Cataphractoi

If you'd like to read more, please consider checking out my other works!

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Slaying Aliens and Infringing Copyrights (A Stray Cat Strut Fanfiction)

My uneventful vacation ended the instant Juny cleared me to remove the backpack providing resources for my upgrades. Most Samurai were content to defend their own local environs, if they actively fought the Antithesis at all, so there were always small towns in need of help. One would think that in the current age most people would have gathered into larger groups for mutual protection, but there would always be people more attached to their homes than their lives- and sometimes they got lucky enough to survive a very long time before running into trouble they couldn’t handle.

In the center of my suite I’d installed the armor maintenance station needed to equip and remove my armor. When it wasn’t in use it looked strange; almost like an altar with nothing but a pair of armored shoes on it, surrounded on three sides with walls far enough away that I could stretch my arms out without touching them. Only when I stepped into those shoes did the station spring to life.

Above me a compartment opened, revealing the undersuit of my armor. It was built in a way that would have made it impossible to slip on like a wetsuit, so it was instead split into front and rear halves. I spread my arms out as the two sections of the suit were lowered down and brought to meet with myself in the middle. They were held in place by the armor station while it performed some kind of arcane scientific magic to seamlessly merge them into a single piece I wouldn’t be able to remove on my own, at which point the undersuit began molding itself to fit my contours perfectly like a second skin.

Gimbaled arms began to unfold from the walls around me carrying the components of my armor. All at once they began to attach plating to hard points on my undersuit in a process bereft of any screws or rivets. Some parts, like the sections of my vambraces and greaves, snapped together when brought together, but I knew from experience that they were just as firmly affixed to the suit below through no mechanism I’d been able to spot.

Once my limbs were armored, next came my torso. That section consisted of just four parts, the largest of which were the ones making up the chest and back protection, but they were affixed as quickly as any of the other components of my armor. In seconds all that was left was the helmet, which was lowered smoothly over my head without me having to lift a finger, my hair already tied up and out of the way. Finally the platform I was standing on spun so that I could step forward and out of the armor station.

Since I was still in the base it wasn’t strictly necessary to carry any weapons, but I chose to get it out of the way now so I had something at the ready. I looked over to the side of my HUD where a list of weapon icons had been added and blinked twice over the SMG icon, already shifting my hands to be ready to accept them. Teleported from the armory, both guns materialized in my hands, where they remained for only a moment before I attached them to the magnetic carriers on my thighs. Just to have one more weapon at the ready I repeated the process with my shotgun and stuck it to my back.

“Would you like to know the details of the mission?” Juny asked helpfully as I headed for the door. I shook my head.

“Where’s the fun in that? I’ll just hear it all from Alana with everyone else,” I told her. By now I knew where to find the typical briefing room for the rapid response teams, who were the only ones that would be involved in this mission, so I headed for the floor dedicated to them. Everyone but the officers lived on that floor, so they were probably waiting there already.

I got there to find fourteen men and women in full gear seated in rows. The room was built lecture-style with each row being slightly higher than the one before it, but with no tables but the podium at the front. While the rank-and-file had beaten me here, neither squad’s officer was around yet. The room was built to hold twice as many squads, though, so it looked empty with only half its seats filled.

That couldn’t be helped; one squad was killed on day one of the siege and another had followed its leader back to the Stalking Tigers. In terms of manpower that was certainly a loss, but truth be told, I’d forgotten there even was a third squad for a while there. I never even met the lieutenant that commanded that team. It was a consequence of the shift schedule; the four squads hadn’t been intended to be on duty at once and there weren’t enough gunships to deploy them all together even before Richter’s squad was lost. I only ran into Alvarez because his team was off-duty when the base was attacked.

At any rate, there were plenty of seats available…but other than nodding to the people in the crowd I knew, I ignored that area as I headed to the front of the room and took up a spot leaning against the wall. Why? Well, it certainly wasn’t because I felt like I belonged there. I was just too heavy for the chairs.

Shortly after I settled in, Alana and Alvarez- whose first name I really needed to learn but was too embarrassed to ask for at this point- arrived and Alana headed to the podium. Both carried their helmets under their arms, which stood out from those carried by the others. While their armor was similar to the standard black ODST gear I’d designed for the troops, they’d received the Recon variant with some extra features packed in for commanders. I planned to eventually distribute specialized variants for other roles as well, but I didn’t have access to the components I needed yet.

“Alright folks, vacation’s over. Boone might be safe now, but there’s a whole lot of places around that still have Antithesis to worry about, and we’ve gotta earn a paycheck somehow,” Alana announced as she took her place at the podium, setting her helmet down.

“Didn’t we just go through a whole bunch of hubbub where we quit being mercs?” some member of Alvarez’s squad asked sarcastically.

“I hope you don’t think that means I’m paying you to sit around, jackass,” Alana countered with a smirk. “We may not be mercs anymore, but the Family has agreed to reimburse us generously for filling in the gaps in underdefended areas, so that’s what we’re going to do. Considering they sent the Mountaineer to save all your asses, I’m sure there aren’t going to be any complaints.”

“Don’t you mean our asses, ma’am?” asked Rick Torres, who I knew was part of Terry’s fireteam but not much else.

“Torres, I had the points to buy a flying tank the size of a barn. You had a shotgun and your brown undies. I would have killed those Twenty Threes eventually, but the only part of you that would have survived that is your dignity, and that’s only thanks to plausible deniability,” Alana roasted the man to the chuckles of his squadmates.

“Now, if we’re all done joking around, here’s the deal. There’s a little place in Arkansas called Jones Mill that just found out Antithesis moved into their abandoned cable plant and the neighboring quarry. It’s a tiny little town with only a few hundred residents, and they had a fortified school building to fall back to, but there’s no corpo security and the local military units are either occupied or exist only on paper,” Alana went on to explain. She put a map up on the projector behind her showing the town as she spoke.

It was small, and it looked like it had gotten smaller in recent years. It had all the signs of a country village that used to have a lot of land to go around but which had contracted into a more defensible area when the Antithesis appeared. There was a cluster of several dozen buildings- maybe over a hundred- at a density that you wouldn’t typically see outside a city surrounded by scattered and run down structures that were much more spaced out.

The place probably didn’t even have a school thirty years ago. Some enterprising local probably got the idea to build and fortify it to make sure the local children would always be in the safest place possible if aliens rolled in.

“So here’s the plan. We’ll be taking the new Sparrowhawk and one of the old gunships to reinforce the defenses. Alvarez, you’ll be dropping in with your squad to defend the school. Word is that the evacuation is complete and everyone is already there or dead, so dig in and hold your position. No need to clear any hives, so gear up accordingly.” Alvarez nodded in acknowledgement, so Alana moved on.

“My team will be tackling the quarry. We’ll be dropping at the school and fighting our way over. Usual gear, but I’m not expecting anything big. We shouldn’t have to deal with anything larger than a Six, and even if we do, the Sparrowhawk is going to be remaining on station to provide air support.”

That just left me, which meant I was going to be clearing the cable plant myself. I gave a nod when Alana looked my way to indicate I understood.

“I don’t think I need to say it, but I’m trusting you to handle the other hive yourself. Do you think you’ll be needing any support?” she asked, letting me know where I factored into the plan without quite telling me what to do. She probably felt a bit awkward about it; we were technically equals here, and I don’t think she was entirely sure how to coordinate with me yet as a result. As a mercenary she’d led a single squad and someone else had told her and the other squad leaders what to do, and during the siege she’d been the unambiguous commander.

“A hive that size should be perfect for testing out my new upgrades. You might want to be quick though. I’ll probably be done so fast I’ll be getting bored by the time you finish, if you don’t hurry,” I joked with a laugh and a thumbs-up. She had a full squad but a quarry is a lot bigger than a factory.

“Hear that everyone? I think Erica just volunteered to buy us all drinks if you can prove her wrong!” Alana declared, turning back to face the troops. That got some cheers from her squad and chuckles from Alvarez’s team, who didn’t have to lift a finger either way.

“Sure, but if I win, ya’ll get to buy me drinks until we find out if I can still get drunk,” I tossed back.

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” I heard Jamal mutter, to which I grinned.

“We can’t let her win, our wallets might not survive,” Haley whispered back.

“That’s all I’ve got. Grab your weapons and meet up in the hangar!” Alana ordered, ending the briefing.