Chapter Sixty-Three – Mechcatular Nyanzerfaust Activate

Chapter Sixty-Three – Mechcatular Nyanzerfaust Activate

“Knowledge download tech was seen as a massive step forwards in the early 2030s. It allowed someone, anyone, to instantly become an expert in a specific field. Things like learning a new instrument or a new language in an instant is fantastic, and all it costs is a small fortune, but sometimes that price is worth it. A thousand hours spent learning Spanish, or thirty-thousand USD? What’s worth more to you? Tons of people signed on and got those early operations, and initially everything was fine.

Then you had what we started to call PBS, or personality bleed syndrome, which is still barely understood, and yet can lead to all sorts of new and terrifying mental issues.”

–Doctor Lopez, McRill neurosurgeon in an podcast interview, 2037

***

I jumped back, all four legs spreading wide even as they opened up and the jet engines mounted into them fired.

It wasn’t enough thrust to lift me up, but it was enough, combined with a backwards leap, to send me flying off the pier. I landed roughly on all fours, claws digging furrows into asphalt until the mech came to a full stop.

I paused then.

All of that had been reflex. Like twirling my arm to stop myself from falling after catching my foot in a carpet or something. It was all done without thinking. And that would be fine, usually, only it wasn’t my body that I’d moved, but the warmech’s.

I ran over every action I’d just taken. There had been several inputs on the two joysticks, and I’d pressed it on the foot pedals a few times too. Fuck, I hadn’t even known that this cockpit had foot pedals a moment ago. “Myalis, this is some weird shit,” I said.

It can take a moment for newly uploaded knowledge to begin to feel natural. If you dislike the feeling, then we can always focus more on training modules in the future. Several vanguard have suggested a strong dislike of memory downloads in the past.

“Yeah, I can see why,” I said. It didn’t feel wrong, but it sure as shit didn’t feel right either.

A tool then, neutral depending on how it was used.

For something like this, needing to learn something right then and there with no time to practice or do things right, that was acceptable, I supposed, but it still felt off.

If I had learned how to move this mecha myself, would I have moved the way I had just then? How much of me was there in my actions if they were actions downloaded from some file or something.

I didn’t like it, basically.

Well, no, that wasn’t entirely truthful. I didn’t like the mind fuckery bit. But piloting a multi-ton warmech so well that I was practically dancing between explosions? That was fucking awesome.

My thumb flicked across a little wheel mounted on a joystick and with a three-button prompt, the shoulder of the warmech unfolded and a pair of multi-barrelled Gatling guns locked into place. My vision split into three, two of the new screens allowing me to aim and lock the guns on the pier ahead.

When the smoke cleared, it revealed a large model eighteen ripping its way out of the wooden pier. Smaller models were using it to rush out of the water in droves.

I locked both guns on the massive monster, felt two triggers pop out of the joysticks under my index, and I pulled.

There was an impossibly loud pair of Brrrts and the entire mech had to take a small step back to compensate for the recoil. I only fired for half a second, but my ammo counter had dropped by three hundred rounds.

The smoke cleared, and the big model eighteen was still clearly alive. A lot of the smaller aliens around it, however, were paste.

“What does this fire?” I asked.

10mm rounds. Very small and economical, but not nearly as impactful as larger rounds. You’re firing a mixture of armour piercing, hollow point, and ultra-heavy rounds, as well as phosphorus tracer rounds.

I stepped to the side and fired at the crowd of aliens again, sweeping the fire from left to right quickly. That was enough to saw one of the big alien’s legs right off and it ripped apart any of the smaller ones hanging around it.

I could live with this.

The pier fell apart entirely as the model eighteen finally died. The posts on the edge broke apart, and a chunk of the walkway next to the pier was ripped back and dragged into the water with a heavy splash.

Stolen novel; please report.

I started to pace along the shore, shoulder-mounted guns sliding back into place while I got used to the strangely flowy motions of the warmech. It wasn’t like riding in a car. There was too much up-and-down motion for that as the mech walked, but it wasn’t as jarring as I might have feared.