(Rewritten) Ch. 63 – Xenocide Act III; Campfire Stories

"So, uh. Ever plan on doing one thing, and kinda, um, accidentally, wind up doing another entirely?I'm sure this'll work, though."

– Anonymous Author

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The lure is working. Some of the closest packs are losing cohesion and heading your way. The first Antithesis will arrive in two minutes.

"Good. Let's give 'em a toasty welcome," I commented, and Leah shot me a thumbs-up.

I touched the forcefield emitting pendant on my forehead. It was powerful, a real lifesaver, but…limited in reach. Extremely so. "Tynea, how many points would it take to come back from dying?"

That…is a very difficult question to answer with any certainty. There is as dizzying a variety of injuries sufficient to render your body non-viable as there are solutions to such.

"Solutions, huh?" I guess I could always jar my brain, if I lost everything but my head.

"What would the ability to always revert lethal injuries cost?" A shadow of a memory shivered through me, half-remembered pain that my brain had mostly deleted to protect itself. "Like, when I jumped off that roof? To fix that after the fact?"

Even that does not narrow down the options to a useful degree. Would you require an immediate return to your previous state, or would you accept a full-body prosthetic for the duration it takes to recover the entirety of your biological functions? Do you wish to remain seamlessly combat-capable, do you mind being evacuated?

"I…see. When Leah's along, I wouldn't want to abandon her to a battlefield that managed to kill me. But if I were alone, I'd be fine with getting evacuated. I think. Unless I were protecting somebody. Yeah, I can see why you're asking."

Yes, it is quite difficult to plan recovery ahead of the injury that would require it. Many Vanguard solve this by using technologies that substitute for critical functions, even including remote-controlled clone bodies.

"Oh, that's… How does that even work? Wouldn't the clones still have, you know, their own brain?"

That depends on the technology used, but typically, not one sufficiently grown for personhood. They're almost always networked to host the thoughts of the original, instead. But then, some Vanguard just…tick differently. They don't mind free copies of themselves existing and just collaborate, or even form a eusocial hive that almost mirrors some insect species. Or, Antithesis.

I chuckled. "I don't know if that's more or less fucked up. Maybe if you die often enough, you stop caring about a little bit of squick?" Shrugging, I decided to return to the topic of my own demise prevention. "I think I'd want to remain combat-capable and present, able to recover my body eventually, and…that I may continue to interact with people, I guess."

Thirty seconds to contact.

That still leaves an unwieldy number of possible options and unanswered questions, such as the nature of that interaction. But let me give you some examples.

You could have a specialized life-support device accompany you in the form of a drone. Most of the time that drone would simply serve as another weapons platform, not unlike Leah's Universal Piloting Pod. It could carry a chamber into which your head would be interred upon destruction of your body. The drone would serve as your body until your biological one had regrown. The drone could be upgraded and customized as you become more powerful, as could the chamber itself.

"That life-support chamber thing does sound reasonable. An add-on to whatever fighting vehicle Leah's gonna buy, maybe?"

That is certainly one option. Teleportation is another. It's an exceptionally powerful tool to dodge death, and also exceptionally expensive. It does avoid the issue of the lifesaving device being attackable. Sensors would detect danger and initiate a short-range teleport across the battlefield.

"That sounds…tantalizing. Tactically useful."

Teleports are very energy-intensive, and multi-use devices only come in specialized, higher-tier catalogs. There is a single-use, limited emergency teleport already available to you for a thousand points.

"Ouch. I guess I don't really need the thing just yet."

No, you truly don't. The single-digit Antithesis would be hard pressed to even get through your skin, nevermind your regenerative abilities if you should take injury.

We were interrupted by a squad of Threes rushing from the treeline. Four of them, and our three turrets cored their brains between one step and the next. I didn't even have time to so much as twitch a finger. The Lure kept blaring away above our heads.

I glanced at Leah with a wry smile and pinged her for a call. "Remember when we had to be careful with single units yesterday?"

She smiled and I saw her chest vibrate with a chuckle, but I couldn't hear her until the mist of her shroud made contact with her lips and slipped into her mouth.

"Yup," she said.

"Is it, uh, lip-reading you?" I asked, tapping my lips and surprising myself with how cushy they were. I had to wrangle my brain away from kissing my fingers to explore being feminine.

"Yup," she said again, grinning either at my chaotic attention span, or about her gear. I couldn't tell which. Nonetheless, I cheered, since, you know, I was a self-employed programming tech geek, and esoteric contact microphones were cool.

"You know," Leah continued, "I did fight a little during the first incursion in New Montreal three months ago. Not much, just a few dozen units, altogether. But it took me days to kill as many as we have just today alone, in a few hours."

"Oh?"

The next group of Antithesis arrived. More Threes, and two Fours. They sniffed the air…and dropped dead, before they even had time to process anything. But that reminded me, and I retrieved two pheromone pouches from the lure.

Leah continued talking, as she watched me. "Mhm. Made a bit of a mistake with my investments, though… I didn't focus on weapons. Got better augs, an eye to replace one I lost to some shrapnel from a collapsing building, lots of food for the orphans hiding in a shelter. Could've done so much more of that if I'd been smarter about, you know, using the points I was making to kill more aliens for more points."

"I see the issue." I handed her one of the scent pouches. "These bags will make us smell like intruders, and the lure smells like a nest under attack. Helps with keeping the Antithesis off of it, since it's not exactly armored."

"Smart."

"Yeah. As long as nobody runs the lure over by accident, anyway. It's a bit spindly."

She nodded, and we just sort of sat there, waiting for the situation to require our intervention.

Leah tilted her head and asked me, "Somehow this never came up, but wanna know how I became a Vanguard?"

"Oh, sure!"

Wow, that really drove home that we hadn't known each other for very long. I marveled at the sense of closeness between Leah and myself. So much had happened in such a short time that it felt like we'd gotten welded together.

I had to chuckle to myself. Big huge blaring horn going off above our heads, xenos attacking in groups of five to ten every few seconds, and here we were, chilling on our quads and Leah offering to talk about her life.

She looked up, a thoughtful look on her face, and I wondered for a moment how she could even hear anything with that noise. But then I saw that she was using the same ear protector thingies that I used, with that active noise cancellation. And much like me, she'd taken the active protection out of her helmet when she'd discarded it for her suit. Unlike me, she'd still fit it around her neck, partially swallowed by the cowl.

"So, you know how I take care of a few different orphan groups, right?"

"Yeah. No details, though."

"Right. I'm not their primary caretaker, but I play with them, train them in the use of tools, try to help them figure out who they wanna be. I just rotate through the groups, and occasionally I take a few kids out of the city for a weekend of camping in the nearby woods."

"Woods? Aren't there usually Antithesis around?" I asked.

"Nah. Right outside the city, where the PMCs patrol."

"Ah, gotcha."

"You know, if you go with a small group and you know the right people, you can ferry them for almost free. It's a real cheap way to get them out and about. Anyway, about three months ago, I was on such an excursion again. Just three children, their caretaker, and me, eating dinner around a campfire."

Leah leaned back, laughing. "I wasn't aware of it at the time, but New Montreal's first incursion had started. I'd just gotten up, about to walk to the piss house, when five Threes surprised us."

"Oh no."

She looked at me, grinning, "No worries, it wasn't really an issue as it turned out. We were camping right next to a really tall tree with loads of branches. The kids and the other adult crawled right up there, but I kinda knew the Threes wouldn't leave, ever. Either they'd gnaw through the tree, or a Four would come and climb up. Or something. The fuckers share intel somehow, right?"

I nodded. "Pheromones." My warning ring pinged and showed a considerably larger group heading for us. At least three dozen members… Still a couple minutes out, though.

Yay, more story time!

"So, what did you do?" I prompted Leah.

"Well, we did have a gun. But the thing was in my backpack, way down at the bottom. Never had to actually shoot anything, you know? My entire life, not once. Barely kept it maintained and did some occasional training on the firing range. But I wasn't used to, y'know, thinking about it, wasn't used to needing one. So what did I do? I grabbed the climbing pick. The sort you usually use on ice? They're pretty nice for trees, too.

"Anyway, I grabbed the thing, and rushed right at the aliens before I could even think about it. Surprised them pretty good, too. They weren't nicely grouped up, so I spiked their skulls one after the other. The first four died instantly. Nailed each once, and they slid right off the pick again."

I was captivated.

"But I fucked up on the last one. I really needed to pee, you see. I clenched so hard it jostled me, and instead of piercing its brain, I just glanced off the head."

"Oh no. What happened? Did it hurt you? Did you get it?"

Leah laughed and kept talking.

"I'd caught it in the ears instead. Hard enough to crack its skull and destroy its hearing, but it was still going. The fucker was fast, too. Guess what, it lost sight of me, and since it couldn't hear me either, what do you think it did?"

Uh… "Chase its tail from the brain damage?"

She snorted and said, "Might as well have. But no, it tried to track me by scent. Thing is, my scent was leading it in a circle around our camp. With me running after it. I had to pee. I repeat, I had to hella pee."

"Noooo…" Did she…pee herself? Oh no.

Leah smacked me in the leg. "I know what you're thinking, and no, I didn't. No, I kept chasing it for five fucking circles around the camp, and I had to pee the entire way and got angrier and angrier. The children learned a lot of new cuss words that day.

"It had a teddy bear stuck in its teeth, too. Fucking imagine having a stuffy wave at you enthusiastically, while you're trying to hold it in, sprinting after a fucker that should by all rights be trying to maul you.

"It ended up being a race between my bladder and my brain, whether I'd lose continence or puzzle out what was happening first. Almost didn't make it, but I did eventually ambush it during the sixth circle. Never have I run for the toilet faster.

"...And that's where I finally became a samurai. On the potty."

I fought hard to hold back the giggles, and Leah figured that was no good. I tried to hop off the ATV and run when she leaned over, but she'd caught me by the waist and dragged me onto her lap before I knew it. Her fingers tickled me in the waist and on my belly until I gasped for air, unable to giggle for reasons not at all my fault.

I looked up at Leah just in time to see a pair of Sixes breach the trees behind her, a whole bunch of Threes and Fours accompanying them.

I banked the hilarity for the moment, took Leah in one hand and grabbed my gun with the other.

But maybe that's a good way to manage stress? Sharing stories, tickling each other and stuff. I nodded. It was all very new to me, but yes. I was going to make that a thing, if it'd help us avoid cracking again.

Especially the tickling. I had to get even, after all. Indeed, another tally for Tickle Time! I was up to three now.

I eyed the Sixes and asked Leah, "Hey Leah, wanna let me kill the big ones? I got something special for the occasion."

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