Chapter Sixty-Three - Meals Refusing Exit

"Are you certain about these two? They don't strike me as competent as their files suggest."

--Brigadier General Thibodeau, Internal Memo 2057

***

I was expecting some action.

Sure, we'd talk for a bit, do some planning, and point troops in the direction they needed to go in, but I expected to fight something.

The entire day passed without a shot fired, and I suspected that I was slowly losing my mind.

A month or so ago, not shooting at anything, and especially not having anything trying to eat me (Lucy excepted), would have meant that it was a good day.

Now the only thing I could think of was that if the aliens at least tried, then I'd have an excuse to not be in the increasingly stuffy command room of the mobile base with some of the stuffiest people who had ever stuffed.

Our progress was tracked in the slow rumble of the mammoth vehicle as it moved forwards at a pace that I could outwalk. It was so slow and steady that I could merely feel the motion, but we were moving, I knew because we were tracked on the large holographic map. Tiny pinpricks, moving ahead one pixel at a time.

The worst thing was the itching.

Actually, no, that's not true. The itching was a close second. The actual worst thing was the shitter. The mobile base had a tiny little bathroom, like something in an old-time aeroplane. So small that you needed to enter it from the side and duck your head not to bash it against the ceiling.

Navigating that in power armour was not possible, so I had to ditch the armour in the corridor, then squeeze my way in there. It was clean, at least. Some poor low-ranked fuck probably had the glorious task of brushing the whole thing out with a toothbrush every day, but clean was the only positive modifier I had for the washroom.

I knew it was a bad day when I was honestly considering the pros and cons of wearing a diaper in my power armour.

The convoy came to a stop at around eighteen hundred hours, a bit before sundown so that they'd have time to set up a proper camp. The spot was, until recently, a little lay-over town with a big gas station for automated trucks and a small row of old last-century homes. There was a supermarket with a big parking lot, all abandoned, but it was a wide open space with solid asphalt below.

A perimeter was set up, tanks were lined in neat, orderly rows, and a corps of engineers started setting up unfolding fences around the entire lot while others lined up a series of mobile bunkers (because the army was too fancy to call them mobile homes) for the soldiers to rest in.

Unfortunately, we could only move as fast as the slowest vehicle in the convoy, which meant we were moving as fast as the tanks with more interior volume than three bedroom apartments.

"That was a good day's work," Gomorrah said as she stepped out of the mobile base. She placed hands on hips and stretched her back out.

"Are you serious?" I asked as I slunk out after her. I was exhausted in a whole new way, and I hated it. "That was awful. Damned waste of time." I had a million new facts rattling around in the back of my head, and I couldn't wait for them to leak out.

Why was it so important that we have a forty-minute discussion about the type, quantity, and quality of rations?

The soldiers carried little MRE packs. Not the old shitty ones from back in the day, but these little flat-packed boxes that came with everything they needed and apparently tasted okay enough while still being full of nutrients and calories.

That was the marketing pitch, at least. The few actual soldiers in the room with us that had eaten them looked like they'd rather eat the no-ply toilet paper they had in their godawful washroom than one of those MREs.

As it turned out, the army had options, because whomever sold them the absolute fuckload of MREs they'd need to keep this operation going was going to make a tidy profit, and that meant that there was more than one person willing to secure that deal.

Hence, a too-long discussion about which corporation to go with for supplying the grunts for this trip. Some corps offered discounts, others came with subscription plans for each soldier, others were just offloading old shit for relatively cheap.

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I hated every second of it, even as I learned how it was all actually kind of important. Yes, figuring out how to supply the troops with food sucked, but it would suck a lot more when they all started to go hungry. I got that. I wasn't moronic. I just didn't want to be the one in charge.

"I'm having Lucy join the army," I said.

Gomorrah turned to look my way. I couldn't see her face, but something in her body language let me read her confusion. "Is this a uniform kink?"

"Yes. But also she's just better at this kind of thing than me. But yeah, the uniforms are kind of hot. Why aren't the guys in the command room all dressed up?"

"Because you don't wear a dress uniform while out in the field. It's not made for running around and shooting things with," Gomorrah said.

"That makes a startling amount of sense," I said. The Brigadier general and Lieutenant Colonel were wearing fatigues that weren't any different than any soldier's, minus the rank insignia. They didn't wear as much armour though.

Just about every soldier I saw had padded leg armour strapped on, as well as a chest rig over a breastplate and some vambraces over their forearms. The kind of shit you'd want--at a minimum--when fighting enemies that likes to jump up and bite your extremities. It was probably pretty sub-par for fighting armed humans, but that wasn't the goal here.

"You're heading home, I imagine?" Gomorrah asked.

"Yeah. I need it."

"If you want, leave your mech here. I'll give you a ride back," she said.

I smiled. "Thanks. I can always call my bike over. It'll only take a few to get here."

"It's fine," Gomorrah said.

We walked over to the Fury which was parked right behind the mobile base it had been following this entire time. Gomorrah tsked, then started to circle the car, looking for something. "What is it?" I asked.

"Look at all this dust," she complained. "Would it kill them to put some mudflaps on their base? I swear, they'll flick rocks all over my hood and windshield."

"Is the paint scratched?" I asked. The Fury was a cool, very-matte-black. I couldn't see any scratches, just a lot of road dust and dirt caked on.

"No, the paint's rated for the inside of a sun, it'll take more than a tossed rock to scratch it, but it's the principle that counts. You can't just... not respect someone's car."

"Uh-huh," I agreed.

She sighed and the car's doors opened for us. I made a show of tapping my boots on the ground before getting in. If she was this pissed about the outside, I didn't want to carry mud inside.

"Tomorrow should be better," Gomorrah said as she took off vertically, spun us around, then accelerated towards New Montreal in the distance.

"Really? Are we going to go over acquisitions for every kind of bullet again?"

She laughed. "No, but we might do peripherals! But more seriously, we'll be in higher-danger areas. The road between New Montreal and Saint-Jérome has been patrolled a few times, it's mostly safe. Further out is worse. That, and we'll be getting some more samurai onboard tomorrow."

"Anyone I know?" I asked.

"I don't know exactly who's coming," she admitted. "Jolly Monarch just let me know that we'd be getting support from some other newer samurai."

"Huh, alright," I said. There were a few newbies around. Cause Player was local, so was Crackshot Cowboy. Emoscythe was around, and so was Grasshopper, but they felt... not new. They both had some years under their belts and were probably able to handle bigger problems than Gomorrah and I.

Maybe I'd get to meet a few other newbies. With the global incursion going on, I didn't doubt that there were plenty of opportunities for new samurai to pop up.

Home came up ahead soon enough, and Gomorrah slipped into the parking garage at a speed that had me subtly grabbing onto my seat. "Home!" she declared.

"Yeah!" I said. It was nice to be back.

Now I just had the oh-so-enviable task of explaining to Lucy that I'd be gone for most of the day for the next... while and a bit.

Damn, how did people with jobs do relationships if they couldn't be home all the time?

***