Chapter Seventeen – Growth

Chapter Seventeen – Growth

“There’s famous samurai, and then there’s Famous ones. I’m not talking about your average joe with an alien chip in their head and a bit of an attitude problem who likes saving orphans. I’m talking about the samurai who leave behind a legacy.”

–Three Swipes, Late Night With AI-567 Interview, 2032

***

“Now what?” Manic asked.

I reached up to rub at the bridge of my nose, then let my hand fall. “Well, we’re kinda fucked, aren’t we?”

Manic shrugged. “Honestly, that’s nothing new for me.”

“Yeah, that’s fair. Want to go out with a bang?” I asked.

She grinned. “Always imagined that the best way to go was while blowing something big up. A last, final show, you know?”

I nodded along. That was the big dream, wasn’t it? Unfortunately, I had responsibilities now, and Lucy would be upset if I died, even if it was in a blaze of glory. So, basically I couldn’t strap a nuke to my chest and charge at the aliens.

Besides, I didn’t feel like swimming.

“Myalis, I need a few more of those cat drones. Can you start mapping out the underground for us? We need to know more or less where they’ll be breaking through,” I said.

Certainly. I’ve already begun, though I don’t yet know the extent of the underground hive’s reach.

That was fine. I let Manic open the boxes that showed up around me. I had to think in the meantime. Downtown was woefully under-defended for the number of aliens we were seeing. “Myalis, you’re the expert here. When will they attack?”

An undisturbed hive will, generally, continue to expand, grow, and harden itself until such a time as it encounters resistance or a threat, at which time it will work to eliminate that threat.

So if I planted bombs down there and set them off, then we’d be swarmed within the hour. I started pacing the little room. It seemed as if I had three problems. I opened a text box and typed them up.

1- Fuckloads of aliens were going to mess us up soon
2- Downtown wasn’t ready to deal with even a moderate swarm
3- All I had to work with were three noobs and Gomorrah

I hesitated, then added a fourth line.
4- Lucy was going to be annoyed if I wasn’t back home for dinner.

“Myalis, what could we do to mess the aliens up?” I asked. “I don’t think we can just nuke them to hell.”

“Nukes are an option?” Manic asked.

“Always,” I said. “But they might be a bit rough here. How much of these hives are under the city that the people we’re supposed to protect are living in? Nah, we can’t afford to nuke anything, I don’t think. We’ll have to be more creative.”

Myalis brought up a map and superimposed it over a 3d representation of Burlington. It was pretty clear that the hive was stretching around downtown, with a few little tunnels leading inwards. Of course, we hadn’t uncovered the entire thing yet. The two cat drones we’d sent ahead were still moving along, and the new ones were playing catch-up. It would take… well, I didn’t know how long it would take to figure out the size of the hive. The bigger it was, the longer it would take.

I started cycling through options.

Resonators would melt the hive up nicely, especially if they couldn’t turn them off in time. Just disconnecting the various root networks would fuck up the antithesis’ logistics for a minute. But that would be super obvious.

If we did that now, they’d react, and then Downtown–and River Heights–would burn.

Lighting everything on fire was an option too, but I figured we’d run into the same problem. Plus, fire would pour out into the city above, and then everything would literally burn. And the hives were underwater. I was sure Gomorrah had fire that burned underwater, but I imagined that would just make it more dangerous.

So, something more subtle than that.

Fuck, I wasn’t too good at subtle.

“Myalis, you remember those nano-bombs? The ones that eat antithesis meat?”

Of course.

“If we set off a number of them in the hive network, would that kill it all without alerting them too quickly?”

The nanomachines can be programmed to only eat the antithesis after a certain set time has passed, ensuring a wider distribution.