Chapter Twenty-One - Shouldering

“It’s sad, but a lot of us just kind of stop trusting people. You can only save people only to see them destroy themselves so many times before you start to lose hope.

Uwu.”

--Beatrice “Hyper Cutie Zoom Ranger Sparkle Girl Bubble-chan!” Smith, during her Twitch livestream of the 2042 Canberra Incident.

***

Myalis came through with the equipment. Each set came in a large case with my logo on the front and a number stamped beneath from one to three hundred. Each case opened up to reveal a suit within, as well as a helmet, a pair of guns, and a small bandoleer of grenades.

The suits weren’t the prettiest of things. More like jumpsuits crossed with skaterpunk outfits equipped with some padding around the torso and elbows and knees. The entire thing was set up so that someone wearing the suit could just pull on a few straps and parts of it would fold up and could be tied down with a velcro strap.

Basically, they were about as one-size-fits all as a piece of clothing could be.

The helmets were a bit large, but they were also clearly samurai-tech, even if it was on the cheaper end of things.

Of course, the helmets had little stubs on the top that kind of hinted at cat ears.

At this point I was too tired to argue.

Second-Lieutenant Smart got a volunteer, one of the green-band civilians, and the man suited up while we watched. It was clear she didn’t pick the shiniest mind in the world, but the guy figured it out in the space of a couple of minutes. In the end, he stood at what he probably thought was attention, his Alley Purr rifle held up before him and his back straight.

“That’ll do,” I said with a nod.

The equipment was supposed to be resistant to lower-tier antithesis threats, and I believed Myalis when she said so. The communications suite they had was rudimentary, but it wasn’t awful. Enemies would be outlined in red, locations where they were needed would be at the end of a string of AR-pointers that only they could see, and allies were painted in green. It even came with built-in reticles.

If the first three hundred proved halfway competent, then we’d buy more sets and get more boots on the ground. I wasn’t going to hold my breath though.

I couldn’t recall any situation when a samurai had armed a large group of civilians so that they could defend themselves, and looking at how excited and frankly kind of dumb the locals were being as the militia directed them to get suited up, I could see why.

I wasn’t going to be the one to order these folk around. For one thing, I didn’t want to, and for another, I was far more likely to lead them into trouble. I’d let the militia do all of the heavy lifting there.

The militia who seemed one part envious, and one part amused. They looked like they wanted to get their hands on the civilian’s guns, but the gear looked so generic and rather goofy that they were probably better off with their own military-surplus stuff.

I left the area when I got a call from Gomorrah. “Hey,” I said as I answered.

“Is everything ready on your end?” she asked.

I looked back to the civvies still struggling to get into their jumpsuits. “Uh, more or less coming along. Why, what’s up?”

“Time’s up,” she said. “Franny is about ten minutes out, and I’ve been following the progress of the militiamen bringing the nanomachines out, they’ve reached the museum already.”

“So, we only have a few minutes left then,” I said. I don’t know why it was so strange to have my plan coming together. “How are the defences coming?”

“Honestly?” she asked. “They’re laughable. Sprout’s planting more of his... plants, but it’s not going to do much against a concentrated attack by a proper force of antithesis. This city is not ready for a proper incursion. I’ve been buying automated defences and setting them up where I can, but it’s only going to dampen the front of the attack, not stop it outright.”

I chewed on my lip. She was probably right. Even the gear Lucy and Franny were bringing wouldn’t do much. A couple of dozen laser turrets? They took a second or two to kill a single model three. If we were dealing with a proper swarm then they wouldn’t even kill a fraction of them.

I had a lot of points left, I could splurge on something to help, but I couldn’t think of what. Mines? More cat drones? More equipment for the locals?

The antithesis we’d be facing would, presumably, not be in the greatest of shapes, but that didn’t mean they were harmless. I couldn’t see an easy way to just wipe them all out and keep everyone safe that didn’t involve nukes.

“Cat?” Gomorrah asked.

“Hmm? Sorry, my... brain isn’t good at all of this,” I admitted. “Just trying to keep up with everything. Uh, speaking of being a responsible human being, Myalis, can you AI-up a report with everything that’s gone on so far and send it to the Family?”

Certainly. Though I’m curious as to why.

“I’m sure you can think of a thousand reasons why it’s a good idea,” I said.

And I could list them in alphabetical order and include little crayon drawings with all one thousand, but that wouldn’t satisfy my curiosity as to why you, specifically, want me to send this report.

I huffed. “Because... look, I’ve heard too many stories about dipshits in middle management positions deciding to cover their asses by not telling people when they’re swamped. Those stories are usually the ones that end with ‘and then the unmaintained equipment failed and sixty thousand infants were born with extra limbs’ and I don’t want to be that sort of dipshit.”

That’s understandable. Well done.

I glared at nothing in particular. “Don’t patronise me, Myalis.”

I was being both literal and sincere. When and if I chose to be patronising with you, I’ll be sure to point it out. And, to avoid hypocrisy, let me point out that the last statement I made was, in fact, meant to be patronising.

I chuckled and shook my head. The bitch, living in my head and still thinking circles around me. “Anyway, Gom, I’m hoping we’ll be able to hold out, but hope’s not worth as much as bullets nowadays, so if you’ve got ideas, I’m all ears.”

“We have chokepoints already, provided by the way the buildings in downtown are laid out. If we can abandon the buildings on the outer edge, relocate everyone inwards, then we can turn the exterior parts of Downtown into a free killing zone. And... this is a little controversial, but I passed an idea over to Atyacus and he said it was plausible. You might like this one.”

She sent over a file, and I opened it.

It was a 3D render of downtown. Some of the buildings were red, all along the outer edge. I was about to ask what it meant when large red circles appeared near the base of those buildings and then all came crashing down like dominos.

“Holy shit,” I said. “You want to create a wall of debris?”

“It might work,” she said. “Controlled demolitions are more or less safe, and it’ll create an impediment to any antithesis coming closer. Not to mention the artificial earthquake will be devastating to any underground hive structures.”

“And to the rest of the city. You think this place was built to code?”

“It’s an idea,” she said innocently, as if she’d just suggested a foursome instead of a massive demolition project.

The problem was, as awesome as the idea sounded, I wasn’t sure it would actually do much to slow the antithesis down, and then we’d be stuck in the middle.

“I’ll table that as plan D.”

“D?” she asked.

“For Destruction.” Or dumb, but I wasn’t going to rain on her parade. “Look, I’m heading out of here. Do you think you can draw up a... I don’t know, prediction-plan for where the antithesis will hit us from? We have a few ways to slow them down. It’ll be nice if we can stall out long enough that the nanomachines rip them apart for us.”

“We can’t assume that all of them will be impacted by those,” Gomorrah said. “Or that they’ll all die to a few nanomachines chewing at them. Some of the antithesis your drones spotted were large, Cat.”

I tapped my foot on the ground to bleed off some of my nervous energy. “Yeah. Big old baddies. I don’t know what to do about them, Gom.”

She chuckled. “It’s not that complicated. We burn them until there’s nothing left but char.”

I grinned right back. “Maybe it’s not so complicated,” I said. But the weight was still on my back.

***