Chapter Forty-Three – Danger Close

Chapter Forty-Three – Danger Close

“All locations in proximity to a samurai in action are to be considered danger close.”

–US Armed Forces NCO Basics manual, 2027

***

When I thought the swarm would be on me ‘soon’ I meant in a few minutes.

I severely underestimated the speed that a few thousand aliens could pick up when they were hungry for human. The tip of the swarm poured down the streets below me. Teeth glistened, eyes narrowed, and they started their mad search for threats. No growling, or mad howls though. The creeps were as silent as ever.

So I decided to make up for their silence all on my own.

“Thanks,” I muttered as I caught a grenade out of the air. I tugged the pin off, then underhanded it down the street.

Dropping to one knee, I watched the explosive disappear in the swarm.

Then it detonated.

A loud whomp filled the air while a circle a couple of metres wide appeared in the swarm. Every alien in the circle was flattened to the ground, as if they’d just been stuffed into the world’s biggest hydraulic press.

Body parts flipped along the edges of the effect, entirely detached from the rest of their bodies.

“Not bad,” I muttered.

The hole filled itself up a half-second later. There were just too many of the bastards for it to make a difference.

“Not bad, but not enough,” I said. I glanced around the city. Lots of apartments, plenty of shopfronts. All fucked now. “Yeah, we’re giving up on the no-collateral thing. We can rebuild, but only if every last one of these fucks is dead. Myalis, I need something that’ll wipe the street.”

There are hundreds of options.

“Not fire,” I said. “Don’t want to step on Gomorrah’s toes. How about… hey, do you think we could melt them all?”

An acid? There are grenades that can spread acids around them. There are even some that will hover over the ground and mist the air with highly corrosive chemicals, some of which are tailored to melting Antithesis flesh.

That wasn’t what I had in mind, but it sounded really cool. “Yeah, I like that idea. Gimme something to drop, I want to see how it works.”

Myalis summoned a box next to me. It had a container with a sloshing liquid within, and three little propellers on stalks around it. It looked a bit like a cheap toy drone.

Toss it ahead of you after pressing the activation button. It will move to hover over the street. It has cameras with which to find the best location.

I pressed start, then tossed it out ahead of me. The drone flipped twice, then fired up with a high-pitched hum. It bobbed in the air for a second before a nozzle opened beneath it and it started to spray a mist of glowing green liquid.

“Is the acid glowing?” I asked.

Yes. Humans are more cautious around dangerous chemicals when they glow.

The mist hit the monsters below, and I could see fur falling off in great tufts and skin blackening and peeling off. A few of them got some in their eyes and they went rabid shaking their heads.

That worked.

I stood up, checked the sky for trouble, then started running again. Every time I jumped to another rooftop I’d drop another grenade down to block the alleyway, at least those I’d marked out on my map. Myalis provided me with a constant supply of acid drones. They hovered over the street, and soon the entire road glowed a faint green as the mist was carried over everything.

The shit was eating through the paint on abandoned cars and peeling ads off of bus stops, but it was doing a number on the model threes too.

The bigger models not so much. Model fours were hit hard. They had a lot of tentacles and all that, but I think something about their skin might have made them more resistant, though not by much. The model fives were just tanking the damage. They were big and thick enough that even my latest war crime of a grenade wasn’t killing them quickly or efficiently. Maybe it would weaken them, injure a few, even, but unless they chose to stand under the acid shower, then they’d still be a threat.

“Need some gravity nades,” I muttered as I leapt onto another rooftop. Myalis obliged, and I underhanded a couple of them over the crowd of aliens.

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Increasing the gravity in an area or whatever did a number on the bigger, tougher bastards.