Chapter Seventy-Nine - Boss Fight

“Do not underestimate the Antithesis. Just because a model’s number is twice as high, doesn’t mean it will only be twice as likely to kill you.”

--Tiny, in a street interview, 2049

***

The trick was picking the right sort of bomb. Nothing that would kill Gomorrah and I, that was a given, and something that would still put the Model Twenty-One down.

It was injured. The Mecha cats had peppered it with little holes, none that seemed too deep, but in spots where their fire had been concentrated, the alien’s skin looked like it had been assaulted by a cheese-grater. Gomorrah’s fire blackened some of its skin, and I was sure emptying every round from my Claw into its flank had done nasty things to its musculature.

I’m afraid there’s nothing I can give you that will kill the Model Twenty-One instantly without risking yourself or Vanguard Gomorrah.

“Shit,” I swore. “Noise grenades.”

A grenade appeared in the air next to me and I snapped it out of the air. I didn’t have to look to pull the tab on it and fling it under the Model Twenty-One. Almost as soon as the grenade landed it started to make its damned keening howl.

The Model Twenty-One shook its overly large head, its focus moving away from Gomorrah, who was busy backing up, and to the ground.

A leg stomped down on the grenade, crushing it and killing its noise with a squawk.

I didn’t know if the resonator had actually done anything in those few seconds, but if it crushed it, then it didn’t like it.

“Another,” I muttered as I started to run. I wanted to keep behind the monster. Hopefully it wouldn’t notice me tossing the grenades by its feet.

The Model Twenty-One was even faster to destroy the next one.

“Another,” I said. “And then give me something that’ll blow up in its face.”

I tossed the next resonator behind it, and the alien spun and crushed it faster than I could blink. The next grenade clattered by its feet, much quieter.

It stomped on it all the same.

I flung an arm over my face as an explosive blast roared past me.

The Model Twenty-One stumbled to the side, its front looking even worse, with its skin blackened and an entire leg missing from the joint down. Blackish blood was sloping down onto the ground in a rapid pitter-patter beat.

It raised its head, one eye partially shut, and looked right at me.

“Ah, shit,” I said.

I tucked my Claw away and grabbed my Trench Maker even as I started running again. My back-mounted guns swivelled around and started to fire at it. The plasma caster didn’t seem to do much at all, only leaving glowing welts in its thick hide, but my railgun’s next round didn’t bounce. It burrowed into the monster’s chest, leaving a finger-sized hole of glowing flesh where it had passed.

It still wasn’t dead though.

A wash of fire shoved the Model Twenty-One to the side, its claws scraping against the ground for purchase.

“Thanks!” I shouted as I tried to run faster. I’d seen it wreck one of my mechs, and I was pretty sure they were tougher than I was.

“It’s refusing to burn,” Gomorrah said. She sounded very insulted about it.

I looked over my shoulder and choked on a curse. The Model Twenty-One was very much on fire now. Gomorrah kept adding to it so that its entire body was covered in flames. It only made it scarier though. What kind of monster could ignore being set on fire so easily?

My remaining mecha cat kept its distance, still firing in bursts at where I suspected the alien was weaker.

It skidded past me and bumped into one of the walls.

I turned and aimed my Trench Maker at it, then fired over and over again until I clicked empty.

The bastard barely seemed to notice.

Another railgun round, and another hole punched into it, but there was no explosion in the wall behind it. The round had stayed lodged somewhere in all of its plant meat. Real tough plant meat.

“Cat, get down!”

I glanced over to Gomorrah, then stared for all of a moment before jumping as far the fuck away as I could.

Gomorrah had bought herself a new gun.

It was a cumbersome looking thing, all angular and flat-sided, with cross-shaped cut-outs and golden trim over flat black plates. She held it on her shoulder, the barrel--wider than my fist--currently pointing at the Model Twenty-One.

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“May god have mercy on you, because I’m fresh out.”

I didn’t have time to tell her that she sounded cheesy as fuck before she fired, and a grey blur shot out of the launcher and struck the Model Twenty-One.

I was expecting heat.

I wasn’t disappointed.

For a moment, all I could focus on was putting more room between myself and whatever the fuck Gomorrah had just fired at that alien.

It wasn’t heat, it was something beyond that. My augs started to flicker, warning about my armour being strained, my coat being unable to function at the current temperatures, and that my mask was switching to tanked oxygen because it couldn’t filter anything from the air.

I stumbled ahead, then when I had my feet under me I ran until the heat only felt like a bonfire at my back.

Slowing down, I turned and winced until my mask’s visor occluded the part of the tunnel the Model Twenty-One was in.

Gomorrah was walking over to me, her launcher lowered even as the mineshaft behind her glowed like an inferno.

The Model Twenty-One was still moving.

Oh, it wasn’t going to move for long, but the thing was crawling its way towards us, even as its sides melted and its limbs came apart one by one.

“What was that?” I asked as Gomorrah came closer.

“That was a very expensive thermate warhead,” Gomorrah said. “Three thousand degrees celsius on the edges, a whole lot hotter in the middle.”

She sounded very, very smug.

“Well, it worked,” I said.

The Model Twenty-One was still struggling, but it was weak, its remaining limbs barely able to pull it forwards.

“Damn, that thing is tough,” I said.

Gomorrah lowered her launcher. “Yeah. I knew the higher numbered models were going to be a challenge, but this is more than I thought.”

“That Model Twenty-One was approximately twenty percent smaller than average, and its reaction times were slower than usual. It’s very likely that it was born before the end of its incubation period because of the strain on the hive.”

So the real thing would be tougher. “And it’s a stealth model,” I said.

“It’s a unit that usually fights as a pack.”

I tilted my head left and right, to crack my neck. “Well then. That’s just plain terrifying.”

“Agreed,” Gomorrah said.

The heat had faded some, and the glowing ball of fire was starting to break up, sending showers of sparks hissing through the air around it with fire-cracker pops. Then it gradually sank into the stone around it.

“Damn,” I repeated.

“We should move on, burn the rest of the hive out and get out of here,” Gomorrah said.

“I could use a break. Maybe a nice nap. Something to drink...” I considered what else to add to my list. “A hug from Lucy?”

“I think we could both use that,” Gomorrah agreed absently.

I shot her a look.

“Shall we get going?” she asked before heading out.

“Hey wait! Lucy’s hugs are mine! I’m not sharing!”

“What are you on about Cat? Can’t you take anything seriously for a minute or two?”

We went the long way around the Model Twenty-One. It wasn’t moving anymore, but that didn’t stop me from reloading my Claw and then emptying it in the bigger chunks of its body, just in case. If there was ever anything that deserved to be double-tapped, it was that heap of trouble.

“I didn’t think the models past twenty would be that, uh, insane,” I said. “Is it dead?”

“We got the points for it,” Gomorrah confirmed.

“Models above Twenty make up nearly half of all Antithesis forces. If you were to graph the distribution of models out, it would appear as a near-exponential decrease, with the median of models being between the model twenties and thirties.”

“And they get worse as they get bigger numbers?” I asked.

Generally speaking, yes. Though there are of course utility models across the scale. Most models past Thirty aren’t necessarily terrestrial.

“Okay,” I said. I could have an existential crisis about that later.

I found my Icarus, the gun scuffed and battered, but still functional-looking, and I saw that Gomorrah paused to mourn over her Archangel's Kiss. Figured we’d made enough points to buy another, but I didn’t begrudge her taking some time for that.

I had one mecha cat left, the one that held onto my old helmet still. “Tough one, aren’t you,” I said. “Let’s hope we won’t be putting that toughness to the test anymore.”

***