(Rewritten) Ch. 56 – Xenocide Act I; Opening Salvo

"These things are bloody hilarious. Blow up your foot, no longer by accident!

Also, maybe, don't let the kids play with these, a'ight? They're barely even firecrackers and make more noise and smoke than they make force, but still."

– Road Rash, signing a bunch of Landmine Feet for shits and giggles

***

"Tynea."

Yes?

"The Sentinel can do forty millimeters, right?"

Yes.

"I'd like something like the twenty mils, but with high explosive in them? Guided. Shrapnel coated in corpse-disposing nanites?"

Done, stretch your hands out, please. Both of them.

I stepped back into cover behind a tree, and then followed Tynea's command. A rather heavy square box of black steel fell into them.

Purchased:

Total cost: 20Remaining points: 2

"Oh crap, that was expensive. Why so much?"

Custom design. These are roughly comparable to your grenades, after all. They might as well be grenades.

Oh shit. Oh hell yes.

They'd pay for themselves. Several times over. I loaded them into the Sentinel, and watched as the barrel swelled to a thickness larger than my wrist.

Tinea, these possess fragmentation rings around the explosive. I would recommend an up-down trajectory that allows those rings to explode horizontally for maximum effect.

"Alright, thank you."

I connected to the Sentinel with my cerebral aug, and accessed the command interface. I let the scope peek out from behind the tree and acquire four of the Fives, each one quite densely surrounded by Threes and Fours, switched to the new ammunition, and mentally "grabbed" the arcs the gun's computer suggested to pull them up into the sky and forward a little, so that the projectiles would rise, and then plummet straight down into each of their targets.

Seriously, this cerebral augmentation stuff was a game changer. So much more intuitive to use than the endless eye-flicking and blinking and staring required by the Earth augs.

Guidance engaged, I lifted the muzzle into the sky. The Sentinel braced itself against the stock of the rifle with two new metal struts boring into the wood next to where my cheek would rest, and with that cue, I pressed the rifle's shock plate firmly against my shoulder, before I pulled the trigger.

My face split in a savage grin, as a palpable wave of kinetic energy traveled from my shoulder through my torso and legs all the way into the ground, only to be reflected back up, where it crashed into the THUMP of the next one.

Charges a good bit bigger than those of the twenty millimeter cartridges tossed the rounds into the canopy, each one as large, or maybe even larger, than three of my fingers together, before the delayed jets engaged in a single short blast to kick the projectiles fifty meters into the air.

At the apex, their guiding fins reshaped themselves to flip the shells around, and with a hair-raising shriek their motors tore at the atmosphere, punching their murderous mission into being with fiery trails of exhaust.

The adrenaline dump to end all dumps rushed through my brain, dilating pupil and time, and I watched as the embodiment of my ire connected to the four Antithesis with lines of blinding plasma.

Faster than I could compute, yet so stunningly clear, their bodies exploded, shorn from existence with the absolutism of chemical reaction. I saw and felt four simultaneous detonations ring through the forest, spreading the ballistic edict of death in expanding circles of shrapnel.

"Oh fuck yes!" escaped my lips in a near silent prayer to violence and mayhem. "Taste the fucking kaboom!"

With a drunken giggle I lifted the scope to my eye, commanded the switch to the twenty mils, and let the Sentinel analyze the most efficient path to localized extinction.

Once more, I pulled the trigger, and this time I held it until I had no more twenty millimeter left to shoot.

There was a field of shredded plant matter in front of me, the cloying stink of mold and cut grass permeated everything…and it was but a fraction of the whole group.

Yep, I'd caught their attention, and it was time to haul ass.

I whipped around just as the first aliens began to move in my direction, pushed off the tree I'd hidden behind, pressing the gun to my chest and out of the way with one hand, while the other was stretched out, palm up.

"Ammo! Twenty mil!" I yelled at Tynea.

The familiar magazine dropped into my waiting fingers and I jammed it against the Sentinel until it grabbed the thing and busied itself absorbing it.

These have several small nanite payloads in them, one each will be deposited inside whatever bodies the round penetrates.

"Awesome!" Time to get distance and repeat.

I slung the gun to my back and used silk to stop it from bumping around. At first I moved with care, as fast as I could without risking a spill in the rain, but I soon remembered that I was sturdy and from that point onwards, I began using trees as springboards to cut corners. I wasn't just dashing across the ground, but bouncing between trunks. I picked up more and more speed and the scenery flashed by faster and faster, blurring into a dizzy whirl beyond my periphery.

My feet beat a rhythm as I traveled, a double-time syncopation of soles hitting mud, wood, and swish-sliding along bark to let me spin myself around corners. I mantled a fallen log, sprinted across wet moss, until my eyes locked onto a heavy log of a branch just above head height, flat across the trail I was rushing down.

Perfect!

That was where I'd extract my next toll from.

I jumped without slowing down and caught myself with one hand to swing up around the back of the wooden limb, planting both feet solidly, rifle already coming forward. I'd gained a good lead on the xeno horde, but their frontrunners were entering range-of-vision and I didn't waste any time setting up sightlines.

Round after round flopped out of the Sentinel's barrel, and in the moments between their liberation and self-propelled action, the tracking computer in my head worth a thousand points plotted what each would do.

The results were as beautiful as they were devastating. For just a few seconds, the steady fwump-fwump of my gun called for decimation, and gyrojet engines answered with sheer unstoppable physicality.

Something about Antithesis gore was just so…wholesome.

I giggled. Keeled over backwards after the last twenty mil cartridge expelled itself, and let my feet catapult myself ass over teakettle through the trees again.

"Leah!"

"Yes?"

"Get ready! I'll be passing you in a moment!"

"Ready. I'll draw attention, you break away."

There she was. Pretty Valkyrie sitting on her rumbling steed, automatic death dispenser poised to point ruination behind us. "Roger! Wreck 'em!"

My battle lust roused Leah, who answered my verbal lunge with a smirk and a revving of her engine.

I used a little trench with some undergrowth above its lip to steal myself away and watched from natural blinds of roots, rotting leaves, and sickly fern as Leah led the mob on a chase, with her turret constantly picking away at the aliens. She was holding back slightly on the engine, making sure none lost sight of her or would find reason to veer off.

Hmm. She was almost traveling at her maximum speed in the forest though, and the Antithesis were still keeping up. I had better make sure she could afford to trip up without getting surrounded immediately, before I went after more Fives.

I whispered, "Tynea, forty mil, first one concussion!", and the already familiar denseness of this magazine settled heavily in my palm.

I marked the largest group near Leah for the fragless shell, and spread the others among different concentrations of Antithesis further away.

"Explosions behind you, Leah!" I warned her, "Keep going!"

"Yeah!"

Another four thumps shoved me into the bottom of the trench, and preceded another four circles of death. The one near Leah tore several Threes and Fours to pieces, threw a dozen bodies around, and pelted even Leah with branches, mud, and monster parts.

Her overall kept her safe, and the ATV just didn't care as it continued to eat distance.

I studied the battlefield again, and it looked like Leah was doing fine. She kept the nearest line at a steady distance, and that range had extended with my actions. I could go hunting now.

"More forty mils, please!"

Freshly reloaded, I retreated yet further, staying beyond the widening blob of aliens. I found a good vantage point in a tree, mostly protected from sight by its thinning crown, and searched for more of those Fives. Fifteen left…

Maybe I'd be able to get three reloads' worth of them from here? Hmm, I could see…only eight Fives. Whatever.

Mark the target, correct the plot, fire. Rounds weaseled past dense foliage, greeted Antithesis faces with wild abandon, and celebrated explosive havoc. I'm in love, I giggled to myself. Reload, once more, eight dead quill-fuckers all in all. Two Fours had taken to the branches and were trying to run me down.

I smiled, lining them up with the rifle, and found satisfaction in the rapid decomposition by screeching HSRP. It ain't quite the same, but fuck, that whistle is a message of its own…

A short pause let me catch my breath a little, and gave me another idea.

"Tynea, do we have, like, energy boosters? Little sugar balls, or something like that? Stuff to dump into my metabolism during combat to keep going for longer. No drugs, just nutrients and lots of energy."

Certainly. They're very cheap, too, at one point per pack of ten.

"Oh! Gimme!"

If you would present your palm, please.

I kept an eye on my surroundings as I held the rifle with one hand and held out the other for the energy thingies to be teleported into.

I received a squishy see-through tube of ten little balls, each one a two centimeter sphere of spongy candy. I popped the first one into my mouth, and a small tingle of electricity ran over my tongue, making me squeak in surprise. When I bit into it, the thing popped and released a gooey substance that tasted incredible. Sweet and everything good, it might've nearly beat chocolate…but only nearly.

Which probably made sense—didn't want to get addicted to something so insanely saturated with calories.

Anyhow, I disappeared the tube into my décolleté, and wow is that something to have, enjoyed the energized shimmy running through me as the gooey goo hit my metabolism, reloaded another four forty millimeter shells, and prepared to reposition.

I'd probably need to get to the other side of the horde to find the rest of the Fives, which would also give me a good opportunity to check on Leah again, help her keep her back free.

Hmm. Might as well take out a few of the Sixes while I was still here…

Four of those. Perfect match for my load.

Another four blasts eliminated their heads as easily as the Fives had been torn apart, and a good two dozen smaller units died to the shrapnel. By now they'd all located me, and I saw more and more Antithesis taking to the trees with tentacles, or racing in my direction by claw.

This area of the horde was already destabilizing bit by bit, with the Sixes dead.

Time to ditch and get them running after Leah again, thoughts of whom were already causing the corners of my eyes to crinkle with happiness.

***