Chapter Eleven - A Teachable Moment

"Everyone has to start somewhere. Even samurai aren't ready to go all-out from the start.

Well, except for me. I was ready. Actually, more people should be ready for more things. If you're going to be a samurai, the least you could do is not be lazy about it."

--Live Interview with Deus Ex on the Saturday Morning Show, 2056

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It started with explosions, which I was reliably certain was always a good way to start something.

Since Gomorrah and I weren't gonna be in the thick of it unless the newbies fucked up royally, I mostly decided to stand back a ways and watch. That didn't mean I wasn't gonna help. I didn't feel like sitting here for hours, in a high-risk environment, without getting some sort of reward out of it.

Mostly I was aiming at some of the smaller models on the periphery and limiting myself to using my gun to tag them. It was live aim practice.

The newbies had come up with a plan.

Well, no, it was more that Hedgehog came up with a plan, and the others didn't have a better idea. They poked at it a little, added some touches of their own, but that was about it. He was kind of carrying the show during the pre-fight stage, and I figured that was probably alright.

This wasn't about forcing the newbies to get good at stuff that wasn't in their... domain. It was more about giving them a chance to play to their strengths. Hedgehog's big strength came from a few years of experience in the field, probably lots of training, and a heap of knowledge he'd picked up through his job.

So his strengths were actually pretty fucking strong. Sure, he was a little weird for a samurai, all stiff and shit, but he was still good.

Gomorrah and I had listened in on the planning phase, of course, just in case they came up with something too stupid.

It wasn't.

"Alright," Hedgehog said. "That'll catch their attention. Be ready. Eyes on your sectors. Keep your ears open."

"Got it!" Princess said.

We were all atop a small hill with a sharp embankment on the side. Below was the remains of that poisoned forest. Fallen trees and dead vegetation for a hundred metres. And also a large smoking crater now.

Tankette had been the one to start the explosions by firing some sort of HE round into the ground some ways ahead. It had taken a good ten seconds to go off. There were still clumps of dirt coming down from above, and the pillar of kicked up dust was still settling.

"I thought we weren't supposed to bomb the place?" I asked Gomorrah who was standing nearby. I wondered if she was miffed. I could plink away at the odd model one or three, but her gear was a little more... up close and personal.

"I think one distractionary explosion shouldn't be that big of a deal," Gomorrah said.

That had been the crux of the plan. A big, loud boom to let the hive and all the little plant babies around it know that we were right here and a threat.

The aliens reacted pretty predictably. There was some scuffling, then little black forms started to run across the fallen forest. Model threes leapt from trunk to trunk, smaller ones ran beneath where there was space, and a whole flock of flying models took to the sky.

"Tankette, do you have anti-air?" Hedgehog called back.

"Oh, um, I do!" Tankette said. She was, of course, in her little tank. There was a hatch open on the top, and if she stretched back, the top half of Tankette's head could poke out of it.

The turret turned, there was a light clunking noise, then Tankette ducked back down. She had insisted that everyone wear hearing protection before she started firing. Gomorrah and I had that stuff built into our helmets, Hedgehog was wearing the kind of headphones I saw soldiers wearing all the time, which left Knight and Princess and Crackshot to figure shit out.

Princess was wearing a pair of almost comically oversized headphones now. They were furry, with sparkly little diamonds on the band that made it look like a small tiara.

Crackshot had some funky earrings that were supposed to be good enough. They were shaped like little fangs. I supposed that fit with the image more than bigger hearing protection, but I bet he paid a premium for it.

Knight got herself a new helmet. It was a slight departure from her previous one, which was... apparently just a normal-ass metal helmet. A comfortable one, she said, but pretty normal. Her new helmet was a curved block of naked steel with a thin slit over her eyes. I wasn't even sure how the visor tilted up. The visor, of course, glowed red, because it wouldn't be cool if it didn't.

She looked pretty pleased with her upgrade.

I still wasn't sold on the way Princess and Knight were splitting their point income, but whatever. Princess had switched out her piddly little handgun for a long shotgun with wooden furniture.

I snapped back to attention as Tankette opened up. Her tank could fire a round every half second or so when she wanted, which wasn't subtle. The constant thump-thump-thump and trembling of the ground was accompanied by an echo as whatever she fired exploded in the air a few hundred metres away. They burst into large black balls of shrapnel that shredded through entire flocks of model ones.

"Maybe instead of going for bombs and stealth I should have just gone straight for tanks," I muttered.

"There are some pretty big downsides," Gomorrah said. "Just like the Fury, she can't deploy her tank indoors."

"Not with that attitude," I said. "A few shots like that and I think you can turn indoors into more outdoors, you know?"

Gomorrah chuckled. "I suppose."

"Open fire!" Hedgehog said. "Focus the larger models. Crackshot, keep an eye out near the hive for direct counters."

"Aye-aye, Hedge," Crackshot said. He grunted as he went to a knee, then laid himself down on the ground atop a coarse blanket he'd laid down. He aimed down-scope and started to plug away at the incoming horde.

The others fired out as well. Hedgehog had a... actually, I wasn't sure if it was an SMG or an assault rifle. It was thick and bulky, and looked like it could be used as a makeshift brick if something came too close and Hedgehog was feeling particularly violent. Princess unloaded with her new shotgun, the recoil pushing her back with every shot, and Knight fired short bursts from that rifle she'd liberated from the army earlier.

It wasn't an overwhelming amount of firepower by any means. I was pretty sure my mech alone could put more rounds downrange than the entire newbie squad, but it didn't matter. They were punching holes into the alien's growing formation, and their initial distraction was working. The aliens were still following the first group that had run towards the crater that Tankette's HE round had created.

"Oh, look, a few are coming around," I said as I raised my Laser Pointer to my shoulder and sprayed a few bursts down the slight incline leading up to where we were.

"How much are we supposed to help here?" Gomorrah asked.

"Gom, we're the ones that decided to do this. We can help as much or as little as we want," I said. "Why, getting nervous for the newbies?"

Gomorrah shook her head slowly. "Not nervous. They'll succeed. But Hedgehog's plan is too... conservative."

"Oh?" I asked.

"Sitting back from a position of strength and taking out the antithesis as they come is a very military-minded approach," she said. "It doesn't work in the long term. The hive will start sending out different kinds of models to test things, and with all of those model twenty-twos around, eventually it'll find something that works."

"Right, don't get into a war of attrition with the ever expanding aliens," I said with a nod.

"Exactly. If they just stand on this hill, they'll just get overwhelmed eventually. Or maybe they'll keep the hive's numbers down, but that will only last as long as they can keep focused on keeping it down. There's no such thing as culling an antithesis hive."

I nodded along, then glanced over to the newbies. "So... do we tell them?"

Gomorrah shrugged. "I'm considering it. Let them mess up for a little longer, I suppose. It's free points for them, and we can always burn this area down if they take too long."

"Ah yes, the 'burn them all and let god sort them out' solution," I said with a sage nod. "That's always a solid plan B."

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