Chapter Twenty-Six – Intel-chan

Chapter Twenty-Six – Intel-chan

“A cult is, in essence, one of the best businesses you can possibly run. The cost of running your own cult is extremely low, and the power, credits, and influence you gain from running a cult cannot be overstated.

Here at C.P. Morgan’s Cult and Pseudoreligion Department, we have experts of all sorts to prepare you and your fledgeling cult for the future and to ensure a happy, healthy, and profitable following.”

–C.P. Morgan, CPD Pamphlet, 2035

***

“That helped,” the anime girl avatar said as I returned. The screen had a view from that same gunner’s helmet, only this time he was looking at a crater with some antithesis bits on the edges while bits of dirt were still raining down from above.

More aliens were coming, but now they had to go around or through the pit in the ground, and I suspected the shock had slowed them down a little.

All the guards needed was a little bit of time to reset though, and they’d been given that.

Now if only Arm-a-Geddon and Gomorrah’s drones could hurry up and get there, then we wouldn’t have as many issues. Or maybe we would. “Myalis, can you give us a heatmap of Antithesis locations?” I asked.

The screen shifted, and the anime girl avatar found herself flickering over to another nearby screen. She frowned, looking peeved at the sudden motion but didn’t complain. The screen now showed a map of Burlington, with some parts painted blue, while plenty of areas were shaded in oranges and deeper reds. The areas along the edges of Downtown and River Heights were clearly marked, and both had a decent amount of red right next to them.

“There are as many antithesis right up against River Heights as there are next to Downtown,” I said.

That is correct.

So we’d need to defend River Heights against the same number of xenos as Downtown. That… wouldn’t work out. We didn’t have the ability to do that, we didn’t have the manpower, and I didn’t have the time to take care of two places at once.

For the time being, my plan was to protect Downtown and let River Heights take care of itself, but if it was going to face a tide as heavy as what I suspected was going to hit Downtown, then the whole place was fucked.

“We need to evacuate River Heights,” I said. “Myalis, can you send Baker a text? Tell her to organise everyone to leave River Heights. They have half an hour.”

I imagine she won’t like that.

“She’s not gonna like that,” the anime girl said.

“I don’t care,” I replied to both at the same time. “We can’t afford to split our attention, not for long in any case. So let’s not. Get the civilians from River Heights to Downtown, shove them somewhere where they won’t be trouble, and then pull back all the troops we’re wasting over there. The place has automated defences, right?”

“It does,” the anime girl said. “Turret emplacements, shaped charges, deployable denial-of-passage cover, and a few other things as well. River Heights invested heavily in its own protection about twelve years ago. The systems are dated, but they’ve been maintained.”

“They didn’t have the budget for the same defences around the rest of Downtown?” I asked.

“Some were installed, but a number of installations were stolen and the city decided not to keep up the maintenance of those in the… financially disadvantaged areas.”

I should have seen that coming. I couldn’t even be angry. I was totally the type of shit to steal a city-placed thing to make a quick buck if the opportunity arose. “Alright, fine,” I said. “Can we set their automated defences to distract the antithesis once we’ve evacc’d all the civilians from the area? It’ll maybe keep one front busy while we take care of the rest.”

“Tactical genius,” the avatar said.

“Shut up… whatever your name is,” I said.

“Intel-chan,” Intel-chan, apparently, said.

I think now would be a good time to deploy the nanomachines. We need them to disperse after deployment and it will take some time before they start to have any noticeable effects.