(Rewritten) Ch. 60 – Xenocide Act II; War Crimes

"Yes, well, you see, I thought this crater could use a new extinction event."

– If these are someone's words, they probably were, are, or will have been, Tinea's

***

Tynea reminded me, Shall I list your purchases and remaining points, now?

"Oh! Yes."

Your personal points, after sharing half-half with Leah, were six hundred and fifty. You bought the Lure and have killed a number of Antithesis since. Partially using the emergency fund, this was the price for your new equipment:

Unlocked:

Total cost: 205 ptsRemaining points: 780

Purchased:

Total cost: 660Remaining points: 120

"Oh nice, I still have plenty points. Let's get one or two blueprints for the Myriad, more materials, and, uh, let Leah know we can get started on her signal, after. And let's keep twenty for emergencies, again."

May I suggest a design that solves the Myriad's weakness against well-armored targets? It solves that issue with rather penetrating panache.

"Show me!"

I'd already been wondering how the missiles would work considering the dimensions of the battleskirt's panels. Tynea threw up a schematic of a chunky disk and I realized that missiles didn't actually have to be, you know, missile-shaped. A frisbee would do perfectly fine if it was thick enough to carry a sufficient payload. Still tiny, though.

Then Tynea animated the schematic, and once more I realized that…no, in fact it didn't have to be a frisbee, and the missile would carry far more payload if the launcher just, you know, assembled the thing even as it was being launched. Electromagnets accelerated each added ring out the very shallow tubes while the Myriad's stores of fabricated parts supplied the next bit.

"And that explains why these blueprints start at forty points. They might as well be tetris puzzles."

Indeed—and yet, the Javelin is, all things considered, still quite a simple design.

Once the launch/fabrication animation had finished, the missile had a long rocket-propelled dart through its middle, facing backwards.

The missile will first face away from the target to gain a little distance. Then it will break apart to free the penetrator in the middle, which has its own short-lived and rather powerful motor. That motor is esoteric in nature and generates quadratic acceleration. It requires at least five meters' run up against the likes of a Six's skull, but the penetrator's fuel lasts for a burn across twenty meters for exponentially more velocity, sufficient to break even some double-digit armor.

Another animation followed. The missile split and the larger pair of stabilizing fins at the dart's head kept it oriented correctly until its engines burned to reverse its momentum. The large wings fell off with an electric crackle before they threatened to tumble the penetrator and so that the smaller fins at the rear, where they belonged, could keep it stable. Finally, the projectiles dove at a heavily armored behemoth and bored a hole right through.

Heavily armored, huh? I'd need this kind of penetration more the longer the fight continued, and the longer the nest could produce stronger and stronger units. Or if we go after the swarm.

"Okay, sure, that's probably a necessary purchase. What about the stuff to build it?"

Shall I take care of purchasing a balanced load of materials?

"Yes, please."

Purchased:

Total cost: 110Remaining points: 20

A bunch of cylinders plopped onto the grass in front of me. Plug-tanks. They, at least superficially, looked quite similar to Leah's water and soap grenades.

As I bent over to pick the first one up, Tynea said, I will highlight where each one goes, Tinea.

"Thanks."

Colors lit up above each of the items, mirrored by the same colors in various spots along the hard, segmented panels where the socket-covers sprang open for access.

Once I was done slotting the tanks in, the count of craftable HE missiles gained two hundred, the new Javelins showed three hundred, and the nanite ones remained stuck at ten. Tynea automatically queued up twenty of the Javelin Penetrators, and five hundred high-explosive ones.

The first will be ready for launch and assembly nigh immediately, but the entire arsenal will take roughly five minutes. You are ready for combat.

"Thank you. Is Leah coming?"

I have just sent her your status update. She's pulling the mob around and will enter the clearing in two minutes. Would you like to test your mobility with the Myriad, and perhaps how it fits on the ATV?

Good idea.

I experienced no issues with jumping and skipping around, and even running at full tilt across the clearing. Sitting on the ATV was uncomfortable, though—the rear and front were too stiff to lay properly, until Tynea commanded a reshuffling of a few of the panels to create seams that could open and close and make like terribly uncomfortable trousers. She complained about supply lines being cut off, and warned me that I'd need to buy extra tanks to keep each half of the Myriad supplied in this state.

Or remain on my feet instead of riding the ATV, which I might have to look at later. Maybe we'd get a shared vehicle next, one where I didn't need to straddle the saddle?

For now I parked my ATV next to the lure. We'd be fighting stationary, anyway.

"Alright, Tynea. Can you give me a test launch, please? I want to see how these missiles work in practice, and I don't seem to be getting any visitors now that I could use them."

As you wish. Please use your cerebral augmentation to mark a target.

I looked around myself. Trees. Lots of trees. Ah, there was a particularly scraggly and sick one. It had survived the storm, somehow. I marked it for a high-explosive missile.

A tiny pling sounded somewhere below my waist, and faster than I could react, a silver blur shot forward from my right thigh. It ignited two or three arm-lengths from me, searing a trail into the air as it tore towards my target, and blew up in a surprisingly powerful detonation for such a small load, splitting the small trunk right down the middle like a lightning strike.

"Oh wow! I thought these were going to be weak, like the Hummingbird micro-missiles!"

Certainly not. Their payload may not quite match that of even a small bomb, but they considerably out-mass those of your sidearm. You will find the throw-weight large enough to be useful, and where one doesn't suffice, a volley might.

"Neat! Okay. Uh…" I looked around myself. Yup. I was ready. Nothing else to do but to wait for Leah. I could already hear her engine in the distance.

"Leah? Will you need time to shop? Or rather, how much time, and how uninterrupted do you need to be?"

"..."

No answer, but I heard the revving of her engine, hard enough that it created echoes in the trees behind me. A multitude of shots rang out. And some whistling followed by explosions.

"Tynea, put Leah on cam."

The window that had shown the blueprint details popped back up, but this time it displayed Leah on her ATV. Consternation drew my brows together as I watched her turret blasting away at a number of Fours almost on top of her, slowly boxing her in. Though it was firing both bullets and a new underbarrel grenade launcher, a large group of Threes still chased her.

If the Fours succeeded, they would be strong enough to tear her from the vehicle. Overall or not, she wouldn't make it against that entire horde of Antithesis.

Her turret was constantly swiveling from side to side, pressed to keep the aliens off of them, and Leah focused fully on the path ahead, careful not to trip up.

She'd make it. There weren't any particularly bad obstacles along her path. All she had to do was keep it up.

But anxiety crept up anyway, laid clammy hands around my throat.

Shit.

Some part of my brain worried whether this, only somewhat due, angst was less about making sure Leah was safe, and more about making sure I wasn't alone again. Another part asked if that even mattered.

…Not right now. Battle's battle.

With an angry growl, I marked targets for every weapon I had.

Mental commands sent my three remaining 40mm frag-shells arcing high overhead and into the mass of Antithesis behind Leah, while guided twenties from my tail shredded branches and footholds to widen the gap between the Fours and Leah, and a storm of tiny missiles jinked through trees on a murderous hunt for xeno monsters in the canopy that sought to reach her.

With the torch I quickly cut into two trees at the very edge of the clearing, forcing them through sheer muscle to crack the rest of the way and fall in a V-shape with a resounding boom. The V's tip had a breach just wide enough for one Leah on a quad, and not much else.

"Tynea!" I yelled as I jumped into the breach, "Send Ypsi an updated path to this location!"

I have done so.

Leah was already visible through the trees, a look of pure concentration on her face as she maneuvered for the gap. My antennae caught Antithesis pheromones trailing her like cheap perfume. I leaped atop one of the trunks and let my HSRP rounds' harpy whistling speak for me, relying on the Sentinel to load a fresh magazine into my rifle every ten shots just as I kept feeding twenties to the auxiliary weapon itself, and frag shells to the Sentinel on my tail.

I laughed as Leah passed me; I was the Bullet Hell personified, I was the Iron Wall. Leah braked hard, reversed to stuff the back end of the ATV with the turret into the gap, and jumped onto the other log to join me in this lethal expression of cathartic stress release.

***

Leah caught herself on the wood with her heels, breathing hard and feeling rather exhausted.

Her arms ached for relaxation, her back screamed from the constant exertion, but seeing Tinea stare down more than a hundred Threes, only to break out in greatly amused laughter and just not give a fuck? That was hella energizing.

Aside from the one married to her turret, Leah didn't really have much of a weapon, yet. The Foxteeth was surprisingly useful, sure, and her three arms let her play whack-a-mole with grenades, but the raw volume of fire to her right let her know just how little she'd dipped into the capabilities of a Vanguard so far. Even the micro-missile module for the turret would merely be a one-off salvo meant to deal with a great number of ultra-soft targets, like oversized flocks of Ones.

Speaking of salvos, what was that skirt-armor-thing Tinea was wearing? Even as Leah glanced at her, constant magnetic plings from it launched a series of small objects which bloomed into blinding flares and lit her up like a starry halo, leading twisting and twirling trails of fire that zipped off to blow up in the center of clusters of aliens, often tossing two or three mulched bodies around.

Leah took a video of one of those mid-flight, and froze the playback to take a better look.

Some sort of rocket? Or missile, considering the things were clearly guided…

So, the skirt thing was a missile launcher? How many could it fit? Tinea had already fired two or three dozen, and the barrage didn't seem to slow down at all!

And then there were the rest of her guns. That weird clunky rifle/Sentinel combo that somehow worked fine despite the fact that it should've shaken itself to pieces long ago. Another, newer, gun was attached to the tip of Tinea's tail, which was curled above the slaughter-happy girl like a scorpion's stinger and lobbed those devastating fragmentation shells like a howitzer. And, of course, the shitty little Hummingbird that was probably not even worth using anymore, which nonetheless was made to squirt out a mini-volley of micro-missiles whenever Tinea's free hand wasn't busy grabbing suddenly appearing magazines to reload one of the other guns.

Hella good trick, that, as she'd learned while juggling her quad through the forest. Much better to grab thin air and end up with a grenade, than trying to catch them without dropping them.

Leah turned forwards again, and saw that in a matter of seconds, most of the aliens had been wiped out.

Wow. She wasn't needed here at all, huh? She heaved a relieved sigh, already exhausted from the adrenaline crash.

Leah swayed numbly after the last cactus kissed the ground with an artistic rendition of a triple flip. Her eyes felt heavy, and she really, really wanted a nap.

Fuck the rain.

Forcing herself to focus again, she carefully checked her surroundings, and asked Ypsi if there were any more beasts nearby.

No! The nice walking war crime blew everything up!

Despite herself, Leah broke out in laughter, flopped over the tree, and let her arms hang down like limp noodles. When Tinea came over moments later, she waved with a loose hand, yawned, and murmured an exhausted "Hey."

***