Chapter Fifty-Seven - In Space No One Can Hear You Buzz

"Top 8 best selling AUG games of 2057

1. Reality Runners [AR Collector Game]

2. The Family [Samurai Gacha]

3. Silly Starlight Symphony [Rythme Gacha]

4. Galaga 2 [Fixed Shooter Arcade]

5. Quantum Heist [Party Game]

6. Minecraft [Sandbox]

7. Verseforge [World Creator]

8. Catastrophe Clicker [Clicker Game]

--Game News Networld, 2057

***

I thought being on watch would be boring, and I was mostly right. It did have a few highlights, though.

A dinky little alarm clock went off a few minutes after Hedgehog carried Tankette away. It was one of those small red ones, with the two big bells on top of it, and the purely analogue clockface. I wasn't even sure how to read the time on it, but I did figure out that smacking the little knob on the top shut it down.

"Okay, I'm guessing that means it's time to shoot something," I said.

"Ça l'air pas mal ça." Gros Baton said. "What're we shooting?" There was a whole menu with all of the loaded shells on it on one screen that he was flicking through, each option highlighted one after the other.

"Good question," I said. "Uh. What's the situation over around Phobos?"

I eyed the consoles and realized that there were a lot of blank buttons. I pressed one at random, then some part of my less stupid brain realized that I'd just pressed a random button on a kilometre-long gun's control station and that was probably a bad idea.

Instead of pushing random buttons, how about you just let me handle things and leave the poor coolant control system alone?

"Yup, sorry," I said as I drew my hands back from all the buttons. "Just... can we throw up Phobos' status ATM on the big screen?"

Certainly.

I felt Gros Baton eyeing me, so I half turned to meet his gaze. That gave him the push he needed to ask me a question. He even bothered to ask it in his accented English. "Why do you talk to your AI, uh, out loud?"

"You mean Myalis? How else am I supposed to talk to her? Text?"

"Yeah," he said with a nod.

"Oh. Well... isn't that impersonal?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I text my best friends all the time."

"I mean, sure. I don't know. I guess I could, but it feels more natural to talk to her out loud?"

"You could whisper."

"Do I look like the whispering sort?"

He considered that for a moment, then shrugged. "Fair enough," he said. "Looks like the evil moon is busy, eh?"

I squinted at the screen. He was pretty spot on there. Phobos was surrounded at the moment. Hundreds of little darting dots. It looked like... actually, it kinda looked like flashing a light into a super dark and dusty room. Lots of little particulate catching the light and swirling around. "What are those little things?" I asked.

Mostly lower-tier models. It seems as though Phobos has launched several thousand model elevens and a number of model twelves.

Model elevens? Those pterodactyl looking motherfuckers? That was pretty low on the food chain, all things considered. "Wait, they can fly in space?"

"Why not, at this point?" Gros Baton said.

I mean, sure, but while I might have been lacking any sort of proper education, I was pretty sure wings didn't count for shit in zero-g and without any atmosphere. Then again, the antithesis seemed to have a knack for not giving a fuck. "Okay, whatever," I said. There were frequent flashes as Keiretsu drones sniped some of the models away with what looked like laser fire, but the models seemed to swarm around organically, and I saw one drone get taken out by a screen of them smashing into it.

"Let's load up one of those Bee Bombs," I said. "We can fuck up their screen, give the Keiretsu a chance to get their drones in closer."

"Ça m'semble bon," Gros Baton said as he took the second seat and started to fiddle with the targeting. I had no idea if he knew what he was doing, but I didn't want to show that I was clueless so I left him at it.

The ammo selector thing was pretty simple. A sort of menu with a flicky wheel next to it that I could roll to switch between ammo types. There was an entry for every kind of shell I'd bought with the number remaining next to it. I noted that there were a few HE shells that I hadn't bought as well. Probably Tankette's purchases.

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

I rolled the wheel until Bee Bomb was selected, then tapped the accept button next to it.

Behind me, a mechanical arm moved up to the right shell, then loaded it into a sort of holster before moving it to the Big Gun's breech.

After that, all we needed to do was pick a target. Phobos was pre-selected, which was nice.

"Time to target... two minutes? Shit, that's not long," I said.

The satellite thing with the other portal had been moving this entire time, and it was slowly getting closer to Phobos. That, and Phobos was slowly getting closer to us.

I wasn't exactly what anyone would call a math whizz, but I understood that the time between shooting and hitting being shorter meant that shit was getting closer together. I kinda dreaded looking at the final count-down between the meeting with Phobos and Earth. So, instead, I looked at the percentage we'd chipped off the moon.

Eight.

Eight percent. That was still a lot, but fuck me if that wasn't nowhere near enough. A small pit formed in my stomach. Then Gros Baton grinned and pointed to the big red button. "J'peux-tu?" he asked.

"Go ahead," I said.

He flicked the little plastic shield up, then slammed a fist down onto the button. Good thing it was made tough.

The usual hair-rising thing happened as the Big Gun fired, followed by the hiss of coolant working to keep the gun intact. "Myalis," I said once the noise died down a little. "Can you show me how to run diagnostics? I'd like to shoot more than once an hour. Even just ten minutes sooner every hour would be one more shell every six hour shift, right?"

Ten times six is sixty, yes. I can help you with that. It should be possible, though it will increase wear slightly. Given the time constraints, the increased wear shouldn't interfere with operations.

"So we can keep shooting and shoot a little faster and shit won't blow up in our faces? Yeah, I'm down for that." I reached up and rubbed at the spot where my cybernetic cat ears met my head.

Gros Baton nodded, then pointed to the screen. The Bee Bomb was arriving. It looked like a streak across the monitor as it raced towards Phobos.

We watched in glorious HD as the bomb exploded and sent a thousand pinpricks moving across the screen. They intercepted just as many model elevens in mid-flight, turning the birds into statistics.

"Nice," I said as I leaned back.

The keiretsu didn't waste too much time. Some drones continued to mop up. More of them flew right into Phobos, slipping between the cracks which were soon illuminated by laser fire. I wasn't sure what was going on in there, but I figured it wasn't pleasurable for the aliens.

I blinked as I got a notification from Myalis. It had me sitting up a little straighter.

Targets Eliminated:

Model Eleven - 278

Model Twelve - 41

Points earned: 31,900

Points distributed to Vanguard: 3,987

New point total: 46,517

Holy shit, that was a lot of points. "We're eating good tonight," I said. I resisted the urge to rub my hands together. Didn't need Myalis switching me from Cat shit to Racoon shit. That role was taken already.

Gros Baton grinned. "I'mma buy the loudest skydoo," he said.

"Yeah, you go bud."

To be fair, though, that last bomb had targeted small, easy to eliminate models instead of the moon. It wasn't actually helping directly except to farm points. That eight percent wasn't moving so easily.

But more points meant I could afford more shells, which was nice. I'd just filled my budget for the next day and a bit. The Tesla Collider was going to fire soon too, so that would hopefully leave us with a nice gap where we could fuck up Phobos before it would have time to recuperate.

It was going ot take some time to fuck the moon up, and I was legit afraid that it would take more time than we had left. But hey, Keiretsu and the Nightwatchmen weren't freaking out as far as I could tell, so that was probably a good sign.

"Right... so uh, we've got another fifty or so minutes to wait, huh?"

Gros Baton shrugged. "Ouien?"

"Yeah... got any games on your augs?"

***