Chapter Sixty-Seven - Exploring New Holes with Your Favorite Nun

“Okay, so you know how slave labour is all sorts of illegal, right?”

“Obviously.”

“Right, so get this. Someone volunteering... isn’t. An employee giving you time willingly, without asking for pay? Yeah, that’s fine.”

“Who’s going to work for free?”

“No, no, see, that’s the best part. You take note of who did volunteer work, make it public, and when promotions roll around, you tell those who volunteered a lot and who happen to get promoted that it’s partially because they volunteered.”

“So to get promoted you need to volunteer?”

“What? No, that’ll just get idiots with too much time up the ladder. Nah, but when someone who did volunteer gets promoted, you make a big show of it. I’m telling you, about one fifth of our employee work hours last year were entirely volunteer work. You can even use it as a tax write-off!”

--Overheard conversation at the AE New Montreal Head Office

***

Cause Player didn’t complain about how cramped the rear seats of the Fury were. That was great.

He did complain about just about everything else though. “Slow down!“

“I’m hardly going fast,” Gomorrah said.

“It’s relative!” he said as trees whipped by on either side.

“We’re barely going one hundred,” Gomorrah complained.

“That’s really fast when you’re only feet off the ground!”

I snorted. “Who uses feet? For measuring shit, I mean.”

“I’d use liters for that,” Gomorrah whispered.

It took me a second, but when I caught on I cackled.

“The road! The road!” Cause Player shouted.

Gomorrah looked ahead, twitched us out of the path of a tree, then turned to stare at Cause Player. “I didn’t learn to drive yesterday, you know?”

“Wait, I vaguely recall you telling me you didn’t know how to drive?”

“That was three days ago.”

I looked out ahead, at all the trees whipping by. “Um, now I’m a little concerned too,” I admitted.

Cause Player said something that was probably rude, but Gomorrah chose that moment to yank us up, spin Fury around, then come to a very quick hover on a flat patch of ground.

The forest was cleared for a ways, leaving plenty of room for the huge machines that were parked around the mine entrance, which was wider than most of the houses in Black Bear and twice as tall.

The Fury slid to a stop and hovered a metre off the ground, front facing the mine entrance. The entrance, and about a dozen Antithesis.

“Huh,” Gomorrah said.

She flicked something, and a large gun unfolded from the car’s hood.

The Fury’s soundproofing proved its worth. I didn’t even hear the machine gun going off. Soon, the few Model Threes and Fours lingering around were turned into so much pulp that they were hard to tell apart from a pile of roadside slush.

“This is your stop,” Gomorrah said. “We even cleared the landing zone.”

“Thank you,” Cause Player said. “I think... I’ll figure out how to get back on my own.”

“Suit yourself.”

I leaned to the side to see him open the backdoor. He looked stange, all tucked in with his heavy armour, knees almost at his chest. It was good that his guns were the teleport-y sort. “Stay warm,” I said. “And if shit goes crooked, give us a call.”

“I will,” he said. “You do the same.” With that, he squeezed out of the car and crashed into the ground, boot-first. Heavy metal started to fill the air as he strode forwards, and a large gun materialized into his arms.

“Really want one of those,” I said.

“The music?” Gomottah asked as the door closed.

“The magic gun thing,” I said.

She nodded. “It’s neat.”

Gomorrah drove forwards, then angled us up and over the rocky hillside into which the mines dove.

I have the survey information from the headquarters. It seems as if they sent information that doesn’t entirely match the seismographic information obtained from the orbital strike. Either the company is lying, their information is out of date, or they are incompetent. I suspect it’s a little bit of all three.

“Did you check around for any signs that they’re lying on purpose?” I asked.

None that I could see, but there are some employees who have a history of bending the truth to better pad out the bottom line.

Well, that wasn’t unexpected. “Whatever. We’ll figure it out once we’re down there. If the place is active, we’ll want to deploy quickly.”

“Rockets in the entrance?”

“Might make the place cave in on us,” I said.

“That’s fair. Do you have anything to prevent a cave-in from killing you?” Gomorrah asked.

“I don’t,” I said. “Well, bombs.”

The nun sighed. “Bombs don’t... well, I suppose technically.”

I kinda wished she could see my grin. “Explosives fix most problems, when you’re creative enough with their use,” I said.

“Right, I’ve got a thing. I’ll buy you one once we’ve landed.”

“Really?”

“A hundred points to keep you alive is hardly much of a sacrifice.”

I... felt a bit touched. “Thanks,” I said, meaning it.

Gomorrah didn’t comment, instead she wheeled us around a patch of what had been a forest. I hadn’t been paying too much attention, but now that we were over the area closer to where the Rods of God had impacted, it became pretty obvious something big had hit.

Nearly every tree around was knocked flat on its side, like tens of thousands of narrow dominos.

The hole we were looking for wasn’t that hard to spot. A crack running across the edge of a hill, maybe fifty metres long and way, way deeper.

“Not finding much space to land on,” Gomorrah said. “Maybe there?” She pointed to a spot some dozen metres from the crack, with a few rocks that looked kind of stable.

“Hover over?” I asked.

“Yeah, but we need to unload some stuff. I think that grapple system of yours is still in the back. I’m... very much not surprised that you leave stuff around in other people’s cars.”

“Oops,” I deadpanned.

Gomorrah brought us down and set the Fury to hover. Stepping out was a bit tricky, with the ground being so uneven, but we managed.

I stared into the crevice, the whole thing feeling a lot larger, and a lot darker now that we stood right on the edge of it. “Alright, let’s unload the mecha cats. Should we leave one with the Fury?”

“To guard it? No, I’ll remote it up a few hundred metres. It’ll target any flying Antithesis around, and it can serve as a beacon for us. There’s not much normal reception around here.”

I glanced to the skies. Dark. Dark and brownish. There were some fires here and there too, little white plumes reaching out to the clouds.

“Cat?”

I snapped out of it and rushed to the back of the Fury to help unload the mecha cats stored within. “Going to be tricky to get these three to the bottom,” I said.

“They’re not so heavy,” Gomorrah said. “Who’s going down first? Oh, and let me get you that thing.”

“Ah yes, the thing,” I said.

As it turned out, the thing was a small pack with clamps. It was mildly complicated to put on, and had a bunch of boxes around it. Gomorrah explained that they would deploy a sort of airbag around me if shit went horribly wrong. It was more than just an airbag, but I got the gist of it.

“Myalis, can I spare enough points for, like, a stealth poncho? With a hood?” I asked.

A stealth poncho?

“Like, a thing that’ll cover me more than just my jacket. I have my legs and head still visible.”

I think I understand what you’re looking for. Perhaps a cloak?

“A cloak of invisibility? That sounds kind of awesome. Always wanted one of those.”

“For peeping in bathrooms?” Gomorrah asked as she helped me grab the last mecha cat.

“Showers, actually,” I said.

You only want something simple?

“It’s all I can afford,” I said.

“You know it’s still weird to only hear one side of that conversation,” Gomorrah said.

I shrugged.

New Purchase: Cloak of Inpurrceptability
Points Reduced to... 35

I picked up the box the cloak came in and opened it to find a long cape-like thing, with a deep hood that of course had cat ears sewn on. Kinda cute though. I slid it on over everything else I had. Fortunately it was pretty light, because I was covered in a whole load of gear already.

“Do you think we should get like, exoskeleton suits, or power armour?” I asked.

“Isn’t that the end-goal?” Gomorrah asked. “Honestly, I think it depends on what you’re going for.”

Gomorrah and I set up my old grapple system, the drill-heads digging into some of the larger stones as if they were so much butter. And then it was time to head down into the pit. “I’ll go first,” I said.

“Not even a debate?”

I grinned, then walked off the edge. “Nope!”

***