Chapter Sixteen - Command Critique

"It started a few years ago. I was conducting some research for... a corp, it was a tangential thing, about radio receiver detection. Anyway, I stumbled across crystal radiography.

Did you know that a crystal is almost all you need to receive a radio signal?

Did you know that radio signals are energy. It was so simple from there, all I had to do was get enough crystals and plug the whole idea into an efficiency AI. Free power! Unlimited free power!"

--From the Redacted Manifesto of the Corpo Bomber, 2046

***

When we returned, it was to find that the army hadn't been sitting on their hands while we were gone.

The line of tanks out before the wall had been improved. Some tractors were pushing dirt around, and backhoes were piling it up into these little ramps. A few were completed, with tanks sitting inside of the pits they left surrounded on three sides by walls of dirt reinforced with sandbags.

The walls of the city were being shored up as well. Some of the fallen sections had been pulled up and the holes were patched by stacks of sandbags and a long row of barbed wire.

A few temporary towers were up as well, with machine guns stationed atop them with a clear view over the wall.

Further in, I could see that the command tent had been relocated deeper onto the highway and more tents had gone up around it. It still looked temporary, but less so than it had when we left.

"They were busy," I said.

"They were," Gomorrah confirmed.

We parked by the edge of the highway, now deep within the protected area that the army had set up. With this level of defence I wouldn't have been surprised to see them weathering those model twenty-twos after all.

I got out of my mech and landed with a bend of the knee right in front of my big old cat. Tankette was stepping out of her own tank, and the others were coming out of the little armoured car we'd borrowed. It had come out pretty dirty, but otherwise unaffected by the trip, which was nice.

"Alright," I said with a clap. "Gomorrah and I will be checking in with the brass. Anyone that wants to come can, otherwise... I don't know, make yourselves useful. Give the army boys a hand. I bet they're still busy clearing out the city itself!"

The group did split up. Tankette mentioned that she wanted to see if she could help the army so she'd ask. Princess and Knight decided to head into the city to help with clearing, which made sense. Knight was particularly suited to that kind of work.

Crackshot, meanwhile, chose to plop himself down atop one of those guard towers and see if he couldn't pick off some distant aliens for fun and profit. Which only left Hedgehog following me and Gomorrah into the big command tent.

"Ah, you've returned," Lieutenant Juno said. He greeted us with a quick salute, then gestured deeper into the room. "Good timing. We were going over the strategic analysis just now. May I present to you Major Tinwhistle."

Juno was gesturing to a tiny slip of a woman in the same kind of army fatigues that the guys outside were wearing, only hers had more mud on them, staining her from boot to mid-shin. She had cybernetic eyes. Not just augs, but full-on cyborg eyes, all black and gunmetal with little red lenses, and one of her arms was fully mechanical as well, though she moved pretty naturally with it.

"As LT Juno said, I'm Major Tinwhistle," the woman said with a voice that sounded like throat cancer warmed over coffee.

"What are you the major of?" I asked.

She sniffed. "I'm the major of keeping things working around here."

"She means that she's the major of the Tenth Engineering Corp," Juno replied. "They've come with resupplies for the forces in place, as well as a number of engineering vehicles, mobile emplacements, and a lot of hard-working people."

"Stop buttering me up, Juno," Tinwhistle snapped. "I'm not gonna fuck you."

Juno opened, then closed his mouth. There was a smattering of red on his cheeks. Well-well, my boy Juno was shooting his shot and got shot down for it. I respected him just enough not to laugh in his pretty-boy face. "Well alright then," I said. "Nice to have you around. What was this about a strategic analysis?"

We joined up at another one of those map-projector tables that the army liked so much. It was for good reason, because they were cool as fuck. Nothing quite like the 'standing around a glowing map' aesthetic to set the mood, even if we were in a glorified tent.

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"Glad to have you back, Samurai," Brigadier General Thibodeau said as he came up to the table. "Do you wish to start us off? From what I understand we have good news from the north?"

I nodded, then gestured for Gomorrah to go ahead. She let out a very slight sigh that someone else might have confused for an exhale. "Things went well. Echo Lake is boiling now. It should remove the last remains of the hive from the water in due time without additional contamination in the area. The top soil was... removed via technological means, and the hive was neutralised. We received the points for it as confirmation."

We had? Myalis must have read my mind, because the notification popped up for me.

Targets Eliminated!

Model One... 2754 Models

Reward... 2754 points

Model Three... 1901 Models

Reward... 19010 points

Model Four... 5 Models

Reward... 75 points

Model Six... 24 Models

Reward... 360 Points

Model Eight... 2 Models

Reward... 10 points

Model Ten... 3 Models

Reward... 3 points

Model Twenty-Two... 8 Models

Reward... 4000

Small Hive Destruction: 500 points

Total Points earned: 26,709

Points after partner share: 4,813

Current Point Total: 38,535

I scanned through the list, but mostly focused on the number at the bottom. That point share was... well, it was alright, I supposed. Several thousand points was a nice load for a newbie samurai, enough to get a full set of pretty damned good starter gear.

For a mid-tier samurai, which I felt like Gomorrah and I were edging towards, it was... not chump change, but it wasn't a ton. We'd be dropping that amount of points on a single piece of gear at our level of things.

Still, the goal had been to give the newbies a leg up, and this would certainly do that.

"--Stray Cat has a comprehensive report on the quality of the new Samurai to present," Gomorrah continued.

I blinked, then replayed the last bit in my mind. I had... not been listening at all. "Uh, yeah, right. So... they're good."

"That's your comprehensive report?" Major Tinwhistle asked.

"Did you not comprehensive a part of it?" I asked. "I can go into more detail if you'd like."

The Major crossed her arms, then shrugged a shoulder. "I'm good."

"I wouldn't mind more details," Lieutenant Moreau said. Next to him, Lieutenant Colonel Britannica nodded firmly.

I groaned. "Fine. Uh. Tankette's tank is great. Lots of flexibility, which you wouldn't expect from a tank. Kind of one-track, no puns, but it's not that bad in this kind of case. If she grows into her specialisation she'll do fine. Princess is a hot mess, but Knight is actually on the ball. Princess needs to get a gimmick and fast because being pretty and all dressed up isn't going to keep her from being eaten alive. Her sister's doing a good job of that, though."

I glanced to Hedgehog for a bit and he nodded for me to continue.

"Hedgehog here's a problem child," I said. I don't think he was expecting that because he blinked dumbly at me.

"Pardon?" he asked.

"He was taught a bunch of protocols and would do fine in the army or whatever. He's very by-the-book. Does things just-so. He's super anal about it, and not the fun sort. And it'll get him killed, because the aliens don't have a book they go by, and his tactics are mostly designed to stall for a samurai to show up. But he is the samurai.

"Crackshot's cool though. He's not great at killing hives with his main strat, but he adapted and figured it out. He's got a niche, but he can play outside of it and plays well with others."

I turned towards Gomorrah and crossed my arms.

"There, happy?" I asked.

"Yes, actually," she said. "You're very observant, Cat... strangely so at times for someone who can be so utterly blind."

"What's that mean?" I asked.

Gomorrah shrugged a little, so I gave her side a poke with a knuckle. It didn't do anything, because she was wearing armour, but still, I had to make my annoyance known.

Maybe I'd stink bomb her car? That had to exist somewhere in the esoteric explosives catalogue, right? Wait... no, she'd just burn down my house in retaliation, and then things would spiral out of control from there.

The look Hedgehog was wearing suggested that I'd already done enough to earn myself some enemies for a day.

"That was insightful, thank you," Juno said.

"Indeed," the general replied. "Onto the meat of this meeting, then?"

***