Chapter Sixty-Eight – Charred as the Wastes of Ozymandias

Chapter Sixty-Eight – Charred as the Wastes of Ozymandias

“We’re happy to say that soon, North America’s number one export may no longer be crude oil and wheat or corn products, but guns!”

–Opening speech at the 2035 Guncon NA convention, 2035

***

Our first pickup was Nya and Knight. I wasn’t sure exactly what the two had been up to… but it wasn’t too difficult to assume that their mission had been a success.

I brought the Bastion around, the wash of the engines pushing through a thick wall of smoke.

There was a… lot of smoke. Mostly because there was a lot of fire. Or there had been? The area they’d worked on was a wide open space, with a few rolling hills and a river that forked cutting between the hillsides.

The ground, everywhere, was charred.

Well, not everywhere. Nya (because it couldn’t be Knight, she was halfway responsible) had left large cat-head-shaped areas untouched, so there were spots of green grass drawing across the hills.

Nya turned and looked up, then waved up at us. “Looks like they had fun,” I said.

It was, in a way, kind of a waste to send Nya out against… well, anything, with Knight. Not because Nya, but because Knight wasn’t actually a samurai.

She’d get some points for her sister thanks to using gear her sister had purchased, but that was it. A fraction of what Princess would get for doing the work directly.

Still, a fraction of a big number was still a big number, right? At least, that’s about how I figured the math worked out.

We came down, I opened the side doors, then Nya and Knight boarded. As soon as they had something to grab onto, I lifted us off again, and moved over to where Grasshopper and Shy were working.

That area was a lot busier. The two were atop a small rise, surrounded by a dense carpet of Antithesis. There was a large… well, it looked like a drill of some sort? I wasn’t sure. It was tall, stuck inside of a large housing, and it was spinning very quickly while the bit in the centre sank into the ground.

Grasshopper was nearby, taking careful shots at aliens, usually nailing two or three with a single round, or taking out higher-value ones with a critical hit.

Shy, meanwhile, was a blur of motion, exploding around the base of the hill with quick bursts of motion, her cloak fluttering with her twin shotguns poking out from beneath. Where she passed, aliens were turned to paste.

I had the Bastion hover around the hillside and debated opening up on the aliens, but then decided that I’d ask the girls first. It was only polite. “Hey,” I said as I connected to Grasshopper and Shy. “We’re above you now. Need any assistance?”

“Oh, hello there,” Grasshopper said. I saw her tilt her head up a bit, the compound eyes on her helmet catching the light. “I think we’re doing quite well. Though I never say no to a friend who wants to help!”

“Ah, well, that’s cool. I’ll keep an eye on things. If it looks like it’s getting messy, we’ll provide some cover.”

There were a lot of aliens, but the two of them were wrecking their shit too. Shy was too quick to be taken out, and Grasshopper was being… mathematical in her culling.

“You guys have something set up to take out the hive?” I asked.

“I do!” Grasshopper said. “Shy and I combined our efforts. I’ve installed this handy little drill that is piercing its way into what I suspect is the main chamber of the hive, its heart, so to speak. Shy helped with the purchase. It’s quite quiet, actually. Anyway, once it’s at the right depth we’ll set off a discrete high-yield explosive resonance detonation and that should take care of this infestation with minimal collateral damage to the environment.”

That was… neat, I supposed.

I looked over, and the crater than Princess and I had made was still visible in the distance, mostly as a long plume of smoke some half-dozen kilometres away. We hadn’t gone the ‘protect the environment’ route.

Shy and Grasshopper continued to put down the aliens rushing at them, but soon the number petered out, and then the drill reached its end. “Detonating now,” Grasshopper said.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

There wasn’t even a kaboom. Or much of anything else.