Chapter Nine – Gotta Kill ‘Em All

Chapter Nine – Gotta Kill ‘Em All

“LOOKING FOR RECS

Thanks! <3″

–Readit Forum Post, 2039

***

We rode down the 117th until we were only two kilometres away from the model twenty-twos and maybe ten-ish from Echo Lake.

“From here on out, we’ll be off-road,” Gomorrah said. I was sure we were going to just ride off the highway and across some fields or something, but then Gomorrah reminded me that her car could fly and we lifted off the ground, coming to a hover about a metre in the air.

I tapped into the comms channel Myalis and the other AI had set up, it was private, just the bunch of samurai out here. “Hedgehog, Tankette, think you can keep up?” I asked.

“Looks like it,” Hedgehog said as he veered his not-humvee off the road and onto a grassy field. “Looks like there’s a decent route from here, and some sideroads out ahead. We’re not going to circle around?”

“I considered it,” Gomorrah said. “But it’s going to add a lot to our travel time. If we hit the model twenty-two all the way on the left then keep on straight, we’ll make it to the lake much faster, without risking the hive being aware of our arrival.”

“I don’t exactly plan on being all that subtle about it,” I said.

Gomorrah shrugged. “Let’s see how far we can get while driving, we’ll figure things out from there later.”

That was fair enough.

With the Fury in the lead, we rode out at a much slower pace across a field, over a few hills, then through a forest that had some trails cut into it that were just barely wide enough for the truck Hedgehog was driving to fit in.

About halfway to the first of the model twenty-twos, we met some resistance.

“Heatsource ahead,” Gomorrah said in clipped tones. I’d been talking to her about how awesome having colour-changing hair was, but I cut myself off mid-sentence as she spoke and sat up straighter.

“All I see are trees,” I said.

“It’s further ahead. I’m catching some blips of moving warmth. Not much, but that’s not surprising. They’re hard to see against the ambient temperature of a tree. Atyacus, can you… yeah, that’s right.”

A screen appeared over the car’s windshield. Or maybe it was more accurate to say that the screen that was in place of the windshield already started to display more than just an image of what was happening outside. The screen was one of those fancy thermal-vision things, painting the world in blacks and greys, with hotter areas being lighter.

A few distant blurs were a lighter shade of grey than the rest. “If they weren’t moving and building up heat, then they’d be basically invisible,” Gomorrah said.

“Wild,” I said. “So, we blow them up?”

Gomorrah considered it. “We could run past.”

“And leave them there?” I asked.

“If we start shooting and blowing things up, it’ll both slow us down and attract a lot of attention. Taking out the Echo Lake hive will be tough enough without having every antithesis within fifty kilometres rushing in our direction.”

It kinda made sense, on the surface. The aliens were generally shit at communicating between each other, so if we zipped by, the nearest would notice that we were here, but the further ones wouldn’t. And yeah, we’d get to the hive without it knowing we were coming.

But damn did that leave a bad taste in my mouth. “I don’t like it,” I said. “It’s our job to kill them all.”

“Be that as it may, a samurai has some leeway in their overall mission,” Gomorrah said. “Taking out a hive takes priority over killing chaff. We definitely won’t be able to kill every last one of the smaller models in the area, not if that means having to stop and comb through all of these forests for stragglers.”

I worked my jaw a bit, then nodded. “Okay. We break through, rush a spot near the lake, then get out and take care of it. Don’t forget, we’re here to get the newbies some points too.”

“Aww,” Princess said over the coms, which apparently had been on this entire time. “That’s really kind of you, Miss Stray Cat!”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author’s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

I closed my eyes for a moment and refrained from swearing.

Gomorrah flipped some toggles and switches on her dashboard–which had analog switches for some reason even though the Fury could obviously be controlled entirely via Augs–and the car clunked a few times as its weapon systems slid out of their respective holes.