Chapter Seventy-Two - Behold My Catlike Grace

"Grace isn't just about looking good while doing the impossible. It's about making sure everyone else knows you're better at it than they are—and maybe stepping on a few necks along the way. Figuratively. Mostly."

--Attributed to Emosycthe Mordeath Noir, early 2050s

***

The next twenty minutes were kind of boring. Even the constant drumming and thumps of multiple AA guns turning the sky into pin-cushion land was something I could get used to.

And then, on the twenty-first minute, things stopped being boring, but in the bad way.

I got a call. It was flagged as urgent, and it was coming from Grasshopper.

"Where's the fire?" I asked as soon as I answered.

"Hello, Catherine," Grasshopper said. "Are you busy right now?"

I stared ahead, where I was moving my mech so that I could line its railgun up with a target some two klicks above and away. "No?" I said.

"Oh, fantastic, because I have a bit of a disaster that I'd appreciate your help with," she said.

I took the shot, then stepped back, allowing the railgun to cool off while I gave Grasshopper my full attention. "Alright, what's the disaster?"

"I've made a lot of friends in the wider Samurai community, as you may be aware, and I always keep an eye out on new up-and-comers, just in case they need a helping hand!"

"Uh-huh," I said. Gosh, I loved Grasshopper, she was a sweetheart, but holy crap was she ever bad at getting to the point.

"In this case, a whole lot of samurai have answered the call. There are vanguard peppered all across the country working real hard to keep people safe and destroy as many enemies as possible. A lot of these are newer, however, and I've been keeping an eye on them, just in case."

"I'm following so far," I said. "Is one of them in trouble?"

"Just so!" she said. "I'd give you a gold star, but we are in a bit of a hurry, I think. They're a... rather reserved samurai who has been a vanguard for some time, but they usually keep to themselves. I only met them a couple of times, and I always had the impression that while they were competent, they would really rather keep to themselves. I named them, you know!"

"You want me to pop over and check on them?" I asked.

"Yes please! I'd appreciate it. They're closer to you than I am, and I'm currently watching over a small group of new friends who could really use the help. Her name is Shy, by the way. I'll have Bybyt send her coordinates over!"

"Bybyt?" I asked. Didn't that mean 'bug' in French?

"My AI friend! Did I never introduce you? Oh, you'll love them, they're quite friendly! Anywho, toodles! Thank you for trying to save my friend's life!"

Grasshopper cut off the call and left me stranded there with a heap of confusion. I shook my head when I received a ping. Coordinates, from Bybyt the AI. As well as a small introductory digital postcard, because of course Grasshopper's AI would be just as extra as Grasshopper herself.

"Myalis, can you make sense of these numbers? And... if it's far enough, I'm going to need a carrier to get my mech from here to there."

Certainly. These are standard coordinates. Vanguard Shy is some seventy-nine kilometres northwest of your current position. As for carriers, I have some options.

"Nothing that's shaped like a cat carrier," I said.

I have fewer options, but some remain. You could purchase a small transport vehicle for approximately nine hundred points. It will be capable of lifting your Nyanzerfaust and moving it. It has no defensive capabilities, but the mech's own weaponry should suffice against lighter opponents.

"As long as it can go seventy-ish kilometres quickly and then survive the trip back, I'll be happy. Get me something that's not too loud, too. I don't need to alert the entire area that I'm around."

I blinked as a large vehicle appeared nearby. Myalis had decided against summoning it in a box, which was probably for the best since I didn't want to get out of my mech to figure that out. The carrier was built on four skinny legs, with a large turbine on each corner mounted so that they could tilt a little. There were those long glowing slat things that all hovercars had as well.

It didn't take a genius to figure out how it worked. My mech fit right under it, and there was a large clamp that came down right over the back of my mech's neck and hooked on. I shifted the mech's paws so that there was on standing on all four of the pylons on the corners, and then the entire thing was linked into the mecha's control system.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

I... did not know how to fly very well, but the carrier had an auto-levelling system and was otherwise pretty simple, control-wise.

"Point me in the right direction, please," I said. Myalis threw up some pointers on my Augs, and I nodded. "And can you tell the people ground-side not to shoot me out of the sky? Maybe send a message to the group chat explaining what I'm up to. I'll be back in a few."

Sent and sent.

"Thanks," I said. "So, what do we know about this Shy samurai?"

Unsurprisingly little. Her records reveal that she had been a Vanguard for two years, and then the records remain rather sparse. A few showings at some minor incursions, including in the very incursion where you became a Vanguard, but no record of any large high-tier kills.

"Okay," I said. Maybe Grasshopper was spot-on with that name. Shy seemed to be living up to it. "Any idea what her speciality is?"

She doesn't seem to have a clearly visible one yet.

Yet? After two years? I had something going on after an afternoon. Then again, I was probably not a very good yardstick for measuring shit by.

The very helpful little distance readout projected before me ticked down until there were only a dozen kilometres left. The whole 'moving in a straight line from A to B' thing really cut down on how long it took to get places, and the skies further out from the Big Gun weren't nearly as busy with AA fire, which made for much smoother flying.

When the coordinates counter hit zero, I came to a full stop and scanned the area. It was a small town, the same sort of bumfuck nowhere that Gros Baton had lived in, but without the benefit of a coordinated community and a local samurai to keep the plants at bay.

This town had twenty or so homes on a T-intersection, and the only two larger buildings were an old pub and a firefighter's station that looked like it doubled as the town hall.

It didn't take long for me to spot some antithesis. A flight of model-ones was zipping across the town's only intersection towards a few packed-together homes.

No, not just model ones. There were a few of those Thirty-One-Slash-Ones, the weird plus-shaped freaks with the tentacles were doing a good job of keeping up with the Model Ones.

Now, if they were all heading that way, then there had to be something calling them in that direction.

I flew over, and soon discovered something running across a wide backyard. Footsteps on unmowed grass, and my thermal sights were showing something running away from the widening flight of aliens.

The something turned and there were a few quick muzzle flashes before a few aliens were evaporated out of the air.

That only took out a few of them, however, and the motion revealed that what I had thought was some sort of invisibility suit was more like a cloak. From above, it was great. From the ground? Probably not so much.

The Model Ones rushed upwards, flipped, then shot out towards the lone Samurai. The bigger tentacle-y flyers shot ahead, tentacles coming around like whips.

I disengaged the clamp holding me in place.

If the aliens expected to have a multi-ton mech crash into the ground between them and their prey, then they sure knew how to act surprised. I especially liked to imagine that their emotionless monster faces had a flash of regret on them before I opened up with my canons.

The blast alone was enough to pulp the nearest of them with nothing more than displaced air. The few actually struck by twin 105mm rounds... didn't make it.

Then I let loose with the twin shoulder-mounted Gatling guns, spraying the space ahead of me with a very tactical figure-eight motion right through the middle of the swarm before I allowed the mech's self-targeting to take over to pick out stragglers.

"Hey," I said out of the mech's exterior-mounted speakers. "You good back there?"

I glanced through the camera mounted on the back of my mech and found a slack-jawed young woman, her face covered in splotches of white and brown and her eyes opened wide.

"Yeah, that's how people ought to look when they see me," I said. "Grasshopper said you might need a hand?"

***