Chapter Sixty-Nine - Nice?

"No, there's no way, that'd be too much of a coincidence."

--Discerning Reader Forums, 2024

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I shrugged. "If you don't wanna talk about it, that's cool too. I'm not gonna put a gun to your head."

Knight turned to look my way, not that I could really make proper face-to-face contact with her, not with the way we were both hanging onto opposite legs. "It's complicated," she said. "Or... maybe not. Look, can we talk once we're on stable ground?"

That was fair. We were both hanging onto the mech, still. There was a small bit of armour that stuck out just over the mech's ankles. More than enough room for a foot. And there were a few armoured panels at about shoulder height that anyone could hang on to for dear life. It helped that I was making the mech walk at a speed that wasn't much faster than a quick jog. It was a bit bumpy, but not all that bad.

"I think we're gettin' close to our spot," Crackshot said.

I glanced ahead and tried to match what I was seeing on the map of Saint-Jérome with what I was seeing before me. At some point we'd crossed over the North River. The entire thing was probably capped over in this part of the city, so that there was more flat land to build on. Above us was a highway, held up by frequent pillars. The 117th, if I wasn't mistaken. Which meant we were on the east end of the city, past the area that was staging all of the evacuated civilians.

A few temporary barricades were thrown up across roadways to our right, with some APCs parked behind sandbags and movable spike walls. "Alright," I said as I pointed out ahead. "We'll stay under the highway. It'll make for an easy point of reference, and it more or less goes from the south to the north of the city." Which was our path anyway.

My mech turned off to the side of the road and came to a stop. I took that time to recheck my gear real quick, in case something fell off during the ride.

In the meantime, a few truckfuls of soldiers rumbled past and started to stop further down. More were coming up behind, but they were mostly jogging along on foot.

"Give me two minutes," I said to Knight and Crackshot before switching channels. I found the command channel, currently being shared by the leader of this battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Juno, as well as a few more lieutenants and a heap of sergeants.

The moment I flicked onto the channel I was able to pick up on their chatter. "Samurai Gomorrah, Princess and Hedgehog have made it to the far-west of our starting position," one sergeant said. "We're catching up now. Damn, that girl drives."

"Samurai Stray Cat has stopped her Mecha right under the 117th highway," Another said. "I'm deploying half my men past her and the others. The other half before that."

"If you want," I said. "We can move up further."

There was a beat of silence before Juno spoke up. "That won't be necessary, ma'am. A central deployment might even be best."

"Cool," I said. "Let me and the newbies charge ahead a little. We'll be the wedge. We're gonna follow the highway above."

"I'll move more men on our east flank," a lieutenant said. "The highway's not a straight line north."

"Noted," Juno said.

"Ping me if you need anything. We're gonna start our leisurely walk. Ping me if anything's up. Or at the first sighting of some alien fucks."

I got some pretty cheerful 'yes ma'ams' at that. Well, as cheerful as a bunch of military types could be. They weren't exactly singing our praises, but I had the feeling they were happy for every alien we murdered that they didn't have to take care of themselves.

They weren't being paid by the alien, and every xeno out there was a threat for each and every one of them.

They were a threat to me too, but they were a threat I could handle with infinite amounts of high explosives, which was basically no threat at all.

"Alright!" I cheered, aloud this time. "Let's get going?"

"I'm down for that!" Crackshot said. He stepped off my mech's head and landed with a slight bend of his knees.

"How did you not just break your ankles?" I asked.

He grinned then patted his pants. "Got some exo-skeletal bits and thingiewhatsits. They're pretty slim, though, so I can still wear my old wranglers over them."

"Huh, alright," I said. "You're really working to keep the look, huh?"

"Looks are important. That's what Miss Mordeath Noir said."

I didn't comment. Crackshot shouldered his big old rifle and started forwards, and I jogged to make sure I was a bit ahead of him. His job was aiming and hitting things. I could take the middle and be the one to spray in the general direction of shit I wanted dead. It was a job I was well-suited for.

"Alright," I said, voice pitched lower. Knight had tailed after me, keeping a step behind and to my right. "You wanted to talk?"

"Not really."

"We don't have to," I said.

She sighed. "But I ought to," she replied.

We still moved up a whole block, past newer apartment buildings and past an old tan-colour hospital building that looked semi-abandoned before she decided to speak up again.

"Princess is my sister. Half sister. We have different mothers."

"Alright," I said. "That's fine, I think?" Probably a little traumatic. Did she lose a parent only for them to remarry? If she wanted to talk about the trauma of losing a parent, then... I was surprisingly well suited for that. Well, usually it was every parent that was lost, but I could probably manage with comforting someone who only lost the one.

But I was getting ahead of myself a little.

"I was our father's favourite," she said. "From his second marriage. His firstborn. He, uh, coddled me, a little, I guess. Ti--Princess was born out of wedlock. Dad never even married her mom. His third and fourth marriages were to others."

"O-kay," I said. This guy was sounding like a bit of a cunt.

"Dad never cared much for Princess, or her mom, but I... well, I got to meet Princess. She's very quick to fall in love. It's nice. So I took care of her where I could, and my dad didn't mind that so much. I think he was aiming for her to be like, my secretary or something, when I eventually got into politics."

"Uh-huh," I said. She was really dumping now.

"Then, a few days ago, you shot dad in the head on TV, the same day that Tiffani became a samurai."

I choked on nothing at all. "I did what?"

Knight stared at me through the slits of her helmet. "My, our, family name is Dupont," she said.

"Oh. Oh." That was the same family name as the Mayor. "Fuck."

"Yeah," Knight agreed.

I wished that I could see her face, because I was really not sure if I was about to get stabbed or not.

Which is probably why I launched into the air when someone spoke right into my ear. "Cat!"

"Jesus fuck, Gomorrah," I said. "What? Yes?"

Gomorrah paused on the line for a moment. "Are you in danger at the moment?"

"No? Probably not. Maybe?"

"Good enough. We need to talk, it's important."

"I am in the middle of something," I argued back. "Besides, aren't you busy?"

"This is more important, Cat. We might have to call off the entire push for this."

I blinked. "Gom, we haven't even killed a single alien yet. Are we about to be overrun or something?" That would be a decent enough reason to pull back and consolidate things.

"In a manner of speaking, yes," Gomorrah said. She sounded deeply serious. "Cat, I just got news from the Family, who in turn just received news from the Martian front. Things went... well enough. Mars's surface was cleansed. But a large detachment of antithesis broke off from one of the moons around Mars and started moving Earth-ward. They weren't noticed initially."

"What's that mean?" I asked.

"It means that on top of the remnants of the global incursion, we're about to have a lot of very pissed-off, very powerful aliens rain down on Earth."

"Ah," I said. "Well, do we have a few hours, at least? I've got some interpersonal business to take care of before I can handle that."

"Really, Cat? Is your interpersonal business really more important than the impending apocalypse?"

"I just found out that I shot and killed Knight and Princess' dad," I hissed.

"Oh."

"That's right! I've got bigger problems to worry about than the end of the world right now! We can handle that when they start raining down from the heavens."

***