Chapter Sixty-Seven - Tank You (For The Sandwiches)

"When it comes to at-home self-defence, the popular option, for years, has been a handgun in a safe. We think that's slow, and unlikely to scare off the prepared bandit.

The self-defence pillow frag!"

--Failed Advertising campaign for at-home high explosives, 2045

***

I wasn't sure if I should have been disappointed or not, but the first attack against the convoy as it was moving happened so quickly and was dealt with so rapidly that I didn't even have time to get out of the mobile base before it was dealt with.

The attack hit our right flank, just as we were nearing one of the many little rivers cutting across the landscape. There was an old cement bridge crossing the river, maybe forty metres long. Not even a proper suspension bridge or anything, just a plain old boring thing.

The aliens came out from the side of the bridge, launching themselves out of the brush and rushing at our front flank.

The computer on the mobile base quickly made a headcount and marked out something like half-a-hundred model threes and twice as many model ones. There was a sprinkling of bigger models too, tankier ones, and some of those tentacled fucks.

The tanks came to a stop, then started to rotate their guns to the right.

Then Tankette got involved, circling around and ahead of the formation so that she could aim back at the swarm. She opened up on the lot of them and turned the enemy into so much swiss cheese.

I was left chewing on my sandwich (she'd cut them at an angle, then flipped one half around so that the sandwich looked like a little heart in the box. She'd placed some baby carrots in the spaces left over too) while I watched aliens die in droves.

The boys on the roof were chatting over the coms while taking shots at the aliens in the lead. Once the tanks and support vehicles right behind had the aliens in sight, it was all over. Multiple criss-crossing lines of machine gun fire was a pretty text-book counter to a charge.

The thing that surprised me the most was the reaction to the flying models. Someone opened up on them with a repeating net launcher. The shots would go out for a few metres, then explode outwards into a net some three or four metres wide. The model ones in the net's path would get smacked out of the air by the net as it came back down, and it looked like maybe the netting itself was sharpened.

Once the last gun went quiet, I waited a beat, then opened up the 'all' coms. "Well done, everyone," I said. "But let's not party too soon. Keep your eyes open as we cross the bridge. Good reaction out there, Tankette."

"Thank you," came Tankette's rather shy reply.

"She's pretty good," I said as I cut off the coms. "What kind of gun is that tank of hers rocking?"

Gomorrah glanced to the side, head tilting slightly. "Looks like a 25mm main gun, and a 5.56 NATO-standard secondary gun. Basically a small cannon and a gun with the same calibre as a basic assault rifle."

"Huh," I said. "Well, I guess with a tank that small you can't have a big gun mounted. I mean, still bigger than what you could carry on your own."

She could probably reload just by buying more ammo from her AI, so that'd save her a lot of trouble.

"I'm sure we can do better!" Princess said. "Just wait, Knight and I will prove ourselves!" She pumped a fist into the air. Knight just shifted slightly from side to side next to her, clearly feeling about as awkward as someone wearing full plate could feel.

"You'll have your chance soon enough," I said. I hoped that was right, because Princess kept edging her way around the central hologram tank in the middle of the command room. I was edging my way around her, and so far we'd gone around the entire table twice.

I didn't know what this chick had going on for me, but I was pretty sure I didn't want any of it.

"Hey, maybe we could stick you and Knight with Gomorrah? She's a fantastic samurai. I bet she could show you all sorts of tricks."

Gomorrah's head snapped up and she looked my way, then towards Princess. "Princess, is that suit of yours flame retardant and fireproof?"

"Uh, no?" Princess said, sounding pretty damned uncertain.

"Then it would be a bad idea, Cat. She should stick with you," Gomorrah said. The clever bitch. Did they teach girls to be this sneaky over in nun school or something?

"We'll figure it out once we're in Saint-Jérome. We're going to have to do patrols around the city for a while anyway, right?"

The general, Thibodeau, glanced up from a tablet that he was looking at. "About that," he said. It had been a minute since he engaged with us. I think he didn't like the presence of Princess and Knight. Sure, Princess was a samurai, and Knight was... well, she might as well factor in as one, but I think that Princess didn't feel as professional to him.

Fuck, did that mean that he thought that I was professional?

What the hell was wrong with me?

"Yes?" I asked as I tried not to have a minor freak-out. I couldn't be professional, could I? I was cool, damn it. Not some pencil-pusher, no matter how much Gomorrah might wish otherwise.

"We have new satellite imagery for the area around Saint-Jérome," the general said. He tapped the tablet a couple of times, and the image in the holotank switched from a drone's-eye-view of the convoy to a map of the city we were heading towards and its surroundings.

Saint-Jérome wasn't anything impressive. Actually, it was kind of the opposite. Bit of a shithole, really. It was only worth noticing because it was within a few hours drive of a megacity. Red splotches started to appear all around the city, locations of antithesis movement and such.

"We know there's a hive in this area," the general said as he gestured to one of the bigger red splotches. "And we've narrowed it down to within an old water filtration plant along the North River."

"North River?" I asked.

"Yes? That's what it's called," he said.

"Wow. Someone was feeling daring that day," I muttered. "Sorry, go on."

"In any case, we've identified one hive to the north of the city. It's been pushing into the city for some time. The defences held until last night."

Gomorrah's head snapped up. "They fell?"

"The city's guard, which is really just militia, some local volunteers, and a small PMC contracted to keep the city safe, were unable to stop the hive at the northern wall. They've begun pulling back and into the city itself. Citizens were evacuated to the southern end of the city. There are a number of shops and chain stores there, with automated anti-theft systems and their own security staff. The city was able to convince the owning corporations to allow the citizens to use the stores as a temporary gathering point."

The general zoomed into the map, and I leaned forwards to see what he meant. There were some two dozen stores in the area, with a small wall running along the south. A lot of the stores had large parking lots, some over multiple floors, and most of them had fences around their lots.

It looked like the parking lots were filled to the brim, with dozens more cars sitting outside of the area creating a makeshift wall. Everyone that had evacuated probably did so by car, creating a small fuckload of congestion on the roads.

"How old is this?" I asked.

"Four hours," the general said.

"We could have been informed early, about the breach," Gomorrah said.

"I don't see how it would matter overly much. We'll be arriving in three hours," the general said.

I hummed. "Knowing earlier wouldn't hurt all the same, but yeah, we still have time to prepare. Do you have a plan already, general?"

The general nodded then gestured over his tablet again. The map pulled back, then switched to a 3d render instead of a satellite image. A red arrow pushed into the city from the south, then split down the centre of the city. "The Twenty-Second battalion will push into the far end of the city, plugging the gap. Meanwhile, the fifth battalion will form a line in the centre of the city and march forwards to meet the Twenty-Second."

The formation was something of a cross, a beam down the middle all the way to the north, then a cross-line that moved forwards, sweeping through the city until it reached the end. "And the recon battalion?" I asked.

"The seventy-Seventh will be reinforcing the walls of the parts of the city that are still in human control," he said. "They're not entirely equipped for wall duty, but more bodies can only help. Some of them will remain behind to help set up our new base camp, leaving room for our supplies to come in."

I nodded. "Okay. Princess, Knight, you'll be on foot, with Crackshot and Hedgehog. Gomorrah, can you slip ahead with Tankette and the armoured battalion? I'll be on the ground too, I guess. Once we've got the city secured, we'll see who's available to hit up that hive."

***