Stray Cat Strut – A Young Lady’s Vacation Next Door – Prologue

Prologue

He liked to imagine Sisyphus happy.

Libre walked down one of the many corridors dug into the earth of his home, cement walls and concrete ceilings, with lights at even intervals and the occasional busy soldier along the path. He had his helmet tucked under one arm, his other hand held up before him so that he could read the display built into his inner arm.

“This will be a quick sortie,” he said, just loud enough for the assistants keeping up with him to hear. “We can’t allow the Antithesis to burrow all the way to the walls of the city. I’ll be flying through quadrants A73 all the way through G43. Our AA should be aware enough not to flag me as a foe.”

“Noted,” one of his assistants said. “I’ve sent a message out to all of our teams already, they should be aware.”

He nodded. That had been an early mistake, one he wasn’t going to repeat. “In the meantime, I need a debrief on our overall situation.”

“Yes sir,” another said. “Supplies are holding steady across the entire wall. We conducted the weekly audit of ammunition and gear yesterday and found fewer discrepancies. We’re still rationing food, however.”

“That’s fine,” he replied.

“Volunteer numbers are slightly down.”

“Why?” he asked.

“There… are only so many people in the city willing to volunteer,” the assistant said simply after just a small pause. “Though we are beginning to receive assistance from outside the city. The army is sending in two battalions in preparation for the arrival of a full regiment of reinforcements by the end of the month.”

That would be a good number of additional guns on the wall. And a good number of new officers to break in as well. Troublesome, but if their volunteer numbers were down, then he’d have to take it.

“Morale is rather low, however,” the same assistant said. “Our rate of dissertation and retirement is–“

“Tell people to stop with this whole desertion stuff. We have no time for cowards,” he said. “And what does morale have to do with anything?”

Did they not see that they were holding? According to his projections, another month, two at most, and they’d be able to turn the tides.

“Noted, sir,” the assistant said. “On that note, however. Some of us were curious about Samurai reinforcements?”

He scoffed. “We have all we need here,” he said. They’d lost a couple, and that was a shame, but this wasn’t the kind of career that came with coddling. The stronger samurai would survive, and thrive. He wasn’t sure if that new girl, Crisis Mode, was going to make it in the long term, but she at least had potential.