Chapter Sixty-Two – Honour and Flames

Chapter Sixty-Two – Honour and Flames

“Samurai meet in the field all the time. It’s a common enough occurrence.

Still, there is a sort of code of honour among Samurai, and even those that belong to opposing factions will generally put the lives of civilians before any grudges. If their explosive attacks happen to accidentally overlap with the area a rival is in, well, that’s just a bit of friendly ribbing.”

–Cynthia Eastwood, head psychologist, New Burkely U. 2051

***

Being on fire was, in a word, unfun.

To be completely fair, I hadn’t actually lit up. The wave of flames wasn’t directed at me. I just got caught in the AOE.

I wanted to scream, but the air around me was boiling and a tiny gasp was enough for me to clamp down and roll up into a ball while flames licked at my jacket.

A very uncomfortable few seconds later, the flames abated and I opened my eyes only to have my organic eye spiked with pain. There was a lot of nasty smoke in the air. My nifty robotic eye was just fine. “Air.” I croaked.

A box appeared before me.

I fumbled it open, saw the facemask within, and slapped it on without a second thought. It didn’t have any straps, which didn’t seem to matter as its rubber lining adjusted itself to my face and stuck on fast.

Taking in a deep gasp was like stepping out of a room filled with smokers for the first time in hours. It was heaven.

“Thanks,” I said.

I can’t serve you if your lungs fail. Though you should consider replacing them with something more efficient. I suspect the fire was caused by a person, not an Antithesis.

Some fuck-o had tried to light me up?

Growling, I rolled out from under the truck, spung Whisper off my shoulder and brought it around to aim at the first thing that moved.

I found myself staring down the scope of my crossbow at a nun.

A nun with a backpack and two arms pointing my way. Arms with little nozzles under them.

We stared at each other for a very uncomfortable few seconds as I twisted so that I was kneeling. The ground was hot to the touch and kind of painful on my legs, but my shoes had good insulation.

I swore to myself that if she’d wrecked my two hundred point shoes I was going to put a very big hole in her. Nun or otherwise.

Hold. That’s a Vanguard.

We both paused. The nun lowered her hands and I, reluctantly, lowered Whisper.

“What the fuck?” I asked though my new mask

The nun was wearing a full-face mask under her habit. It looked like a featureless woman’s visage, like one of those disappointed statues of Mary. “Forgive me,” she said. “I didn’t know you were there.”

I growled, the noise made deeper by the mask. My organic eye was still acting up. Worse, there was nothing I could do about it while the ground around us still smoked and smouldered. “Yeah well, that’s no excuse for–”

I cut off as noise came from off to the side.

Turning, I took in the subway’s entrance which had half a dozen extra-crispy aliens flopped around it. Obviously, those within the tunnels didn’t get the memo. With a now-practiced gesture, I slid Whisper over my back, pulled three ordinary grenades from my pockets, the last of those I’d acquired from the PMC armoury.

Three pins clinked onto the floor around me. I flung them underhand into the tunnel.

“That won’t keep them,” the nun said.

“Are all nun-type people such weirdos?” I asked.

“Pardon?”

“You’re not pardoned,” I said. “Myalis, glue-and-goo.”

The adhesive grenade burst apart over the entrance just as the first Model Three barged out. It took two steps before flopping forwards as its momentum and unmoving feet tag-teamed each other and smashed its face into the sticky ground.

The Resonator stuck fast to the white-ish foam rising on the ground and started to wail.

The nun flinched back and I imagined that she was wincing under that mask of hers. “That’s loud,” she said.

“Maybe if you hadn’t crisped me I’d feel sorry,” I said.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

She harrumphed and shifted her white-on-black dress. It allowed me a better view of her weapons, a pair of what were obviously flamethrowers with handles that had metal hand-protectors over them. It didn’t take a genius to figure that they were connected to her backpack somehow.

Her dress had a strange sheen to it, and I guessed that it was probably nice and cool under there, because of course the nun only lit others on fire.