Chapter Twelve – Salt The Earth

Chapter Twelve – Salt The Earth

“–We don’t have permission, sir.

–We don’t have permission.”

–Overheard discussion about My First Stray Cat Dolls, 2057

***

Gomorrah and I let the newbies have their fun for a while. Eventually, there was the usual mid-fight upgrade, but that really just amounted to Tankette buying different, more effective rounds for her mini-tank, and Princess buying Knight a proper samurai-grade weapon. In this case, an assault rifle that had a sword built into it. It could transform back and forth between a really shitty assault rifle with terrible ergonomics, to a short sword with equally awful ergo.

It did look kind of cool though, so good for her.

I tapped my way into the team comms while looking over the field below our little rise. It was currently filled with a whole lot of dead aliens, and some that were going to be dead soon on account of all the holes in their bodies and the missing limbs. “Alright, newbies, you do know that there’s a hive to kill, right?”

“Oh,” Princess said. “Right! We should go out and do that, right?”

Hedgehog decided to cut in before she could go skipping along. “Normal procedure is to hold in a defensive position and then let the artillery or specialists take care of an active hive.”

I stared at the man for a long moment. “Bud, we are the specialists. And unless you’ve got a mortar emplacement in that spikey coat of yours, we don’t have artillery.”

“We have your mech, Miss Tankette’s tank, and Miss Gomorrah’s Fury,” Knight said as she gestured to the three vehicles. “Those could serve as artillery, or at least big weapons.”

I scrunched my nose up, then gave her a reluctant nod. “Fair. This is a test for you bunch, so that cuts down on what you’ve got as options. Keep in mind that we’re supposed to not explode the hive.”

Crackshot hummed. He was still laying on his belly on the ground. He took a quick shot at one of the aliens in the heap below, nailing it in the head and sending it down. “We’re gonna need some special munitions then. What are our options? I’ve got a catalogue for weird rounds on me.”

“Oh!” Princess cheered. “My AI suggests cutting the area up. I have something for that too.”

I was gonna suggest they buy something off of my own catalogues, but this might work out for the best. I watched as Tankette opened the top hatch of her tank and poked her head out. “Um, I can take any 25-millimetre shell, if we’re going to use my tank.”

“I suppose I can afford a few mortars as well,” Hedgehog said. “Disposable ones aren’t overly expensive. Though if we’re going to use mortars, we’ll want something larger than what Tankette’s using.”

“Just got to find a kind of bomb that won’t toss up too much dirt, then,” Knight said. She coughed. “I don’t know if it’s just in my head, but I feel like my throat’s all scratchy already.”

“We should probably take some healing stuff after this,” Princess said with a nod. “I don’t want super cancer.”

I stepped back and watched them work. The group came together, argued for a bit, then nodded between each other. Hedgehog bought a pair of mortars, the classic sort, with a tube and some arms and a doohickey on the side to adjust the angle. It was maybe a bit higher-tech than the fully manual sort carried by soldiers. It looked like it could auto-adjust, at least.

Crackshot summoned up an entire crate of shells, and Princess skipped over to Tankette’s tank and the two of them looked into the back where I supposed the tank’s ammo stowage was.

It took a minute or two for them to be ready, but then Tankette drove around to the edge of the hill and turned her turret out towards the aliens. “Ready!” she called out.

“Ready here,” Crackshot said. He, Knight, and Hedgehog were manning the mortars a little ways back.

“No point in delaying this,” Hedgehog said as he dropped a shell into a tube. There was a satisfying thump and I darted my eyes up to follow the blur of a shell as it went up high. It arced far above, then became harder to see as the smoke trailing it broke off. Still, it was pretty easy to tell where it landed because there was a big wump sound, and suddenly there was a hole about a metre across that lacked any dirt or rocks or any alien bits.

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“What was that?” I asked, pitching my voice down and keeping it off the comms.

That seems like an anti-materiel shell of the dimensions-shunting variety. You have a few grenades with similar effects.

“My blackhole grenades?” I asked.