Chapter Sixty-Nine – Nice

Chapter Sixty-Nine – Nice

“If you don’t want to be diagnosed with pyromania, just… burn the therapist.”

–Attributed to Gomorrah, unconfirmed, 2057

***

For all that Gomorrah wanted me to show up at the crack of dawn, and for all that I showed up… past that. There were still several hours to wait before anything actually happened.

I ended up sitting over with the others in the main space next to the Big Gun’s little command bunker. It was comfortable enough, and I got to chat with Gros Baton and Crackshot. The kid and I mostly double-teamed Crackshot, teasing him about his relationship with Emoscythe.

From the way he spoke about it, my favourite cowboy was entirely whipped by his hotter, older mistress, and he was loving every second of it. He had a goofy smile on, even as we poked fun at him, and the blush that stretched across his nose and made his ears glow was quite cute.

I mean, he was still a disgusting boy, but I could see what Emoscythe saw in him. That kind of honest and entirely earnest charm was endearing.

It was a solid two or three hours after I arrived at the camp before an alarm went off. All three of us jumped in our seats and glanced around. The alarm was one of those old-school wailing sirens. It made the kind of noise that was more appropriate for a horror movie than anything else. It screamed, and with it, the soldiers around the camp started running.

“Sounds like shit’s about to go down,” I said.

“Yeah,” Crackshot said. “Bet we’ll be filled in eventually.” He reached up and adjusted his hat, then he pulled his rifle off the ground behind him where he’d left it while we chatted. It looked more or less the same as I remembered, though maybe the barrel was a little shinier, and there was a sticker of a chibi-fied Emoscythe stuck onto the stock.

“Ah, criss,” Gros baton said. “Ca commence, hein?”

“Yup,” I said. I moved outside, then tilted my head way back and took in the sky. Those rockets earlier, the ones that cleared things out and made the sky as clear as I’d ever seen it, were well worth whatever they’d cost.

The sky was so blue it almost hurt to look at, but there were now teeny-tiny speckles of something darker above. I squinted. My fleshy eye couldn’t see shit, but my better one twisted my vision, and it felt like I was looking through a digitally stabilised telescope for a moment before my vision narrowed and zoomed way in.

Those tiny flecks and lines I could see weren’t solid. They were… beams or something flashing out in the dark of space. It was hard to make anything out past the dome of blue overhead. “That has to be the orbital defences,” I said.

“Looks like it,” Crackshot said. He tugged his hat on lower to shield his eyes from the sun, at least a little. “I recon space is a good ways up there. Even coming down pretty fast we’ll have a while before the aliens are close enough to shoot.”

“Maybe they’ll all die first?” Gros Baton asked.

“Doubt it,” I said. “We’re not that lucky.”

Turns out, I was unfortunately right. The siren went off after a minute, and then the entire temporary base was left in a state of high tension. The soldiers I could see were either fiddling with their weapons or keeping their eyes on the sky.

I checked the group chat, and some of the others were complaining about the sudden alarm. Hedgehog and Gomorrah were posting updates though.

Gomorrah: AT spotted in close orbit.
Gomorrah: Moon bases have launched interceptors towards the AT swarm
Gomorrah: Intercept in ten.
Hedgehog: Army sats have a lock-on. They’re sending telemetry down.

They were nearding out in the chat, trying to see who could post the most incomprehensible military jargon. I mostly glazed past those and focused on the bits that were helpful to read.

Gomorrah: AT are 8,000 of KM out.
Gomorrah: They’ll be in our out-range in five minutes.

“Five minutes,” I said as I closed the chat up. “Time to grab a drink.”

“I don’t know, it’d feel weird to grab a drink while waiting for the sky to fall down on our heads,” Crackshot said. “Weather’s nice for it, though. This is ideal bar-b-que weather.”

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“I think Gomorrah’s feeling the same way,” I said with a grin.

I went back into the Big Gun’s command room and fetched my helmet and coat. I probably shouldn’t have left without them, but when we were just sitting around it felt weird to be fully kitted out. I sent a message to my mech as well, calling it back to more or less where we were.

The mech stomped its way over, then sat down nearby. Gros Baton used that as an excuse to lean against the mech’s front while still keeping an eye on the sky.