Chapter Twenty-Five – Dinner is Served, and it’s You

Chapter Twenty-Five – Dinner is Served, and it’s You

“Never underestimate the will of the common man. Certainly, they will lie back and take any small punishment you give them as long as the pain comes slowly like an ache in the back, but push too hard, push too fast, and they will be roused from their lazy state with great violence in their hearts.”

–Letters to my Son, the biography of a West-African warlord to his son, 2029

***

I dropped to one knee, Bullcat placed on the edge of the cement barricade with the stock pressed up into the crook of my shoulder. I closed my fleshy eye and zoomed in with the other.

I could see the wave coming. The antithesis were clumped up, but those clumps were starting to spread out.

I didn’t have the patience to count them, but there had to be a couple hundred of the bastards. Mostly it looked like we were dealing with model threes. I noticed a few of those tentacle-faced model fours and those really big model fives.

A flock of model ones was spinning around above the main body of the wave. They never moved too far from the central group. I was actually impressed by the quick switches in direction the model ones were pulling off, all in sync with each other too. It reminded me of some documentaries I’d seen about extinct birds that flew in large flocks. Things like starlings and such.

“You’re sure you have enough AA to take care of the skies?” I asked.

I saw Jolly Monarch nod from the corner of my eye. “My pawns could likely take out this entire wave on their own. But I’d rather they not have to. I’ll take care of the enemies above and any that get too close. Just do what you can to thin out the bulk of the wave.”

“Right,” I said. “Myalis, you got the timing down for all those bombs?”

Everything is set up. We only need to wait for the antithesis to step into the right spots.

“So we just need to wait for the enemy to cooperate,” I said. “I’m not any sort of tactician, but isn’t that, you know, not a great idea?”

Incoming.

I refocused on the wave. It was obvious that the entire thing was starting to move hastily now. The aliens had our scent, I imagined. The civilians nearby started to mutter and curse as the entire formation of xenos started to run faster and faster.

Then the wave split down the middle, model threes scrambling aside to make room.

“Fuck,” I said.

The antithesis moving into the gap was a big motherfucker. A six-legged thing, about as tall as a hovercar. It had wings folded up against its sides, and a long body like a grasshopper, though its head was all wrong, angular and with a large mouth that was a bit too vulva-ish for comfort.

“A model fifteen,” Jolly Monarch said. “It’s a little early to be seeing one of those.”

“What’s its gimmick?” I asked.

The model actually stopped, the rest of the wave continuing on past it without getting in its way.

“It’s an artillery unit,” Jolly Monarch said. “If you have any bombs near it, now would be a good time to set them off.”

“I don’t,” I said. “Can you take out whatever it shoots?”

“I can,” Jolly Monarch said. He gestured forwards and two of his pawn drones shifted to aim down towards the model fifteen. “Masks on, everyone!” he shouted.

All down the line, civilians scrambled to put masks on.

I didn’t have time to ask why when the model fifteen fired.

I was expecting… something? A bomb, a bullet, maybe a large lump of acid.

What I wasn’t expecting was for the model fifteen to spit out a spinning green wheel. It was about half as tall as I was, with a distended middle and furry sides. The wheel shot ahead, keeping balanced even as it bounced over potholes and raced past the front of the wave.

One of the pawns shot a burst towards the wheel and hit it dead-centre.

The wheel exploded apart. I blinked as a cloud of pale dust filled the air before it. Then something rained down around me, a few plings sounding out as bits of the wheel made it all the way over to our position.

It wasn’t until I heard one of the civilians screaming that I realised it wasn’t just debris.