Chapter Thirty - Going Down Geneva's Checklist

"§ 3(a). The use of incendiary weapons against civilian persons, corporate property, protected medical personnel, prisoners of war, wounded combatants, and recognized human combatants remains prohibited except as otherwise permitted under existing international humanitarian law.

§ 3(b). Notwithstanding the foregoing, incendiary agents, including gelled petroleum compounds, thermobaric botanical suppressants, and derivative anti-phytogenic threats, may be employed against hostile non-human phytogenic entities (namely, the Antithesis) where such entities are determined to constitute an invasive, self-propagating biothreat."

-Additional Protocol IV to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949
Relating to the Classification, Containment, and Lawful Destruction of Non-Human Invasive Phytogenic Combatants, Adopted at Geneva, 17 June 2048

***

Okay, so 155 millimeter shells worked.

I took over the controls of the MEOW's turret and slowly panned it over to the side. The targeting software was kind enough to highlight anything alien with a glowy red outline so it was easy enough to pick them out from the sparse bushes they were running through.

Also, there were a lot of targets to pick from, which made things kind of trivially easy.

I pinched my tongue between my lips and gently squeezed the trigger.

The entire mech rocked slightly, a shiver running through it as it absorbed the recoil of the shot. I was more focused on what happened in the distance.

An explosion rocked up along the hillside, throwing up an expanding cloud of black smoke around a flash of orange-white fire. I actually found the strange scattering of impacts around the explosion a lot more interesting. There were dozens of little puffs of dirt kicked up off the ground, some within metres of the explosion, but they scattered out from there, becoming less common the further out they were. At fifty metres out there were just one or two at random.

"How many?"

Seven hits. Total profits after the cost of the shell is forty points.

"Tch. Yeah, alright," I muttered. "What's with the little white puffs? Is that shrapnel?"

Mostly, yes. The rounds aren't designed to fragment, but its rather inevitable. Some of it is dirt and organic matter pushed away from the point of explosion.

"Cool," I said, because it was.

I liked explosions. It would probably sound stupid if I said that they felt powerful, because no shit, but that didn't make it any less true. The boom, the way the air thrummed, the shiver in the ground, the heat and flash of light. It made adrenaline surge down my spine.

Definitely a top-three experience for me.

I'd always make fun of Gomorrah for her love of fire, but I kinda got it, at least a little.

The hillside that the Antithesis were running over was only cleared for a few seconds. The shot had taken out seven, but there were seven more behind those, and seven hundred more rushing over towards the wall. There was never a shortage of Antithesis once they decided to show up.

A few slight taps on a joystick shifted the turret around slightly and I squinted through the view-screen above my head until the crosshair was locked in on a bigger alien. A model six, I think, one of those big four-legged rhino-looking tanks.

Could big guy over there survive a direct hit?

I squeezed the trigger and was happy to learn that he could not! I laughed as the shell turned the alien and the area around it into a growing ball of fire and dust. A few larger chunks eventually came back down with a splat that I couldn't hear, but I liked to think that they made a nice sound as they hit the ground.

I rotated the cannon, then waited for the wonderful ker-chunk of another shell being loaded. Only... nothing happened. Frowning, I looked over at the ammo feed and winced. Empty.

"Okay, that sucks. Didn't I start with a bunch of rounds?"

Yes, Catherine, you did. Note that there is a large swatch of the hillside ahead which has been defoliated.

"Yeah yeah," I said. "I got a little trigger happy. Uh, is the livestream still going well?"

It is! I'm switching it between footage of your mech shooting at the Antithesis, footage of the Antithesis themselves to establish the threat, and some long-ranged shots of the militia and army setting up on and within the wall.

"Nice. Well, we can give them more to look at. Got any interesting ammo laying around? I've been firing nothing but HE this entire time, and it's cool, but also kind of plain?"

I might have a few interesting things laying in storage, sure. Did you want to start with the conventional or unconventional?

The latter scared me a little. "Let's start with the normal stuff? Like... what do you call those fancy plates with all of the cheeses and meats?"

A sample platter? Yes, I can do that. One moment.

A purchase came in, chewing up a few points, but not that many. I'd be making them back, I was sure.

"Okay, so what's the first up?" I asked over the sound of shells appearing one after the other in the loader's magazine.

The first shell is an ADAAMS round. That stands for Area Denial, Anti-Antithesis Mine System. Aim up and in the general direction that the Antithesis are coming from.

"Alright," I said as I adjusted the aim. I was enjoying the idea of testing things, but I was also aware that we wouldn't have all day. Eventually, they'd reach my position and things would get a little more complicated. In the meantime, though...

I fired, and watched the shell disappear as a black blur into the sky.

It arced, then exploded far, far above.

What came down was a shower of what almost looked like streamers? They dispersed over a pretty wide area. I expected them to explode on contact with the ground, but instead they kind of just landed wherever,

"What's that about?" I asked.

It'll take another thirty seconds for the mines to prime themselves.

I didn't have to wait too long before I saw the first result. A model three ran past a bush and its leg caught on one of those streamers. It acted almost like one of those fly-killing ribbons, sticking to the alien and trailing after it.

Then the weight on the end of the streamer exploded with the force of a hand grenade.

"Nice," I said. I see why it's an area denial weapon."

Some antithesis would be smart enough to do the mental math and equate the shiny streamer to an explosive death.

"Why don't we use that kind of thing more often?"

It's illegal in most countries. Either because it's an aerially-dispersed anti-personnel mine, or merely because it's a cluster munition. These will go off on their own in six hours, not to leave any lingering explosives behind, though that time can be dialed in.

"Lame," I said. "Okay, I like that one, I guess, but it's not... immediate enough. I was raised on brain rot, Myalis, I need my instant gratification."

I see. Try the second shell, then. Same aim profile, though aim elsewhere.

I shifted the turret a few degrees right, then fired.

This time, when the shell exploded, it spread tiny little dots that I couldn't really see well. They landed across a wide area and then did a whole lot of nothing.

"What was that about?"

RADAAMS. Same as ADAAMS, only remote-detonatable. There are more explosives, and they are designed with shaped heads and a body that tends to land with the shaped charge pointing upwards. This isn't the ideal situation for this munition. Ordinarily it would be best used in a situation where you're facing a large number of more armoured foes.

I found the remote she was talking about. It was a link on my augs, and the options were... well, there was only one, and it was 'detonate.'

"These isn't individual control for each one?" I asked.

Not at that price point.

I shrugged, then waited for a slightly larger group to be passing through the area before I pressed on the 'detonate' button.

It was immensely satisfying to see a few dozen flashes of light go off. It almost looked more like pyrotechnics than the usual high-explosive effect. The few aliens caught right in the blast radius had whatever was close melted right off.

"Nice," I said. "What's next?"

Phosphorus dispersal shells. This was a suggestion by Atyacus.

That was Gomorrah's AI, which meant... "This is going to light things on fire, won't it?" I asked.

Yes. It's also illegal.

"People really like making all of the fun kinds of weapons illegal, don't they?" I asked.

I believe the logic is that they're only fun when you're the one using them.

That was probably right, but it didn't change the facts too much. I lowered the aim on the turret and then tried to pick out a nice grouping of enemies. It wasn't too hard, they were coming in greater numbers now, which inevitably meant clumps of them.

I fired, and the shell detonated a few dozen meters before reaching the aliens, scattering a dozen fat white tendrils ahead.

Where they landed, fire bloomed, though it looked kind of small? Hot, though, my thermal feed lit up as though there were a thousand little suns scattered across the entire area.

The aliens that were hit crumpled.

"Not as satisfying as I had expected," I admitted. "There isn't even that much fire."

Maybe this next one will solve that?

***