighed and walked over to put a hand on the Samurai's cybernetic shoulder with a good deal more dramatic pause than necessary. "Cat, you literally have a magic space genie living in your head. All you have to do is feed her enough points, and she grants your wish. You should spend less time second-guessing if it's possible and just tell her what you need to get the job done."

Cat frowned as she shrugged the hand off. "How many points was that thing, anyway?"

"On par with most of your basic grenades," Myalis readily provided. "It's not a particularly complex piece of equipment by any measure."

She looked back at roughly where the Five had been. "Fuck, and it can just drop one of those big motherfuckers?"

"Did you forget that the whole reason I encouraged single-use weapon systems is because they hit above your weight class?"

"Then why didn't you ever recommend it to me?!"

"The darts are dumb-fire. Considering so are you, I determined the risk of friendly fire or significant collateral damage to be unacceptably high. In fact, I have designated 124 items in your current catalogues as NCC, with more added to the list with every new catalogue you purchase."

"The fuck's NCC?!"

"Non-Cat-Compliant."

Ash wasn't really listening to their back-and-forth. Instead, she took the moment to move over to the edge of the concourse they were on and look down over a neighboring highway. It was the kind for walking, but it was so wide it could have easily been an interstate. And it had a problem, because of course it did.

"Uh, guys?" she asked.

"You invented a new item designation just to make fun of me?! Don't you have anything better to do?!"

"Literally, no. Everything I do revolves around you, Catherine. That's my job. And really, it's more like a filter."

"Guys!" Ash repeated louder as she physically turned back toward them. "We've got an issue."

The other two walked over to see what she was talking about.

"Oh," Cat intelligently observed, elongating the single syllable. "That's a lot."

Ash watched the mass of xenos ripping apart the street like the world's ugliest biker gang. She saw more than a few of what she now knew were fives, as well as a number of even larger ones. Some were incredibly slow, with long, bloated throats. Some were large centipedes. A few even looked like the tank's bigger, meaner brother. "If we don't do something about them, somebody somewhere is going to have a really bad day sooner or later."

But Cat shook her head and looked back at the concourse that had bottlenecked their own xenos. "The only reason we didn't have to run up here is because they could only come at us from one direction. We're two girls with scifi weapons and a pet drone. They'd have us fucking surrounded and buried under bodies before we could make a dent."

Ash's eyes, on the other hand, went up. "Maybe not. Myalis, I need a launcher. It can be disposable so long as it's got six, hmm, make that eight rounds. Each one sticking on contact and potent enough to bust a cubic foot of steel and reinforced concrete, tied to a single remote trigger. Effective range ... at least fifteen hundred meters."

Myalis looked up, too. "Hmm, yes, I believe I understand. This should suffice for what you have in mind."

Cat followed their gazes, but frowned at the swooping curve of the overpass above them.

A long, white box appeared at their feet, but Ash pulled her hammer out instead and smashed it into the reinforced glass wall. She ignored Cat's protests and the causeway's newfound wind as she let the hammer drop to the ground and pulled what looked like some sort of rocket launcher from the box.

Ash took a moment to familiarize herself with the controls, then parked the padded portion on her shoulder and aimed down the viewfinder.

Ka-thunk.

It was an entirely uninspiring sound, more like something being dropped in a bucket, but it accompanied a burst of hot wind coming out of the back end of the launcher and a white wad of something getting spat out the business end. The projectile hit the furthest support of the overpass with what must have been a wet slap that didn't reach back to them.

She got through three more before Cat interrupted. "Wait, wait, are you mining the bridge?"

"Yup."

"But the Antithesis are down below!"

"Sure are."

She finished, with the last two actually close enough for them to hear the splatter, with each pillar across the highway beneath them now sporting what looked almost like a spider's egg sac.

"They're almost in position," Myalis noted.

"Would you mind doing the honors, Myalis?" Ash asked. "Wouldn't want to screw up the timing."

"It would be my pleasure."

Cat looked between the two of them quickly. "But you're going to destroy the overpass!"

Ash turned away from the scene, empty tube launcher propped casually against her arm as she walked away. "That's the plan."

Before Cat could say anything more, every sac exploded simultaneously. The mass of Antithesis were almost completely underneath, and most stopped to look up at the sound.

The bridge seemed to fall in slow motion, casting the Antithesis below in an ever deepening shadow. And then it hit like an earthquake.

Every building rattled and shook, windows exploded outward and a pillar of dust reached skyward as if it wished to join the ever-present Montreal clouds.

"Estimated 97% extermination," Myalis informed the girls once the world had finally settled.

"Good enough," Ash agreed as she went ahead and tossed the tube aside. "Whoever the other three percent bother won't have nearly the trouble now."

Cat was on her heels as she started walking again. "That's it? Just drop a bridge and you're out?"

"My priority remains Forgah," Ash reminded her. "I thinned their numbers, but the damage an Atellian with his mind on harm can do with these things is far worse than what a group three times that size would have done on their own. I'm not against stopping to help if someone's in need, but if we try to put out every single fire we come across to the last ember, we'll never finish. There's other Samurai, right? Let's trust them to do their job."

Cat stopped behind her for a few moments at that, but, probably after a mental snap of the whip from Myalis, got moving again to catch back up.