Chapter Eighty – No Country For Old Cats

Chapter Eighty – No Country For Old Cats

“Die young. It’s not worth it, being old.”

–Slogan of the Young Bloods, PMC group, 2051

***

“Myalis, is that thing dead?” I asked.

Death confirmed. Points deposited.

“How many?” I asked even as I allowed myself to slump back. There was some crap on my seat that dug into my back. Oh, and I could see the sunlight through the walls of my mech, which meant that shit had been way closer than I liked.

You received two thousand points for the elimination of that Model Thirty-Three.

That was it? Then again, a chunk of that was split with Invincible. Maybe even ToeJam, if he’d damaged it and survived. Which meant that big fucker was worth a heap of points.

Probably less than what it would cost to fix my mech.

There was a shushing followed by a pop over the comms. “Samurai Stray Cat?” someone asked. Young, male, still kind of gruff sounding.

“Who’s this?” I asked. I hadn’t switched channels. Unless something got knocked around?

“This is Two. One is injured and I’m taking command in his stead. Can you confirm that you’re well?” Two asked.

Very imaginative names, this bunch. “I’m alive,” I said. “And not injured. My mech’s another story. The alien’s dead, but feel free to empty a few more rounds in the fucker if it so much as twitches.”

“Understood. Samurai Invincible and our team is coming around to assist you.”

I grunted, then reached over and grabbed one of the screens that showed my drone’s visuals. From above, it looked like… well, like I’d tumbled down the side of a short cliff with a fuck-large spider-velociraptor and crashed through the roof of a store.

I shifted until I was sitting back down, then I reached over and tapped into my mech’s diagnostics.

There was more red than I’d ever seen before. But… well, the mech was made tough. I knew, I’d opened it up a few times and fiddled around with its insides. I had a passingly decent idea of exactly how much of a pain in the ass fixing all the errors being thrown up would be.

I got my feet into place and grabbed the yoke, then I started to extricate myself from out of the alien’s body.

It was larger than my mech, kinda. The thing had a relatively small central body, but it had legs that went on for days. I had to chop off a leg with my mech’s claws to get it to let go, then all I had to figure out was how to climb out of the wreckage.

We’d fallen right through the roof of… was this a snow-mobile dealership? There were a few crunched up next to some ATVs. The lights in half the shop were down. There was almost enough room for my mech to stand there.

Crawling down onto my belly, I made for the exit, then shoved right through the safety glass.

Once my mech was out, I had it stand up tall and pulled the latch to open the cockpit.

Fuck-all happened.

“Yeah, figured,” I muttered. The cockpit was all chewed up. Something was probably jammed into something else and now it wasn’t opening up like it should. I bent down a little, then gave the roof a few swift kicks. Something crunched and the top moved up a little.

Enough that when I pulled the release again, it screeched upwards and out most of the way before getting caught on something.

I cursed as I left the cockpit and sat up atop my mech.

It looked like the alien had gone for the face. Honestly, that was for the best. There were lots of delicate, probably expensive sensors in there, but it was otherwise mostly for show. Then it had tried chewing on the mech’s neck, the top of it, where on an animal there would be a lot of important nerves and the start of its spine, and on my mech I had my cockpit.

There were punctures in the armour large enough for me to fit my thumb into. Armour meant to take small arms fire like rain off a windshield. A few bits were crunched in, and I winced as I ran a hand over a plate that was bent almost in half.

That was going to be a bitch to replace.