Chapter Twenty-Five – Trickle Down

Chapter Twenty-Five – Trickle Down

“While the very concept of trickle down economics was proven to be utter bullshit, we still haven’t figured out whether the samurai’s trickle down technology has the same bullshitty smell to it.”

–Edward Denless, political commentator, 2032

***

Things went well for all of thirty seconds after I cut contact with the general. Then, of course, things got complicated.

Arm-a-Geddon gladly accepted a ride to River Heights onboard a troop-transport loaded up with militia guys. They’d reinforce the front line over there, which was getting complicated. The militia had cameras lined up so that I could check on things with some ease, and from the looks of it they were getting swarmed mostly by small-fry antithesis, but I didn’t think that would last.

Gomorrah agreed to send some of her drones over, which meant three of them were flying across the gap between River Heights and Downtown already.

They were going to lay down some literal fire on the antithesis. That would help, but her drones weren’t the fastest things around, so we had a minute or three to wait before they arrived.

In the meantime, I had to deal with Manic.

“What do you mean you don’t want to?” I asked.

Manic didn’t sound impressed over the line. From what I could tell she was sitting by one of the walls on the west end of the city. “I mean I don’t wanna. Never been told no before?”

“Fuck,” I said. “The people there–”

“Are spoiled rich fucks. They’ve decided to hole up in their little mansions. Let them.”

I ground my teeth together. I couldn’t even be angry, her attitude was exactly how I would act and… wait, did that mean that I was a bitch? Shit. It wasn’t time for self-reflection.

“Fine,” I said. “You’re staying by the area you’re in?”

“If the plant fucks are moving on River Heights, they’ll be hitting Downtown soon. I’ll break them before they get far.”

“Right,” I said. “You do that.”

I cut the line off and took a deep breath. Now what? Manic would have been useful in River Heights. She had a lot of AOE stuff as far as I could tell, and she was good in a scrap. I placed her higher than Arm-a-Geddon and Sprout as far as combat abilities went, but she wasn’t available, so I’d have to live with that.

Your ride is here.

I glanced up and stared as a massive vehicle lumbered along the road, taking up two of the three lanes that bisected Downtown’s centre.

The militia had a single mobile base, and I imagined the reason for that was related to their budget. The mobile base was an eight-wheeled, two-bus-long thing that was squat and fat. It had gun emplacements on the front, sides and rear, and looked like it could just barely manage to move at a double-digit speed provided it was going downhill.

It had escorts, of course, a half-dozen armoured trucks with mounted machine guns on top of them. They all had Burlington Crowd Control stencilled on their sides.

The machine came to a grinding stop, a door on the side opened and a set of hydraulics whined as steps dropped to make it easy to get in. An officer type jumped out and jogged over. “Ma’am,” he said. “The general wanted to invite you into the mobile command centre. We’re at your disposal, ma’am.”

“And where’s the general?” I asked.

“Headquarters, ma’am,” he said.

I shook my head. “Alright, I think… you know what, screw it. Let’s go. Can you drive this thing to the west side of Downtown?”

“We can,” the soldier said. “How close to the defences do you want to be?”

“What’s the range on the turrets on this thing?” I asked as I headed in.

“Three hundred metres, optimally,” he said.

“Then about that far,” I said before grabbing a handhold and pulling myself up and into the mobile base.