Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Forty-Four - Machina

“There’s an entire industry of trade where people, often scavengers working in some very specialized unions, will rush out to an incursion to pull the best, most juicy toys from the wreckage, often before the area is properly cleared.

As you can imagine, their mortality rate is high, but for some, it’s worth it.

Samurai tend to discard weapons at a moment’s notice. The trouble of selling something they won’t be using anymore is often not worth the effort for them. Some are more generous, and will give older gear to soldiers and the like in the field, but often the gear they’re using is incompatible with modern doctrine or requires ammunition and maintenance that’s beyond any civilian’s ability.

So the scavengers come, and when they find a Samurai’s trail, they follow it like hyenas after an injured antelope.”

--Excerpt from ‘After the Fall: A History of Post-Incursion Areas. 2040

***

I was down forty points.

I also had four sub machine guns hanging around me from a couple of straps hooked onto their short stocks. They were called Stingers, and while they were cheap as shit and a bit bulky, they also had 120 round magazines that could be emptied with exactly thirty seconds of continuous fire.

My Trench Maker was strapped in place, the pockets and holders on my back were full up, and my new arm’s rocket launcher was loaded up with three HE rockets that I could call up by thinking about it hard enough.

It was pretty cool.

I still had points to spend, but not the time to spend them in. At least, not if I wanted to protect the AA gun for even a moment more.

Hesitation gripped me just as I was opening the door back onto the roof. The kittens, Lucy, were probably safe by now. They were across the front line and were no doubt being pushed into some sort of shelter or an evacuation area.

I could just tuck away in some corner, maybe find a route towards the edges of the incursion myself. It would be safer, probably.

“Fuck me,” I said as I slammed the door open.

The roof was crawling with aliens. Model Fours, over a dozen, all huddled low and ready to move up towards the gun above us. Model Ones, an entire flock’s worth, sometimes flopping down dead if they poked their head up too much and got tagged by the point defence guns. And more. Large winged models that I had only seen in flashes when looking out were circling the building.

I saw hungry eyes turn my way.

They looked first into my eye, then down to the two guns I was holding like the star of some samurai flick.

I pulled back on the triggers and grit my teeth as the recoil had me stepping back. Twin lines of steel death washed over the nearest Antithesis.

My left hand stopped firing way before my right. “Myalis! Resonator!” I called as I let go of one gun. A grenade fell into my hand, and in a second was sailing above the heads of the xenos still in my path.

The familiar ring of the resonator wasn’t nearly as irritating with my new earpieces. At least, it wasn’t as irritating to me. The aliens didn’t take kindly to it.

They rushed at me. “Fire!” I screamed just as my right-side gun clicked empty.

The guns over my back slid out into place, fully loaded and ready to tell the aliens, in no uncertain terms, that they could fuck right off.

My second Stinger clicked empty. I unclipped its sling, marvelling at how easy it was with two hands, flung it to the ground, then pulled up the other two waiting by my hips.

The next barrage was more about putting down tenacious aliens than really mowing them down. The resonator had a decent range, but its effect diminished with distance. The fliers were still zipping about unmolested, that was, until my back-mounted guns turned them into so much meat.

I stepped out with a glance up for any surprises, then emptied the last of my bullets into a few aliens that were still writhing around while melting. I didn’t need a flailing tentacle to batter me down.

More were crawling up from the edges, and a look around revealed what had to be hundreds of Model Ones and some of those other fliers circling the roof like vultures around a corpse. They seemed content to circle though, without charging right at my exposed form.

I ran up the little stairs towards the AA gun and winced. The machine was tough, but it had taken a beating. Its sides were covered in gore and burnt bits of alien, and a few battered bodies hung onto it like Christmas tinsel.

I saw a Model Four lunge at it, only for the entire weapon platform to spin around so fast I felt the wind of its passing where I stood.

The end of a railgun slapped the Model Four so hard most of it flew off the roof.

INCOMING CALL FROM... BIG BROTHER LONGBOW

“C’mon Stray Cat, you should get to cover, not stand around like that.”

I pulled back. “Yeah, yeah alright,” I said.

“Why are all my cute little brothers and sisters so hungry for points?” he lamented. For a moment he sounded like he could have been any of the older kids at the orphanage talking shit about the brats. “Get back to cover. Only a minute or so until help arrives.”

I started back towards the entrance when I saw a shift in the flock of Model Ones.

I’d seen nature docs from before the incursions, when the world was still mostly green and vibrant. There used to be these huge flocks of birds that would fly so close together that they looked like one giant mass. And when they moved, they would twist about like a plastic bag caught in the wind.

They twisted, and it was with a sinking feeling in my gut that I realized that I hadn’t been ignored after all. “Oh shit.”

My back-mounted guns started to tear into the oncoming tide, but it was like trying to stop the rush of water from a hydrant by throwing darts at it. Model Ones fell out of the formation, but it was still coming.

“Rocket!” I screamed while pointing ahead.

The upper part of my new arm slid back, a blocky section popped up, and without so much as a whisper, a black form darted out of my arm and into the swarm.

The explosion knocked me on my ass.

A wave of heat, followed by a rain of xeno bits, rushed over me. I had a second to blink my eyes and collect myself before I looked up and took in the devastation the rocket had wrought to the swarm.

Broken Model Ones were all over, twitching and trying to get back to their feet. More were still in the air, but their tight formation was utterly lost.

Still, there were hundreds of them, and it only took a glance to see more coming from afar. I had, perhaps foolishly, attracted a whole lot of attention.

I heard a whistling-whine from above. The air began to taste like ozone.

I didn’t have time to wonder at that.

The sky became filled with red lines cutting down from a point somewhere above me and poking through every single Antithesis I could see.

The tableau held for just a moment, a thousand aliens, all skewered by red beams like hot-dog slices with spaghetti noodles through them.

The light had only been there for a second, but it burned itself into my retina. It did a lot worse to the aliens.

They began to tumble out of the sky, all of them very dead.

My neck craned back and I took in the radiant form of my savior.

She stood on empty air. Behind her floated a sleek thing that looked like someone had taken the latest Ferrari hover car and split it in half before sculpting it into some sort of weapon’s platform.

Her body was covered in a matte bodysuit, but her arms were grabbing onto little trigger mechanisms that lead to a pair of boxy cannon-things linked to the platform behind her. Her legs were both slotted into giant mechanical boots that had opened up to reveal hundreds of glowing emitters.

She dropped down with a low hum that sounded like something between the purr of a cat and the growl of an engine, but a whole lot more lethal. I couldn’t see any weapons around her other than the floating cannons by her sides, but that meant jack.

This woman was a bonafide Samurai, the sort movies were made of, whose face probably showed up on cereal boxes and who could definitely fuck me up without a second thought. Even the rain was curving way around her, as if afraid of getting her wet.

Then she landed and I had to reassess that.

The girl was a Samurai. She was a head and a bit shorter than me, and while her skintight suit was cool and all, it was definitely hinting at proportions that were imagined rather than real. When her mask split in three and folded away, it was to reveal the pouting face and chubby cheeks of a girl who had ducked under the puberty bat. Her flat blue eyes framed by long brown hair looked like they knew exactly what I was thinking and didn’t like it one bit.

“Heya, pipsqueak,” I said.

“I could fucking melt you and no one would blink an eye,” she warned.

I felt a very inappropriate grin tugging at my lips. “So, you’re the cavalry?”

She nodded. “I’m Deus Ex. Now get on, I’ve got better shit to do than babysit your green ass.”

***

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