Chapter Sixty-Four - Anti-Antithesis-Anti-Air

"Orbital defences aren't an option anymore. They're a necessity. I understand that there are political frictions involved with planting weapons past low Earth orbit, but for the safety and security of our nation and people, we must prepare to receive the alien threat as far from land as possible, and that means installations in outer space!"

--General Whitacker to the US Congress, 2023

***

"Hey, boss, what's the plan?" Gros Baton asked, leaning lazily against the doorframe of the Big Gun's command room. His call had caught the attention of the others.

I looked around. We were all here, it seemed, with one extra, even in the form of Emoscythe. Tankette was still making her way over while wiping her hands on a small tank-patterned towelette. She was close enough to hear, though.

A quick check of my augs showed me that we were a few minutes shy of six in the evening. When had the time flown? Also, had I skipped lunch? I couldn't remember if I'd eaten anything since that poutine earlier, and that was like, overnight.

Right, people were expecting shit from me, and I couldn't just sit here and bitch about being hungry, even if I really wanted to. "Alright boys, girls and Grasshopper," I said.

Grasshopper giggled, so I figured that one had landed.

"We've got more news, which sucks because I'm tired of this constant cycle of having to deliver news, then something weird happening, then having to deliver more news again right after. It's a boring circle. Fortunately, the boring circle will be busted up soon. The Family has their panties all knotted up, but I think they're getting their shit together too. They're laying out a grid of samurai to keep an eye on the skies and knock the aliens down."

"A grid?" Hedgehog asked. "What kind, and what are our numbers?"

I checked the thing Gomorrah had sent me. "We're up to a hundred and forty-eight samurai volunteering, which is pretty decent. The spacing is... awful. We're covering the entire hemisphere, which means a lot of space between points on the grid. The bigger cities mostly have locals staying in them to keep them safe, and they usually have their own AA so there's that."

"There are hardly all that many cities in this hemisphere," Crackshot said. "I reckon NM's the biggest here, then Quebec to the east and a few more south of us, but the north is wide open. The west has some pretty big gaps too."

"It's a problem, yeah," I agreed. "The nice thing is that no one sane lives in the north, so fuck it. If the aliens crash there, that's on them. They can eat snow or whatever."

"They'll need to be taken care of," Grasshopper said. "Just because a problem isn't right in front of you doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. The antithesis will have to be dealt with, even if they're not landing right on top of us."

"Well, that's where we're lucky," I said. "Because they definitely are landing right on top of us. Got the projections from our German pals. They did the maths and we're right smack-dab in the centre of the shitshow, and it's probably safe to say that this is where most of the aliens will be coming. We have almost a day before it's raining plants."

"So what's the plan?" Gros Baton asked. He pointedly looked up to the sky, where it was a bit overcast. "Tire le ciel?"

"If Phobos is already fucked, we can probably use the Big Gun a few times to shoot into the swarm," I said. "Does Earth have any orbital defences?"

"A few, yes," Gomorrah said. "There are some stations in orbit that belong to various samurai. You'll recall Deus Ex's station."

"That's the kind of thing I was thinking about, yeah," I said. I could still remember just... going into space on one of Deus Ex's planes and arriving at her station. I was pretty sure it was in low Earth orbit, not space, but I was also sure that I was the last person that should be discussing the difference between one and the other. "Her station had guns on it, right?"

"She's taken it to Mars," Gomorrah said.

"Wow, top-tier samurai are amazing," Princess said.

"Yeah, it's a whole other thing," I agreed. "And Deus Ex isn't the only samurai with a station, right? There has to be more? And if they left them behind, then that might knock some aliens out before they hit the atmo."

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"I wouldn't gamble on a few stations being enough," Hedgehog said. "Though this entire incursion and the Phobos situation might be the last kick that the governments and corps need to start building real orbital defences. They've been talking about it for thirty years."

"Budget issues?" I asked.

He nodded. "That and public perception. Some people said that the orbital stations would be used for mind-control and I don't think the smarter people out there had the time or patience to correct the idiot majority."

"Ah, that's rough," I said. It always sucked when the conspiracy theorists got in the way of progress. And it sucked extra hard when they turned out to be right. "So were there really mind control systems that were gonna be put on those orbital stations?"

Hedgehog gave me an unamused look. "They were to assist with advertising. They're not mind control."

"Uh-huh," I said. "Anyway, setting that aside. I think that whatever we have in orbit can help, but it's unlikely to be anywhere near enough to completely stop us from being attacked on the ground. I'm not even sure if any AA we buy will be enough."

"To add to that," Grasshopper said. "It's very probable that on entering the atmosphere, the antithesis will scatter signal pheromones. That might well trigger any still-dormant hives into awakening, but the last global incursion might have actually saved us there."

"How so?" I asked.

She gestured vaguely around us. "Because most hives were already awakened by similar means."

Which meant that they were already attacking or had been wiped out. The Phobos antithesis wouldn't find too many locals to help them, but just because we'd wiped out a number didn't mean that we'd taken them all out. This entire expedition had started as a way to go out and cull more and there was no lack of the fuckers around.

"Okay, so we're going to have to shoot them down, then probably deal with a local surge or something?" I asked.

"That sounds accurate," Gomorrah said. "Since we have time to prepare for it, we might be able to gain additional support from New Montreal to defend this area."

"More troops?" I asked.

She nodded. "And artillery. We're within range of the bigger pieces in the city, and well within range of any of the missile launch systems."

"Right," I said. "So primary focus is anti-air to knock the fuckers out, and then ground defences second?"

That seemed reasonable enough. The discussion turned towards just how much air defence we wanted. We'd all been earning a fair few points, and this next fight would earn us a few more, but the pool wasn't infinite.

In the end, Hedgehog and Emoscythe ended up being the ones leading that discussion. They both had more experience than the rest of us, one in military matters, the other with direct combat experience against the antithesis.

The plan was simple. Fill the air with so much high-velocity lead that we wouldn't even be able to see the plants before they came crashing down. Missiles were okay too.

Soon enough, we were all buying up some AA for ourselves. There were plenty of catalogues that had something capable of shooting into the air, and for those that didn't have the inclination, we were all up to sharing.

Tankette bought a large rack that fit onto her tankette, then she got a set of multi-barreled guns on a turret that hovered on top of that. Princess and Crackshot combined some of their catalogues into a sort of... very pretty boxy building with a single barrel sticking out of the top.

Grasshopper and Emoscythe both got their own small buildings, towers that were very much opposites. Squat and rounded for Grasshopper, with a sort of boffer gun atop it, and tall and angular and dark for Emoscythe. I was pretty sure that Emoscythe had done that on purpose, tailoring her design to... uncompliment Grasshopper's so much that it wrapped around to matching.

Gomorrah just bought a large missile launching system. She said it was like a HIMARS and I pretended that I knew what that meant.

Gros baton supplied a heap of ammo for the rather plain-looking installation that Hedgehog bought and dropped by the command centre of the Big Gun.

The others spread their things out a fair bit, placing them around the Big Gun but not all clumped together.

It left me with a spot of my own... which I now had to figure out how to fill.

***