Chapter Nine - Gotta Kill 'Em All

"LOOKING FOR RECS

Hi, I'm looking for recs. I've read all of the popular stories on here, the ones that are easy to read. I only have the three major subscriptions, so I don't have access to that many.

I'm looking for something fun to read, no AI stuff please! I have Nimbletainment Plus Premium Reading, is there anything good in that, or should I pay the extra 150 credits/month for the ultra plus model?

Thanks! <3"

--Readit Forum Post, 2039

***

We rode down the 117th until we were only two kilometres away from the model twenty-twos and maybe ten-ish from Echo Lake.

"From here on out, we'll be off-road," Gomorrah said. I was sure we were going to just ride off the highway and across some fields or something, but then Gomorrah reminded me that her car could fly and we lifted off the ground, coming to a hover about a metre in the air.

I tapped into the comms channel Myalis and the other AI had set up, it was private, just the bunch of samurai out here. "Hedgehog, Tankette, think you can keep up?" I asked.

"Looks like it," Hedgehog said as he veered his not-humvee off the road and onto a grassy field. "Looks like there's a decent route from here, and some sideroads out ahead. We're not going to circle around?"

"I considered it," Gomorrah said. "But it's going to add a lot to our travel time. If we hit the model twenty-two all the way on the left then keep on straight, we'll make it to the lake much faster, without risking the hive being aware of our arrival."

"I don't exactly plan on being all that subtle about it," I said.

Gomorrah shrugged. "Let's see how far we can get while driving, we'll figure things out from there later."

That was fair enough.

With the Fury in the lead, we rode out at a much slower pace across a field, over a few hills, then through a forest that had some trails cut into it that were just barely wide enough for the truck Hedgehog was driving to fit in.

About halfway to the first of the model twenty-twos, we met some resistance.

"Heatsource ahead," Gomorrah said in clipped tones. I'd been talking to her about how awesome having colour-changing hair was, but I cut myself off mid-sentence as she spoke and sat up straighter.

"All I see are trees," I said.

"It's further ahead. I'm catching some blips of moving warmth. Not much, but that's not surprising. They're hard to see against the ambient temperature of a tree. Atyacus, can you... yeah, that's right."

A screen appeared over the car's windshield. Or maybe it was more accurate to say that the screen that was in place of the windshield already started to display more than just an image of what was happening outside. The screen was one of those fancy thermal-vision things, painting the world in blacks and greys, with hotter areas being lighter.

A few distant blurs were a lighter shade of grey than the rest. "If they weren't moving and building up heat, then they'd be basically invisible," Gomorrah said.

"Wild," I said. "So, we blow them up?"

Gomorrah considered it. "We could run past."

"And leave them there?" I asked.

"If we start shooting and blowing things up, it'll both slow us down and attract a lot of attention. Taking out the Echo Lake hive will be tough enough without having every antithesis within fifty kilometres rushing in our direction."

It kinda made sense, on the surface. The aliens were generally shit at communicating between each other, so if we zipped by, the nearest would notice that we were here, but the further ones wouldn't. And yeah, we'd get to the hive without it knowing we were coming.

But damn did that leave a bad taste in my mouth. "I don't like it," I said. "It's our job to kill them all."

"Be that as it may, a samurai has some leeway in their overall mission," Gomorrah said. "Taking out a hive takes priority over killing chaff. We definitely won't be able to kill every last one of the smaller models in the area, not if that means having to stop and comb through all of these forests for stragglers."

I worked my jaw a bit, then nodded. "Okay. We break through, rush a spot near the lake, then get out and take care of it. Don't forget, we're here to get the newbies some points too."

"Aww," Princess said over the coms, which apparently had been on this entire time. "That's really kind of you, Miss Stray Cat!"

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I closed my eyes for a moment and refrained from swearing.

Gomorrah flipped some toggles and switches on her dashboard--which had analog switches for some reason even though the Fury could obviously be controlled entirely via Augs--and the car clunked a few times as its weapon systems slid out of their respective holes.

"Hedgehog, Tankette, prepare to shoot at anything that rushes you, but try not to slow down."

"Got it," Hedgehog replied.

"I'm on guns," Crackshot said.

"I understand," Tankette said next. She was right behind the truck, with my mech following behind her. I checked on my mech real quick, I had a little app that showed me its status in real time. I was down a few thousand rounds for the miniguns, but everything else was green at the moment.

The first alien I saw properly, without needing that whole thermal vision crap, was a model four that leapt down from the branches above. It was eighty-percent tentacle by body mass, and all of them were squirming at the Fury as if looking for a way in even as it thumped against the hood.

A second later it was on fire, tentacles writhing in something akin to pain as its nerves were lit up.

Gomorrah tilted the car slightly to the side and the body rolled off the hood. "Deploying PD," she said.

I didn't have time to ask what that meant before everything around us started to burn.

"That's going to be pretty fucking obvious," I said.

"It's temporary," Gomorrah said. "I'm spraying everything in a solvent that reacts to oxygen and burns, but the bi-product suffocates fire pretty well. Basically, it'll burn now, but extinguish itself as soon as the solvent's burned up."

"Hedgehog, can you still see where to go?" I asked.

"I can," he said. "I don't know how fireproof this car is."

"I can't decide if I should turn the AC on or leave it off," Crackshot said.

"Off," Hedgehog snapped.

We rode through the forest through a blazing road of Gomorrah's making, the others following just behind. Lower ranked models weren't what I'd call smart, but they knew better than to run into fire. I supposed that they were still plants at the end of the day and were probably aware of how flammable they were.

Which is probably why we kept going without really getting harassed. A few bigger models, fives and sixes, showed up down the way, but a few shots took them out before they could start anything.

"We're near the model twenty-two on this side," Gomorrah said. "There's a small backroad that leads all the way to the lake right past it. I think I'll lead Hedgehog and Tankette that way."

"I can take care of the big guy, then," I said.

Gomorrah nodded.

I leaned back into my seat and opened a few apps. I had control of my mech from here. It wasn't perfect, though. Mobile controls were shit compared to being jacked into the mech directly. It wasn't latency, because stupid-sci-fi-magic-tech didn't suffer from lag, but being in the mech meant having my hands on the controls. From where I sat I had to deal with digital versions of the same.

"Myalis, can you pick up the slack a little?" I asked.

While in the mech I could handle everything all at once, but from here it would be trickier.

Certainly. I'm ready before you are.

I chuckled, then my vision was filled with what my mech was seeing. It wasn't quite at the same level of fidelity as being in the mech, and the field of view wasn't as great, but I'd live with it. "Okay," I muttered.

Myalis gave me a waypoint marker for the approximate location of the model twenty-two, so I pointed the mech that way and took off at... whatever the four-legged equivalent of a jog is.

I zigged around some trees and zagged along the edge of some rougher terrain. That's when I noticed the small horde of aliens out ahead. Lots of smaller models all swarming around and bumping into each other as they moved at... honestly, kind of a slow pace. There were bigger models standing out from the crowd as well, even a few in the double-digit range near the back.

And, of course, the model twenty two.

The fat fuck was lumbering out of the forest, branches scraping against its sides and snapping off to fall onto the aliens crowding around it. I spotted a few of those rarer models, the sorts that mostly hung out near a hive.

Not that it really mattered. "Found our big friend," I said.

"Kill it," Gomorrah suggested.

"I was getting to it," I said. Then I pulled the digital trigger.

***