(Rewritten) Ch. 110 – The Public Service Announcement

Shredded Senses And Torn ThoughtAre Siblings On The Battlefield

Mind Thy Step And StrideLest Thou Limp'st For Life

– Proverbs Of Road Rash; Twitch Chat Edition 2057

***

Leah was still crying into my chest and it ripped furrows across my heart, but that part of me felt foggy. Far away, like I could barely hear it through the mist.

My attention jumped from alien to alien chasing us, and I realized that they were catching up. Slowly, but surely, the fastest ones—the Fourteens—were gaining ground. The big one that had ambushed us from beneath was busy trashing the cannon. That wouldn't last either, and I didn't know how fast it could move.

– Observation: Model Twenty-Eight, armored with extremely dense plates of bone. –

Siege breakers. And it sure broke us.

The Fourteens were still running after us. I studied them and bit my lip.

Not sure we can kill those without the big gun, either… Bombs, maybe? I do have those. But no time to set up a killing field…

I looked down, at the top of Leah's head.

"Leah, hey, Leah," I whispered as I stroked her hair. She cried harder and batted at me with the stumps of her arms, like she was trying to hug me. A flash of rage at the way she'd been rendered so helpless locked my breath for a moment. I pushed down on it, scared how Leah might react if it showed up in my voice. Instead, I just squeezed her tightly against me.

"Leah," I murmured, "I need access to the guns. The seventy-fives. Can you let me control them, please? You just keep running, I'll keep us safe, okay?"

The regular stagger of the mech was the tick-tock of a metronome in my brain, counting down the minutes until the first Antithesis would catch up, trip us, hurt Leah more. I shook from the hatred surging with the thought.

For just a moment I was completely and utterly occupied with protecting Leah from the power of my own muscles, unwilling to be a source of pain myself. But maybe something about that reached her, because she looked up at me with big, wet eyes.

"Tinea," she cried.

I shushed her gently, and kissed her forehead as I wiped away tears that wouldn't stop flowing.

"It took my leg, Tinea!"

I hugged her and then turned us around until I sat in her creche, my legs and tail hanging out of the pod. Leah lay weeping on top of me, her head resting on my breasts, just like she did after I'd first found her. And I kept stroking her hair and spine, just like then.

My mental eyes wandered back to the Fourteens. Unlike then, we didn't have the time to rest and recover. Unlike then, we were being actively hunted.

I gently lifted Leah's head by her chin and supported her torso with my tail.

"Leah."

She looked at me with glassy eyes.

"You'll be okay, yeah? I'm here with you. And you're a samurai. You'll be okay, yeah?" I said quietly, cradling her face in both hands.

Her tears still flowed, but she nodded at me eventually. I let her lie down again and hugged her around the waist with one arm, while I let the other return to petting her, smoothing down her hair and stroking down her spine.

"But for now, Leah, we need to fight. Will you let me control the guns?"

To my relief she nodded once more, and a new connection popped up on my HUD. Combat Command immediately took control of the 75mm howitzers and began shelling the more vulnerable single-digits.

Meanwhile, Leah continued staggering onward. We were almost all the way across the huge open space now, past the highway.

Shit.

We'd gone too far. The aliens would catch up before we'd make it around to where the highway would let us escape and move at our best speed.

In her panic, Leah had let them corner us against the forest on the other side, and I'd failed to notice. I frowned and chewed on my lip.

…

Even if we reached the highway safely, there was a good chance we'd just have more Antithesis waiting for us. The Fourteens were fast enough to catch up, if we got stuck fighting past the reinforcements.

We'd get boxed in. Gotta kill them here. Gotta.

Leah was moving in straight lines, drawing the Fourteens into a long string behind us.

Easy to target with mines, at least.

I used my tail to pop open the little hatch, grimacing at the loud screech of metal grinding against metal. Something was seriously wrong with the spider. A look through one of my four drones told me that the forceful separation of one of the legs on the left had warped the frame there and deformed the first joint of the limbs on each side of it. The friction was bad enough that the rain hitting those joints boiled away in thin wisps of steam.

We'll have to stop soon, get that at least fixed up well enough to continue moving without more wear. Actually…

"Ypsi?"

Yup!

"Can I ask you to do something about that damage with the maintenance drone, while we're moving? Maybe cut some of the crumpled armor, if it's getting in the way?"

Oki! Will try!

"Thank you," I said with a smile. Even Leah breathed a little easier with Ypsi's cheer.

"Tynea, I'm gonna need bombs to toss out the airlock. It'd be good if they can just kill the Fourteens, but if Class I explosives don't give me enough oomph for that, I'd prefer to immobilize them at least."

Class I Esoteric Single-Use Explosive Devices doesn't offer anything that will completely stop the Fourteens, short of using a lot of explosives at once. But the right device will cause enough damage to their legs that they'll slow down sufficiently so that you may maneuver freely.

"Shit. Nothing to immobilize them, much less kill them with?"

Not without expensive overkill. But the Moonsingers have created catalogs of designer insects that can feed on the Antithesis. If you infected a Fourteen with, say, the Class I Apocalypse variant, they'd procreate within the flesh and eventually eat it from the inside, only to abandon the corpse and find more living Antithesis to consume and infest. You could use Class I bombs to control the crowd long enough for that to work.

My eyebrows jumped.

"That sounds nasty. And dangerous. What if they infest other things? Non-Antithesis things?"

They cannot. You would kinetically inject a small organ into a Fourteen, which would analyze the Antithesis' current DNA plan, and design the first pair of insects to it. They'd undergo acute apoptosis the moment they encountered non-registered DNA. This pair would procreate, and as they are not allowed to mutate, each following generation will carry a precise copy of the cell-death programming.

"And…uh, how long would all of that take?"

At Class I, perhaps an hour until the insects achieved critical mass and killed the first Fourteen. The raw mass of a Fourteen would have allowed them to breed in the billions, however. The resultant swarm would deflesh the remaining Antithesis in short order.

Old memories of things gone wrong went through my mind. An hour… No. That was too long, even if I slathered the fields with crowd-control bombs. What could go wrong, would go wrong.

And I didn't have the tokens to unlock the Class II variant of those insects, either, assuming they'd grow a lot faster. Not if I wanted Class II Medical Utilities. Which, looking at the army of Antithesis backed by double-digit models, I would definitely require, both for medical care and to use the jump jets soon.

Shit… What to do?

Ah. Right. I'm not actually alone anymore, am I? I thought with a mushy happiness that threatened to push tears into my eyes.

Looking down at Leah, I whispered, "Hey, love?"

She tilted her head up and rubbed her cheeks against my bust. I could still see the panic and disorientation circling her soul, but there was just a little of that Steel-of-Leah that made her such a strong woman. There wasn't anyone I respected more.

"Think you could equip Daddy-Long-Legs with a new gun? A big one?" I asked, carefully wiping her eyes with a bit of fluffy silk.

"Mm," she nodded, and I smiled.

I wasn't alone, anymore. No I wasn't.

***

Leah's mind tumbled in a whirlpool of fear and stumbled on knotted pain with every phantom twinge from the stump of a leg she didn't have. Her thoughts kept sliding and running off in bad directions.

She recognized the signs of an impending flashback and desperately clung onto each caress of Tinea's fingers across her back with hands she didn't have. She sunk her teeth into every syllable the warm woman spoke so that she wouldn't lose herself to those old memories that kept whispering that It Was Her Fault.

Her sensors told her how little time they really had. She was coming apart at the seams, but life didn't care. And so she clawed at the mud that was her brain and made herself think until she remembered.

"O-okay, Tinea. I've a-already got it. Gonna unlock C-class II cannons. H-here," Leah said and linked the purchase. Try as she might, she still felt the weakness in her voice creep up on her and threaten to strangle her. But Tinea brushed it away with the stroke of a hand and she forced herself to breathe properly.

Tinea froze.

The whispers rose again, telling Leah that She Wasn't Good Enough. Heartbeats ricocheted against her ribs, and shoulders rose with worry as she looked up. But Tinea's expression displayed only surprise, and moments later, involuntary giggles broke free from the girl's lips.

The chiming tinkles tickled Leah's heart, and suddenly the missing leg she never really had didn't hurt so bad. Instead, her eyes grew big as she stared at Tinea who broke into proper laughter with shaking shoulders. The happy sound dove into Leah's lungs and hunted her anxiety with fangs of glittering humor, then traveled down her back and soothed the cramping muscles there.

"Oh dang. I love you, Leah!" Tinea chortled. "The Public Service Announcement? Really?" Leah couldn't help herself and her lips started twitching as the other girl laughed.

Unlocked:

Total cost: 400 pts, 1 tkn (Leah)Remaining points: 3303Remaining tokens: 0 (Leah)

Purchased:

Total cost: 900Remaining points: 2403

It finally clicked, and Leah looked at the list with new eyes. Something finally, finally unclenched within her. Tears flowed and she laughed freely and loudly.

Ypsi was a riot, and Tinea was…everything.

Yeah. I love you too, she thought, and stretched for one of those nourishing kisses.

***

Memes make for great inspiration: