Chapter Fifty-Five - Making an Entrance

“Post-2020 saw a massive surge of people moving into the cities and new megacities appearing all over the world. A surge that hadn’t been seen since the height of the industrial revolution.

Despite that, the small-town didn’t just disappear. Entire businesses formed that catered specifically to people living in rural towns across the world. They became popular places for the rich to spend their retirement years away from the pressure of the city, and for the lucky few that retired to live out the rest of their lives in relative quiet.

That does not mean that small towns are perfect hamlets of civility. All the issues of poverty, hunger, and the gulf between rich and poor are just as prevalent in these towns, especially in the many, many ‘corpo-burgs’--corporate-owned towns--that started to appear near larger cities.”

--Commentary on the Shift in Small Town Thoughts, Tim Butcher, 2038

***

I gave Lucy a kiss before going. Then, because Gomorrah hadn’t arrived yet, I gave her another, then another.

Unfortunately, we were both still dressed when Myalis pinged me to inform me that Gomorrah had landed out front.

“Be careful,” Lucy ordered.

I gave her a last hug for the road, pressing her close to me. She fit the way only Lucy did. “I will be,” I promised before letting go.

I ducked my ears down flat on my head as I stepped out into the rain, then belatedly tucked my helmet on. Gomorrah had parked God’s Righteous Fury right in the middle of our landing zone, the car all wet and sleek as if it was posing for one of those hyper-real commercials. I could almost hear the snobbish narrator telling the audience that they would never be able to afford a car this awesome.

I ran to the passenger side just as the door opened with a pneumatic hiss, then I flung my Whisper in the back and placed my new grenade launcher on my lap as I fell onto the seat. “Yo.”

“Are your feet in?” she asked as she pressed the gas. We were off the edge before the door had even sealed.

I leaned into the cushions as Gomorrah aimed us into the greyed sky. “So, uh, what’s up?”

“You’re really not good at pleasantries, you know?”

“Oh yeah, I know, but it’s polite to pretend to be nice to your friends,” I said.

“Hmph,” she said. “Do you have any idea what the sisters at the monastery would say if they saw you calling me a friend?”

“They’d ask who the smoking hot girl you’re with is?” I tried.

She shook her head. “If they didn’t think I was some sort of saint they’d pull out the ruler and go on about bad influences for an hour.”

“The ruler, huh?” I asked. “You should tell Lucy about that, she was always really keen on spanking disobedient girls... do you think Lucy could cut it as a nun?”

“No,” Gomorrah said. “How is it that we’ve been together for less than a minute and you’re already being a pervert?”

I shrugged. “I’ve got a very simple mind. Half of it is filled with snark, the other half is loaded up with images of Lucy being lewd. Speaking of which, do you think I could borrow a nun costume?”

Gomorrah made a disgusted little noise. I figured she was actually amused by it all though. “I’d need to burn it, like how they disposed of unclean things in the past. And it’s called a habit, not a costume.”

“I’ll try not to make a habit of calling it a costume then,” I said.

She glanced my way, and while I knew she couldn’t see my smug grin through my helmet, I liked to think that she could sense it.

“Where are we heading to again?”

“Black Bear, I think. Some little mining town about an hour north from here.”

A map appeared, superimposed over the rainy city on the other side of the windshield. Our location was a glowing dot, and our destination another. Gomorrah manipulated the yoke and we shifted just a little bit. “An hour north, huh,” she muttered.

I only-just had time to grab onto my launcher before we accelerated forwards and everything became a whole lot heavier for a moment. A glance at the speedometer before Gomorrah showed it shooting past the two-hundreds, then the threes, before slowing down in the four-hundreds.

“I guess it won’t take an hour then,” I said.

“I’d hope not,” she shot back. “So, details?”

“Right. Deus Ex was about as enlightening as usual, which is to say, not very. Basically, some stealth aliens settled down near the town. We need to keep it safe until the big guns hit the hive. Probably going to send the aliens running.”

“So, we’ll be playing a defensive game, then,” Gomorrah said. “I can work with that.”

“Plenty of forests and stuff around too, I think. Means a lot of biomass, but also a lot of stuff that burns.”

Gomorrah nodded and then angled us down. I felt my insides trying to become my outsides, and that fancy supper from the night before was considering leaving when she leveled us off about twenty meters over the tops of the tallest trees.

I relaxed. Gomorrah was a good driver. Or was it pilot? It didn’t matter, she seemed to enjoy this kind of thing, and she was damned good at it from what I could tell. Her AI probably wouldn’t let her crash into a mountain either.

We started to slow down, and I felt the seat molding around me to hold me in place against the pull of deceleration until Gomorrah and I were flying slow enough that the scenery outside was more than just a blur.

Homes zipped past. Little bungalows in neat rows with bigger apartments next to them. A few stores too. Mostly gas-stations and convenience stores, but at least one grocery right on the edge of the town.

I tried to recall how many people lived here. It was a tiny enough place that had we still been moving at Gomorrah’s preferred speed, we would have likely missed it with a blink.

Flashes of gunfire drew my eye, and I pointed towards the centre of town. “You see that?”

“No, what? Ah, I see it.”

There seemed to only be two schools in Black Bear, two older looking buildings built across the street from each other, with decently large fields out back and parking lots filled to the brim with cars haphazardly tucked away.

Weaving through those cars were familiar forms.

Model Threes, running on all fours like a pack of hounds, some leaping onto cars, others slipping around them.

And facing them from behind a row of squad cars were some five or six police officers. They were right before the school’s main entrance.

“Damn,” I said. “Myalis, can you figure out what’s going on?”

I believe so. The protocol in case of an incursion near Black Bear is to resume work until company representatives can verify the veracity of any claims, calculate potential losses, then allocate their employees to shelters. I will note that there are no shelters in the town that meet any major criteria.

“Shit,” I said.

In defiance of this, it seems as if the locals have unanimously declared that none of their machinery was functional today, and have sought shelter in the local high-school. Company police have acted against this. From their recordings, it seems they were at the school to clear it out when the first Antithesis arrived.

“Damnation,” Gomorrah said. She flicked something on her yoke and a dozen cross-hairs appeared on the windshield, then zipped around to aim more-or-less right at the nearest aliens. “Firing.”

“Firing what?” I asked.

Then the Fury spat out a volley of screaming missiles that spun in the air, realigned with the ground, and blasted the town below, sending fire and concrete and bits of hovercars all over.

“Now they know we’re here,” she said.

“Shit,” I said. “Okay, we need to defend this town... the entire town. How many people have made it to the school?”

Unknown. Certainly less than the entire population.

“Right... shit, Gomorrah, can you drop me off by the front. There’s supposed to be some other samurai here. We need to get into contact. I’ll talk to the locals in the mean-time. Can you waste a few more of those rockets on any big pack?”

“And then?” she asked.

“I think we need to draw all the civvies to one place and barricade it in. It’ll be easier to protect them that way. We can install turrets and mines and shit. Worry about clearing the town later.”

“So I’ll play air-support?” she asked.

“Land Fury somewhere safe if you want,” I said. “I’m not your boss. Just not keen on seeing folk die.”

The nun nodded and spun us around while lowering the car. The passenger door opened when we were still a meter off the ground.

“Call me if you need me, I’ll be farming points the easy way.”

“See ya,” I said as I stood, grabbed my crossbow from the back, then dropped to the ground to land with a crouch.

The Fury pulled up with a wash of warm air, leaving me alone in front of some half-dozen guys in blue uniforms. “Sup?” I asked. “Hear you guys had an alien problem?”

***