Chương 409: Book 7 - Chapter 5 - Flying Fish

"The Ursas are under attack," Spooky said.

"We've already lost two to the Antithesis attack." I frowned and glanced over at the intercom panel.

"Are you talking about the same Ursas that were performing strafing runs and bathing the battlefield in M17 back at Great Falls?" I asked.

"The same Ursas that we weathered the worst anti-air fire the Antithesis could throw at them and returned home nine times out of ten? Those Ursas?" I asked.

"The very same," Spooky confirmed.

"When the last few groups approached their drop zones, they were met with several waves of flying antithesis rising out of the deep." My frown deepened.

"I still fail to see how this could be a problem," I said.

"Don't the Ursas have built-in PAWs Active Protection Systems? Those systems were originally designed to take down missiles, and they've proven to be quite effective at taking out flying Antithesis before. Why are we having problems all of a sudden?"

"Well, the good news is that the PAWs systems are still effective at taking out massive hordes of Antithesis before they reach their targets," Spooky said.

"The bad news is they can't do anything about the cloud of viscous fluids that these specific Antithesis release upon death. The fluid is splattering all over the cockpit, obscuring the pilot's vision, and getting sucked into the Ursa's air intakes. It's thick enough to make the engines seize up if a sufficient concentration is pulled in."

"Are you telling me that my latest and greatest vehicles, the ones with complete environmental protection and enough shields and armor to shrug off a Class I missile strike, are getting downed by engine issues?" I groaned.

"That does seem to be the case, yes," Spooky replied.

"This has to be the work of the Gene Tender. Traditional Antithesis would have either tried to swarm the Ursas with Model Ones or, if they wanted to get fancy, thrown some sort of exploding flier at them like the ones the Model Fifty-One-S produced," I muttered.

"There's no way a traditional hive would jump to gumming up the gunship's engines with mucus this early. It must be something that the Gene Tender had been cooking up to deal with them back in Great Falls."

"What do you want us to do?" Spooky asked.

"I've ordered the runs to continue for now, but even if we take extra precautions, I expect we'll continue to take losses."

"So, the Ursas must be flying fairly low for this to be a problem; that's the only way that I could see the Antithesis getting close enough for these clouds to be effective, they'd have to emerge practically on top of the ships, correct?" I asked.

"Correct," Spooky confirmed.

"Then why aren't we just asking the Ursas to fly higher? Then they could shoot down the Antithesis before they became a problem," I asked.

"Simple."

"If we ordered them to fly higher, then there'd be a chance the wind could pick up the buoys and throw them off course, making holes in our sensor net. We'd have to drop the beacons closer together to compensate."

"So we either have to slow our deployment or risk our equipment, is that right?"

"That's the long and short of it, yes," Spooky replied.

"If we did deploy more beacons from a higher altitude, would we still be able to outpace the Antithesis leviathan and slowly box it in?" I asked.

"Give me a moment to perform the calculations," Spooky said. There was at most a second pause before he was back on the line.

"Yes, but it would force us to extend it another fifty kilometers or so out, and we'd have to drop thirty-two percent more buoys." If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

"I don't give a shit about how many buoys we have to drop. I think production is already outpacing demand, and an extra fifty kilometers isn't a huge distance in the grand scheme of things. I'd be more concerned about the Antithesis either getting lucky or figuring out a consistent way to gum up the Ursa's engines and delaying our deployment long enough for the leviathan to slip through," I said.

"Actually, you know what? New rule. No more optimising plans to the extent they were here. I know the network makes it extremely easy for you guys to optimise everything, but if dropping the payload from a couple of meters higher throws your plan off, then I don't want you using them. I'd rather have robust plans that are hard to disrupt."

"This plan wasn't that precise," Spooky grumbled.

"Spooky if the rollout of the sensor grid had been disrupted based upon the wind patterns, then it was WAY too precise. We should have been deploying the buoys with a decent amount of overlap so it would be harder to disrupt," I said.

"Less focus on efficiency, more on redundancy going forward, got it?"

"Yes, boss," the bear muttered.

"Good. How are the Marsupial's upgrades coming? I know the beaver engineering team was still working on it when you arrived. Is it ready yet?" I asked"They're doing the final checks now," Spooky replied.

"It should be ready in a few minutes."

"Excellent," I muttered, a small smile pulling at the corner of my lips.

"In that case, I want you to assemble a crew and have them prepared to leave the instant it's ready."

"Okay? But I was under the impression that you'd weaponised it so it could take on the larger aquatic models and even that thing the Gene Tender is traveling in. We haven't discovered anything like that yet, so where do you want me to send it?" Spooky asked.

"Right into the area where the Antithesis have been throwing themselves at the Ursas. Even though the Marsupial isn't designed for recon purposes, if the Antithesis are throwing waves of sacrificial troops into our equipment, there must be a fairly steady stream of reinforcements that it can use to track down the source," I said.

"Although I'd love for that to be the leviathan, giving us an easy way to locate it, I expect the source to be a hive hidden not too far away. Even though destroying something like that should be fairly simple, it should give us an idea of where the Gene Tender has been lately." I frowned.

"Well, unless it's able to make genetic changes at a distance, which we haven't seen, but if that's the case, it presents a whole mess of problems."

"So, to summarise, you want me to use the Marsupial to track the Antithesis back to their source," Spooky said.

"Isn't that what I just said?" I asked, confused.

"It was, but then you kind of started ranting about the reasons for doing so and theorizing about the abilities of the Gene Tenders, and I kind of tuned you out," the bear replied.

"I like to theorise, and when there are other samurai around, they like to hear my reasoning," I said defensively.

"I'm sorry that you don't appreciate my musings."

"I appreciate them, just not when I'm trying to reorganise our search grid, gather enough bears to crew the Marsupial, make sure we're sending enough reinforcements back to Great Falls to cover the casualties, and oversee not only Bear Force One's regular operations, but its upgrades as well," Spooky said.

"I may be smart, but even I can start to feel overwhelmed when I have so many tasks to focus on at once."

"Yeah… I guess I have been giving you a lot to do lately," I muttered.

"Maybe I should have brought more than you and Heavy on this trip. We could use the help. I'll ask Heavy to handle the aquatic operations, along with managing the manufacturing side of things."

"That's not necessary," Spooky said.

"I can handle things for now."

"For now. But what'll happen if we discover the Gene Tender, or different hives, or we have other Samurai show up?" I asked.

"You're the cornerstone of my operation, and I can't have you getting overwhelmed."

"What about Heavy?" Spooky asked.

"Isn't he busy too?"

"He's been figuring out how to redistribute our manufacturing capabilities now that we have a whole bunch of Class III machines, and he's handling the arming and maintenance of the Ursas, but he does have downtime between his tasks. I'd give the job to either Deadbeat or Bandit if they were here, but they're running the cleanup around Great Falls and probably won't be joining us for a while," I said. I looked down at my pajamas and, for just a moment, considered going back to bed before shaking my head.

"I just need a few minutes to get cleaned up, then I'll head to one of the meeting rooms to take command of the Marsupial. I'd like to see what's out there, and since most of our forces are on standby, I'm not using my command bandwidth anyway. Any more concerns before I cut you off and take a shower?"

"No, but maybe I should remind you that I had to interrupt your call with the other samurai, and you might want to get back to that first?" Spooky suggested. I considered for a moment, then shook my head.

"Although I really should learn who we'll be working with, I said what I needed to," I waved my hand dismissively.

"If anything important comes up, they can call me back. Besides, we have work todo."

"If you say so…" Spooky said.

"I do!" I replied before stepping over to the intercom.

"I'm going to cut you off now, I have a feeling if I don't jump in the shower now another crisis will come up and I won't get a chance for another week. I'll contact you when I'm done."

"Alright, talk to you soon," Spooky replied before I cut the line. I stood there a moment and sighed before finally heading towards the bathroom.

"I guess there's no rest for the wicked," I muttered.

"Back to work."