Chương 429: Book 7 - Chapter 25 - Mutagenic

The meeting room appeared to be in a state of chaos when we arrived. There were people yelling and running between groups, and I saw at least one person throw a punch. I'm sure that things would have been much worse if Hel wasn't there because as soon as someone got rowdy, she either shot them a dirty look or stomped over to 'talk' to them. No matter how distraught they were, no one wanted to piss off the Class V samurai.

Claire and Alise were at the back, busy discussing something with a full-sized hologram of Warspite, but all three turned towards us when we stepped inside.

"What's the situation out there?" Alise asked tensely. I looked at her strangely for a moment. I knew that Sharron had already sent them an update, so they should have already known, but after a second, I realized she wasn't asking for herself. She wanted to update everyone else.

"It seems that the Antithesis set up a trap for us. One of the Antithesis detonated, creating a massive EMP, while the other one turned and started engaging the pursuing fleet. Although we managed to kill the remaining leviathan and all the other Antithesis in the area, we lost five ships, SubSonic, Mant-a-war, and Stormsurge," Mako explained sharply. I heard someone let out a low, long breath, but pretty much everyone in the room stopped arguing to stare at us and listen to our report.

"In addition to that, the EMP was strong enough to knock out part of the sensor net, so there's a chance our quarry may have escaped the perimeter," I added.

"So… that's it? After gathering everyone together, we're going to fail to take down that fucking Antithesis commander?" someone hissed.

"I'm already plugging the holes, but if it did escape the net, it's not the end of the world. Once we had the situation under control, I contacted our reinforcements and let them know what was happening. They've already spread out and started creating a secondary perimeter," I explained, gesturing at Warspite. The Admiral nodded.

"We've already started deploying our own scouts and static defenses, in case the creature heads our way," he said.

"However, in order to ensure that there aren't any gaps in our own sensor net, we've had to drop to cruising speed, which will delay our arrival."

"Better to arrive late than to risk the Tender escaping," Clare announced.

"What we need to do now is come together and focus on the task at hand. Now that we know the Antithesis are going to try to fuck with us, we need to be more cautious."

"It would also help if I had more people to not only help assemble the remaining sensor net, but reinforce the existing sections with different types of detection," I said.

"Although I've been told my sensors would be sufficient to detect anything going through it, it wouldn't hurt to have a little redundancy." Claire nodded.

"That's probably something we should have considered and implemented before. I'll send out a message and see if there are any volunteers." Now that the other samurai had been updated on the situation, it looked like they were calming down and returning to their own discussions. Just as I was about to head over to Alise and Claire, Mako elbowed me in the side.

"I'm going to make my rounds, talk to the people I know, and figure out how everyone is doing. Make sure you come find me before you leave; I want to know what the twins have to say," she said. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"You know, you could come with; I'm sure they wouldn't mind," I said. She paused for a moment, then shook her head.

"I'm more comfortable talking to the people with their fins in the water. I'll leave the strategizing to you," Mako said before slipping away and heading towards a group of girls dressed like mermaids in the corner.

"Come on," Sharron whispered, nudging me on my other side.

"Let's talk to the Brass."

"You know you don't all have to elbow me," I muttered, rubbing my side as I followed her forward.

"I have ears." Claire gave us a tired smile when we finally worked our way between the different tables and towards the back of the room.

"Hell of a day, huh?"

"It's not over yet," I grumbled.

"What the fuck happened back there anyways?" Helspite asked.

"I've seen the Antithesis use EMPs before--I've even hardened my ship against such attacks, but from what I've heard, that blast was on an entirely other level. I've never experienced anything like that, and to the best of my knowledge, none of the Antithesis in this area should be capable of that."

"They were fairly common on Mars," Hel said.

"The Antithesis knew that most of our tech was vulnerable to disruption and constantly bombarded us with various types of ECM."

"I encountered something similar just recently in Great Falls, but that was emitted by a giant root system developed by the Gene Tender. That's why I updated the Strato Carrier's systems and added additional EMP protection," I said.

"It's a good thing I did too, because if I hadn't, Bear Force One would have ended up underwater."

"So the Gene Tender had access to that gene?" Hel asked.

"Yeah, but to the best of my knowledge the Tender has been trapped within the net, and to the best of my knowledge there's no possible way that it could have come into contract with those fucking leviathans," I muttered.

"It wouldn't have to come in direct contact if it had access to Seven-Ms," Sharron said, receiving a nod from Hel.

"What the fuck is a Seven-M?" I asked.

"They're how the Gene Tenders transmit their changes to the wider swarm," Hel explained.

"While the regular Model Seven worms are designed to dig into native hosts and take them over, the Model Seven-M are designed to dig into other Antithesis, or Antithesis hives, and trigger a mutation."

"Wait, you mean the Gene Tender can update its forces on the fly?" Alise asked.

"Seriously?!?!"

"That's one of the reasons the war took so long. If the Tenders had to make changes in person, we would have been able to pinpoint their positions and perform a couple surgical strikes," Hel said.

"But since they could send out those stupid bugs, the Tenders could scatter, hide within the swarm, and perform changes on the fly."

"You're telling us that thing doesn't even need a hive to perform changes?" Claire exclaimed.

"How are we supposed to deal with that?"

"Same way we did on Mars," Hel replied.

"Kill the Gene Tender."

"We're trying," I grumbled.

"I thought it would be pretty easy if we isolated it and methodically hunted it down, but if it can both summon followers in from outside the zone and mutate them before they arrive, we could have some serious problems soon. My sensors can detect large entities trying to come in and out of the area, but there's no way it could detect worms."

"In that case we should focus all our efforts on hunting the creature down before it gets a chance to pull in support," Hellspite declared.

"I'll ask the best scouts in my fleet to start combing the area while the combat ships maintain the perimeter. The sooner we find the beast, the sooner we can kill it."

"That's fine with us, but make sure everyone knows they shouldn't take any chances. Who knows what else that thing has cooked up, and I don't want anyone else dying unnecessarily," Alise said. Hellspite nodded.

"I'll make sure they're aware."

"I can't believe this. I thought the Gene Tender was bad enough when it was in charge of the hive, but now I find out it didn't even need to be there to do that shit?" I growled.

"I guess we're lucky that it stuck around as long as it did. If it had fled earlier, we may never have known until a second super hive popped up."

"Don't even joke about that. We had to glass Mars to finally get rid of those things, and even after everything we did, I'm not 100% sure we got them all," Sharron said.

"Well, we'll get this one," I declared confidently.

"From here on out we work as a team, search the area as quickly as possible, and come down on that thing with everything we've got once we find it. Quick and clean."

"Quick and clean," Hel repeated.

"Let's get to work."