Chapter Sixty-Three – Cat Called

Chapter Sixty-Three – Cat Called

“The history of telemarketing stretches all the way back to the early days of the Bell telephone, where only the eccentric and rich could afford a phone of their own and therefor they made for great targets for sales pitches and cold calls.

As history progressed, the phone became an ubiquitous part of human society. It’s no surprise that ads vectored in throught that medium continue to be popular to this day.”

–On Advertising, 2nd ed. 2049

***

Gomorrah was not happy with me.

I could tell, because she very pointedly removed her facemask so that I could get an unobstructed view of her glare. Also, the first thing she said when she arrived was “I’m not happy with you.”

“Did you get a lot of calls?” I asked.

“I had to get an answering machine catalogue,” Gomorrah said. “Your little prank has cost me fifty points.”

“Oops?” I said. I wasn’t actually remorseful, but I could pretend to be guilty like the best of them. “But hey, some of those calls are good, right?”

She sighed, but nodded. It had been a couple of hours since my broadcast. Most of us here were just chilling around the Big Gun, cheering whenever it went off and taking in the occasional update from Gros Baton about the progress around Phobos.

Things were actually looking up on that front. Phobos had been fucked up pretty hard, and it wasn’t being allowed to recover at all. The constant swarm of drones were leaving their mark. Death by ten million cuts was still death, and we were helping by ramming the moon with the occasional miniature black hole or web of monofilament.

The points we were earning helped too, though it wasn’t all that much all things considered. A nice, steady trickle every fifty-odd minutes.

I’d seen some images of the moon. It was fully split now, and some of the bigger chunks didn’t even have tentacles keeping them together. Keiretsu drones with large thrusters were pushing the bits apart. It looked like they were moving at a snail’s pace, but that didn’t matter. It would be enough for those chunks to miss Earth entirely.

A one degree change so far out meant a whole lot to us down here.

The next use of the Teslacollider would probably be the finishing blow. We’d crush what was left of Phobos, and then all that would remain was the clean-up.

So, in a way, we’d won.

Woo.

Hurrah.

All that jazz.

Actually, sarcasm aside, the mood was pretty upbeat. Princess and Knight were prattling along to Emoscythe. Tankette was taking care of a food tent nearby, wielding a ladle like a king might a sceptre. Crackshot and Hedgehog were close to the entrance of the Big Gun’s control room, close enough for Gros Baton to join in on their conversation.

I had listened in for a bit, and… it was really disgusting the kinds of things guys would start talking about when there wasn’t a woman around. Not that I would start flinging stones from my glass house or anything.

The area was starting to fill up as well. The idea of keeping the Big Gun secret had flown out the window with my broadcast. There was too much background stuff. Some geoguesser would spot two trees and know the exact coordinates down to the centimetre. It was only a matter of time.

So if secrecy was out the window, then the best protection came from numbers, and that meant a huge influx of troops.

Major Tinwhistle’s engineers had gotten back to work, setting up barracks and defences. The ground was being reinforced and extra concrete was being poured out into moulds for barricades.

The order of the day was AA. The incoming swarm was made up of fliers. Gunning them down before they hit the ground or even got close was our best bet for keeping the Big Gun and the area around it safe.

“We received some calls from several local samurai,” Gomorrah said. “And several from some that aren’t as local. I’ve gotten offers from some less-close samurai as well. Dreamer and Teddy from Calgary, Grey Goo, Myriad, Bloodhound, Magpie, Xenovir, Hard Rain, GroundWire, Speed Demon, Cassy the Clown and several others from Big Top, Gaea, Legion…the list goes on. I’ve also gotten some… unhappily-worded messages from the Family saying that they’ll be willing to assist us with the logistics.”

“Logistics?” I asked. “What sort? Are we going to be spreading people out?”

“Ideally, yes. It looks like this will be the epi-centre of the… pseudo-incursion, but antithesis will be landing all across this hemisphere.” Gomorrah reached up and rubbed her nose. “It’s a lot. We need to cover a huge area. There might be a few samurai that can do that, but they’re not around, so scattering as many samurai as possible makes sense.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Alright,” I said with a nod. “And the Family’s taking charge of that?”

“They are. And I’m looking over every one of their choices now. They’re annoyed that we didn’t give them a proper head’s up and forty-eight hours of lead-time before dropping that announcement.”

Well, at least she was saying ‘we’ and implicating herself in the whole mess. “They do understand that forty-eight hours is too late, right?”