Cataphractoi

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“Hold up a moment, I need to drop a bomb,” I said to my mom in the moving truck behind me. I made to slow down my hovercar and opened the window, checking the ground below before tossing a firebomb out, incinerating the Antithesis corpse below and setting a fire that would burn out the scattered bits hidden around the field.

“I thought that was a euphemism for taking a shit,” said the absolute creature in the other vehicle.

“Mom!” I objected, rolling my eyes. “No, there were just some dead Antithesis left over from when I became a Samurai that needed to be cleaned up before they made any more problems. Juny neglected to remind me how they spread until after we’d left because I couldn’t spare the points at the time.

“Oh! You figured it out!”

“I’m not an idiot, it was pretty obvious when I saw how much the explosives catalogue cost,” I replied to the AI in my head, currently puppeting a spherical robot in my passenger seat.

“…was that your old car down there?” my mom asked somberly.

“Don’t worry about it too much. I’m fine now,” I replied, not wanting to dwell on the subject of how I became a Samurai.

We continued towards Boone, me driving the battered armored car I’d essentially pilfered from the Stalking Tigers and my mom driving a long hover truck containing all our worldly possessions. It’d been over a week since I’d been back. My original intention was just to bring my mom back with me since I could guarantee her safety there, but she’d insisted on stopping by my own apartment to retrieve my own stuff while we were at it.

Unlike last time I’d gone down this route, there were no incidents, so we arrived in Boone shortly after. It’d been a bit of a detour, but I wanted to make sure that chore was taken care of while I was out. When I stepped out of my car I immediately received a message- Alana had asked to talk to me the instant I’d arrived.

“Yo, Haverson!” I called out to the former sergeant coming out to meet us. “That’s the truck with our stuff in it. Do you need to know which rooms are ours?”

“Nope, I got ya’ll covered. I’ve got some grunts on the way to handle the heavy lifting,” the quartermaster said amiably, clapping me on the shoulder on the way past.

“Thanks, man. Mom, this is the former Sergeant Haverson, I asked him to help us with the move ahead of time. I need to go meet with Alana, so go ahead and get started without me,” I told my mother as she exited the truck.

“I can’t tell if this is an attempt to get out of the work or your way of hooking me up with that fine young gentleman,” she whispered after Haverson had walked past, smirking.

“Mother!” I chided, taking off my helmet just to make sure she could see me glaring holes in her.

“Alright, alright. Have fun at your meeting, sweetie,” she said with a chuckle as she walked towards the rear of the truck. I huffed a bit and then went inside, following Juny’s waypoints to the meeting room.

“Welcome back. How’s your mom doing?” Alana greeted as I entered. She was dressed in fatigues, so I felt a bit overdressed, but I hadn’t had time to remove my armor before coming. Also seated at the table was Captain Lafayette- a late-thirties woman with short cut hair and severe features dressed in the uniform of the local militia.

“Oh, you know. Ordering grunts around, probably flirting with Haverson by now. What’s up?” I asked as I took a seat in a chair that was clearly intended for me, given how heavily reinforced it was. Evidently Alana was expecting me to be here in full kit.

“Now that you’re back, I there’s some things the three of us need to discuss about how we’ll be moving forward. I believe you’ve met Captain Lafayette before?” Alana replied, waving at the other woman. I nodded.

“Call me Selene. You’re not exactly military anymore, and you never were,” the captain replied, looking to each of us respectively.

“Selene, then. Moving on, with the Stalking Tigers having pulled out, we’re short on manpower, so I thought it was important to touch base with you and coordinate our efforts,” Alana said to Selene.

“Past tense? I knew they lost their contract, but I thought it would take them a bit longer than that to make the move,” I said, frowning.

“While you were out, I negotiated for possession of this building and everything in it. I was able to trade a handful of templates that shouldn’t cause much trouble in exchange, and I bought out the contracts of anyone that wanted to stick around on top of that, so they only needed to transport their personnel.” Alana shrugged.

“How many did you manage to keep?” asked Selene.

“About a quarter. Mostly people either personally loyal to me or itching for more action. I can’t blame the rest; mercenary work is fairly stable for the larger outfits, and the Stalking Tigers mostly handle security jobs. What happened here was an anomaly,” explained Alana.

“Less than I’d like. We lost a good fifth of our people during the siege and another fifth were too traumatized to return to action. There were fewer casualties than I’d expected thanks to the supplies you both provided, but it’s still going to be hard to make up the difference,” Selene said with a scowl. With the size of Boone’s population, I could understand how they’d have trouble recruiting.

“We can probably make up the lack of quantity with quality if we outfit more people with Samurai gear, but…that might get a bit expensive depending on what we buy,” I said with a frown, drumming my fingers on the table in thought.

“About that…Dylta and I have been talking, and I think we have a solution. It’s the same as the ammo press- if we purchase fabricators and templates instead of directly buying gear, we can mass produce equipment as long as we have materials. And we have a literal mountain of materials right outside the wall that we need to deal with anyway, preferably before the Antithesis biomatter under it starts growing,” Alana told us. I was already starting to have ideas, but I had a question first.

“Isn’t most of that material just dirt?” I asked skeptically.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that. We have a number of tunnels we need to fill in, not to mention structural damage to buildings and the wall. We can just process the raw earth and wood into bricks and planks,” Selene answered confidently.

“Cool. In that case, is there any limit to what the fabricators can make?” I followed up, this time prompting Juny to chime in.

“There is not! Fabricators capable of faster production times and volume will be more expensive, and higher class templates will require commensurately higher class fabricators to use, but on the whole they are quite versatile!” the AI said.

“In that case…you know those walkers I bought? I cheaped out on them at the time because I didn’t have enough points anything better, but we might be able to use fabricators to upgrade them to use Class I materials,” I suggested eagerly. Alana and Selene nodded their agreement.

“That’s a good idea. We should set up separate lines for vehicles, weapons, armor, and building materials. It’ll cost a hefty chunk of points, but I think the efficiency would be worth it. Especially if we ever need to upgrade the standard issue gear,” Alana replied.

“Are you planning on recruiting more people to outfit?” Selene asked carefully. “Or do you intend on subsuming the militia? It doesn’t seem like you have that many people.”

“I think it would be best to maintain separate chains of command, but I’d like to equip your people as well,” assured Alana. Selene still looked unconvinced.

“It seems a bit risky to just give out Samurai gear like that. If people sell it they could make a pretty penny,” the militia captain pointed out.

“We’ll be smart about it. Secure armories, serial numbers on all the gear, maybe embedded trackers for the really dangerous or valuable stuff. Fact is, even combined we don’t have enough people to fully man the walls. You need our tech and we need your manpower,” Alana retorted, apparently to Selene’s satisfaction.

“That does still leave the question of who’s in charge, though. You said you don’t want to absorb the militia, so how will we handle that?” she asked next. I was starting to feel like an accessory, to be honest.

“We’ll coordinate assignments as equals when Erica and I are around, and when we’re out of town I’d like you to assume command of our people as well. You’re the most experienced officer around, anyway.”

“How often are you expecting to be gone?”

“Fairly often. I don’t anticipate much more in the way of Antithesis incursions here going forward as long as we sanitize the ruins properly, so we’d just be sitting on our thumbs here. I think the Family could use a pair of mobile Samurai that can respond to incidents like the one that happened here.”

I’d already agreed to that when I decided to stick around, so I didn’t object. With that matter out of the way, though, I thought I’d steer us back to the previous topic.

“Getting back to the logistics- how are we going to be splitting those purchases up?” I asked Alana.

“Going half on everything is fine with me. We’ve probably got all the catalogs we’ll need between the two of us, minus any additional facilities we might need,” she replied.

“Only other thing I can think of is how we’re getting this stuff in the field. We can resupply ourselves, but the portable ammo press wasn’t able to keep up when your team was separated from you.” I scowled, considering another problem I’d already been giving thought to. “I’m also having issues transporting all the weapons I’ve got. They all have their purposes so I don’t really want to leave any behind, but they’re more than I can carry and a cargo bot would be vulnerable to Antithesis.”

I left out that we wouldn’t necessarily be fighting only Antithesis…mostly because I didn’t want to consider it too closely.

“That’s true, but I’m not sure what we can do about it other than putting together some kind of baggage train.” Alana raised her hands helplessly.

“Well, hell, you’re Samurai aren’t you? Can’t you just…I dunno, teleport it to you? That’s basically what you do when you buy shit anyway, isn’t it?” Selene suggested with a raised eyebrow.

“Huh. That seems obvious now that you mention it. Juny, can we do that?”

“Of course! Many Class I items already utilize short-range teleportation. If you purchase a Class II Teleportation Technology catalog, you can teleport equipment directly to and from the field, and at Class III you can also transport larger things like people at long range!” Juny answered eagerly, happy to explain. “It will require a significant amount of power, though!”

“I’m sure we can solve that with some sort of reactor tech. We’ll discuss it further when we decide where we’re putting everything, but I think this meeting had gone on long enough for now. Unless anyone else has something to bring up?” Alana said, looking between Selene and I.

“Nothing from my side,” Selene told her with a shake of her head.

“Well, it’s more of a personal matter, but…I did have one request,” I replied with some trepidation. What I was about to ask felt a bit embarrassing as a Samurai, but I was in the perfect position to request it and I had to take advantage of it.

“Sure. What is it?” Alana asked curiously.

“Right now I’m basically a civilian with fancy toys. I think what I need most right now is training.”