Chapter 153 – The Deus Ex Machina Protocol; Act VI

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– Personalized advert for a new product line, targeting members of the Explosion Addicts Anonymous culture club

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One tentacle knife whipped towards my hairline as I squirreled past another, and would've shaved the antennae right off my skull if it hadn't contained enough metal for my forcefield to repel it. The electric snap of the field egged me on, set my nerves tingling.

Another spasming tentacle scraped against the spine in my tail, its edge so sharp I didn't even register the degloving of part of my most prehensile appendage—not until I sensed the way its new shape altered the air currents. Even then, the cut was too neat for the decapitated pain receptors to fire, the emptiness of absent pain a hollow echo of dread expectation.

It sat queer in my skull, and that had always meant one thing only: ride or die.

My heart rate tripled and set my blood on fire. Sitting still ceased being an option. The familiar, hyperactive madness descended again, tickling my attention with a thousand little hints about how to best break the thing I was looking at.

I'd watched as I sailed past, felt the canonettes' darts perforate the body of the Nine. Dozens of them, all over. They'd just gone through and out the other side. There was no sturdy cage of bones protecting vulnerable organs, and none of them had a fixed position either. I'd never know where the brain would be located just from looking at the things.

I crashed against the trunk of a tree several meters beyond. The thing was still moving. It was damaged, twitching and uncoordinated, with holes torn in its skin where I'd removed tentacles, but it was both alive and mobile.

I'd have to sieve every single Nine top to bottom to guarantee a kill.

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Unlocked:

Total cost: 12970 pts, 2 tknRemaining points: 142333Remaining tokens: Tinea 2, Leah 0

Purchased:

Implacable One 'Leah's Moving Castle':

Implacable Two 'Backbone':

Assorted:

Total cost: 140571Remaining points: 1762

The air thickened the very moment Leah confirmed the purchase, pregnant with the physical potential of the two warstriders Ypsilon was preparing to warp in.

Looking at her beancounter, she swallowed heavily. That was a lot of points. They'd gone from, like, two hundred thousand points to less than two thousands in a manner of minutes. Thirty minutes. Twenty? Since Dervish inverted the world.

The zap-clunk of her one-oh-five receiving and loading a new shell reminded her why she hadn't had much choice but to be so heavy-handed with their most precious resource.

So did the hulking figures of three model Twenty-Threes—bastard children of salad and T-Rexes—which were already halfway up the hill. If they got to her while she was still fending off a newly swollen pack of stealthy Twenty-Ones, she'd be dead.

Then, the quickening potential of the warstriders' teleport came to fruition. Two massive mechs arrived with that alien, rule-breakingly sudden apparition that forced the brain to play catch-up.

Machines and computers didn't share that weakness, and indeed, their guns rained absolute hellfire on every hostile assigned by the Sim Cell's strategic data center. Leah hadn't even had time to take in her newest selection before they'd gone to work.

Yay! cheered Ypsi, you're officially a Class II Vanguard now, Leah!

That was enough to bring a smile to her lips, and it only grew when the giant spiders' giant cannons' giant thunderclap crashed into her Daddy-Long-Legs's audio pickups.

Two rounds streaked towards the Twenty-Threes down the slope. They moved slowly to Leah's eyes, barely even supersonic, but they were heavy; designed to impart maximum force rather than penetrate and devastate.

The choice of shells confused her for a moment, but the tactical computers' reasoning quickly became apparent when the heavyweights smashed into the beasts' armor hard enough to send two of them rolling down the hill. Their bony plates hadn't so much as cracked from the hits. It would take a little more than mere cannonfire to break these monsters. The one left behind hunkered down, hiding its vulnerable legs and belly beneath its armored skirt. A further volley failed to dislodge it, the shells just pasting themselves in streaks across its dense exterior.

But with the third alien isolated, the two warstriders advanced while a bevy of secondaries and mortars killed or kept every other, lesser, Antithesis occupied.

Leah admired the new Implacables' lines. She'd retained the Warforge color aesthetics of black decorated with golden filigree and ephemeral pinprick diodes, and had adopted the denser shape of a jumping spider's legs along with the predatory body of the Australian Huntsman spider. They were said to be one of the few native species to have lasted against the Antithesis even after that experiment with anti-Antithesis plants had gone so horribly wrong.

With their armor—actual armor, not the paperthin excuse of the Hatchets—and at the size of a family home, the new Implacable class weighed hundreds of tons. No common terrain would've withstood that weight, not concentrated as it was on eight legs, and so, they used early prototype grav technology to carry most of their abdomens' mass.

Their feet were a marvel of articulation, both fine enough to find purchase on any ground and sturdy enough to grapple and control threats at close ranges.

Even knowing that, it was still uncanny to watch them move. No stomping—just an unnervingly smooth, controlled poise that set Leah's lizard brain screaming: predator, predator, run bitch, run!

A pair of Twenty-Ones, perceived only by the rain they displaced, jumped onto one of the Implacables. They tried to mangle one of the 30 mm secondaries that were spitting a hail of lead at the smaller Antithesis, but it simply jerked back into its hardpoint while one of the recessed mortars let a grenade roll onto the mech's armor with the weak thump of a minimized charge.

Moments before it went off, the remaining autocannons ducked below their armor, just long enough for the shockwave to pass. It all but blasted the two belligerent aliens off the spider, laden with enough energy that it registered like an earthquake to Leah's tremor sensors.

The striders marched on—untouched and undamaged—until they'd pincered the lone Twenty-Three and closed almost into melee range. When they came near enough, the beast leapt up to attack, but the pair of 203 mm cannons discharged. One struck high, above the beast's center of mass, one fired low into its knee.

Instead of sinking its hard fangs into a mechanical leg, it found itself flipping over, violently. The strong bones in its knee hadn't broken, but the skin and muscle were torn to pieces, and tough as it may have been, it still didn't have the raw mass to ignore that much kinetic energy being imparted upon it.

The thing flailed, nearly bouncing back onto its feet before one of the Implacables managed to seize its tail with a pair of grasping claws. Its grav engines powered down, and several hundred tons proved enough to keep the alien T-Rex prone.

The other strider lifted its rear high and pointed its main armament at the exposed underbelly. A single high-explosive shell was enough to hollow out its viscera—even if the ribs and bones still refused to break.

She decided to have her scavengers recover the material later and see if she could sell it to the corporations. It'd be enough to bargain several favors for the orphanage. The thought of playing them against each other, especially against the ones poking around Saint Viktor's, made her grin.

Meanwhile, her one-oh-five twitched a few degrees sideways to take advantage of one of the flung Twenty-Ones' exposed belly, and she confirmed the firing solution.

Leah! I'm giving you a token!

"Oh?" Leah asked, happy at the news. She'd just given up two, after all. "What for?"

Your first kill of a Twenty-Three! Ypsi replied. I can't, um, give you more for the rest though, since you're not punching up anymore. Sorry.

Leah giggled at the huge teary eyes the adorable avatar made, fully cognizant of her AI's perfect manipulation. "Aww. No need to apologize. Look, I just made back fifteen hundred points."

Mhm! Twenty-Ones are real rewarding!

"And real dangerous."

Yup! They got the second highest kills-to-power ratio of any offensive Antithesis unit! That's why I can give you so many points for each kill. If you were any weaker, you'd get several thousand more!

"Huh. Which model has the highest ratio?"

Uh… Ypsi shifted unhappily. The Seven.

Leah lost her smile and sighed. The zombie worms. Of course. "Ah, well. That makes sense I suppose. Nasty fuckers."

Yup, said the little girl and nodded. And worth very little, because they're so weak. Then she perked up, at the same moment that Leah did, too.

Tinea was near enough that her Sim Cell's extra-sensitive receivers detected a few scraps of the warrior girl's electromagnetic emissions.

Not quite close enough for proper communication, but it wouldn't be long now.

Leah found herself taken by surprise by the strength of her relief at that realization. And perhaps, also a little unsettled.

There was no denying that they were moving hella fast with their relationship, but…she also thought they'd figure things out. As unusual as the circumstances that had led to their meeting were, she and Tinea were even more unusual.

Considering how well they seemed to fit together despite their unusualness, worrying about those circumstances and what effect they might have on them seemed…superfluous.

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