Chapter Sixty – A Unique Combat Doctrine

Chapter Sixty – A Unique Combat Doctrine

“Samurai have a wide array of fighting styles and doctrines. Ranging from long-distance destruction of targets, to close-up melee fighting. The styles are as varied as the Samurai themselves, and their little AI partners seem to only encourage this diversity.

It’s one of the many, many reasons why trying to use the army to subdue a rogue Samurai is a terrible idea.”

–Major Huygens, in a brief before Operation Feudal, May 2027

***

The doors opened with a squeal of metal grinding against metal. I could only imagine what it sounded like to those caught within the shelter.

To my surprise, I didn’t find a sea of terrified people waiting for me, but instead a large empty room. It was a dozen meters long and wide, with cement walls all around that had shoulder-height windows cut into them. There were openings for people too, of course, and that’s where I saw the first of the survivors.

They looked… grumpy.

The first few to come out from hiding were bigger men in rough-cloth uniforms. Some had old rifles, others large wrenches. They looked at me as if I was a two-bit hooker, then thought better of it on seeing the gun held casually by my side and the drones moving about around me.

“You Stray Cat?” One of them asked.

“Yup,” I said. “We can’t evacuate everyone here at once, not yet.” Their grumpiness moved up a notch. “I’ll need truck drivers and whomever has a gun and knows how to use it, as well as some folks with good arms.”

“What?” The man I chose to name grumpiest asked.

“We don’t have enough transports for everyone here,” I said. “So we’re stealing some.”

“What’ch’a stealing?”

“Trucks,” I explained. “We’re stealing a whole fuckload of trucks. I need help emptying them out so that we can carry people out of here. We have maybe ten minutes before the worst of the waves hit this area.”

One of them, slimmer and lankier, pointed back into the shelter. “We could stay here.”

“No. You can’t.” I saw him about to protest. It was surprising how kitten-like some adult expressions were. “Because I said so.”

“That’s not a–”

“Because I said so, and because I have a fuck-huge cannon,” I added.

That, surprisingly, worked.

Some of them ran back to look for more volunteers while a group of them, ten or so in all, followed me back out onto the street. The moment we were out I shoved my floating gun to the side and let it hover ominously next to the entrance leading to the shelter. My Dumbasses ran ahead of me and were the first to meet with Monroe as he jogged over. “Ma’am.”

“We have volunteers,” I said.

“That’s… good,” he said.

“Did you do what I asked?” I asked.

Monroe managed to look uncomfortable despite all of his armour making his body language hard to read. “You didn’t actually leave us with any orders, ma’am. We passed around the guns and then set up the cars to protect the area. We also marked out trucks that we could potentially move over to here.”

“Uh,” I said. “Well, good work. We’re going to steal a fuckload more trucks. So if you could help organize that, it would be nice. Myalis can unlock them… or the Dumbasses can?”

They can.

“Right, they can. So they’ll be with you for that.” I snapped a finger at the nearest drone and all three of them turned to face me as if they were listening. “You get that? You’re going to help Monroe here crack the locks on some trucks.” The drone bobbed up and down and I decided to believe that that meant that they understood.

“What about you, ma’am?”