Chapter Sixty - M9

“The traditional family unit may have been displaced as time progressed, but it never truly disappeared.

A system by which a child had multiple guardians and siblings is still, in nearly every scenario, optimal.

A child needs constant attention, and constant love to grow into a strong and capable adult.

Sometimes, that requires more time than their parents can give them.

This isn’t because of a lack of love. That missing time is spent working hard to put a roof over your child’s head and keeping them safe and fed.

Perhaps all you need is something to help with the more mundane tasks of raising a child?”

--Nannyco Robotics ad, 2047

***

I glanced at my map of Black Bear really quick as I jogged along. Myalis had marked a few spots to check around town, mostly places where she’d seen civilians gathering. I wanted to get them moving to safety, but I was also on the look-out for nearly-invisible ambush aliens.

Which I figured wasn’t going to end with me finding any of them.

“Where to next?” I asked as I shot past an intersection. There wasn’t any traffic, so I only gave a quick glance each way before crossing the road. It was a good thing too, it let me see some movement down the street a little ways. “Scratch that.”

There was a small family milling around a van. An ugly old thing from the late 2030s. All curved and filled with unnecessary plastic body parts, and very much unable to hover. In a small town like this though, that was probably fine.

There was a ramp extending out of the side of the vehicle, and what looked like an entire family was gathered around it. It looked like some picture-perfect bunch. The mom, dad, and a boy and girl who were in their younger teens.

It would have been picture perfect if the dad-looking guy wasn’t in a wheelchair, his kids fussing with him, while the mother ran around in a panic.

“Yo,” I said as I approached.

No one noticed me.

That didn’t bode well. What if I was an alien?

Then again, I was supposed to be stealthy, so I chalked it up to me just being that good before I scream. “Yo!”

The kids and the dad jumped and spun around, looking for me. Then they started yammering as I walked closer. I flicked off my coat’s invisibility just as the dad finagled a rifle from inside the van.

He paused in the act of fiddling with the safety and looked my way. “You’re not an alien.”

“I’m one-hundred percent mostly human,” I said. “What’s going on here?”

“Oh, shit, she’s a samurai,” the girl said. She couldn’t be older than thirteen or so, about the age of my kittens.

“Sweetie, don’t swear,” the mother said.

I don’t know what she was talking about, the woman looked like she desperately needed a chill pill and maybe a margarita. “It’s alright?” I asked. “You folks okay?”

“Who are you?” The dad asked.

I didn’t actually know if they were a family, but if they weren’t the resemblance was uncanny, and absent any actual names, that’s what I was going to label them as. “I’m Stray Cat. Your kid’s right, I’m a samurai. Just looking for stragglers. You folk should head over to the company headquarters, we have a samurai guarding the place already.”

“Oh, wow,” the son said. His sister looked like I’d just announced that Christmas was coming early. She whipped an old-school phone out, then frowned at its blank screen before stuffing it away.

“Yeah yeah, hero worship later. Your van’s fucked?”

“Langu--” mom started. She paused, then swallowed thickly. “The van won’t start. It turns on, but I can’t get it to move. And our phones stopped. Reginald can’t walk anymore, not since he got hurt last year.”

I nodded along. “Alright,” I said. “Myalis, is this something we can fix in a hurry, or are we going to escort this lot around?”

It seems like the ground vehicles in this town all require a registry code to function. A DRM sent from somewhere in town. Something is likely interfering, or the company has shut it down, thereby preventing the vehicle from working at all.

“Can you fix it?” I asked.

Certainly.

The van rumbled to life and the family jumped. “Mom, it’s working!” the girl said.

“There you go,” I said. “It was just some software fuc--fudgery. Uh, you should be good to go? Head right towards the headquarters. It’s not too far.”

“Will we be safe there?” the mom asked.

“You should be. I doubt Gomorrah will be pleased if they don’t let someone in.” I moved over and helped the kids push their dad back up into the back of the van. “You good to drive?”

“I am, thank you,” the mom said.

The lot of them tossed their stuff back into their car in a hurry, then they were off. She actually stopped at the intersection and used her flashers to signal her turn. I shook my head. “That was nice; next group?”

Two blocks over. I’ll mark it on your map.

I stared, then groaned as I realized the van had gone that way already. I could have hitched a ride.

I flicked my coat back on and took off once more. It got boring within ten steps. I could only get so much joy from seeing the shadow of my head bobbing on the pavement before that grew old. “Where are all the damned aliens?” I asked. “I don’t think I’ve killed a single one yet.”

There should be no lack of them in the region, but the Antithesis have little need to fight and kill the locals for biomass when there is so much still available naturally. Until the main hive is destroyed, it’s likely that the local swarm will keep a low profile.

“Which means we might be here a while. We’re going to need to evacuate the entire town to someplace else.”

And scour the entire region.

“No chance that someone will decide to just nuke us?” I asked.

That would be exceptionally irresponsible. And while temporarily effective, it would likely spread some Antithesis elements far and wide. Radioactive ones.

“That sounds awful,” I said.

Also, as a matter of common sense, we strongly discourage the use of weapons of mass destruction on a planet upon which your entire race resides.

“Common sense never stopped humanity before,” I said.

Your race isn’t unique in its idiocy, I’m afraid. Most others that have gone as far as humanity usually die out along the way.

“So you’re saying we’re tough?” I asked.

I was saying you’re idiots, but if you wish to read it that way, I will not stop you.

I laughed as I picked up the pace.

My laugh froze in my throat as I came around a corner and saw the same van that had just moved away from me stopped at the end of the street. It was parked in the middle of a lawn, a fire-hydrant spraying water up in a fountain.

Had the mom been distracted?

I didn’t even hear the crash. Or maybe I had and had simply ignored it. I was used to a city’s worth of noise. A distant bang barely registered. I had to pay more attention. I might not have fought any aliens yet, but that didn’t mean they weren’t around.

Jogging over to the van, I expected to see the family moving about, maybe a bit disorientated. I had plenty of points to get some medical stuff if it came to that.

Instead, halfway down the street, I noticed the blood splashed across the inside of the windows.

Wait.

I stopped, then started to look around. If Myalis told me to wait, there was a damned good reason for it, she wasn’t the sort to stop me from racing over to help someone.

My gaze travelled across the street, looking for something, the black of an antithesis, maybe some monster lurking in the shadows.

I found plain homes, some with manicured lawns with little bushes, others looking a bit rougher around the edges. There wasn’t much space between the homes, but they each had a little lot. Cars sat useless in driveways and some of the homes had lights on.

Stealth units.

My back-mounted guns unfolded, both of them coming to rest just over my shoulders. They scanned across the street.

“I want to check in on them,” I said.

Go ahead. I am trying to see the Model Nine.

Myalis not being able to see the monster wasn’t filling me with confidence.

I walked over to the van, eyes shifting around, searching for anything.

The wind shifted, blowing across the leaves of one of the few trees around, and the grass, and the bushes which twisted around.

My heart skipped a beat.

Spinning around, I raised Whisper.

It was far too slow.

The bush launched itself at me, entirely silent.

My plasma caster spat a torrent of burning pellets at the creature, but it couldn’t track fast enough.

A claw crashed into my crossbow, then two more smacked into a pair of hexagonal disks that flashed into existence before me. Those would have eviscerated me.

I stumbled back, dropping my crossbow and finally taking in the Model Nine as it regained its footing.

It looked... like a bush. Leaves and branches. But not really. The leaves were fur, too puffy and made of thin woven strands. The branches were more like additional limbs sticking out of a thin, muscular body.

I couldn’t see its eyes, but I could make out the black claws at the ends of its many limbs. None more than a couple of centimeters long, some of them bloody.

I whipped out my Trench Maker just as the Model Nine jumped again.

Three barks sounded out as I fired into the Model Nine from point blank range.

The alien crashed to the ground.

“What... what the hell,” I swore.

***