Chapter Sixty-Four - Aftermath, but we’re Really Bad at Math

“When the first incursions occurred, humanity as a whole didn’t know how to respond to them. They were a threat unlike any other.

And so, naturally, no holds were barred when it came to unleashing humanity’s collective arsenal on the aliens.

Often, that meant that the worst of the disaster wasn’t created by the aliens, but by humanity itself.”

--Excerpt from A History of Disaster, 2047

***

“Okay, press here,” I said, gesturing at a point on the dude’s leg.

He hissed as he put pressure on his wound, but it helped, keeping one of my hands free so that I could tug his leg up and wrap the bandage around it again.

I had plenty of first aid stuff, but they were a bit pricey. Good bandages though? With some sort of magic bullshit fast-healing stuff in them? Yeah, one point for a roll that had an adhesive strip on the ends and that would contract and breathe as needed.

“There,” I said as I pressed the strip into the bandage. The edges flashed green and the entire bit of cloth tightened a little. “I’d kiss it better, but you’re not my type.”

“Thanks,” he said.

I shifted back out of the car, ignoring all the glass crunching below me as I backed out, then I gave him a hand to get out himself. He still hung onto his gun, which was great. It might come in handy.

“Let’s get you inside,” I said as I looked around. None of the cars around us had windows, and they were all turned an ugly grey-ish brown by the blast of dirt and ash.

Speaking of ash, there was a faint rain coming down from above. Too grey to be snow.

“What happened?” he asked.

"Some fuckwit didn’t learn their lesson about blast radiuses, I think,” I said. “Just hope this shit’s not radioactive.”

It is not. The HVW that struck nearby was an iridium rod. It is non-radioactive.

“Oh, so it’s not fallout?” I asked.

It’s fallout from the explosion, but it is not radioactive fallout. No more than any amount of soil kicked up would have, at least.

“That’s good, right?” the guy asked.

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s get you inside, you can have a sit with your family.”

The arena was fucked. The lobby was fine. A bit dusty, and some of the posters had been ripped off the walls, but nothing a janitor couldn’t fix. The rest of it though? The tin roof had been peeled back like a sardine can, exposing the hockey rink and letting in plenty of dust and crap.

Dust had made it all the way into the corridors leading to the shelter. The doors were shut when we arrived. Couldn’t blame them, I’d have closed them on sensing the blast too.

I had to knock hard to get people to respond. Then I was practically shoved aside as the man that had asked me about his son grabbed the guy next to me and hugged him.

A nice, tearful reunion. Still, two others wouldn’t be getting theirs.

I hesitated for a bit.

Should we move these people back to the headquarters, or leave them here? A quick look in the shelter revealed a low-ceilinged room, with hefty cement pillars here and there, and little rooms on all sides with cots. Maybe some thirty or forty people inside, most of them adults, but a few kids.

“Hey,” I said to one of them standing by the door. He had an old hunting rifle by his side and looked ready to use it. “I’m stepping out. Just outside. Close up, alright? I want to see what’s going on.”

I waved them off and headed back upstairs. I wasn’t as concerned about aliens as I had been. That blast should have done a number to anything outside, aliens included.

“Myalis, can you connect me to Gomorrah, please?”

Certainly.

I closed my eyes for a moment and just breathed. The line beeped and I heard Gomorrah talking to someone. “...Do what you can. Empty the infirmary. There should be more help coming soon. Give me a moment, I’ve got a call. Cat?”

“Hey,” I said. “Did you feel that?”

“If by ‘that’ you mean the dozen orbital strikes less than ten kilometres away, then yes, we all felt it.” She was a bit terse. Maybe I could cut back on the snark? A little bit?

“Everyone alright?” I asked. “Are you alright?”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Everyone else... well, there aren’t any dead. Biggest injury is a broken leg. One of the police officers climbed up the wall to see the light show. He was thrown off. We have a lot of smaller injuries. The entire side of this building facing the blast had windows. There’s just... blood all over. We’re trying to set things up. Get glass out of cuts and bandage them up.”

“Oh, shit,” I said. I hadn’t considered that. “I heard you saying something about help. That’s not me, right?”

“No. Army is coming in from New Montreal. They should be half an hour out. The army-army, not some PMC,” Gomorrah said. She sighed. “I can’t wait, this entire thing has turned into a mess.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m going to stay here for a bit. There’s a shelter with a bunch of civilians in it. Once you get in touch with the army, can you have them send a few soldiers this way? We can escort them to the headquarters.”

“You don’t want to do that yourself?”

I shook my head. “Not in this mess.”

The streets were covered in debris and a few trees had fallen. The power lines had snapped in a few spots too.

“Do you still have power?” I asked.

“Generator,” Gomorrah said. “They have a smaller one here, enough for the lights. We’re using the steps instead of the elevators too. Apparently there are bigger generators over by the mines.”

“We’ll see if we can’t get the army to move them over,” I said.

“That’s an idea.” Gomorrah paused. “I’m getting a request for a call with someone, I’m patching you in.”

I didn’t have time to protest that my augs shifted and suddenly I was looking at the face of a smiling man in a business suit. “Hello Gomorrah... and Stray Cat? Pleased to meet you. How are things on the ground?”

“Gomorrah, who’s this fucko?” I asked, politely.

Gomorrah snorted and the guy’s face went through a few emotions. “This is the one in charge of the orbital weapons. No, he’s not a Vanguard.”

“I’m Lorenz,” Lorenz said.

“That’s nice. Why the fuck did you hit so close to the town?”

“Uh, that’s where the hive is?” he said. “I actually stopped firing early. We were supposed to hit twelve times, then six more times in the centre, right over the main body of the hive, but there’s some tectonic instability in the region from the first hits. We’ll need to wait for that to clear out first.”

“Another wave of hits?” I asked. “The place is barely keeping together as it is.”

Lorenz seemed to disagree. “We need to eradicate as much of the hive as we can now, before we send you in to weed out the rest.”

“I’m sorry, what?” I asked.

“The Black Bear Mining Corporation has been using new technology to find mineral deposits,” he said. “Instead of strip mining, they’ve been using tunnels to reach those deposits directly.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Lorenz, what the fuck are you on about?”

“I’ll admit, I’m curious too. This seems like an unnecessary tangent. We’re trying to save lives here, we don’t care about mining.”

“Sorry, sorry. It’s just that we think the local Antithesis hive has relocated into the mining shafts around Black Bear. Some of the scans of the mines we have don’t match up to the official records the company keeps. For that matter, they’ve been extracting more ore than they should have.”

“So the aliens are underground,” I said. “That is, if you didn’t collapse them in.”

“The shafts should still be there. The next wave of HVWs should be stronger, with bunker-buster munitions. It will be a bit harder than the last blast.”

“HVW?”

Gomorrah was the one to reply. “High Velocity Weapon. The kinetic strike rods they just used.”

“Okay,” I said. “So you want us to go skipping around in some mineshaft, to kill some aliens, while folk around here are screwed over by your inability to aim?”

Lorenz looked a bit pale. “Yes? ... Ma’am?”

“Lorenz, where are you right now?” I asked.

“I’m not supposed to disclose that?”

His IP traces back to a Family-owned complex in Wyoming.

“Wyoming, huh? Lorenz, I’ve decided that I don’t like you. So if you want me to do anything that isn’t driving over to... wherever the fuck Wyoming is, then you’d better become real convincing real fast. I’m not in a good mood.”