(Rewritten) Ch. 82 – Xenocide Act VI; The Raptor’s Dance

Blackened blood swirls in passing winds, mistblade dexter reaps pests worth not my eye.

Arcs of translucent death mark the swings, moonblade sinister claims another alien skull.

– Klingentanz, blade-dance, a German samurai loved for her grace in combat

***

– Three. –

The resistance of the spatio-kinetic anchor bled energy from my controlled tumble, gorging itself on my momentum. My chest pressed into the haft of the flying spear and joyful adrenaline squeezed breathless giggles from my lungs.

– Two. –

My body described a gentle arc through the air, twisting around the javelin's axis as AI-I counted down the tenth-seconds. Almost. I was almost in the perfect configuration to let the spear sling me along again.

I could feel the moment building, the kinetic release approaching.

– One. –

The spear's haft lengthened itself between my hands, until one set of engines reached far enough for leverage. My hand followed out, out and out, as far as my arm could stretch, so I could brace against the engines and the anchor.

I was still falling, still twisting 'round and 'round.

– Zero. –

I hit that critical moment. Anticipation lifted the corners of my mouth and tickled down my spine.

– Engaging. –

AI-I let the motors blast to feed the falling rotation, and I braced against the spear as it drank more kinetic energy, enough to overmatch the momentum of my fall. I laughed as the crystal mist from the distant blade drew circles into the air and around me, tumbling and tumbling towards the ground.

More energy.

– Three. –

The ground, still several meters distant, rushed to meet me. But my spear was thirsty, and laughing, I kept feeding it my fall.

The motors pushed on my rotation, turning it sideways and diagonal, until my body lined up with the haft and the spear rested against my back. My left hand snuck into the small of my back where it braced the weapon, and I rejoiced at the tactile reminder of my feminine curves.

– Two. –

Another moment built, another release wanting to be set free.

My tail twisted behind me, adding a touch of correction to my tumble, nudged it from smoothness into dancing perfection.

– One. –

My ankles hooked around the haft on one end, and the back of my head rested softly on the other end, cushioned by the fingers of my other hand wrapped around the haft there.

My tumble, slowed by seconds of spatial drag, finally saw me upside down and perpendicular to the ground. I barely spared a glance for the corpse of the Four in front of me, absorbed by the building tension.

There.

– Zero. Rebound. –

Another shot of adrenaline rushed through my blood as the spatial tethers snapped. The shunted anchors, stored more than a dozen meters away, crashed into their receptacles and a powerful impulse shoved me forward.

Rollercoaster glee burst from my throat as I flipped over and across the Four's broken body. The Raptor's Dance's blades shredded its neck and I didn't even slow down until my feet slid across the ground on the far side, accompanied by crystal dust twinkling in the sparse light.

"…" I stroked the javelin in my hands. I already loved this thing.

Metal striking metal tore me from my immersion, and I spun around to see Leah leaning against her pod with an impressed moue, clapping her prosthetic hands.

"I won't lie, Tinea, I thought guns were your thing. Where'd that come from?" she asked, waving vaguely at me.

Giggling, I replied, "Guns are most certainly my thing. I used javelins during my first fight, but mostly for bomb delivery. Couldn't even throw them straight, you know."

"Oh? How'd you become so adept then?"

"Dream learning, like I got for flying. I've been thinking about ordering lessons for my silk weaving, too." I waved my spinneret around. "There's gotta be more useful stuff I can do."

Leah tilted her head, curiosity playing across her face. "What's that dream learning stuff like? I'm gonna have to learn how to pilot the tank, too."

"Um…ever had a dream where you were aware you were dreaming?"

"A lucid dream?"

"Yeah!"

"Sure."

"Right, so it's kinda like a mix of a lucid dream, and Diving the Mesh. You can control the dream like a simulation during a Dive, but it feels as real as any dream." As advanced as the Diving tech was, being originally samurai-supplied, it still did not quite match real life. "The physics are more immediate and complete, there's no fake sensations to fool your brain into thinking it's real—it just is. Although I was quite alone. Like a solo Dive."

"There are options for shared dreaming," Tynea added. "These aren't usually suggested, as learning efficiency unfortunately tends to suffer with more people involved."

Dream together, huh? I could think of a few fun things to do… Says Tinea, just after she was warned of inefficiencies. Hah.

"Anyway, I bought dream training for spears, and," I grinned brightly, "I just got to try it out for the first time. It's fun."

Leah laughed and said, "I saw that. Very acrobatic." She tilted her head the other way. "Do you figure it's gonna be useful in combat?"

"Um…" I blew up my cheeks. "Yes, but I'd need to invest into it to take it anywhere serious. Compared to my missiles or guided bullets and grenades… I'd probably need several hundred points more to reach the same efficacy, and that's only 'cause I've already invested ten thousand into my body."

"I see. Why the spear, then?"

I smiled at her, and the metal in my hands flowed to shift the handle up to roughly a third from the top, and six slots of various sizes opened up. Two beyond the handle, and four below it. "Because it can also carry bombs bigger than the Myriad can launch. It's basically my version of your cannon."

"Oh, so it's like a bomber drone?"

"Kind of? It doesn't have any cameras or anything, but it's networked."

"There are sensor pods you could slot into the bays. They're often scattered around an area to build a more permanent spy net."

"Or that, I guess. Anyway." I hefted the Raptor's Dance. "It's a good melee weapon and bodyguard, but it does a lot more than that for me."

You could also choose to upgrade your esoteric explosives to Class II, if you wished to take full advantage of the javelin.

"I'll do that if I need it. There's plenty of interesting upgrades and I don't have a lot of tokens, do I?"

Only the one, I'm afraid.

"Right. We'll use it when we actually need it."

Understood.

"Alright…" I looked around myself. "Leah, I figure we just dispose of the quads. You've got your pod, and I've got my legs, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Do you want to keep that sledgehammer?" I pointed at the thing dangling from one of the robotic arms attached to the underside of the pod's stowage.

Leah shook her head. "Nah. Get rid of it. Can't see a use for it; it wasn't expensive, was it?"

"No, just a point. It's a nice hammer, I guess," I said, chuckling, thinking of the things samurai often sold to turn points into money.

"Twenty-five thousand credits, huh?" The same math clearly turned the gears behind Leah's eyes.

"Yep."

"Trash it," Leah ordered.

"Aye-aye, ma'am!" I saluted with a cheeky grin and started to walk past Leah, only to bounce when Leah swatted my bum.

I smirked smugly after continuing past her. Yes, girl. I saw your eyes wander to the jiggle. Sooner or later, I'll have my fun with you. Promise.

The pod handed me the hammer, and I tossed it into the storage compartment of one of the ATVs before asking Tynea to teleport them both away.

Purchased:

Total cost: 10Remaining points: 3083

Yay! Cheated five points by being smort with the hammer! I pumped my fist and valiantly ignored Leah giggling behind me. "Alright, thanks Tynea. Now's just the lure left, and…"

May I suggest that you reinstate the emergency funds again? Possibly even adjusted to your improved resources. There are also several dozen Antithesis fragments within six hundred meters large enough to spawn new nests.

"Yeah, those are what I got the nanite tank for. Take care of them, please."

Will do.

Emergency funds, huh? I had my bionites, which had proven quite effective, and I could share them with Leah easily. As prophylaxis, even.

Still, particularly grievous injuries might require particularly expansive—and expensive—treatments. Would an emergency fund of just a few hundred even be useful?

Probably better than noth—or, actually, "Leah?"

"Yeah?" she answered, still watching me. Or, considering the way her eyes snapped up when I turned to her, perhaps the way my Myriad moved? I couldn't fault her, the thing was mesmerizing. And feminine. And curvy. And aesthetically pleasing. And if she wore it, I'd be wanting to peel her out of it. And now I kinda wanted to be peeled out of it.

"Have you considered getting some sort of permanent medical nanite factory installed? Or even bionites, like mine?"

"Yeah! But since I'm gonna be inside the pod, I figure that's a little bit of a luxury right now. I'll wait until we have Daddy-Long-Legs."

Uh…

"Daddy-Long-Legs?"

She giggled. "The scout tank I'm going to buy for ten-k."

"And… I'm guessing it has very long legs?"

"Yup. Hella long legs. You'll see."

"I guess I will, huh? No spoilers?" I made puppy dog eyes at Leah, until she laughed and shook a finger at me.

"Nope. No spoilers, you'll have to wait like a good little girl."

"Fiiine. Meany."

I would have to practice my puppy dog eyes. Kitty cat eyes? Kitten eyes? I do think those are something different. But I'd have to practice them too, yes.

"Anyway. Emergency funds. I got my bionites, and I can share them with you, but I figure we should put five hundred aside for medical stuff and ammunition anyway."

"Okay. Five hundred. Each or combined?"

"Combined, at least for now."

At Leah's nod, I saw the counter drop to 2583 and turn green. Alright… Almost done.

After stowing the lure, I let Tynea launch the missiles. She'd queued up fifty of them, several being the new Long Hands with their much increased fuel capacity. They had a reach of several kilometers, unlike the shorter Carrier.

I jogged a circle around the clearing, partly to burn down the nearby corpses with napalm and tail-torch, and partly to stay out of the stinky exhaust from the cheap kerosene.

Drone footage let me observe each delivery to all the sites we'd battled at. The payloads from the variety of darts and shells I'd fired weren't always enough to consume the corpses, but the nanite loads were large enough to eradicate all organic matter in circles twenty meters across. That took care of entire clusters of bodies.

I came to a stop next to Leah, and put my hands on my hips, glancing across the cratered, burnt, stinking glade.

"Well, I'd say we're done here. On to the mobile hives? After which we'll prep the facility, and let Tynea stuff all her drones into that nest and call orbital strikes down on it."

"Yup." She gave me a thumbs-up.

There should be two model Twenty-Twos. I'm 99.94% certain that the third large grouping did not gain members unseen.

"Hmmm…" Leah let the sound draw out, her voice rising a little at the end. "Do you think we should split up? We're hella more deadly."

"Uh. Maybe? Tynea?"

Either of you could kill a Twenty-Two. You will be facing mostly single digit models, and both of your protections are adequate to face such.

"I guess that's that, then? We split up. Oh, do we lose the ten percent bonus?"

Yes, though you will also finish twice as quickly.

And Leah was getting antsy to go home. Fair enough.

I caught her eye and asked, "How fast does your pod go?"

"Well, Ypsi says it's twice as fast as the quads, but the cannon will complicate travel between the trees 'cause I need to maneuver the thing without tipping it over. I'm gonna drop it off somewhere it can ambush the Twenty-Two once I've drawn it out."

"Alright." I studied our map, thinking about how we might best approach the situation. "So, there's one thing I think we should keep in mind. The underground hive built Fourteens, and possibly these Twenty-Twos, since we don't know where they came from. That means there might be other double digits waiting somewhere."

"Right."

"Since we haven't spotted any, they're either dug in, or they aren't close by. I think it'd be best if you don't risk leaving your pod for anything. Not until we're back together, at least. Like, not even to pee."

"They've got sensitive noses, yeah. Sure."

"Yeah. So, since I'm faster, I'll take the further one?" The first model Twenty-Two was about fifteen hundred meters away, and the second one two thousand. I could run faster than Leah's pod even if it weren't weighed down by the cannon.

"Sounds good."

Leah looked at me. Silence fell, and for once it was awkward.

Splitting up…that wasn't something we did. We'd had only two or three days of being together, but somehow, the mere thought of it scratched my heart with anxiety.

Urgh. I bit my lip.

I went over to Leah and buried my face in her chest and squeezed her hard enough to almost bruise. I could feel my tension mirrored in her muscles as she hugged me back, and, yeah, she actually shook slightly.

Was this…too early?

Maybe we should stick together after all.

Should we? Was this, like, an important moment to practice independence?

Fuck.

***