Chapter Five – Leadershipping

Chapter Five – Leadershipping

“It takes the average samurai three incursions before they reach a level of comfort and stability with their own abilities and tools to be completely effective. Some take longer, and others are naturally inclined towards the lifestyle of a samurai. A few rare examples flake out and decide not to take part in combat and alien-hunting directly.”

–The Family’s Guide to Working with Noobs, 2051

***

“So, what do you know about the locals?” I asked as I followed Gomorrah outside. I immediately put my question on hold as I took in the car sitting on my landing pad.

The Fury had been Gomorrah’s baby. I think the only thing she loved more than that car was fire and maybe Franny, in that order.

The car sitting ahead of me wasn’t the Fury, not unless Gomorrah had gone really nuts with the modifications. It looked a bit like her old ride though, but bigger and meaner. The car was stationary, but it looked like it wanted to be breaking every speed limit in the province.

Four metres of pitch-black, obviously armoured skin on a chassis that reminded me of an old-timey muscle car, with sharply angled panelling. It sat low on the pad, fat wheels tucked deep within. “Damn,” I said.

“Pretty, isn’t she?” Gomorrah asked, clearly proud. “I’m calling her the Fury Resurrected. It felt like an appropriate name. Bigger engines, a better environmental control system, actual space-capable thrust, and a lot more armour than the first Fury.”

“Wait, it can go to space?” I asked.

“Yes, but not for long. And not very well, honestly. If I wanted something space-capable I’d just buy something specifically designed for it. I’m just saying, it’s a lot faster and can take more of a pounding. Oh, and it’s better armed too. Two gatling guns at the rear, a forward-firing railgun, a missile launching system and flamethrowers for up-close work. It won’t be knocked out of the sky by an unlikely strike from a passing model eleven. Oh, and the interior’s big enough to accommodate power armour.”

“Oh, that’s a nice change,” I said. The doors to the new Fury opened up, gull-wing style, and I slid into the passenger seat while Gomorrah went around. “Hey, is this real leather?”

“Real fake leather,” she said with a nod as she sat behind the wheel. The interior really was more spacious, though I still pitied anyone that had to squeeze into the back.

“Nice,” I approved. “So, are we heading straight south? What’s the plan here?”

Gomorrah reached to the console in the middle of the dashboard and touched a few buttons. A hovering map appeared between us, projected from a tiny pin-prick hole in the ceiling. New Montreal was impossible to miss, at least until she zoomed out and moved south across a bunch of nothing towards a city that looked a good deal smaller than ours.

“This is Burlington,” she said. “It’s a fairly small city. Population: just over half a million. There’s a big university there, and not too much else. It’s mostly a retiree city.”

“So chock full of old people?” I asked.

“Just about,” Gomorrah agreed. She set the new Fury into motion and we smoothly rose up and away from my place, then we turned and started flying just under the skylanes which had the most traffic. “The place is guarded by three samurai. They’re all new. Like, very new.”

“We’re not exactly old,” I muttered.

“Compared to these three, we might as well be,” she said. “All three of them became samurai near the start of the global incursion. Like Jimothy. But they’ve had it a bit worse. They were the only ones around to defend the city, except for the local cops, and maybe a small militia.”

That sounded like a hot mess. I could see why Laserjack or whoever wanted us to fly over and check on the place. “What are things like?”

“One in five dead, nearly half the city lost, it’s just not looking very good, and while the big-name samurai have been actively breaking most hives, I don’t think they’re destroying those inside of cities.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Too much collateral, there are shelters and people hiding that would die just because there’s a tiny hive nearby. Look, Atyacus will send you the package.”

I got a ping, and when I checked it (It had taken surprisingly little time for me to get used to not having pop-ups and ads shoved through my augs at all times of the day) it was a set of compressed files from Gomorrah.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

I leaned back, trusting the nun to drive while I looked over what she’d sent. There was a lot there. Maps, connections to live satellite feeds, historical documentation about the city, the location of shelters and projected numbers of survivors. Just heaps of stuff. But it was also organised so that I wasn’t instantly swamped without a clue of where to start.

The thing that caught my attention first was the time-lapse of the antithesis movement in and around the city.

They started on the edges, but most of them seemed to come from this big lake right next to the city. The aliens poured out right onto beaches and behind waterfront homes that had no defences. The defences the city did have were all outwards-facing from the outer edge of the city. Nothing faced the waterfront.