Chapter Sixty-Three - Cat Called

"The history of telemarketing stretches all the way back to the early days of the Bell telephone, where only the eccentric and rich could afford a phone of their own and therefor they made for great targets for sales pitches and cold calls.

As history progressed, the phone became an ubiquitous part of human society. It's no surprise that ads vectored in throught that medium continue to be popular to this day."

--On Advertising, 2nd ed. 2049

***

Gomorrah was not happy with me.

I could tell, because she very pointedly removed her facemask so that I could get an unobstructed view of her glare. Also, the first thing she said when she arrived was "I'm not happy with you."

"Did you get a lot of calls?" I asked.

"I had to get an answering machine catalogue," Gomorrah said. "Your little prank has cost me fifty points."

"Oops?" I said. I wasn't actually remorseful, but I could pretend to be guilty like the best of them. "But hey, some of those calls are good, right?"

She sighed, but nodded. It had been a couple of hours since my broadcast. Most of us here were just chilling around the Big Gun, cheering whenever it went off and taking in the occasional update from Gros Baton about the progress around Phobos.

Things were actually looking up on that front. Phobos had been fucked up pretty hard, and it wasn't being allowed to recover at all. The constant swarm of drones were leaving their mark. Death by ten million cuts was still death, and we were helping by ramming the moon with the occasional miniature black hole or web of monofilament.

The points we were earning helped too, though it wasn't all that much all things considered. A nice, steady trickle every fifty-odd minutes.

I'd seen some images of the moon. It was fully split now, and some of the bigger chunks didn't even have tentacles keeping them together. Keiretsu drones with large thrusters were pushing the bits apart. It looked like they were moving at a snail's pace, but that didn't matter. It would be enough for those chunks to miss Earth entirely.

A one degree change so far out meant a whole lot to us down here.

The next use of the Teslacollider would probably be the finishing blow. We'd crush what was left of Phobos, and then all that would remain was the clean-up.

So, in a way, we'd won.

Woo.

Hurrah.

All that jazz.

Actually, sarcasm aside, the mood was pretty upbeat. Princess and Knight were prattling along to Emoscythe. Tankette was taking care of a food tent nearby, wielding a ladle like a king might a sceptre. Crackshot and Hedgehog were close to the entrance of the Big Gun's control room, close enough for Gros Baton to join in on their conversation.

I had listened in for a bit, and... it was really disgusting the kinds of things guys would start talking about when there wasn't a woman around. Not that I would start flinging stones from my glass house or anything.

The area was starting to fill up as well. The idea of keeping the Big Gun secret had flown out the window with my broadcast. There was too much background stuff. Some geoguesser would spot two trees and know the exact coordinates down to the centimetre. It was only a matter of time.

So if secrecy was out the window, then the best protection came from numbers, and that meant a huge influx of troops.

Major Tinwhistle's engineers had gotten back to work, setting up barracks and defences. The ground was being reinforced and extra concrete was being poured out into moulds for barricades.

The order of the day was AA. The incoming swarm was made up of fliers. Gunning them down before they hit the ground or even got close was our best bet for keeping the Big Gun and the area around it safe.

"We received some calls from several local samurai," Gomorrah said. "And several from some that aren't as local. I've gotten offers from some less-close samurai as well. Dreamer and Teddy from Calgary, Grey Goo, Myriad, Bloodhound, Magpie, Xenovir, Hard Rain, GroundWire, Speed Demon, Cassy the Clown and several others from Big Top, Gaea, Legion...the list goes on. I've also gotten some... unhappily-worded messages from the Family saying that they'll be willing to assist us with the logistics."

"Logistics?" I asked. "What sort? Are we going to be spreading people out?"

"Ideally, yes. It looks like this will be the epi-centre of the... pseudo-incursion, but antithesis will be landing all across this hemisphere." Gomorrah reached up and rubbed her nose. "It's a lot. We need to cover a huge area. There might be a few samurai that can do that, but they're not around, so scattering as many samurai as possible makes sense."

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"Alright," I said with a nod. "And the Family's taking charge of that?"

"They are. And I'm looking over every one of their choices now. They're annoyed that we didn't give them a proper head's up and forty-eight hours of lead-time before dropping that announcement."

Well, at least she was saying 'we' and implicating herself in the whole mess. "They do understand that forty-eight hours is too late, right?"

"Does logic and common sense ever stop you from being irritated by something?" she asked.

I didn't have to think about it for long. "No," I admitted. "That's a fair point. But you'd think they'd be better. Plus it's like, a whole-ass company. We're talking about them like they're one person."

"Sometimes it's just like that," Gomorrah said, and she didn't elaborate any before sending me a message. I opened it without checking. If Gomorrah was sending me viruses and shit then I would be in a rough shape already.

It opened to a map of our hemisphere, centred more or less on where the Big Gun was located. There were pins all across it in an array of colours with little icons next to them indicating who was where.

There was a grasshopper for Grasshopper, a tank for Tankette, a crown for Princess and so on. We were all squished in so close together that there was some serious overlap in the icons.

There were also, I noticed, 'ghost' icons. Those were sometimes linked to a more solid copy of the same. "Are these location markers?" I asked. The ghost icons and the rest were scattered across a wide area. Most of the northern end of the country and a lot beyond as well. Even some over the bigger lakes and out in the ocean.

"That's where the Family wants people. Each location forms the meeting point of a set of three equilateral triangles. So we'll be equally distant from each other except for a few areas of high importance, like right here."

"Makes sense," I said. Then I took in the scale of things. "How many points are there on here?"

"Not including the areas of greater importance? A hundred and twelve."

"That's not a lot of points," I said. Not for the amount of area we had to cover, which was massive.

"We don't have a lot of samurai," she said.

"Oh," I said. Right, this was all-hands on deck in a big way. Then the map updated and I noticed the triangles getting very slightly smaller, and some icons already hovering over their designated locations were being asked to move inwards. "Did we just get more?" I asked.

"This is with the current crop of volunteers," Gomorrah said. "And then, only those that are explicitly working with the Family. I'm, or rather Atyacus, is working to keep in contact with those that called me directly who aren't affiliated and who don't want to be. That's only a dozen or so samurai, so far."

"Makes sense. I'd be more willing to call someone directly than deal with a corp I don't trust in their shoes."

"Yes, it turns out that your fumbling around actually had some benefits."

"As planned," I said.

Gomorrah crossed her arms. "No. Not as planned. I refuse to believe that. In fact, I know otherwise. If anything, this is me looking very hard for a silver lining to your goofing up."

I laughed. "Sorry," I said. "So, are we stationed right here?"

"This is where it might be worse," Gomorrah said.

"And where we'll make the most points for defending," I said. "And where we literally have an army and no one civilian-like around for kilometres. We can afford to go all out."

"And we'll need to," Gomorra said. "What have you prepared so far?"

"Uh," I said.

Her eyes narrowed. "You have spent the last two hours or so preparing, right, Catherine?"

"How upset would you be if I did nothing but fuck around and chat instead?" I asked.

"Not upset. Disappointed."

"Ah," I said. "Well, that's no fun. But it's also the truth, so at least you know that I'm honest with you?"

"You're nothing but a pest, Catherine," she said. "We need AA set up, and soon. I'm thinking several larger guns. We need the ability to strike at small, distant targets. These enemies will have come through the atmosphere, so they'll either be weakened, or they're so tough that it didn't slow them down and that'll mean a whole other level of problem."

I nodded. She was right, we were dealing with mid-twenties enemies here, probably. These weren't model ones with a few burnt up feathers. They'd be genuine threats. "I'm sure we can get something going that'll give them all a proper Earthly welcome."

She nodded. "Good. Then we need to get ready to deal with those that survived the landing and any hives they might awaken on the way down."

"We're not finishing this tonight, are we?"

***