“Are they all like that?” Sharron asked. I’d stopped referring to her by her Samurai name after our sharing session.

The two of us were staring down at the chaotic mess of Antithesis pushing back and forth across the bridge below.

“Seriously? How did you get to the precinct if you didn’t cross one of the bridges?”

“I walked through the canal. Environmental suit, remember.”

“Ewwww… I touched you after you walked through that?”

She glanced in my direction “It can’t be that bad.”

I locked eyes with her, “It can.”

There was a beat, then I turned away looking at the bridge below, and the wreckage of my 5th bear sitting on a roof nearby. “We could really farm some extra points here, I don’t know if that’s going to help us find the hive in the long run.”

Sharron pointed at one of the model twelve crossing back and forth. “There’s a lot of twelves going back and forth, I would bet they’re picking up biomass to take back to the hive. If we could track one…”

“It’s possible” Nyx’s voice once again came out of Spooky’s mouth, I nearly jumped out the window in surprise. “Evelyn’s Command and Control Utilities Catalog has several options for monitoring, it’s just a matter of applying one to a model twelve.”

“Oh, no problem then.”

Sharron knocked me on the head, “Evelyn sarcasm doesn’t help, ideas are what we need now.”

I rubbed my head, power armor assisted bops hurt. “What sort of options does my catalog have?”

“There are two options which may work for tracking Antithesis targets. A light dart which injects the target with nanites, which then reform as a tracker under the skin. Practically undetectable, but it will be difficult to penetrate a model twelves flesh, even if you hit an unarmored point. The other option is the suspended gel matrix tracker. These trackers are typically fired from grenade launchers, or something similar. The round bursts on impact and the gel instantly hardens, cementing the tracker to the target. Unfortunately these rounds are not subtle as they leave a stain on the target.”

“Could I maybe fire them from the CAR?”

“Adjustments could be made, there would be an extra cost though.”

I turned towards Sharron, “What do you think?”

“We probably want to hit a couple in order to get a good read on their pattern, we'd want to avoid alerting that mob down there if possible.”

“I can adjust the round to only thrust for the first few seconds. The Antithesis are unlikely to know where the round came from, even if they notice the impact.”

“Great! Then we just fight across the bridge, earn some extra points, and follow the signals to their destination. Anything else?”

I let my eyes slowly fall on one of the roofs far below.

“If we can… I’d like to retrieve one of my bears I had to leave here earlier”

“I KNEW IT! You’re attached to them.”

“Fine, maybe I am, a little bit, they’ve been saving me all day.”

She had that smirk again, “And they’re cute.”

I wasn’t going to acknowledge that, even if it was the truth. “And they’re expensive, it’ll never be able to build up any points if I abandon them.” I sighed, “I wish I could just build more in the Fabricator I found earlier, that would solve a lot of my problems.”

“Oh, yeah, you could do something like that.”

My brain stopped for a moment, then I turned on Spooky nee Nyx, “Pardon?”

“Well, not with a mundane fabricator, you’d have to purchase a Samurai grade machine and the required blueprints, but it’s possible. You’d just need the raw materials.”

“Why did you not bring this up earlier?”

“You never expressed the desire to build your bots yourself. Plus, you’d only be able to fabricate basic bots with mundane materials and a Class I Matter Manipulator. You’ve barely stopped moving since we met this morning, it didn't occur to me you'd want to set something like that up.”

"Is it expensive?"

"Relatively, a good creation machine costs more and, and you need to buy blueprints, if you plan on building everything the costs will pile up."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Fffffffffff….ine, we’ll put a pin in that for now. I'll start saving for it and figure it out later. Let’s deal with the situation at hand first. One step at a time.”

Behind me, I could hear Sharron laughing.

**********************

We decided it was better to track as many twelves as possible, so I emptied my reserves. The tagging went smoothly, unfortunately one shot went low, splattered against the twelves side instead of the top, and alerted the surrounding swarm. Thankfully they were just too stupid to find us in our elevated position.

After the tagging we advanced, stopping right before the convenience store I’d left my bot at earlier. I'd say we were sneaking, but Humboldt’s armor wasn’t built for stealth. Somehow, we managed to get close enough to see the back of the store without being detected.

“I don’t think that ladder’s going to support me”, Sharron said, looking at the old, rusted ladder bolted to the back of the building.

“I’m not even sure if it’ll support MY weight,” I replied back, “I’ll send a couple of the bears up there. It’s a good position to set up that railgun Spooky is carrying; I left a heavy machine gun up there too. Rather than rushing across, I’d rather clear out a significant number so we can cross safely this time.”

“No arguments here, the less Antithesis running around the better.”

“Nyx, how is the tracking going?”

I’m mapping their positions now, by the time you’re done here I should have some points of interest identified.

“Good. Make sure to keep the reloads coming for everyone, and get that bear up ASAP.”

Got it.

Sharron lifted her cannon, “Let’s get to work.”

I’d seen the aftermath of Humboldt’s attacks before, it paled in comparison to seeing her in action. She just walked out, it was like she didn’t even care about the Antithesis in front of her. Then, the lasers opened up, each one burned a line through a model three then seamlessly moved on to another target. One tried to flank her, but the lower tentacle intercepted and decapitated it, effortlessly.

It took me a moment to recover from the awe of the situation and order my bots to attack. The heavy machine gun opened up on the Antithesis coming in behind us, ripping through the Antithesis reinforcements. The rifles picked off individual targets with frightening precision.

I ran out behind Humboldt, sighting my CAR on whatever heavier Antithesis I could. For long minutes, a relative stalemate occurred. We couldn’t thin the Antithesis’s numbers enough to clear a comfortable path, they couldn’t approach close enough to get a hit on us. Both ends of the bridge were just covered by the dead.

Suddenly, pain blossomed in my side and I found myself thrown to the ground. As I skidded across the asphalt I saw what hit me. A model four was climbing over the side of the bridge, it must have traveled along the underside to flank us.

I reached for my rifle, only to grasp air. Looking around I saw it sitting a few feet away, right before the four stepped down and crushed it. The beast reared up, and its tendrils shot forward, barely missing my face as I ducked, rolling to the side.

In desperation, I grabbed my last remaining weapon, the ax. The blade hissed to life, instantly going red hot, and I swept it through the tendrils before they could retract, severing them all; The creature reared back, screaming silently. Pushing myself to my feet I stepped forward, bringing the ax down on its face, the tendrils still writhed but without direction now, so I brought the weapon down again, and again. Finally, the beast laid still.

You’re lucky your armor held, your side is still heavily bruised.

“Don’t care, the stupid thing stepped on my rifle. I liked that rifle”

You want a new one?

I slung my ax back across my back, “Yes, in green this time.”

The new rifle just materialized in my hands, the body a dark green instead of black. A smile crossed my face.

You’re really easy to please sometimes.

“Shut-up.”

I would but we have an issue, twelves are approaching the bridge from both directions. Your bots can take care of the one behind you with the XR-railgun, but the other one will be on top of you before it cools down.

As he said this there was a bright flash behind me and a thunderous boom as the XR fired. If it was anything like last time, we’d never have to worry about the twelve on that side.

“Shit”, I stepped closer to Humboldt’s back, raising my voice to be heard. “Model twelve incoming from your side of the bridge, can your cannon handle it.”

“We’re about to find out.”

I felt a rumble from the far side of the bridge, the Antithesis parted, forcefully. Even from my position I could see model threes being thrown to the side as the twelve charged forward. We both opened up with our weapons, my CAR barely making a mark on its armor, Humboldt’s cannon managed to damage it, but not enough to slow it down. The rampaging beast slammed into Humboldt’s armor and sent it tumbling into the railing. Before I could react it turned, slamming into her again, the railing broke away.

My heart jumped into my throat, as her armor fell back. Just as it started disappearing over the side the two blade arms shot up and embedded themselves in both sides of the model twelves neck. There was a high pitched whine as the suit’s legs caught the edge of the bridge and pushed, over the noise I could vaguely hear Sharron’s voice “You’re coming with me”. Then the twelve slid off the bridge, plunging both of them into the sludge below.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

I scrambled to the edge, looking down into waters below. I couldn’t see any sign of the twelve or Humboldt’s armor below.

Calm yourself, Aeonys has notified me that Sharron is fine.

Rushing back down the bridge, I stood on the edge of the embankment, looking for any sign. Slowly, a heavily armored form dragged itself out of the canal before dropping down on the ground, exhausted.

I moved around the suit, trying to get a look inside. “You ok in there?”

“No. You know how you said that sludge was bad? It’s so much worse than you said. That thing started to dissolve as soon as it went under.”

“I warned you.” I laughed, in spite of myself “That was one hell of a move you pulled.”

Inside the suit Sharron was laying down, eyes half lidded. “Thanks.”

“Now back on your feet, our work isn’t done here yet.”

She groaned, “I hate you so much right now.”