Chapter Eighty-One – Touch Me…

Chapter Eighty-One – Touch Me…

“And so we discover that technology is sufficiently advanced, that what we understood was but a mere fraction of the whole, and that our instincts are nothing but fumbles in the dark.

What a time to live in, when there is so much to see in a world where mankind is introduced to the first true light, even if it may be of another’s making!”

–Professor Le Guin, 2038

***

I ended up asking the Family if they could spare a ride back to the Big Gun. My mech was loaded onto the carrier, with a bit of difficulty, and sent off towards home. I’d given the carrier instructions to park itself out on the porch, for ease of access later. I would move the mech into the garage when I got home and could supervise it a little. Maybe it was time I bought a mechanic’s catalogue and a few jacks and… those big fork things that they used to lift cars up, but for mechs.

I expected the Family to let me ride in one of their quadcopters, but instead they flew over a speedy little APC strapped on with some jet engines. It landed nearby, and I waved goodbye to the troopers still securing the area.

It was back to the Big gun for me.

Sitting down in the otherwise empty APC felt strange. I was drained. Maybe it was the adrenaline finally sinking, or the long ass day finally starting to weigh on me, but whatever it was, I felt like I hadn’t slept in three days.

I wasn’t physically tired, just… my brain felt a little buzzed out, but not in a pleasant way.

I stifled a yawn as the APC came in for a landing and I stood up and grabbed onto an overhead handle for stability.

There was a moment where I got a good view of the Big Gun site from above. The wave of aliens rushing towards us looked like it had petered out to nothing, but not without leaving some signs.

There was a trench of craters and burn scars a few kilometres long reaching out from the base and way out into the countryside. It was filled with small bits and pieces of aliens.

The newbies had been having fun, it seemed. A few larger corpses were tossed around there too, but nothing even in the twenties.

The Fury was parked nearby, so the moment the APC set down, I hopped off and started to search. I hadn’t thought about what might have happened to Gomorrah, to my friends, while I was busy with that Thirty-Three, but what if it wasn’t the only Samurai-killer out there today?

My shoulders slumped a little when I found Gomorrah, mask off, sitting near the Big Gun’s command room. She was talking to Emosythe, both of them holding onto paper coffee cups.

“Cat,” Gomorrah said when she saw me. “You’re back late.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” I said. “Did you hear what happened?”

She frowned faintly, then shook her head. “No? I just returned.”

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Emoscythe said. How she knew that when I was still wearing a helmet, I had no idea.

“I had a close call. Two samurai died to one alien, and a third was messed up. Got there and, uh, ran into one I’d never seen before.”

“Thirties or higher?” Emoscythe asked.

“Fuck me, I don’t know if I could handle something higher than the thirties now,” I said honestly.

She shrugged. “Saturation bombardment cures many ills. What did you run into, exactly?”

“A Model Thirty-Three,” I said. “Weird spider-dino looking fucker. It chewed my mech up pretty good. Injured this other samurai I’d never met called Invincible.”

“I heard of him,” Gomorrah said. “He’s Family through and through. I don’t think he’s from New Montreal. Somewhere further south. New York, maybe.”

I shrugged. “He got chewed a little too. But he’ll live.”

“Close calls happen,” Emoscythe said. “It’s why we’re paid the big bucks. The little Antithesis? Any properly organized army could take care of them. It’s the bigger ones that need special attention, and why we’re always valuable and tolerated. The praise and fame and such is just good PR on top of that.”

“Sure,” I said, because who was I to deny her. “How about you?” The last was directed to Gomorrah.

“A few newer samurai needed some help. The larger flying units need special attention to be taken out, sometimes. Gear that not everyone has access to yet. In any case, it wasn’t anything too bad?”

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“Yeah,” I said with a nod.

Gomorrah stared at me for a moment. “I’ve got things here handled, Cat,” she said. “Go home.”

“Huh? Nah, I’m sure there’s still shit to take care of,” I said. I still hadn’t gotten any news about Phobos, or, like, the wider situation. What if I was needed on some flank somewhere. Or another mean fuck like that Model Thirty-Three showed up?