(Rewritten) Ch. 103 – Rods From God

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***

"What time is it now, Tynea?" I asked, one leg dangling off the cot I was lying on, the other leg, arms hooked into slings of silk to secure myself, trying hard to not focus on the slowly swirling, expectant heat in my belly. Leah was getting used to maneuvering with the spider mech, doing slow, careful turns and circles at the moment, stepping over fallen trees and other obstacles.

If she started jumping, I'd have to actually glue myself down.

Which was a tempting idea. I'd have my hands free to…explore. My hips shifted again.

My tail's end was twitching only millimeters from Leah's pod, and I had a feeling she was very, very aware of it.

Tynea's voice interrupted my speculations.

Eleven thirty, still, Tinea. Post meridiem. The minutes will not pass faster, regardless of your frequency of inquiry, she said, and threw a clock onto my HUD in the top right corner, right next to our point counter. Which currently read 1999 points, after Leah's final purchases of munitions to arm and supply Daddy-Long-Legs a little more comprehensively with.

We'd get our daily allotment of 10 points each at midnight. Which means I'd have enough in thirty minutes at the latest.

So! Close! Half an hour! Wings!!

Well. I'd have them start growing. Exciting nonetheless!

Impatient as I was, I was still debating that particular purchase. I'd have to wait weeks for the wings to be properly usable as they grew without a combat graft. But I would gain early benefits from their highly advanced motion-sensing organ. No amount of pirouettes or getting tossed about would confuse my balance in battle. Which wasn't worth two thousand points by itself, probably, but it would make a difference.

Yet, using up the remainder of our points would completely lock Leah's ability to buy that skill-download until we killed more aliens. Which…wasn't really much of a problem—plenty of those fuckers around. Hell, they were in range of our biggest gun right now, if we were ready for the ruckus it would cause.

Nyaargh! I'd already waited so long, though!

Should I wait for a few thousand points more and get a grafted version of the wings, so I could fly immediately? That would be an option with the big wave not too far. But I'd tried that with the tail during the designing of Tinea, and the graft just wasn't quite comparable to the real thing…

I'd miss the whole process of discovery. Proper growth, getting used to the changes, seeing what new things I could do day by day.

I looked at the points counter again. 1999.

Leah deserves a chance to discover her new toy, too.

"How's it going, Leah?" I asked, using the nearby cameras of a few drones to watch her tip-toeing through the forest and lifting herself across the smaller trees on long legs.

My tail twitched some more, and crept a little lower. Still keeping air between itself and Leah's pod. A snake looking for a branch to settle on. Yup.

"It's going automatically," she answered. I tilted my head. Didn't she sound a little distracted there? "No more difficult walking on eight legs, than on two, surprisingly. Or four. The piloting implant's doing a lot of work making it feel natural."

Leah suddenly stopped and ran backwards, and I had to catch myself as I almost tumbled off the bunk. She jinked left and right around a few trees at speed until we arrived back on the facility's concrete courtyard and came to a stop.

"Like, it doesn't matter in what direction I go, how many obstacles there are. I'm just…moving my body? Even if the motions would be impossible for my human body."

"Kinda like my tail, huh?" I asked, curling the appendage's tip in front of the pod's eye, lightly stroking it across its skin. Which was effectively Leah's skin while she was connected to it.

Leah stayed silent for a second too long, and I grinned smugly. It widened when she cleared her throat.

"Probably. Seems that way." she answered with a slightly strangled voice that forced a giggle from me. I thought about getting down there and sitting on top of the pod. Naked. No silk tubes.

"And the guns?" I asked, letting my daydreams play with my voice, add that little bit of husky rasp underneath.

I yelped as I went weightless for a second as the spider suddenly crouched and the cot disappeared from beneath me, and then once more as I bounced in the cot when the abdomen stopped to hover just centimeters off the ground.

My eyes were drawn to my chest during the…involuntary relocation. Having jigglies jiggle on top of me was kind of distracting. Which wasn't helping with the excitement further down. I couldn't stop the smile that hijacked my lips.

Leah's voice—entirely mild and clueless, of course; no way were any of the sudden motions a revenge for my teasing her—floated disembodied through the cabin to answer my question about her guns.

"It's like I have two arms, and I can group weapons to shoot in two different directions."

Various drone feeds showed the large underbelly cannon swiveling towards the left, between the middle pair of legs on that side. At the same time, a few of the smaller 75mm barrels rotated to point directly opposite.

"But that's about it?" she continued blithely, putting a smile on my face with our secret game of tease-and-revenge. "I'll be using Daddy-Long-Legs' tactical computers to track additional targets—but that's one of the things I'll need the download for."

Then she rose again, just as quickly, and I had to catch myself against the ceiling before I banged into it. I suppressed a snort as I dropped back down onto the mat.

Point taken. Do not tease the Leah while I was…inside her. In a manner of speaking.

Wouldn't mind teasing her while she's inside me, though. Heh.

"I see, I see. Do you need to…hump the ground a few more times, or shall we shove off, Leah?" I asked, just as nonchalant and definitely not having learned my lesson. All my limbs and appendages immediately jumped to better brace myself the moment Leah started to speak.

"...Come to think of it, we haven't really tested how well secured all the gear is, have we?"

Even my tail abandoned Leah's pod in favor of wrapping itself around some silk lines. The threat was dripping right from the first syllable, perfectly audible.

Fifteen seconds of what I'd swear consisted of at least three headstands, two flips, and one blast-off into space later, Leah hummed with satisfaction as I was left hanging haphazardly in a twisted, frazzled net of silk while giggling my tits off.

"Looks like everything's squared away."

"Yup, sure does," I replied, still laughing. "Especially me."

Leah snorted.

"Shall I call for the bombardment of the subterranean nest?" I asked her. My tail was already unwinding itself again. It had another fun journey ahead of itself.

"Go for it. I'll wait right here until I'm sure that the spy-sats can see us leaving."

"Okay," I replied and extended a thumbs-up past the cot, while Tynea began moving all our little communications-cum-spy drones towards the cave system of that underground nest.

I got on the Family's samurai app to send a request for an orbital strike—Rods From God were available up here, so far north. Huge meter-long sticks of tungsten, about thirty centimeters across, that would simply drop from orbit. No explosives, no warheads, just an immense amount of potential energy turned into kinetic energy in a long, ballistic fall.

They'd hit the ground at hypersonic velocities.

I figured it was gonna be fun this close.

Just like my tail is having a lot of fun sneaking up on Leah's pod again.

I wasn't very surprised that the Family would have access to that kind of weaponry, considering that it was the largest gathering of Vanguard, and aligned corporations, in North America. Their app made for a nice way for our independent souls to call for backup. No strings attached.

Hmm. If I want them to actually prioritize this nest, I should mention its peculiarities, shouldn't I? It's rather far from civilization, after all. They'd have no reason to pick it, really.

Let's see. Probably doesn't hurt to let them know that the facility we got kidnapped to remains intact, but only so long as no Antithesis can ransack it once we're gone. A young nest that spawned two Fourteens, an absolutely ridiculous number of Fives and Sixes, presumably after it got activated by that humongous wave of Antithesis passing by. Oh, I'll attach running footage from the drones. Might be they see something worth cratering the fuck out, nevermind the nest around it.

And if that doesn't do it…I guess we can forfeit our fraction of points for spotting it? Hate to do it, but we do have that big wave coming up, and we're geared well enough to get started on it.

That last bit decided it, apparently. Barely had I entered it, did we get a confirmation message that said "One dozen killstrikes incoming, 05:00 minutes to impact."

Well, alright then. That didn't sound very professional. I definitely wasn't talking to military types. Let's just hope they know how to aim those things, huh?

"Leah, earthquakes in five!" Tickles imminent, though.

"Okay!"

And…that was it for official business.

Unofficial business had my tail tickling the pod under its chin. Unofficial business also had Leah bite her lips on a surprised squeak and a grin dancing on mine.

***

The swarm of drones was mobbing the caves, drawing a long line of relay points that let us stay connected. There was indeed a way-too-big nest there, situated in a massive void reinforced with alien roots. Hundreds of little growth sacks hanging from alien jungle trees.

Weird plant monsters were stationed around various tunnels. Thirteens, the most intimate guard unit for a nest. They had three linked bodies—each with its own brain for maximum redundancy, meaning you had to kill all three before the bodies stopped moving—equipped with very powerful and quite heavy whips. They'd absolutely batter Class I armor and even I'd risk my life engaging them without additional protection.

Masses of aliens moved everywhere, riled up by the presence of our drones. Tens, little monkey-looking caretaker aliens swatting away at the drones, mostly without success. Ones did a better job, grabbing the drones in their beaks and bashing them out of the air with their wings.

There were several big growth pods, fed from several nutrient-slush pools. More Fourteens, perhaps? One looked like it might finish growing soon, and a swarm of single-digits was waiting close to it.

Well, I thought, glancing at the timer, two minutes. Omae wa mou shindeiru. Plenty of time to tease Leah some more.

Tail action planned; tail actioned plan.

It slowly crept down the sides of the pod, the fuzz just barely touching until I had about a meter's length gently tickling away.

I could swear the whole spider was shivering slightly as Leah moved us to place the building of the facility between us and the impact zone. There, we hunkered down to take cover, while I made sure I was properly cushioned.

"Are you sure Daddy-Long-Legs will be fine here, Leah?"

"Yeahhh!" Her voice was getting all breathy. Funny that. Wonder why? "Ypsi…calculated…things. We're good!"

"Okay."

And then, we just waited, counting down the final minute as my heart beat faster and faster, while the spider vibrated harder and harder.

Fifteen seconds before impact, we lost connection to the drones. Tynea had programmed them all to congregate at the center of the nest, and we'd sent the telemetry to the Family so they could place their Rods ideally.

Leah's breathing was getting very uneven.

Ten seconds, and the spider's sensors were able to pick out the distant trails of ionized plasma as the Rods From God burned their way through the atmosphere.

My lips were twitching uncontrollably as I let my tail play fully across Leah's pod's entire surface, and the spider went from merely shivering, to actually shuddering.

During the last few seconds, the telephone poles from space appeared to speed up more and more as they came closer, until even my accelerated perception couldn't see anything but twelve lines terminating in bright white glares that themselves stretched out.

Leah was positively panting, almost moaning as my cot vibrated beneath me with her tension. My heart was drumming in my chest, and my lips were stretched in a mad grin even as my teeth clenched.

And then, during that moment between breaths, the kill vehicles struck.

My body tensed all over, my lungs cramping on emptiness, and my eyes went wide as saucers as I hung there bound and trussed with my tail wrapped tight around the "waist" of the pod, waiting for the world to shatter around me.

A whipping boom smashed the edge of the facility's roof, and adrenaline crashed lightning through my torso as I watched the distortion of its shockwave stroke across the spider's abdomen with screeching nails. I wanted to scream and moan and laugh, but I had no breath to do it with.

A second and third wave of heat and compression flashed past us, and the vacuum of decompression tugged with feathery fingers on the cabin around me each time, racing on with beckoning suggestions of a mad tumble.

I was already trembling, a faint numbness tickling in my extremities, when the first tremor in the ground arrived and touched tingling needles against my fingertips.

Through my sensilla, I could sense the first dip in the concrete, the plunge preceding the rise, passing underneath the Daddy-Long-Legs' legs, one by one, pushing little brands of static against my nerves.

And then came the wave that wanted to topple our walking home, the sideways shove against Leah's toes, the upheaval that my senses told me was only the tiniest echo of the violence that had pushed itself directly downwards into the ground over five kilometers away.

Silence followed, and my tail twitched its fuzzy tip against Leah's pod as I finally drew a breath.

Only to cackle hysterically when I saw a tree whip by not five meters away.

***