Chapter Forty-Nine – I’m Cat and You Are Watching Deep Space Ballistics!

Chapter Forty-Nine – I’m Cat and You Are Watching Deep Space Ballistics!

“Today, we’re going to see how these watermelons fare against this discarded samurai railgun we found by the Ohio incursion zone!

Stay tuned!”

–Youtube video transcript, 2032

***

The bomb went off, then, in less time than it took for two neurons to connect, the projectile it launched was ramming into Phobos’ surface.

“Fuck yeah!” I cheered as we got a big-screen view of the strike. Tankette had brought her tank around and installed a little projector on it. Major Tinwhistle had found a large white tarp and had it strung up between two cranes.

Sure, this was probably the kind of shit that ought to be classified or something, but it felt wrong not to have the entire group witness the fruits of their labour.

Engineers were whistling, workers were cheering. Someone had broken open a case of beer and they were being passed around. Another had set up a bar-b-que and cheap hot dogs were being roasted. It made the entire place feel like a party.

It was deserved. These guys and gals had spent hours working on the Big Gun. Without them, this moment wouldn’t be happening. It was a rush job, done with no time to spare. I looked around and saw plenty of baggy eyes and slumped shoulders. These people were exhausted, but they were also happy for the moment. Proud, at least.

I turned my attention back to the projection. Our strike was creating a moving wall of dust and debris away from the point of impact. A small stud of a mushroom that was slowly expanding against whatever gravity Phobos had going for it.

The spots where the Keiretsu nukes had hit had taken hours to clear out, and they’d left a few massive craters behind.

I had to wonder what our hit had done… but not for long, because the screen split and the right side was replaced by a 3D diagram of the moon’s surface. Lots of numbers were thrown up on screen, but it didn’t take a geologist to see the spiralling cracks moving away from the point of impact, or the way our shot had dug a hole right into the moon.

“What’s that bit?” I asked as I pointed up to where it looked like there was a second explosion way deeper in the crust.

I was surrounded by most of the other samurai in our group, but it was Major Tinwhistle that answered. “Spalling,” she said.

Let me draw up some pathing predictions.

New lines appeared, showing where the chunks blown out of the back of the crust would have gone.

“The moon’s surface is tough, like a shell, but the interior is likely all antithesis, with tunnels and structures dug into the moon, but also large roots and veins and arteries as well as organ-like structures within the moon,” Grasshopper said. “We’ve likely done more damage with our one strike than the previous wave of drones managed to accomplish.”

“Damn,” I said. I was feeling a bit of that pride too. It looked like we’d done the equivalent of popping the alien with a small-calibre bullet that broke up inside of them.

Having shot a few bigger aliens with small arms in my day, I knew that it wasn’t nearly enough to bring one down. But it was damage.

Then the diagram view zoomed way, way out, and I got to see the sheer size of Phobos compared to the tiny pinprick we’d stabbed into the moon’s side before the image winked out.

“We shot an elephant with a bb,” Hedgehog said.

“And next we’ll see if we can’t poke a match into the elephant’s hide,” Gomorrah said. “And if that doesn’t do it, we’ll try something else.”

“She’s right,” I said. “Our job isn’t to finish the job, I guess. It’s to keep poking holes, ripping bits off, and slicing off chunks of the moon.”

“The predictions are still in our favour?” he asked.

I shrugged, but Grasshopper confirmed it to me a moment later with a serious nod. “Seems like it.”

Hedgehog seemed a little restless. He was shifting his weight from foot to foot without ever standing still. “Fine. We need to set up a watch rotation on the Big Gun. And we need to set up a continued escort with the rest of the army. People will be asking questions soon, about why the advance has stalled.”

“Yeah. I bet that even with everything we’ve done, there will still be leaks,” I said. “It makes sense to keep a watch going. One or two of us here at all times?”

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“Two is better,” he said. “Some… would consider trying something against a single samurai. Any one of us could be distracted. But two? That’s a much bigger ask.”