Chapter Sixty-Seven – Not Mushroom for Emotions

Chapter Sixty-Seven – Not Mushroom for Emotions

“No, blowing things up is not a good substitute for proper therapeutic care.”

–The American PMC’s Guide to Therapy, 2nd Edition, 2041

***

I had the MEOW leap over a fallen tree while Princess took potshots at the aliens trailing after us. They’d come out of the woodworks, kind of literally, as we ran away from the hive. I figured we were mostly dealing with the Antithesis that had ranged out and away from the hive and who had come running back when we poked their home with high-explosives.

“Anything big?” I asked.

“Just some smaller ones,” Princess said. The guns rattled, though I only really heard them through my implants. The MEOW’s cabin was airtight and sound-proofed, I doubted I’d be able to hear much of what happened outside of it unless I popped a hatch.

I glanced back, and yeah, the only models keeping up were the ones and threes. The rest were on the slightly slower side and couldn’t keep pace with the mech.

“Myalis, are we still in the blast radius?” I asked.

Yes, though you’re on the edge of what most would consider the survivable zone.

“What’s that mean, exactly?” I asked. I mean, she did say that I ought to ask more questions.

The survival zone is the area where an unprepared civilian has 50-50 odds of living.

Maybe I could keep moving. A few more minutes wouldn’t hurt. There was a rise up ahead, some hundred metres or so. It was a grassy cliff without much vegetation around, so I aimed for that and was soon clawing up the side of the hill.

Once at the top, I turned around and looked back. The map I had on my hub showed that the heap of explosives was about a kilometre and a half away. “This safe?” I asked.

You’re outside the light damage radius. That means that a person standing out in the open might only suffer from very mild burns and would only be at risk of further damage from a bad fall from the outer blast or if a piece of debris happens to strike them.

“Cool,” I said. “One sec…” I opened a call to the Bastion and the others. Almost immediately, I heard chatter from Nya and Knight, with the occasional retort of a gun coming over the line. “Sorry to interrupt. Princess and I are about to detonate the first hive. There might be a small boom. Ah, if no one is using the Bastion we’ll call it over for retrieval.”

The plan was more or less to let each group of two tackle their hive, then gather everyone up at the end before moving on to the next set of hives, maybe with some switching up along the way.

Hopefully with some switching up along the way. Not that Princess had been all that bad.

“Hey, want to press the detonator?” I asked.

Princess gasped. “I can?”

“Sure,” I said with a shrug. I loved pressing the big red button, but I’d done it a few times, and there was no harm in giving Princess a chance. Besides, seeing the explosion from up close was half the fun anyway.

I had the detonation thing linked to my augs, but it was a simple matter to send that over to Princess.

“Okay. On three… one… two… boom!” she said.

Nothing happened for a fraction of a second, then there was a flash in the distance. A bright ball of fire rose, pushing the air all around it out and away. A split second later the ground started to tremble and a shockwave blasted past, followed moments later by a wall of dust and kicked up debris.

“Woo!” I cheered ever as the earth continued to shake. “Bet they saw that one from the city!”

“Yeah!” Princess said.

The MEOW had little wipers on its cameras, which turned out to be damned useful. They cleared things out so that we could watch the expanding ball of fire climbing into the sky. It was a real mushroom cloud, though a smaller one.

Hive destruction confirmed.

“Nice,” I said. The ground stopped shaking, and I shifted the MEOW so that it had better footing. There didn’t seem to be any aliens left between us and the now-burning crater where we’d left the explosives.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I tapped into the Bastion’s controls from afar, made sure that no one had requested it for aerial-support, and recalled it.

Since we were the first out, I figured it’d make sense for us to be the first to return as well. Probably? The Bastion spun around, and my wider-view map of the area showed it slowly returning to our position.

“I think that worked out pretty well,” I said.