Chapter Sixty-Five – Sky’s the Limit, But I Can Reach

Chapter Sixty-Five – Sky’s the Limit, But I Can Reach

“Wow. Insurance is such a scam.”

–Lord Burninator, at his criminal trial for Mass Arson, 2032

***

“So, what’re my options when it comes to AA?” I asked.

Presuming from context that you mean Anti-Air and not Alcoholics Anonymous, or automotive insurance, then we do have quite a few options. In fact, you have options for all three.

“Wait, all three?” I asked. I was off on my own, feeling a little awkward for being away from all the others, but it wasn’t all that bad. I’d be rejoining them in a minute or five.

Indeed. Technically, as a vanguard, you could subscribe to any number of insurance services. The companies offering them make the information about their low premium Samurai tier policies as easy to find as possible. As for the alcohol, I have substances that are so addictive that you’d never have time to be addicted to alcohol to begin with.

“You are far less reassuring than you ought to be sometimes,” I said.

I find it amusing.

“You think you’re so cute,” I muttered.

I’m adorable. Now, shall we talk anti-air options? You have fifty-one thousand, one hundred and seventeen points at the moment, which is a very respectable amount of buying power.

I glanced over to the others. They were mostly crowded around Tankette’s updated tank with a few further out. Crackshot and Emoscythe were sitting in a rather nice wrought-iron bench that had definitely not been there minutes ago.

“That’s… a lot of points. Shit, I’m close to the big leagues, aren’t I?”

No. You’re still some ways away from that. However, you certainly are edging your way out of the more beginner tiers. Now, what kind of budget are you looking at?

I rubbed my chin for a moment, then nodded. “I think two thousand or so? I know I have a lot more I could splurge here, but that doesn’t feel right for a one-and-done kind of event. I’ll want something that I can move back to our home and slap onto the roof. So it needs to look pretty intimidating? As for weapon-types… maybe something that fires larger rounds so that I can load it full of explosives?”

That’s a clever idea. How about a Mark Six Heavenly Striking Tiger Automated Anti-Air Platform? It would come up to a thousand nine hundred and fifty points. A few shy of your stated limit. The system is autonomous, with very competent long-ranged tracking capabilities, and it’s designed to fire 30mm shells.

Those were some chunky bullets. “Will they go far enough?” I asked. “Ideally we can hit them while they’re still, like, nearly in space?”

That complicates things slightly. But I could have the barrels reinforced, add a water-cooling system, and elongate the receiver to compensate for those additions. It’ll allow you to fire the same projectile but with a larger propellant charge. You might still want specialty shells to reach that far up, whereas lower targets can be taken out with more traditional rounds. All that would increase the cost by two hundred points.

That was a smidge over my initial budget, but not by so much that I’d mind. The gun was probably going to earn that point cost back, and then some. “Alright, do it,” I said.

Not so fast. This gun is rather large. Placing it right in front of you wouldn’t mean that it can’t be moved, but it might be best to lay it down in its final intended position.

Ah, that made a heap of sense. Myalis was pretty good with the deliveries of stuff. She’d never dropped anything on my toes before and I’d come to trust her with that kind of thing. “Lemme ask Hedgehog where he wants it, he seems like the one to ask.” It was him or Emoscythe, but she was being cute with Crackshot and I wasn’t gonna cockblock my guy.

Hedgehog was happy to help. He explained the rough idea of the current layout, going on about overlapping fields of fire and combined arms and firing intervals. He didn’t want our flak to mess up our missile fire, and there were issues with several of our things interfering with our targeting.

The army had more balloons they were putting up, there with powerful sensors strapped to the top pointing into the sky to better identify incoming fliers, and we were going to piggyback off of that a little.

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The army also had its own AA. A mix of rather simple ‘big gun that shoots up’ and surface-to-air missiles specifically designed to track and hit antithesis.

The army had a lot of gear for taking out swarms of model ones, even far from a base or a fixed location. They were a minor threat on their own, but in big enough swarms they were definitely a problem. They also had some weapons platforms for bigger fliers. But what they didn’t have was weaponry designed to take a flying antithesis out from over a dozen kilometres away.