Chapter Twenty-Eight – Morale

Chapter Twenty-Eight – Morale

“Morale, while not a factor that is easy to quantify, is nonetheless an important measure of the potential success of troops on an active battlefield.

For this reason, it is usually a good idea to allow your troops to see any local samurai at work. Nothing inspires hope like the casual disregard for death and the destructive capabilities of a samurai in action.”

–Morale and Victory, officer’s training tips #358, 2039 edition.

***

I ran up one of the ramps set up behind the wall, then paused near the top as soon as I could see over the defences.

The aliens approaching us weren’t quite like the tides I’d seen in the defence of New Montreal. Those tides had been so thick that I couldn’t see the ground past all the antithesis, and they went on basically forever, with no breaks in their formation except where a shell went off to create one, and even those were temporary.

Here, the formations were a lot patchier. With trios of aliens running together and the occasional larger group. Often, some bigger, slower xenos were running on their own, too slow to keep up with the much faster and more common model threes.

The remote-controlled and human-operated guns nestled in the wall spat at the aliens, short, loud bursts that ended with a few corpses rolling across the pavement.

Those that managed to get close anyway got to meet Gomorrah’s drone, which hissed out lines of liquid fire onto them and turned the aliens into rolling balls of flame. The smoke might actually be a problem later if it interfered with our vision. Then again, it also removed the corpses, turning them to ash before they piled up so high that they became an obstruction, or worse, a ramp of dead flesh.

So far, things seemed alright.

Then I ducked down with a curse as something smashed into the wall some ten metres off to my left with a huge bang. The metal under my feet rattled and I grabbed on until the shivers passed. When I looked up again, I saw the broken remains of a large chitinous wheel, its edges cutting into the wrecked cars and cement barriers that made up the wall.

Little spines had sprayed out from around where the wheel impacted, and even now some of them were falling down around us, sticking into the ground on the safe side of the wall. No one was hit, but I imagine some of the gunners were spooked.

If that had hit one of the little openings… yeah, that would mean one gun down, and maybe a couple of volunteers dead too.

I glanced down the road, looking for the model fifteen that had spat that.

Myalis helped, highlighting three figures without me having to ask. One was on the road a ways away, protected by model fives on either flank and moving forwards on its little legs even as its gut swelled and I imagined it was preparing to launch another wheel.

The other two were better hidden, both of them in a building off to the right. It was some storefront, but the middle floors of the building were taken up by paid parking spaces. The walls on the street-side had been torn apart, giving the model fifteens somewhere to shoot from.

As I watched, one launched one of its wheels.

The massive spinning lump of antithesis flesh smashed into the road, spinning so fast that it tore up the topmost layer of asphalt before that spin turned into forwards movement and it zipped across the gap on a wobbling path towards the wall.

I locked onto the wheel and my shoulder-mounted guns popped out of their housings and fired. The whip-like crack of two railgun sabots ripping through the air echoed across the street and the wheel imploded as holes were punched into its structure.

That didn’t end it though. As the wheel exploded, it unravelled, sending a whole swarm of long, thin needles scattering into the air.

The aim was atrocious, and most of them were flung right into the ground or at an angle where they wouldn’t do much, but there were so many, and they all moved in the direction of the wall.

I ducked down again and winced as a few needles whistled past. “Motherfuckers,” I swore.

Someone screamed, and as I glanced back, I saw a green-armband volunteer panicking at the sight of a needle embedded in his chest. A medic ran over and tackled him to the ground, and soon they were applying some sort of gauze-spray over the wound and dragging the guy to cover.

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He’d live, I figured. If he had the energy to scream, he was probably going to be alright once the medics got done with him.

The blow to morale though…

Fighting an enemy was rough, but if it was a fight, that meant that you had a chance to win. Getting fucked over by an enemy you couldn’t see or do anything about? Just sitting there and waiting your turn to die by big needle or enemy teeth? Yeah, that would break someone’s nerves sooner than later.

“Myalis, can you connect me to… Intel-chan, I guess.”