Chapter Fifty-Nine – Hot Hives in Your Area!

Chapter Fifty-Nine – Hot Hives in Your Area!

“We don’t like the term trailer trash, we find it all sorts of offensive to our long heritage and ancestral culture. My great great grandfather bought that trailer with his own money.

If you need to call us something, then perhaps ‘Trailer-privileged Community,’ would be more respectable.”

–Jim “All Teeth” Vincerella, 2038

***

“Myalis, ‘nade. Something high explosive,” I said as I brought my left arm back. Something small and weighty fell into my hand, and my thumb naturally touched upon a trigger. It started to beep a moment before I flung my arm forwards.

The grenade sailed through the air, then smacked on the bottom lip of one of the holes in the hive. It bounced, then rolled in, disappearing from sight into the darkness within.

I brought my arm back around and continued to shoot.

Gomorrah was laying down a wall of fire that didn’t seem to want to extinguish, even with nothing to burn. It looked like her gun had shifted from firing… well, fire, to launching large, swelling masses of some goopy material that formed a large barricade ahead of us.

That barricade was, of course, on fire, and any alien that tried to climb over it soon found themselves glued onto a surface that was literally burning. They’d tug and thrash and sink in deeper into the goop even as they burned alive.

It was a sight to see.

I took a few of the smaller ones out of their misery, but I had bigger, meaner targets to focus on just behind the line of fire.

Then the grenade in the hill went off. Myalis hadn’t cheaped out on the ‘high’ part of the explosive.

The hill exploded outwards, man-sized chunks of dirt and roots flying away from the top while a rush of looser dirt was flung upwards and out.

I ducked my head as small pebbles and clods came raining down all around me. Some of them landed on Gomorrah’s fire, as well as a few larger stones that could serve as stepping stones, at least until she started hosing those down too.

“Did that do it?” I asked as I stood back up.

The tactical com from the soldiers registered a few scuffs. One guy was swearing up a storm as he’d been smacked in the face by a jagged piece of rock. I felt a little bad for the guy, but that was the price for playing with high explosives.

“No notification,” Gomorrah pointed out. “The hive’s still alive.”

“I can toss in a few more,” I suggested.

I had earned plenty more points from that stunt than the cost of a single grenade, after all.

“Let’s move up instead. We don’t know how deep it goes. Lieutenant, hold here, if you can. If it becomes too hot, then feel free to start pulling back.”

“Acknowledged, Samurai Gomorrah, we’ll hold,” the LT said.

That was simple enough, then. “So, we charge in?” I asked as I took a second to reload.

“We can at least get to the edge of the hive,” Gomorrah said. “I have some new equipment that I haven’t had the opportunity to field test yet. Your equipment is heat-proof, right?”

“Uh, a little?”

“We might want to set it off from afar, then. Just in case. I’m looking into replacing my skin with something less flammable. You might want to do the same.”

“I’ll add it to the list,” I said.

Once I got back home, I was probably going to give in and get a few upgrades. I didn’t wanna go full cyborg, but maybe being faster and tougher wouldn’t be so bad.

Gomorrah moved up, and I trailed right after her. She’d left a gap open in the wall of fire. It was still damned close to the flames, but there was a gap that we could cross without getting cooked.

The antithesis had noticed too, and were crowding on the other end. At least, until Gomorrah switched the nozzle from ‘tight’ to ‘spray’ and lit the fuckers right up. I shot into the bunch as well, punching holes into the tougher models that didn’t seem to mind being on fire as much.