Chapter 152 – The Deus Ex Machina Protocol; Act V

"Only once the avalanche has fully settled, and the area has been declared safe by schooled experts, do rescue operations begin, along with long-term debris assessment and landscape recovery. Survivors, if any, are often located near the surface, but others may remain buried until thaw conditions allow for the retrieval of their bodies."

– Jenny sits cross-legged in front of the couch, sorting through tiny mismatched socks beneath the watchful eyes of Sister Lana (Jenny isn't worried. Sister Lana probably thinks she can't see the smile she's hiding, but Jenny has sharp eyes! The doctor said so, too). The damp figurines are laid out in neat rows on a towel, some of them in tissue body bags because they'd been stuck beneath the wet bedsheet for too long. The bunny's ears are singed from an unrelated toaster incident, but it's dry now. She's given it a ribbon, and a job: avalanche watch. "No more snow indoors," she says, quiet but firm. "Not unless we gots helmets."

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The first Twenty-One vanished in a spray of gore as the 105mm HEAT shell's liquid metal jet punched through its chest, detonating its innards in a burst of thermal overpressure. The dense plates of bones turned into shrapnel and pinged off its packmates' armor, much like the 20 mm kinetics fired by the Dakka's four rotary cannons.

The aliens dug their claws into the hill's rock against the hail of bullets and bone, but one lost its footing; sent tumbling on ground broken by the grenade's shockwave, belly exposed—and mercilessly torn to pieces when the Sim Cell instantly redirected the Dakka's fire to take advantage.

Leah released a shuddering breath as her brain caught up. She'd just killed two of the six Twenty-Ones in a handful of seconds. The power she possessed was very real and very dangerous, and she was far from helpless.

She'd just have to beat it into her brain until it believed it, too.

Perhaps the next shell, freshly loaded into the one-oh-five with a clunk, would help with that.

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There was mud everywhere. The incessant deluge churned the topsoil, and turned it into a runny mess that cut furrows into the landscape around me. Currents rushed down every slope, fast enough to break the more sickly trees along the way. Dangerous landslides of water, mud, and debris.

The unholy mess was an absolute chore to navigate. Lots of scrambling and fighting to keep my light weight from being washed away, interspersed with the occasional highpoint of Antithesis fangs to face.

Girl, you'd be fucked without your body upgrades, I told myself—the reminder that I was literally superhuman did keep my spirits up.

Every now and then, a bolt of lightning managed to pierce the gloom and illuminate the aqueous slaughtering of the local zip code. It really looked like the apocalypse had come.

"Anything?" I asked Tynea via the Quanta while I shot a set of three flares fifty meters ahead. Their motors weren't strong enough to arrest their station against the currents, but they'd shimmy sideways until they got caught in something. Still made for great bait.

Nothing yet, but based on your rate of travel, I suspect you'll catch the first snatches within minutes. Sooner, perhaps.

Smiling, I ducked low in the water as yet another log swept towards me. My forcefield automatically shut off to preserve its charge and my antennae got soaked yet again, but the moment they lifted free of the water, they shook themselves in something a little gentler and less disorienting than the old sneeze reflex.

I'd barely taken another step when the loud splintering of wood cracked through the air, somewhere to my left and just far enough that even my enhanced eyes couldn't see anything. The Auxiliant's cameras showed another log breaking against a boulder sticking up. A glance was enough to confirm nothing heading my way from that particular collision.

Instead, a massive ball of rock, grass, and earth, all caught up in the roots of a destroyed tree tumbled down the slope. I ran left to clear it.

Really, I didn't get a second's break. I was forced to pay attention to my surroundings every second of every minute, lest I get washed down the hill again, along with whatever would've nailed me. Thankfully, Tynea was a dear and scanned every byte the Auxiliant's radio receiver caught for any of Leah's frequencies.

Nothing so far, but I'd been climbing the same hill for a good ten minutes now, wading through the floods and winding past healthier, still standing trees. Couldn't be much further.

One of the flares suddenly snapped up, lifted by something at least a meter into the air before it went dark.

I froze, goosebumps prickling my neck. It had failed to reveal whatever'd taken the bait. That meant an ambush, and the flares might've just saved my life.

Adrenaline slammed vertigo through my body and fever through my brain, but I directed my Auxiliant to fire at the spot, fast as thought. The gunshot cracked through the air, splitting a trunk, and its muzzle flash lit up the space like a still image.

There was a barrier of underbrush, tangled and caught against a little copse of close-standing trees.

But one had moved, right to left, fast enough to register motion even in that instant. It was utterly silent, not even my sensitive antennae caught so much as a rustle. The next flare died, cut in two pieces.

A model Nine, Tinea. Fragile, but they grow blades sharp enough to eviscerate even you.

"Alone?"

Probably not.

"Why're they here?"

They're intelligence gatherers, and Dervish is a powerful Class III samurai who's been keeping the Antithesis from expanding in her direction for decades. I wouldn't be surprised if they had dozens, even hundreds, stationed nearby.

"Hundreds… Sticky flares, lots of 'em!"

Unlocked:

Total cost: 50 ptsRemaining points: 151003Remaining tokens: Tinea 2, Leah 2

Purchased:

Total cost: 20Remaining points: 150083

Catch.

Tynea sent me a rather long canister with a finned sleeve at the end. A bullet trap?

Slide the sleeve over the Sentinel's muzzle, then squeeze the red ring until you feel it crack.

I followed suit. It didn't take much force to get the plastic ring to collapse, and I heard a spring unload inside the canister, sending something slamming backwards into the Sentinel's barrel and chamber. The canister vibrated, and the Sentinel poked me through its connection with my Quanta and asked for a number.

Set the distance variable, then aim and fire.

I gave it forty-five meters and aimed in the direction of the third and final flare. My ballistics HUD updated instantly, mapping out the canister's sharp, arcing path. I adjusted further upwards and fired.

The thing was ungainly in flight, massively inefficient and slow even before it disappeared into the murky rain. But it didn't tumble, and two seconds later, it gave a mechanical click loud enough to reach me through the thundering rain at arming distance.

A sudden tornado of bright splotches spun into existence. Drops like sunlight splattered tangled trees and drowned the undergrowth in a sphere ten meters across, even tinting the water yellow and orange.

Three quarters of the brush twitched when the bright, sticky substance made contact.

Shit. That was a lot of knife-wielding shrubbery, and I'd only revealed a section of the problem.

"Again, Tynea."

Another canister landed in my hand, and seconds later, another splotchy sun exposed yet more edgy thicket.

"Again."

The things were starting to move, disorganized and confused by the hollow clicks of the canisters and the muffled gunshots of my Sentinel.

I still hadn't found the edges of this stand of trees, nor of the undergrowth. There were already thirty or forty moving targets.

"Again."

It was a little strange. Why so many of these beasts in one spot? Did they get washed up by the flood? Perhaps…but they weren't relocating either, and the trees would've made that easy. That meant they wanted to be here.

They didn't seem to have been aware of my approach though, and hadn't set an ambush for me. Some were rolling in my direction, but they were just following the canisters. Yet, there were too many for it not to be an ambush; mere observation and intelligence-gathering didn't need numbers like these.

One set for Leah, perhaps? She'd be a whole lot more noticeable than I in her spider tanks, and she said she'd be hunkering down to avoid getting buried in the floods. She'd make an easy target. Did I interrupt them as they were setting up to go after her?

Gotta be getting close, then.

Oh. They were known for their ECM spores, too. They wouldn't do much, not in this weather, but right here where the creatures were gathering and sticking to trees? Yeah, that might be enough to mess with my radio reception. She might literally be in striking distance, just across the trees.

I'd have to wash up later so I didn't track the spores into Leah's vehicles, if they were getting carried downstream into me. It'd mess with any sensitive electronics.

But first, I'd have to figure out just how deep this thicket went.

"Unlock a payload version of the sticky stuff, please, for the carrier missile."

Certainly. Shall I queue a purchase of the relevant materials as well?

"Yeah."

Three ten-liter plug-tanks and a hundred points later, I remained silent and stock still for the few seconds it took the Chrysaora to fabricate a volley of fifty Long Hand carrier missiles.

Several of the model Nines were slowly tumbling down the slope like particularly large and evershifting tumbleweeds. Those getting carried along in the water pulled ahead of the others, but they all went slow and careful, their boneless bodies constantly twisting against themselves to keep their highly advanced sensory organs pointed forwards. Little tiny twisters of flesh, each one.

They were trying to wipe the glowy stuff off with motions that seemed anxious—like their instincts for stealth were suffering a nervous breakdown. The luminescent sticky fluid was worth its weight in gold—no matter how they tried to wipe it off or how heavy the rain fell, it just refused to go and merely covered more surface in light.

It was only once the aliens realized that they could rub the affected areas in dirt to obscure most of the bright glare, that the things found some relief. Some. They still didn't seem happy with the muddy breaks in the shifting patterns of their skin, and I just keyed the Auxiliant's tracking computer to those.

I was watching the nearest one in particular. It had closed to less than ten meters, and I figured its sensitive nose would catch a whiff of me very soon. I wanted to see how the cannonettes would deal with a target that was all morphing skin and muscle with no conveniently obvious brain to destroy, and the closer it got the better the little shoulder-mounted weapons would work.

But, I'd light up a riot once they started firing. I needed a good compromise between not letting those sharp knives get too close and learning if I could trust my cannonettes to protect me against a surprise Nine in the thick of battle. I thought catching it in that moment where it'd notice me and before it had time to decide how to react to my presence was going to be the best, safest opportunity possible.

Three seconds later and seven meters away, it suddenly froze—just like I had earlier.

A wicked grin split my lips as the simmering anticipation of violence resolved abruptly with the hissing scream of my cannonettes and the snarling roar of my Second Wind's jet engines as they carried me in an aggressive arc past the alien and through its bladed, reflexively whipping tentacles.

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