Chapter Seventy-Five – The Worth of a Human

Chapter Seventy-Five – The Worth of a Human

“Studies indicate that 11% to 20% of veterans who served in frontline roles have experienced PTSD in a given year. Likewise, 15% to 35% of Antithesis conflict veterans experience PTSD within a year of their departure from the front lines.

Whether this is due to the process by which they are chosen or not is uncertain.”

–VA-PTSD.RD.GOV, Prevalence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in the Combat Populace, 2046

***

“Alright, you good?” I asked as Shy landed on the ground.

She patted her knees clear of dust, then shifted the hood of her cloak back up and over her head. Her clothes were… a bit of a mess, to be honest, but that’s what happened when you were flung into a tree.

At least she was partially armoured. She had a padded undersuit beneath that poncho, with some harder looking plates over the chest with a few little pockets here and there. Basic tactical gear stuff, and all very obviously Samurai-made.

“Lady Shy wished to reiterate that she is well.”

“Yeah, that’s good,” I said as I backed my mech up and away from the tree she’d been stuck in. I’d used my mech as a sort of ladder to give her something to climb down. There were plenty of handholds where the armoured plates on the exterior of my mech had gaps. “Look, I can’t sit around here for much longer. Will you be okay if I leave you behind, or do you want to come back to the Big Gun?”

I didn’t have a fantastic idea of how dangerous the area was, but I could guess that it wasn’t that bad. There hadn’t been many flyers coming down from above. Those that I did see were all shooting out in the same direction I’d come from, and most of those were way, way up in the air.

Unless Shy here tried taking massive potshots at them, she was probably going to pass unnoticed. That meant she could probably pick out the targets she wanted.

The Model Thirty-One was probably a target of opportunity for her.

I was… way newer as a samurai, but I’d been in the thick of it from the start. Shy here was a more normal sort, chilling out at a lower, more reasonable tech level for a longer time. She probably had a whole life that didn’t involve samurai shit.

Couldn’t fault her for that. She was here now, doing her thing. Shy hopped on the spot a couple of times, dislodging a few small branches stuck to her poncho, then she checked on her guns, each one rising up from under her cloak so that she could look them over. The way they moved was fluid and fast, and I suspected that she was wired into the controls for them directly.

I saw her mouth move behind her scarf a little. “Lady Shy is thankful for your intervention, and more so for allowing her to eliminate that higher-tier model. Having said that, she doesn’t require any additional assistance.”

“Cool,” I said. I called over that mecha-carrier. It was hovering not too far from where I was dropped off. A few model ones had zipped around it, but it wasn’t biological enough for them to nibble at, and it wasn’t hostile, so they treated it as just an obstacle and mostly left it alone.

I was sure that wouldn’t be the case if a bigger, smarter model flew by, but for now it was safe enough. It turned, then started moving my way at a slow, careful pace.

“If you’ve got any problems, just gimme a call. Your AI buddy can ping Myalis, yeah?”

Shy nodded once. She pushed her shotguns down, then gave me a small bow. Then she kind of just… stood there for a moment. I could feel the awkwardness wafting off of her like a weird smell before she turned and scampered away. She went invisible, but that didn’t hide how weird she was.

“That girl’s a little strange,” I muttered after shutting my exterior speakers off.

Most Vanguard fit a set of criteria that don’t comply with normative human behaviour. It’s natural, therefore, for them to stand out as a little strange to the average person.

Normal, huh? I shook my head, then moved myself over to the side a little so that I was in a clearer spot for the carrier to come down and grab onto my mech.

Once I was clamped in, I shot upwards, angled towards the Big Gun and shot off in that direction. I had Myalis connect with the tactical net that we were using to coordinate our AA. In theory we wouldn’t look like a juicy alien target, but I didn’t want to test it.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I was pretty sure I could eat a few rounds from the smaller AA guns without any real issue in my mech, but if one of those bigger rockets slammed into me, I’d be a cooked cat before long, and my own 30mm guns probably had enough juice at this altitude to punch right through whatever armour my mech had, or at least it would mess it up.

Better safe than punctured.