Chapter Nineteen - Vital Defensive Preparation

“I like the ship.

Plus, I bet that in private, Gomorrah’s totally the dom. I mean, have you seen the amount of faux-leather in her outfit?”

--ShipBattles Forum post by user Youralis, 2057

***

My plan had three basic steps, and of course I ran into trouble before the first one was out.

“Fuck,” I said succinctly.

Myalis had continued to direct my drones through the hive tunnels, and that meant that with each passing minute we had a better picture of where the hive was. The good news was that few of the branching tunnels were under Downtown. Not none, but few, which was the second best option there.

Then Myalis, being the helpful little AI she was, kindly pointed out a big glaring issue that I hadn’t considered.

If we wanted to spread the alien-eating nanogoop to as many aliens as possible, then we’d need to insert it in a few spots, and the best of those were all hard to reach. She overlaid a few locations in the tunnel network where we could do the insertion, but they weren’t all close at hand.

“Okay,” I said. My first thought was finding suicidal volunteers to head out and drop the packages off, but there were other, better options. “We send out drones. Same cat drones that we’re using already, but with the bombs attached to them. Is that doable?” I asked.

Of course. The cats will also be able to reach the locations that I’ve designated as ideal spreading points with relative ease. Though this will take time in any case, and there are few locations to insert them from. The hole in the basement of the museum is one of three locations I’ve found so far, and it’s the most convenient.

I nodded along. It wasn’t central or anything, but... yeah. Time to delegate. “Get me the General,” I asked while I paced along the length of the food court. I didn’t care if anyone saw me, really. Manic was still around, cleaning her nails out with a guitar pick. Sprout and Gomorrah had run off to prepare the defences and Johnny--Arm-a-Geddon, that was, had run off to... I didn’t know, try to get laid maybe?

A line opened up on my augs with a boring image of the general’s face as the only indicator of who I was talking to. “Stray Cat?” he asked.

“You got any militia people with honking big testicles, General?” I asked.

He chuckled. “I might have a few. What needs doing?”

“I need a very precious cargo driven to a specific location and delivered to a specific hole. And no, this isn’t any sort of innuendo. I need people to deliver a load of drones to the museum, specifically the basement where there’s access to the antithesis’ tunnel network.”

“Is this going to be the sort of mission where we only ask for volunteers?” he asked.

I swallowed. “I hope it’s not that bad but... maybe ask anyway. We don’t want cowards on this one. Give them your best gear too, and maybe I can throw in a few bonuses. Uh, while I have you on the line, where would be the best place to dump off a heap of Samurai-grade weapons?”

“Mall, second floor, we’ve taken over a row of shops there,” he said. “I’ll have someone meet you.”

“Alright. Will you be able to distribute things quickly?”

“We’ll try. No promises when it comes to the civilians though, they might decide to run and hide.” There was no contempt there, just a matter-of-factness to everything that made it sound terribly truthful. Some civilians would run, and there wasn’t anything we could do about it.

“Thanks, General. We’ll deal with that when the time comes, I guess. Getting as many people ready to receive the horde as we can is more important for now.”

With that done, I started to make my way across the mall. Of course, my pacing meant that I’d ended up as far from the nearest escalator bank as I could be without stepping outside. That was fine, it gave me time to get my next call out of the way.

Lucy answered on the third ring, and the first thing I heard was her breathing. Her breathing which was hard and laboured. “Uh,” I said. “Hey... what’re you up to?” I asked.

She laughed between pants. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Desperately,” I said. “You know, you can set your augs to record whatever it is you’re doing in first person...”

“Oh?” she asked, the teasing note in her voice was impossible to miss. “Would you, ah, like that?”

I swallowed then glanced around as I slowed my walk. This was very much not the time to be looking at something like that, but yes, I totally wanted to see.

“Here, linking you in now. Enjoy the view,” she said with a raspy chuckle.

I opened the link as soon as it came through and... watched through a floating screen in my vision as Lucy--in first person--knelt down and picked up one of those turrets we’d been fabricating at home and loaded it up into the back of a van. She stopped after it was in, hands on her knees to catch her breath.

“These things are way too heavy,” she complained.

I snorted. “Yeah, I’ll bet. How come you’re loading them?”

“Isn’t that what you called for?” she asked. She smacked her hands together and turned. I saw the front of our home. She was between the forelegs of the cat, just on the landing deck out front. The door was held open with a block of something and the kittens were carrying out turrets, working in pairs to lift them.

“Yeah, but how did you know before I called?”

‘Because Gomorrah is better at communicating with her girlfriend than you are,” she said. She turned and I saw that Franny was around.

The redhead looked up and blinked. “Girlfriend?” she asked. “Wait, who are you talking to?”

“I’m talking to Cat. Give me a bit?” Lucy asked. At Franny’s nod she walked off to the side where she had a little bit more privacy. “So, what’s up?”

“Uh, literally just called to ask about the turrets. How many do we have?”

“Forty-seven,” she said. “And I think we won’t be able to fit all of them in the van. Rac’s working on making more as we speak, but they take like, twenty minutes each, so even if we did a round trip and then returned we wouldn’t deliver that many more.”

“That’ll help,” I said. “Also, what do you mean by ‘we?’”

“We as in me and Franny!” Lucy said. “I’m going to be the door gunner!”

“Lucy, no,” I said.

“Lucy, yes!” she cheered. “Come on, it won’t be that dangerous.”

“It’s a van, not a gunship. There’s no door to gun from,” I said.

“I have a handgun,” she replied. Then she looked down, unzipped the front of her blazer, and pulled a handgun out from where she’d tucked it into the waist of her pants. “See,” she said.

“Disregarding how hot that was,” I said. “Still no.”

Lucy laughed and shoved the gun away after checking to see if the safety was still on. “You can’t stop me, Cat. Besides, it’s just a quick trip over, right? I’ll kiss you in like, an hour, tops. Alright? Now, I need to get back to work. Love you!”

And then she had the gall to disconnect me.

Lucy was coming here. Oh, I could probably stop her, for now, but then it would become a challenge and I really didn’t want to stand in Lucy’s way when she felt challenged about something. That wouldn’t be healthy for our relationship. Besides, I did kind of miss her.

So, if I fucked up here, I wasn’t just going to get a few thousand civilians dead, I was going to end up without Lucy too.

“Well, fuck,” I muttered. “Myalis, how many points do I have left?” I asked as I ran up the escalator. The clock was ticking.

You currently have ninety-six thousand, four hundred and twelve points remaining. You have been spending without paying them much heed recently, but that amounted to less than three percent of your point total, so I didn’t see the need to be overly concerned.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “We’re going to be spending a lot more. I need drones with those nanomachines, I need turret emplacements, I need entire crates of easy-to-use weapons, and I need cases of grenades. If we can’t make the walls around Downtown impervious, then we’ll just turn everything at street level into one big killing field.”

Oh, wonderful! In that case, might I suggest a few catalogues?

***