Chapter Ten – Hope

Chapter Ten – Hope

“Hope is a currency that’s hard to define.

Hopebucks! A non-fungible semi-monetary unit that you can buy, keep, store, and place your hope in!”

Typical NFT advert, 2023

***

Myalis had General Wilkinson’s contact information ready for me, of course. It included the locations of all of his troops and their current dispositions.

I was able to confirm that nearly half of the militia was located in River Heights.

“Miss Stray Cat, ma’am,” the General said.

“Hey,” I said. I glanced around myself, taking note of the militia guys leaving the food truck and the owner of said truck packing things up. The guy pointed at me, then the stall, and I shook my head and waved him off. Nice fella. “So, I’m at River Heights. Be honest with me, how overkill are their defences?”

“They are far above standard. As it stands, and assuming normal antithesis progression, the area should be entirely safe for another seventy-two to ninety hours before we would need to increase its defensive potential.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “And Downtown, the defences there?”

“Abysmal, ma’am. Samurai Sprout’s plant-based defences are helping, and Samurai Manic’s frequent excursions are culling some of the alien threat, but the defences are manned by civilians with little to no training. Those who did have training were conscripted into the militia.”

“Right. We’re moving things around then,” I decided. “Find out what the minimum number of militia you need in River Heights is, leave that number behind. I want you to set up a few rapid response teams. I think my fellow samurai and I will be heading out to cull some of the nearest hives. So we won’t be manning the walls.”

“I understand. I can have them transferred over within the hour.”

“We’re not in that big of a hurry. Do it naturally. I’m heading back downtown in a little bit. Also, your report has a section on missing supplies. That’s like things you wished you had but don’t?”

I scrolled through that section. For the most part it was ammunition counts, some additional guns, more armour. Whoever the general had serving as quartermaster was pretty good at keeping track of what they needed.

“We’ve opened our storage caches, where our ammunition and additional weapons were stored, and discovered that a number of them were either mismanaged, robbed, or simply had unmaintained equipment. As it is, with our current rate of consumption, we’ll be running out of certain kinds of ammunition within the next two days. We’ll have to switch off certain weapons platforms for others, which means using that ammo faster.”

“Right,” I said. I… might be able to help with that. “We’ll see about that problem later. If you guys are actually getting close to running out, make it a priority to annoy me about it.”

“Yes ma’am. Will you be handling the fallout with the River Heights leadership?”

I frowned. “What fallout? I’m telling them what to do, if they’re not happy they can go live in a city that’s someone else’s responsibility.”

I cut off the comms with the general after a few more pleasantries, then I sighed, stretched my back out until it popped, and started walking back the way I’d come. Johnny was waiting for me nearby, the absent twitching of his fingers suggesting he was scrolling through something.

“Doomscrolling?” I asked .

“Hm? Oh no, I’m looking at my matches. I never had trouble with the ladies before, but since getting these arm rockets.” He paused to strike a pose. “My DMs have been on fire!”

“Uh-huh,” I said. Guy must have been attracting every gold digger within ten hour’s flight. “Well, you can flirt with folk once I’m done with you.”

“Oh my,” he said.

“Not that way,” I sighed. “I mean I want to start clearing the area around Downtown and River Heights of antithesis. That’ll mean taking out hives and blowing up plenty of aliens.”

Johnny grinned. “Hey, think we can get someone to film us at work? I need some new pics for my dating sites.”

“I’m sure we can find someone with nothing better to do,” I said. “But first, let’s find a way back to Downtown.”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

As it turned out, Miss Baker wasn’t too far from where I’d left her. She rushed over to us, or at least, walked over as quickly as she could in her little high-heels and pencil skirt. “Ah, you found our local guardian,” she said with a plastic grin.