Chương 146: Ch. 143 - Up Shit Creek

On the origins of Samurai Death-Knells, 2049 In 2036, the rAinforeZt Corporation assassinated a major critic of theirs, a samurai known as Pluto, and unwittingly triggered a contingency he had established with his AI; a fictionalized account commented to be 'surprisingly accurate' contained the following dialogue:"Apopytus, you AIs think fast, right? Real fast. You think you're fast enough to come up with something on the fly, when I die? Use every last point I have, make something lethal.

I want you to kill whatever bastards manage to get me." Within a matter of hours, the rAinforeZt Corporation ceased to exist. Apopytus had used all 314, 159 points that Pluto had accrued to deploy the world's first recorded cognitohazard attack [pl. cognitohazards, an image, pattern, sound, or any other kind of sensory signal that directly causes harmful or undesired physiological or physical effects to one who senses or perceives it] on the corporation's executives and major shareholders, and followed it up by wiping all traces of the hazard and the corp from the Mesh. The only evidence of the attack was an obituary written by Apopytus of his Vanguard of seven years, displayed on the rAinforeZt Corporation's Mesh domain.

– Paradox, hobby historian and samurai enthusiast, late March 2049"Suicide by samurai, as a term, will last the remainder of your species, I'll bet." – Apopytus, 2036 I chortled as I watched Leah reluctantly tip-toe up to the woman-statue and gingerly poke her in the forehead like she was scared of tripping the wrong alarm. Or worse, of sudden Nerdgasm all over her. Dolores's serene visage abruptly transformed into that of a man in his thirties.

An antique pair of glasses flickered into existence on her nose as she leaned forward—right into Leah's personal space. Then, in the most grating, self-important voice imaginable, she declared:"Get. Off. The phone!"

With not a space for thought, Leah's fist shot forward and smashed into Dolores's nose, who flew backwards to the sound of shattering glass. She landed flat on her back behind the plinth, arms and legs sprawled wide. I was left blinking, confused at the sudden, dramatized violence, until the spread-eagled samurai started giggling in delight. It was quite incongruous, the feminine laughter and the male appearance.

An exasperated Leah rolled her eyes, but she did hold out her hand to help Dolores back up, whose semblance was already reverting.

"Are you quite satisfied yet?" she asked the avid Nerd once she was on her feet again.

"Oh, worry not thy pretty head, my dear cyberknight! Much more lies in store!" While Leah facepalmed, I couldn't help but notice the disguised social crutch for what it was; behind Dolores's crowing still lay that anxious awkwardness I'd sought to assuage earlier. I supposed that kind of thing didn't just go away so easily. I'd know, considering my own past. Nonetheless, I stepped forward and offered her a simple smile.

"Hey. We mostly got our stuff figured out, but we'll need to coordinate if we wanna turn plan to action." Still bright with amusement, she replied, "Sure sure, let's do that. Got some news on the creepers, too."

"Oh?"

"U-huh. Sec." She stepped up to her pedestal and kicked it in the side. There was a mechanical clunk, and with the clicking of a ratchet, it began rising, revealing itself to be a submerged pylon of smooth metal beneath the marble cap that was the plinth. At elbow height, its sides folded upward and outwards, forming three sides of a small standing table. The fourth side's mechanism was grinding its gears with an ugly, metallic squeal.

Cursing 'cheap Class I furniture' under her breath, Dolores banged against the recalcitrant panel until it finally surrendered to its electronic orders.

"Bloody junk's junk," she groused.

"Anyway, check this out." The cap turned out to not be marble at all as its top surface cleared and a square lens projected a hologram of a map into the air. The entire North American continent was visible, populated with icons and blotches of color I recognized from the Family app. Samurai, Antithesis hordes, everything tracked in real time, but Dolores had access to far more information than the app made available to the public. She zoomed in on Baie-Comeau.

It was a sea of red everywhere with a tiny green dot in the middle. Kilometers of Antithesis in all directions, only a handful of hours out. A "What the fuck?" escaped me before I could stop myself. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

"I know, right?" the fandom oracle cheerfully answered.

"I haven't seen this much red since my last XCOM campaign. And spoiler alert—those guys did not make it." I wasn't sure if I should be aghast at the reference, or that Dolores didn't smear Mesh slang all over her sentence for once. Maybe even her nerdiness wasn't entirely immune to being up shit creek without a paddle. Leah looked pinched as her eyes flicked back and forth between the little village and the masses that threatened to crush it. I could see why.

This was a bit more than the few hundred thousand Antithesis she'd signed up for, but the stakes were way too high to skip out on everyone.

"Dervish," I asked, "how strong are you exactly?" She grinned at me, flashing titanium teeth.

"Strong enough. Honestly? I could handle this on my own. Everyone would have to evacuate, sure, and the village would be wrecked in the fight, but I'd make it out just fine—and they'd just rebuild after" Her grin curled into a smirk.

"Wouldn't be bad for business, either. Plenty of mega-rich idiots out there who'd pay big to tickle their egos with some… battlefield tourism, and a leveled village would really sell the experience." We relaxed a little, but Leah shot me a look and a private message. If Dervish can just delete the horde and no one's gonna die… why are we even here, preparing to fight this battle? We have all the gear we need to scare off any corpos, don't we? I sighed and hugged my dear grump from the side.

To build your dream orphanage, Leah.... Yeah. While Leah straightened up and provided her own mechs' capabilities for Dolores's understanding, I studied the terrain. It wasn't exactly hilly. No mountains, barely anything that reached two hundred meters in height.

It'd be impossible to set up permanent chokepoints, but even outside Dervish's circle of healthy forest, there was enough vegetation that I could play with sightlines, control the aliens' movement, and split pieces of the horde off for Leah to tackle one after the other. Lots of water, many lakes. Leah wasn't set up for water combat, but my bombs would do well—water was a great medium for deadly shockwaves, what with it being nigh incompressible.

"Gonna be difficult being everywhere I'll be needed," I muttered under my breath. Was I even gonna have time to resupply Leah's more distant mechs, like I'd claimed?

"Hmm?" asked Leah, whose explanations I interrupted.

"Sorry. Was just thinking that with the terrain being what it is, we can't really set up in one spot and defend it effectively. Not enough local features to take advantage of, and we won't be building a fortress in a few hours, either. That means we'll need to cover lots of ground instead and defend Baie-Comeau through maneuvers, and so far as I'm aware, I'm the only one who can fly?" I asked, raising eyebrows at Dolores. She waved me off.

"I don't fly, but I move real fast. I'm familiar with the surroundings, too. You just do what you wanna do, and I make sure nobody dies." I observed the flood of red on the map again.

"You're certain you're not overestimating yourself? What I see there is beyond either Leah or me."

"Well, why don'cha take a look at their force's makeup first?" Right. Dolores turned and tilted the map to give us a vertical slice of the approaching horde. Tynea helpfully provided a list. The vast majority of it were model Ones, a million of them in a great cloud so tall its top would rise above the horizon soon. Beneath marched the landlocked models. A wave of hundreds of thousands fed by who-knew-how-many nests along the way. Threes in a dozen variants, Fours, Fives, on and on into the Twenties.

The artillery bugs were thick on the ground. If Leah and I had tried to engage that horde on our own, we'd spend days nipping at it. Good points, probably. The Ones alone had enough mass between them to utterly bury her mechs and crush their frames. But… Ones were fragile, easy to kill en masse. We faced millions of enemies, but most of them were paper tigers if we played our cards right. Still beyond Leah and myself, but we wouldn't be helpless.

"There's going to be an absolute shitload of new hives along their route, isn't there?" I asked.

"U-huh." Dolores nodded.

"And they'll be constantly birthing new units to reinforce the mob, too. But don't worry about those—I'll be wiping 'em out." Good. We really didn't want to stick around any longer than necessary. It was time for us to get home.

"Have to do it while you two are holding the horde, though." Leah's head whipped towards Dolores.

"Wait, what?" I chewed my lip, before I squeezed Leah from the side and explained.

"We don't really have much choice. I could probably delete the entire horde too, if I converted every kill's points directly into more bombs and missiles until the last alien's gone. But imagine the level of damage I'd be causing so close to Baie-Comeau."

"I…have no idea?" Leah replied. The uncertain unhappiness in her voice had me nudging her with my shoulder, so she'd look over and see my smile. We might be up shit creek, but we were samurai. We came with paddles built in.

"There's enough Antithesis to cover an area the size of New Montreal. I could kill 'em all—and so could you, with an upgrade. That's what it means to be Class II. But we'd be causing a firestorm the size of a metropolis right outside this tiny little village."

"Ah…" she mumbled weakly.

"Yup, them's the breaks," Dolores interjected happily.

"We're not doing that. Which means we need another solution, and with the Antithesis being happy breeders, we won't win this fight unless somebody culls the resupply."

"That's accurate," I agreed.

"And so, you want to go and take care of that?" Dolores zoomed the map out again until the entire region to our north became visible, all the way up and past the ring crater Leah and I had come from, two hundred and fifty kilometers away.

"How quick could you guys cover all this?" Leah and I threw glances at each other. Coincidentally, we knew quite well. To Dolores, I said, "If we had to check nooks and crannies for nests along the way, we'd be busy for a month."

"Yeah, figured. I'll have it done in a day, easy."

"I see…" That threw a few wrenches in our plans. But on the other hand…we didn't exactly have the points to come up with anything else worthwhile, and the terrain was what the terrain was. Leah was visibly stressed and unhappy next to me, and fidgeting from frustration.

"Hey, Dervish," I asked, "if you had to end this battle all at once, say, if either Leah or myself got disabled, would you? And how'd you do it?" The grin of timeless alloy lost its cheekiness.

"With hail carried by supersonic winds, weaponized thunder, and driving blizzards. Sandstorms that strip the skin and blast the eyes, and hurricanes so violent they drag down the cold of space-touched air before it has time to warm."

"…" Baie-Comeau might be fucked either way. I hoped they had bunkers enough for everyone.