Chapter Thirty-One - Gold Star

“Ah, hello there everyone!

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--Advertisement for A is for Ants, by Grasshopper, 2056

***

I wasn’t sure if I could drop the three or four metres to the ground in front of the mobile base without breaking something.

I probably could, my armour was pretty good. The problem was that I had a mental image of nailing a cool landing only for the mobile base to drive into me, and I didn’t feel like getting run over.

So I did the smart thing and climbed down the side where a ladder hung leading to a few feet off the ground. I jumped off halfway down, landed in a crouch, then took off sprinting to the front. The convoy was slowing down, just as Grasshopper said, which made it easy enough to catch up to the front.

I found Grasshopper ducking to the side as a model three leapt through where she was a moment ago. She pointed a gun into the alien’s side and emptied three rounds into its chest before it flopped on by.

More aliens were pouring out of the forest in ones and twos, but they were being intercepted by my B.E.E.S.. If they slowed down any, then Grasshopper casually planted a round into their heads.

“Good so far?” I asked as I ran up next to her and shouldered my Bullcat. My shoulder-mounted guns deployed and I checked my gear real quick, just in case. My bike was hovering just over the mobile base, if I was needed somewhere further back, I could hop on it and race over.

“So far, so good,” Grasshopper said. “Big group, four o’clock.”

I glanced to the right, then tensed up. A couple dozen model threes were rushing out of the woods, a model five trampling after them on huge, bulky legs. The entire group sailed over the ditch on the roadside, then scurried towards us. At some point they slid into the range of the nearest resonator, but that didn’t slow them down any, nor did the B.E.E.S. that flew over to the group and coated over them.

“Shit,” I muttered before shifting to the side and aiming down at the group. I opened fire, and for a moment all I could do was work to keep the recoil down as I sprayed them with pellets.

Skin was shredded apart, and one model three’s head burst like a melon being dropped onto a speedway, bits of the alien’s face flying all over.

My gun clicked empty, and I stepped back. “Myalis, reload.”

The Bullcat could reload automatically, the magazine in the gun dropping down and a fresh one teleporting into place. It still took a couple seconds.

Grasshopper hummed to herself as she ran towards the group. I almost screamed at her to stay back, but then, she was a samurai as much as I was.

The woman ran low to the ground. Halfway to the first model three she leaned way, way down, then she twisted around in mid-air so that she fell onto her back. The dozens of limbs on her suit clattered against the ground as she slipped under the first leaping model three.

She shot up and into its torso before her legs kicked up and she flipped back onto her feet. The entire time, her arms swung around, almost like she was dancing, and with every swing, she fired.

I blinked as a dozen aliens fell around her, pierced through their heads and the middle of their chests, all clearly dead. Then she spun and ran up towards the model five.

Grasshopper dropped both of her handguns, the two of them swiped out of the air by the arms on her gear. Reaching over her shoulders with both arms, she grabbed onto a pair of hilts pushed up by her equipment.

Two bright knives flicked out of the handles, each one longer than her forearm, and in one smooth motion, she stabbed down with both in an ice-pick grip and impaled either side of the model five’s head.

Grasshopper kicked off the alien, then retracted her knives. She placed the hilts at the base of her back, and retrieved her guns. “I like that sentence.”

“What?” I asked.

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I was impressed. Not even reluctantly impressed, just impressed.

“So far, so good,” Grasshopper said. “It’s an interesting sentence. It’s not particularly unique, but it’s still a fun expression.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Why did you run over to them? You have guns.”

Grasshopper looked away from me. “It looks cooler when you kill them from up close. I’ve been practising my gun-fu for months now.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, yeah, that looked really cool.”

Grasshopper glanced up, and clapped her hands together once. “Thank you. I appreciate it. Sometimes, just a few kind words can serve as enough justification for a lot of work. Humans are creatures of praise.”

“Hey, no problem,” I said.

More aliens started to pour out of the woods, and I fired into the head of the group. There were so many of them that even I would be hard-pressed not to hit at least a few of them with every shot I took.

Grasshopper continued to prove that she was the better markswoman, each shot from her handguns punching a hole through the head of a new alien and sending their body flopping onto the ground, very much dead.

The convoy was moving at maybe four or five kilometres an hour, about normal walking speed. It was about a kilometre long, and we had to cross a kilometre of ground, which meant that it would take us...

I tried to work it out in my head, find X where X was the duration of time the convoy would be staying in the forest for, but I couldn’t figure it out. Maybe if I had pen and paper and a shit to give.

“How long is this going to take?” I asked.

“Do you need help with the math?” Grasshopper asked.

“I just need an answer,” I said.

She shook her head. “Come on, Stray Cat, it’s not too difficult. I’m sure someone as clever as you can work it out. Oh, look, a model four!” She spun around and fired full-auto into a model four tentacling its way over the ditch.

I muttered to myself as I worked it out. This was now a matter of pride. “Okay, one kilometre of woods, at about five kilometres an hour, that’s... sixty minutes divided by five? What’s sixty divided by five?”

“You can work it out by making the question a bit easier. How many times does ten fit in sixty?”

I swore under my breath. “Six.”

“Good! And how many times does five fit in ten?”

“Twice, so twelve. It’ll take twelve minutes to reach the end. At least, for the front of the convoy.”

“The convoy is a bit longer than a kilometre, but we can round it down to make it easy,” she said.

“So, twice that? Twenty-four minutes to cross the forest?”

“More or less! Good job!” She lowered her arms, stored her guns away, then walked over to me while bringing her hand out. A small box fell into her outstretched palm. She’d bought something from her AI?

Grasshopper opened the box, then pulled out something from within, a piece of folded paper of some sort? She peeled something off of it, then before I could react, pressed it against my chest.

I stared. There was now a golden star on my armour, just below my collarbone. It said ‘Maths whizz!’ on it.

“Good work. I’m proud of you.”

I felt some warmth climbing onto my cheeks and was thankful for my helmet hiding my face. “Seriously?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said without any hesitation or even a hint that she was joking. “You did well. I know that math isn’t easy for everybody, but I’m proud that you tried--and succeeded--out in the real world.”

“You are so fucking weird,” I muttered as I turned around and refocused on killing the nearest xenos. I didn’t pull the sticker off. It was probably some weird alien-tech that would make it hard to remove.

“Being weird isn’t bad,” Grasshopper said. “It doesn’t stop you from being a good person. If you ever need more help with learning maths, I give classes. My students would love to meet you.”

“You give math classes?”

“Pre-K to sixth grade, yes.”

“That explains so much,” I said.

Still, even if Grasshopper was more than a little strange, she seemed nice enough, and for the next... twenty-three minutes or so, I was going to need her help, because the number of monsters rushing our way wasn’t stalling any.

***