Chapter Sixty-Two - Getting Out of Hand

“You can never be too prepared when dealing with an incursion. When on defensive duty, it behooves a commanding officer to spend their entire budget on good equipment. Yes, cutting corners is tempting, but history and statistics have proven that more money is saved by having better equipment than by purchasing and equipping soldiers with poorer equipment.”

--The Awe Strikers, CO manual, Page 257, 2044 edition

***

“This is getting out of hand,” I shouted over the din of constant gunfire.

The debris barrier had served its purpose, it had slowed down the alien swarm for a good long while.

Now, the wall of crumbled cement was riddled with holes as artillery shots from the antithesis exploded against the far side and bigger models rammed their way through the debris. The smaller, more nimble aliens just continued to flow over the wall without much issue.

We were burning them. We were shooting them full of holes. We were even outright melting them with acid and resonators. The occasional bomb set off in their midst was chewing through their numbers too. I was tossing everything over to the wall to slow the tide down.

Blackhole bombs could only take so much before they stopped. Zero-kelvin grenades would slow the advance down, but only in pockets. Garrot grenades were great at mulching the smaller antithesis, but against the more armoured ones they would break apart after a few seconds of sustained use.

Gomorrah’s flames grew hotter as she switched over to a new gun. Soon the PMCs on her side were inching closer to mine, away from the scorching heat. I think Crackshot Cowboy to my right got some sort of infinite-ammo thing for his gun because he was firing a whole lot faster. He’d need to replace the barrel soon, it was glowing orange, and not from any RGB.

“Christ,” Gomorrah said. “This isn’t working. We’re not going to hold them back forever.”

Eventually bigger, stronger models would show up. The barricade we had would fail. Or maybe we’d just run out of bullets. There were vans driving over to the backlines with entire pallets of ammo boxes, but I didn’t think that would be enough, even with teams of volunteers reloading magazines that were being run back and forth.

“Myalis, one of those fire-lasers, please,” I said. She dropped the grenade into my open palm and I flung it forwards with a grunt. It flew a good long ways before bursting and sniping a dozen aliens with fiery beams of reddish light.

That poked a hole in the alien carpet.

The hole was filled a moment later.

“Fuck me,” I swore.

“Yeah, I feel ya,” Jimothy said over our shared comms.

I had points to spare. Thousands of them. What I didn’t have was time. I was really tempted to start chucking nukes or their equivalents onto the aliens, but I had to worry about collateral damage, which meant using more precise weaponry.

“Go wider,” Gomorrah said. “Bigger effects, everyone.”

Bigger effects... I could do that. “Myalis, I need the mother of all acid bombs. I want to carpet the entire area in alien-melting goop.”

That can be arranged. Might I suggest bombs which have highly-pressurized compressed space within them? If filled with sufficiently dangerous chemicals you could quite literally flood a large space with your chemical of choice!

“Sounds perfect,” I said. “And give me something to shoot it with. I don’t want something too dangerous to go off at our feet.”

Understood. Delivering.

“Head’s up!” I shouted aloud. “Switching guns. Keep up the fire!”

The amount of gunfire redoubled for a moment while I ducked back. A pair of boxes appeared next to me. One long and big enough that I could have stuffed Lucy into it, the other the size of a fat briefcase.

I opened the smaller of the two, revealing two big, egg-shaped objects that were very obviously bombs. They had little fins on the back and black-yellow warning stripes around their middle. Each had a cap with a different colour. Green and blue.

The green one should be fired first. It’s an aerosolized acid dispersal bomb. Despite its size, the bomb contains point five tonnes of hyper-compressed gas. The blue bomb contains a connection to what is essentially a massive off-planet vat of liquid acid. It’s technically a sulfuric acid, though the exact chemical makeup is somewhat dissimilar to the frequently-used acid and there are several additives.

“Green first, got it,” I said. I popped open the second box to reveal a long tube with pads for it to hang onto my shoulder and a trigger mechanism at the front. There was a big opening on the side, very conspicuously bomb-shaped. “Alright,” I said. “I think I’ve figured this one out already.”

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Very well done. Place the bomb into the slot, business end pointing forwards, then aim and fire. The launch device has no safety, so please be careful.

I picked up the launcher, grabbed the handle, then reached down for the green-topped bomb.

Damn thing was heavier than it looked, by a lot. Still, I managed to load it into its slot. As soon as it was in, the opening closed with a clunk and a few lights on the side of the barrel went green.

I dropped to one knee and aimed down a holographic sight on the side of the barrel. It very conveniently showed me the arc the bomb would take. Tipping the entire thing back, I aimed skywards, then pulled the trigger.

The bomb flew forwards with a dull thwump, and I felt a slight kickback against my shoulder.

I followed its pretty arc across the sky. Just as it was about to disapper over the debris wall the bomb whooshed and the air filled with a growing cloud of bright green smoke.

“What’s that?” Crackshot asked.

“Acid,” I said. “Might want to warn the folk around here to avoid it. I’m going to fire something else at them.”

“I’ll take care of that,” he replied. “Need to let my gun cool down anyway.”

“Thank you,” I replied. The opening on the launcher’s side reappeared and I picked up the second bomb. The damned thing was heavier than the first.

This time, I aimed a little higher. Another loud thump, a hard shove against my shoulder, and I got to see the bomb fly over and smack a model five atop the head with enough force that I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to make it.

No bang this time, though maybe the bomb’s noise was swallowed up by the still-growing green cloud.

“Acid! Acid! Masks on!” some sergeant shouted. The PMCs took turns pulling on full-face masks. The militia folk too, though I questioned the quality of the masks I saw them putting on.

The shift meant that for a good few seconds, we weren’t firing into the mass of aliens anymore. The antithesis didn’t slow down, but when they came pouring closer, it was clear that the acid was working.

A model three with its eyes leaking down the side of its face jumped onto the barricade, jaws wide open to reveal a mouth with gums that had turned to liquid. A militiaman jammed the butt of his gun into the alien’s jaw and its many teeth tinkled onto the ground before it flopped back onto the other side of the barricade.

More aliens came pouring out of the smoke with their skin melting off. Eyes and lungs seemed to be impacted first. The antithesis were usually rather quiet but now they were gasping for breath with liquid rasps.

Having no eyes meant that they weren’t as coordinated as usual. Plenty of them were running parallel to the barricade now, and a number of them charged up and rammed the cement walls head-first, some hard enough that they died then and there.

I noticed some sort of gel-like substance sticking to a lot of them, usually around their legs and on the smaller models, their stomachs and tails and torsos. It was eating through their flesh at an alarming rate.

The gas was slowly dissipating. Or rather, it was spreading itself thin.

“Nice work,” Gomorrah said. “It doesn’t seem flammable either, which is nice, I suppose.”

“I mean, if you want to go all thermobaric on them, go nuts,” I said.

“Don’t tempt me,” Gomorrah said.

Our banter was cut off by a ringing. The Family was calling, and it seemed urgent. I answered, of course, while bringing my Bullcat up to spray at what aliens were making it through the acid cloud.

“Everyone,” Laserjack’s voice said over the line. “We’re almost in the clear. Almost. We have a large number of higher-numbered models coming. Brace yourselves. This is about to get a lot harder. For those of you at the very front... thank you. If you would rather back out now, we’ll understand.”

I think the PMCs and militia got similar messages. A lot of them were clearly listening to something.

And then, just like that, there was a sudden exodus.

I stared as entire squads grabbed their gear and ran back.

“What the hell?” I asked.

“They’re retreating,” Gomorrah said simply.

“Why? We’re winning, aren’t we? We can take on a few of the bigger bastards, no problem.”

That wasn’t quite true. ‘No problem’ was a lie. It would be hard. It would be much harder without the help of non-samurai.

“Ladies,” Jimothy said. “I don’t rightly think I’m ready for this part. Going to back up a ways and lay down fire from afar. Good luck, alright?”

I cursed under my breath. Why now, of all times?

“I think I need to make a call,” Gomorrah said solemnly.

***