(Rewritten) Ch. 74 – Xenocide Act V; Debate’s Resolution

"The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is boom."

– Mission statement of EAA, Explosion Addicts Anonymous

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"Tynea? How long will it take the fire to burn out?"

The payloads will be used up in thirty to ninety seconds. The wooden fuel adds some unpredictability to it, though. If the logs properly catch fire, they may continue to burn and smolder for hours.

"I see. Will whatever rain's left be enough to prevent a forest fire, then?"

Yes, certainly. The napalm won't dry the local forest enough for it to spread.

"Okay, I won't need to stay here, will I? Let's just use drones to keep an eye on the flames."

Understood. May I launch two of your UAVs?

"Go ahead. Let's actually launch all of them. They're much faster than the drones, right? Use them to scout further, especially around the areas where the aliens gathered first. I want to see if we can't confirm those mobile hives."

Not to mention that more vision would let me use my missiles across a larger area. I could go back to Leah and hunt down the stragglers. Yup, Tinea smort!

I imagined myself going Daaarling~ as I danced gaily towards Leah's fat egg. I pursed my lips and shook my head. I was still safe. I didn't have the ojou-sama sonic-assault-laughter, after all.

Metallic clangs announced the ejection of six of the UAV missiles, and I watched as they rose roughly sixty meters into the air, well above the canopy.

I immediately commanded one to keep an eye on Leah, who was doing fine, just starting to engage the emerging aliens with her guns, keeping them at range. The Fives and Sixes would probably show themselves soon, and AI-I queued up penetrators to launch automatically if she called for aid, or if it looked like she was getting flanked.

Using the cerebral augment in a more direct manner, I zoomed in on the UAV missiles and studied them in good detail. They were about five centimeters longer than any other I'd launched.

Which made sense.

The Myriad couldn't increase the diameter of my missiles without alterations to its launch tubes, but adding more segments along the length during the catapulting? Well, that's what it was already doing anyway, though there was a limit to how long the things could get before aerodynamics and stability became a problem.

At the apex, they separated their rocket-motor butt ends, unfolded long and graceful wings, and their quieter jet engines spun up. I probably wouldn't have been able to hear them without my antennae.

"Jet engines modified for stealth, huh?" I wondered.

Tynea explained, Jet engines aren't just far more fuel-efficient than the rocket motors, it's also easier to configure the sound picture of their exhaust, to reduce what materials or substances can reflect their echoes. They'll be able to loiter for roughly an hour, all without attracting too much attention. If necessary, they may fold up again and reposition quite quickly, though fast travel eats right through their fuel reserves.

Oh! "Do you think you could get these UAVs past the Antithesis into the caves? Are they fast enough?"

Too fast, in fact. I could probably penetrate deeper, yes, but they won't quite manage the tight turns in some corridors to even get there. And if I slowed them down to get around those corners on wings, then they'd be vulnerable to attack again, and considerably larger and easier to destroy than the normal drones.

"What if we used a few normal drones to carry the missile to where you'd have a clear shot into the unexplored areas on rocket power?"

That still doesn't allow the slower drones to get past the guards, and we'd need them to pass the network along underground. We'd lose connection around the first or second bend without the drones.

"Ah, damnit. Right."

– Attention: Antithesis model Four approaching. –

Moments after AI-I's words, I sensed the fast movements of a Four traversing the canopy with its tentacles, whipping itself limb over limb towards me.

I centered my rifle on it and fired a round of HSRP to rip the alien to pieces. The impact was just a tiny bit off, not exactly where I'd aimed. Which, at a mere twenty meters, was a problem.

I looked down at my rifle and traced the divot with a finger. Things weren't quite seated right anymore. The trigger and its guard had play where there shouldn't be any. Yeah. Today's gonna be your last, huh? Hell, it'd be stupidly dangerous to use if I weren't armored against it exploding in my hands.

I sighed, and reoriented myself. Time to move.

The whistling banshee-shriek of the HSRP had attracted some attention, and I armed my tail-mounted Sentinel with a magazine of 13mm nanite darts to take care of the smaller Threes, and relied on good old 20mm gyro-jet shredders to kill any Fours as I walked along below the wall of fire.

Tynea continued our conversation. My suggestion would be to flood the caves with every drone at your disposal when you're ready to leave, and to call for an orbital strike once we've confirmed the existence and exact location of the nest. The destruction of these drones in the bombardment would be a useful result, too. Stealth drones are another choice, though. Something like the Scout's Quartet, but hidden.

Speaking of which, "What happened to the Quartet back home, actually?"

I've been able to connect to them intermittently and have logged everything that I could.

"Huh?" My brows pinched. Not again! "Why didn't you tell me?"

There is unfortunately no useful information, and nothing you couldn't have found yourself already on the Mesh—or even the Family app, if you were interested in finding out. I would certainly have shared anything of importance to you or Leah. There is nothing. No operators identifiable or trackable, no changes beyond some damage to your apartment from your cocoon's extraction. The neighborhood remains as it was days ago, unrepaired due to the global incursion.

Well, I had to admit that made sense.

I exhaled and relaxed. Yeah. My previous argument with Tynea, and the things I'd learned about her, they had me a little…sensitive right now. I was looking for signs of…what? Betrayal?

Kinda.

It's how I'd react to any human pulling that shit on me.

But…Tynea had wanted me to figure out that she wasn't human. That if I was to use her properly, I had to understand that.

But what did that mean, exactly and practically? From her explanations, it seemed that I should just trust that she wasn't going to…go behind my back anymore, and never would have in a way that could cause me harm.

And, that I had to…prompt her appropriately. Just like the AIs I would use as a programmer…

I stopped. My body froze as a new thought formed itself. Aaah. Now I understood.

I'd made the mistake of making her responsible for figuring out my less obvious wants. Those that weren't objectively identifiable. The ones that would be both natural and obvious to another human...

Oh shit. Okay.

Absent-mindedly, I began to walk again.

The reason she could afford to make those decisions for me with samurai gear was because all of that was reversible. If I didn't like something, she could easily undo it. There wasn't really any deep meaning to gear, after all. They were just things, tools, even at times when, if I were truly honest with myself, I didn't think so.

She was kind of too smart to fuck up anything objective, but if she did, the consequences just weren't really there. Maybe some loss of points, but whatever, those were effectively infinite.

But that was not true in other areas of my life. The subjective stuff, the social things, the responsibilities… That kinda stuff.

And she wanted me to take the lead on those elements. If I didn't, she'd try, because that's who, and what, she was. A Class XII Personal Assistant. She'd try and do what she could to shore up my shortcomings, just like those AIs I'd use to create code did. But, smart to match a planet or not, she wasn't me.

Yeah. Yeah, okay. I could work with that.

And suddenly, there was a connection again, between Tynea and I. I knew what I was supposed to do.

A smile stretched my lips and a bounce lengthened my stride.

***

Leah twitched her left gun-arm, and she sensed the head of a Three in front of her powder-blackened muzzle. Her imaginary finger primed the rear of a very not imaginary mass of soft brass, hard steel, and hungry nanites.

By the time the Three's skull exploded, she was already onto the next two, reaping Antithesis as fast as they came for her.

Leah was having fun. Lots and lots of fun. She hadn't thought she'd enjoy combat like this…ever, to be honest. But, indeed, she salivated at the thought of piloting a proper tank.

She couldn't quite ignore the incoming attacks in her egg. She couldn't just stand still and take it while she executed enemy after enemy. Yet.

But she was liking her first taste of giving harder than she got, face-to-face, without having to hide in a tree or riding an ATV on the run, constantly wary of making the mistake that would end up killing her.

"Ah, there's the first of the Fives."

She flexed a muscle made of implanted thought, and her right gun-arm ejected the current magazine, and replaced it with another one from a basket just beneath the gun's mount, full of recoilless 22mm cartridges tipped with explosively bad temper.

Before the walking cactus could even point its quills at her, its brain had already energetically vacated its case.

Leah!

"Ypsi?"

Tinea's coming back! She made sure that the baddies will be slow with fire, lots of fire. She also said she has some of the stitchers for you, if you need them!

"Alright, thank you. Ypsi, could you show me a map with markers for the Fives, please? Tinea said they'd already gotten past her, so those won't have been split up."

Here you go!

"Thank you, dear," Leah said as the map popped up on the inside of the pod, on the curved shell in front of her. She opened her real eyes to study it, and found against expectation that she had no issue simultaneously looking beyond the wall with her imaginary eyes. Which was awesome. It meant she could multitask effectively!

"Gonna hav'ta deal with all the Fives at once, won't I? …I need more protection. Ypsi, let's get something against the quills. I'll probably tank two or three volleys before I'll have killed them all."

Okay! Umm. There's two different options. They're both neat! And you could take both.

Leah grinned. There she was again, little girl Ypsi trying to be serious with big words. It was just too adorable.

If you borrowed Tinea's Esoteric Defense Systems catalog again, you could get more of the teleporting explodey plates. They'll blap the enemy projectiles!

And from your own Warforge Technologies catalog, one of the few esoteric thingies are the electrolaser banks!

"Oh?"

Mm! Ypsi nodded. They're a bit low power, but they have enough energy to mess with air currents around flying stuff and make them tumble and go elsewhere. And they work really, really fast! Even the weakest one can totally, uh, shut down all of the Fives coming for you!

"Hmm. Can it kill Antithesis, too?"

Not the weakest one. The Mark II could kill model Ones, and the Mark III model Threes and maybe even Fours, sometimes.

"What's the price difference?"

The electrolaser costs three hundred points once, and the other one two hundred, but each plate costs five points! They're a lot stronger and larger than the ones you used personally, and need to go a lot further to cover everything around the vehicle.

"I see. So, the running costs would escalate pretty quickly, wouldn't it? Even if it starts out cheaper. In that case, let's try the electrolaser, shall we?"

Okay!

New Purchase: Class I 'Volt' Mark I Multi-Channel ElectrolaserCombined Points reduced to... 5450!

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