Chương 396: Book 6 - Chapter 57 - Samurai Strategy Session

[Teddy, why is there an emergency broadcast being sent across every single radio, tv and augment channel in Great Falls? All the civilians have been evacuated, and the Antithesis assault is finally starting to slow down,] Mudflap grumbled. [Uhhhh… yeah, sorry about that. We've kind of encountered a problem, and we didn't have the time to update you all before sending out that alert,] I replied. [Nyx is actually sending it out to everything in a two-hundred-kilometer radius. We kind of have an issue here.] [Teddy, we've been fighting the Antithesis for nearly a week straight. Being bathed in acids, attacked by an aggressive fungus that consumed every living thing it came into contact with, and fighting titanic monsters the likes of which the world has never seen. What kind of issue would require that sort of response?] Wild asked. [A flying Antithesis that's nearly as big as Bear Force One and is dropping spores that dig into every living thing it passes over and convert them into Antithesis fauna,] I replied.

[Spooky is currently trying to draw it away from the area.] [How did something like that survive the phage? I have to imagine that it was pretty close to the heart of the hive," Bern asked. [It was actually a little ways away from the core,] I replied, [and I assume that it survived because the Gene Tender either protected it or severed it from the hive before it could be affected.] [The fucking what?] Wild muttered. [It's a long story,] Nora said, [and I'd love to catch you all up on this but…] [We kind of need to discuss how to deal with that fucking thing,] a new voice said as they entered the call. [Uhhh…. Who's that?] Wild asked. [Wildwalker, Mudflap, and CBeRN, meet Lag. He and his partner Dial-Up are the ones currently driving the apocalyptically large tanks towards the heart of the hive,] I said. [Sup,] another voice added. [Anyways, I called you all because instead of the phage solving our problems, it seems to have unintentionally made things worse,] I said. [It crippled the EMP generator they'd created, but doesn't seem to have affected the birthing process at all.] [Really? We're already seeing the assault here faltering, because the few Antithesis that make it to the town perimeter are falling apart,] Mud said. [The ones here aren't,] I grumbled. [They're completely intact.] [They're also dying so fast that you're not even paying attention to the battle,] Nora replied. [And since you added a small nanite payload to the rounds, in order to try and break down the Antithesis they kill before the mold could reclaim them, it's a little hard to tell if they're affected or not.] This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. [Uh, kids, can we please get back to the matter at hand?] Dial-Up asked. [Did you say there was an EMP down in the hive?] Lag asked at the same time. [Yeah, a big one. It shut down most of my forces for a couple minutes. Thankfully, my squad was able to hold out against the combination of scorpion, crab, and trash compactor that was waiting for us until everything else rebooted,] I explained. [Kid, when this is over, we need to sit down together so you can go over all the crazy shit you've seen the last few days,] Lag muttered. [Can we talk about the clear and imminent threat now?] Dial-Up sighed. [It is why you called us all here, isn't it?] [It is,] I admitted. [That son of a bitch is tough, and even though the Strato Carrier is hitting it with everything it has, I don't know if it's going to be able to take it down before the thing loses interest. Here, take a look.] I said, before granting everyone access to the camera system on Bear Force One. The chat went quiet for a minute. [That's one tough son of a bitch,] Lag muttered. [What's that flying of yours packing?] [Class III Railguns, and Class II long-range missiles,] I replied. [This is the first time anything's survived more than a single shot of the UHR before, never mind shrugged it off.] [UHR? It doesn't have some fancy name, like the Sunderer or something?] Lag asked. [Maybe it does, but I don't know what it is. I kind of… salvaged the first one from a fallen samurai named BlackDog during the Siege of Seattle,] I said. [I just called it the Ultra Heavy Railgun. I figured the name fit, since it blew holes in Twenties, through other Twenties. I thought that was extremely impressive at the time.] [It is impressive; these are just extraordinary circumstances,] Dial-Up replied. [So, now we've established that there's an extremely large, and tough Antithesis coming out of the ground, what do you want us to do about it?] [No fucking clue,] I said. [However, as Nora pointed out, you're the samurai closest to us, and you might either have something capable of hurting the Fifty-One-S or have some idea how to deal with it.] [We've got some pretty big guns on our tanks, but I don't know if they're strong enough to hurt that thing. And even if they were, we don't have line of sight,] Dial-Up said. [Well, I ordered the captain of my ship to try and drag that thing as far up as possible,] I said. [I'd like to keep it from traveling too far, spreading it's spores around, and apparently it has to shut down it's spores to reach max altitude. Seemed like the best way to keep the damage to a minimum. If the plan works it should be rising over the horizon, into your line of fire soon.] [As soon as it shows its ugly mug, we'll give it a full salvo and see if we can cause some serious damage. I wouldn't hold your breath though,] Lag said. [We've optimized our loadouts to scourge Antithesis off the face off the earth and strike at hives buried deep underground, not kill something that size.] [You could have fooled me, considering how much damage your artillery is doing to the hive's carapace,] I said. [Sure, they're punching holes into the surface, but those rounds are supposed to be able to dig down several hundred meters and detonate, completely evaporating hives,] Dial-Up explained. [That's unfortunate, but it's still worth a try,] I said. [And even if you can't, we have others here who may have a more subtle solution,] Nora said. [Bern, Wild?] [We have all sorts of biological and technological weapons capable of directly attacking either an Antithesis' flesh or nervous systems, but I'm not sure if it would affect such an advanced model. There's a chance the phage reached it, and it shrugged the effect off,] Wild said. [I really hope not,] I muttered. [Because if that's the case, we could really be in trouble. I think it's more likely that the Tender managed to cut off the effect before it reached the Fifty-One and sent it out early, so it wouldn't get consumed by the effect.] [That would mean that thing isn't even fully grown,] Mud grunted. [That's a scary thought.] [It's worth a try,] Nora said. [If the bombardment doesn't work, we can bathe it in a variety of different compounds and see what happens. Dial-Up, Lag, if your bombardment fails can we deliver the compounds to you and have you fire them up at that thing?] [Uhhhh… We can provide you access to the loading bay, so they could be loaded in a shell,] Lag replied. [It would be a little difficult for us to do it ourselves. Long story.] [Good enough,] I said. [Hopefully, if all that fails, the Family will finally get off their asses and realize that not only is the orbital cannon down, but there's an extreme threat floating around. If we can't down it with our weapons, maybe a good old-fashioned orbital strike will do the trick.] [I really hope it doesn't come to that,] Nora muttered. [Me too, but we'll do what we have to. Otherwise the situation may spiral out of control,] I said. [Everyone know what they need to do? Let's get started.]