Chapter Fifteen – Spontaneous Lobotomy Syndrome

Chapter Fifteen – Spontaneous Lobotomy Syndrome

“Do not start a land war in the Middle-east, a war in the Russian winter, or against the Antithesis.”

–Advise for Fledgling Commanders, 54th edition, 2046

***

What in the fuck was I supposed to do about this moron?

A big part of me wanted to walk over and punch him in the teeth, then demand more explaining, but like… okay, sure, his dumb choices had probably led a few militia folk to die, but I’d made the conscious choice to stay in my warm bed at home instead of go out and save some small village somewhere… just about every day since I’d become a samurai.

If we counted inaction or stupidity as a valid excuse for teeth punching, then I’d be in dire need of a dentist.

“Hey, Crisis,” I said, keeping my voice low. It still carried in the empty room, but whatever. “In your opinion, has he been doing an alright job?”

Crisis Mode stood straighter, and I noticed her hands both reached up to fiddle with the little medic pouches on her suit. “Um,” she began.

“Am I being judged now?” Libre asked. He wiped his face clean, then stood there with a rather grim look on his face.

“A little, yeah,” I admitted. “Sorry, buddy, but it sounds like you kind of went off the deep end.”

His jaw worked, but he didn’t say anything for a moment, then he nodded slightly. “My actions may, I suppose, be read in an uncharitable light. But I’d like to point out that while I was and still am on a quest for revenge, I still did my best with regards to the overall tactical position of the forces at my disposal. We have managed to keep the Antithesis from breaching the walls for well over a week with little to no outside support. And… I haven’t yet elaborated on the overall political situation.”

“Political situation?” Gomorrah asked.

“Sec,” I said. “Crisi?” I really wanted to hear what she had to say.

Crisis Mode licked her lips, then sighed. “He’s a dick.” Libre flinched at the pronouncement. “But I don’t think he did that badly? He’s right that we didn’t have much. And his choices and orders weren’t all bad. Actually, no, they were usually really good. He’d have us bombard an area that they were tunneling through, or put up defences just before they attacked, or move a lot of people to a new part of the wall just before a push. It’s like he always knows what the Antithesis are about to do before they do it, and then puts people in place so that they’re, uh, in place.”

So he was as decent as he said? Or could come up with a competent plan or two. There had to be protocols for a siege against the Antithesis, right? Maybe I could give Professor Rogers a poke about it?

Still, what mattered more was that Crisis Mode wasn’t pissed off enough at the guy to pull a gun. That was a pretty good sign, probably.

“Great, you managed to be competent enough not to make enemies,” Hedgehog said. From the low, simmering scowl he wore, he wasn’t pleased with Libre either. “Let’s skip back to the important parts. Do you have a plan for the next few days, the next week? The number of enemies won’t go down because of wishful thinking.”

Libre nodded, then reset the hologram tank to a view of the city and its surroundings. He started to explain things, both with gestures and with glowing markers on the map beneath his feet. Known hive and nest locations, places where the Antithesis had been storing food, places where larger numbers of them were resting.

He had a damned goldmine of intel. Sometimes it was down to the individual number of aliens in any given spot, often he had drawn out the probable locations of communication lines between different sections of the hive.

If I didn’t come in thinking he was a bit of an ass already, I might have been impressed… no, that wasn’t fair to him, I was a little impressed.

His strategy so far was mostly reliant on small long-range strikes against key Antithesis positions. Sometimes to blow them up, but more often than not to draw them out.

By more or less cutting off the ways the Antithesis communicated with itself and by poking them in the face here and there with artillery strikes and drones and sometimes sending out troops outside of the walls, he was able to basically keep the aliens coming, but in smaller, more controlled numbers from predictable directions.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

It was kind of genius, even if it was simple on the surface. In practice, he had to keep a lot of moving parts going at the same time.

With us here, that would change, of course.

Juno’s people would bring a lot of firepower and a lot of flexibility, plus we now had a good reason to ask for reinforcements.

Then there was me and the others, Gomorrah, Hedgehog, Shy and Princess. That was a fair amount of samurai firepower.