Chapter Thirty-Four - Experimentation

“Mater artium necessitas; the mother of invention is necessity.”

– William Horman, 1519

 

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My idea was actually stupidly simple, and probably looked hilarious.

I’d gone and sort of glued my antenna to the floor with sticky silk. 

Not the fronds at the end of it, they actually lost sensitivity if they couldn’t move—after sort of pseudo-meditating at them, I was able to determine that each single sensilla repositioned itself without pause to better pick up vibrations. Gluing them down damaged that ability.

So instead, I tied the blank bit of each antenna’s stem just beneath the hairs to the floor with a string of silk, tensioned enough that any vibration was transmitted to those stems, which in turn would jostle the sensilla, and give me a sort of tremor sense.

The problem was that I couldn’t just draw the string directly from floor to antenna. I’d lose tension every time I shifted or looked around. Sitting normally just didn’t work at all, I’d suffer from a, uh, loose connection, so to say.

In the end I was bent over forwards, with my elbows supporting me atop the stairs, and my butt high up in the air, behind me.

This ridiculous position let me draw my strings backwards from my antennae across my ass, and from there down to the floor.

I could adjust tension fluidly by raising or lowering my beautiful bubbly butt half a millimeter, or even just by tightening the muscles of my posterior.

Of course, I’d had to deal with the rather powerful damping effects of so much, uh, soft flesh. 

But I found an easy fix—I wrapped a tight sheet of silk around my hips, which meant that where silk traversed buttcrack, there was no direct contact. I could suspend the antenna-binding string down along the, um, crevice, and I’d be perfectly able to hold it taut and sense the ground.

Leah, predictably, got a complete kick out of it. I think that was the first time I’d seen a person literally rolling on the floor, laughing. 

Even now, she had difficulty controlling her mirth. If she so much as glanced my way, the helpless giggles popped right out of her, again.

I thought it worth it. If this is what it took to so fully distract her from her recent experiences, then yeah, I was going to sacrifice myself, no problem.

Nevermind my constant blush.

“How long will it take you to turn this place into a sex dungeon, Tinea?”

Oh, I’d just love to show you, my dear.

“I don’t expect to do much binding of the fun variety here, Leah,” I murmured, looking meaningfully at her, “unfortunately.”

And there was that unexpected and delicious flush again, tinting her neck every so slightly, riding her cheekbones, and reddening her ears. But this time she fought back with a teasing smirk, that had me imagining all sorts of things.

Damnit, she knew exactly what she was doing to me.

Clearing my throat, which Leah answered with a satisfied chuckle, I said, “I don’t sense anything extra-large approaching. My antennae aren’t quite supposed to work like this, so it’s a bit difficult to tell what I am detecting, but I’m confident that we’re not about to get run down by anything bigger than a Six above ground, and there isn’t anything below, yet.”

“Anything that is coming closer?”

“Yeah, we’ll get some visitors soon. Between the smell of Antithesis death, and the sound of your Hummingbird, we’ve attracted a few nearby units.”

“‘Kay, I’ll be ready.”

Leah seemed to be quite focused on not looking my way. I wonder why.

Eventually a triplet of Threes poked their heads in, and Leah killed the first and last, while I took out the middle one. So far things had been rather easy on us, and I wanted to take the opportunity to see what else I could do with my silk.

Could I create Ripwires myself? What were they made of again? Monofilament strands of graphene? 

Actually, what did my spinneret allow me to craft? Could I create minerals?

Another quick bout of sorta-meditation filled my consciousness with more knowledge, and told me I was limited to proteins, apparently. I suspected there’d be upgrades that would let me spin even inorganic materials, but that would have to wait. There were more important purchases to be made.

Proteins. What could I do with them? What kinds were there, and which of these could I create?

Hmm. I knew that enzymes were proteins. Our metabolism was based on them, and we used them to digest food. They were catalysts of chemical reactions.

I could probably create some pretty nasty alien-dissolving traps with that, though I suspected they would work slowly.

Oh! It would allow me to dispose of the dead bodies without fire! Or without having to buy something for points to do it for me.

“Tynea, I just had a fun thought. Couldn’t I make special silk to melt the Antithesis bodies after combat?”

Certainly, though you will need to buy the right genome library for that. You currently do not have the knowledge or the blueprint. It didn’t come with the spinneret, and isn’t part of the human genome either. Do remember that spinning silk takes energy from your metabolism.

“Yeah, thanks. What’d be the price?”

Class I Protein Catalysts would cost you fifty points. It’s a generic catalog that covers a lot of ground, but it doesn’t contain the most effective enzymes. There’s little you would want to use in direct combat. It does have interesting options to further improve your digestion, including the ability to break down usually lethal toxins, or even inorganic material for elements, for future modification projects.

From this catalog, the right set of enzymes to melt the models One through Nineteen, goes for one hundred and fifty points.

Hmm. A bit expensive, but also just a one-time purchase. And I could come up with a lot more ways to apply my silk than I had ways of creating a bonfire to burn corpses in.

Yeah, worth it.

My antennae twitched. “Leah, incoming.”

I decided to detach myself from the floor. I wanted to be able to move quickly, and ass up might have been funny and sexy, but it wasn’t a very agile position to be in.

While Leah readied herself again, I rushed to the doorway and tossed several thick, slack strands of sticky silk across it, a bit like barbed wire, designed such that you couldn’t climb over it. I wanted to see how the xenos would react to unknown obstacles, and how strong it needed to be to hold them.

I made it back to Leah’s side for a quick hug’n’squeeze that had her smiling happily, about a minute before the small group of scouts arrived.

These ones weren’t going slow or careful. They’d smelled the deaths of Antithesis and it had spiked their aggressiveness.

These also weren’t the basic Threes.

“Leah, I count eight Antithesis. Four Fours, two Threes, and two I haven’t seen so close before, but I think they’re a Six and one I haven’t yet encountered to identify without visuals, and it’s blending in real nice with the green of the swamp. But it’s as big as the Six, so probably a Five? I don’t think your Hummingbird will be effective against those two.”

“Still got those mini-missiles?”

“Yeah. Tynea, can I use them in this enclosed space?”

Certainly. Prepare for an extremely painful shock to your antennae.

Ah, shit. I could probably cocoon them, though. It would remove my ability to sense much…

Leah looked at me with an uncertain worry in her face at Tynea’s answer.

Thinking about it, I came to a conclusion.

Staying here had been a mistake. I’d believed the building would serve as a cover for us, hide us, but now it was messing with my ability to fight effortlessly.

Nothing for it. 

They needed to die, and we needed to move earlier than I thought. We couldn’t sit still, not with more of these big lugs after us. I could already hear a dozen more rushing closer, perhaps two minutes out.

“Leah, we need the Threes and Fours to die first. I’ll set up for the two big ones.”

She nodded at me, and took her previous stance, lying down on the stairs, weapon resting on the top step.

Meanwhile, I began to wrap my antennae with sheets of silk. These were non-sticky, and I made them as soft and fluffy as I could, like those microphone covers for windy conditions. 

Yeah, I was blinded. Being restricted to the narrow senses of a human, even enhanced as they were, felt terrible and turned me jittery with a weird, muffled anxiety.

“Tynea, this is bad. I need a better way to deal with shockwaves inside buildings.”

Your Class I Esoteric Defense Systems catalog offers suitable items. A straightforward automatic impulse muffler is worth thirty points. It uses an energy field to deaden sound waves above an adjustable threshold.

“Yeah, make that my first purchase once I have the points for medicals and ammo, please.”

Done.

The Antithesis arrived.

There was the Six in the middle of them all, like the leader of a squad. They saw us the same moment that Leah opened fire through my sticky silk ropes and pelted the first Three with a salvo of four whistling micro missiles.

As if on command, all the smaller models rushed towards us. I let Leah pick them off, and centered my own sights on the head of the Six, followed by a gentle tug on the trigger.

That kill was as satisfying as the previous. The HSRP round cracked against its skin and just…disappeared a good half meter sphere of fleshy plant matter, along with itself, and left the heavy, massive corpse slide forwards until its momentum was spent, crushing the bodies of the smaller models along the way.

I still had no line of fire on the other big creature, and killed the first of the Fours instead. Seven HSRP cartridges left.

Leah’s Hummingbird tore the second Three’s skull to pieces, and turned to the Fours.

The smart weapon’s projectiles were individually a little weak, but four of them did prove enough to kill the tentacular monsters, so I left them to her and moved up the stairs, to angle sideways in an attempt to get a line on whatever the last large alien was.

I’d barely taken three steps, when a series of explosions rocked the world all around me.

 

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