Chapter Fifty-Nine - Baby's First Hive
Chapter Fifty-Nine - Baby's First Hive
"Question 124: Yes or No: You discover that one of your teammates intends to become a 'whistleblower' about an issue they believe they have uncovered. Do you report them?
[...]
Question 289: In your own words: Explain your opinion and beliefs with regards to former coworkers suddenly passing away before testifying against the company? Do you think this is acceptable?"
--Mowing Employee Onboarding Questionnaire, 2031
***
The first shot came from our end, of course. Hedgehog got a lock on one of the biggest Model Elevens and he let a missile fly. The projectile dropped out of the bottom of his car, flipped over itself with the assistant of some retro thrusters, then it screamed out into the distance.
The missile detonated a few dozen metres away from the Model Eleven, sending a scattering of shrapnel and metre-long needles plunging into the flyer. That was more than enough to rip it out of the air.
Problem was, a big explosion like that wasn't exactly the most subtle move.
A dozen others flying around wheeled over and started to flap our way. I glanced at the Bastion's radar system and winced. We had a lot of targets coming around and heading our way. Some of them were too slow, we'd be long gone by the time they reached the spot we were in. Others, especially those ahead of us, were going to be more of a problem.
"Check the point defence guns, would you?" I asked.
Knight turned towards me, then back to the console next to her. She was a little hesitant, but soon enough she found the right menus. It wasn't exactly laid out in a complicated way. Myalis and her AI buddies knew a thing or two about good user-interfaces.
"I think this is it," she said. "We can dial in the range. What should we set as the maximum?"
"Call it two hundred metres?" I tried. That felt reasonable enough. The others were flying well within that bubble, so the Bastion would be able to protect them.
"Done," Knight said. She returned to looking out of the front window, then tilted her head to the side to eye the instruments panel. Honestly, all we could see out the front was the grey interior of thin clouds.
I checked our speed, then refocused on the flight itself. The Model Elevens would do as they wanted. They were a threat, sure, but not as long as we knew how to handle them. Mostly that meant filling them full of holes before they came too close.
The Fury launched a guided rocket that spun out and crashed into a flock of Model Ones, turning them into little tumbling lumps of flaming meat. Hedgehog's new ride fired off three more missiles, each one targeting a different Model Eleven.
"We're coming upon the landing site soon," Hedgehog said. "Got a drone out surveilling the location now. Looks like light resistance once we land. I'm seeing plenty of lower-ranked models on the ground."
"Give me a moment. I'll clear it out," Gomorrah replied.
She fired a single, larger missile. More of a fat drone, really. It shot out ahead of us, then dipped down and detonated. The explosion was big enough that I could see it through the fog of the low-flying clouds as an expanding zone of fiery red and oranges.
"Gomorrah, you do know that we have to land there, right?" I asked.
I checked on the feed that Hedgehog was sharing. The footage was crisp and in high-definition, but that didn't help me make sense of anything. The landing area we'd picked out was atop this fat hill with relatively low vegetation.
Low and quickly decreasing as Gomorrah's firebomb spread out across the entire area. The original explosive was still in the middle of the space, giving off enough heat to melt everything around it.
The nearest vegetation was disintegrating. I wasn't sure about the local Antithesis, but I didn't give them good odds of being in any state.
"Gomorrah, you do know that we have to land there, right?" I asked.
"It won't last forever," she replied.
That wasn't entirely wrong. The fire in the centre gave out with a wink, then the growing circle of flame slowly started to gut out.
The end result was a circle of charred ground maybe ten metres across, with the fire on the edges spreading out further and further from there.
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By the time we arrived a couple of minutes later and were circling around to come in for a landing, the circle was twice as large and the fires on the edges were little more than a smokescreen. There were still some hardy bushes that were lit up, and a few dying tree trunks were on fire from within, but that was fine.
I brought the Bastion down in the centre of the bullseye, the downdraft of my thrusters reigniting some of the grass so that there was a fresh wave of fire that spread out around where we were landing.
The feet of the Bastion touched down with a hydraulic hiss, and then I was reaching up and flicking the switches to open the rear doors. "Set the guns to automatic," I said.
"Got it," Knight said. "Are we heading out?"
"Yeah," I replied before I stood up and rushed to the back.
The doors were just hitting the ground when I arrived. I saw Shy glance back at me for just a moment before she walked out. I waved, even if she couldn't see it, then moved over to the BOBCAT and sent the signal to open it up.
I squeezed my way in and was just finishing up the startup sequence when Gomorrah walked into the Bastion. I heard the rapid thump of a gun just outside. So, the Antithesis were coming in already? I waited until the space was clear before I walked the mech out.
The BOBCAT's sensors picked up targets almost as soon as I was out. Antithesis, obviously. Mostly Model Threes that were rushing over. Shy was there already, bouncing from one group to another with blasts of her oversized shotguns.
She was having her fun, so I left her to it, but there were more aliens coming in from afar, mostly from the same direction, and also from behind us. It looked like we'd attracted a fair bit of unwelcome attention.
"Sending a spy drone up," Hedgehog said. "And... sharing footage now."
I opened a screen in my augs to take a look. The drone was hovering well above us, but it quickly moved in a north-ish direction, then came onto the hive.
It would have been a tough one to spot from ground level. The hive was dug in between two hills. There had been a small rivulet, or a stream, running through the gap, but now that stream poured into a hole in the ground, like a rocky-edged maw that swallowed the little waterfall up.
Within that maw was the hive. Multiple layers of it. The deepest parts were shrouded in shadows, but the waning sunlight was beaming right onto one wall of the hive, and I could see roots and crawly things covering it. There was a sort of switch-back set of bridges within, made of what looked like wood and fibers and roots, and it was currently full of models in the low-single digits pushing each other for space as they climbed up.
No bigger, scarier models, which was great.
"So, we head over and mess them up, or do we want to bomb them from over here?" I asked.
"Better for point-sharing if we do it manually," Gomorrah replied. "You and I can play overwatch, and take out anything larger. The newer Vanguard can take care of the chaff."
Aw, but what about my points?
I didn't complain. That was probably a good plan, and it wasn't like Gomorrah and I weren't going to make a few points here and there. And also, it wasn't like I'd gone out of my way to pretend that I cared so much about points before. I wasn't about to start bitching about it now.
"Okay, then," I said. "Shy, you're playing scout?"
Shy... didn't reply for an uncomfortably long time. Eventually she came on the air. "Um... I can."
"Cool," I replied. "Crisis, Princess, Hedgehog, do your thing. We'll be covering you."
I walked the BOBCAT around to the far side of our little formation while Gomorrah took the opposite flink. There were a lot more enemies ahead, towards the hive, than behind, but there were some coming in from that way.
It looked like we'd dropped in on a spot that was near the path they were taking towards the city, so now that 'snapped' line was coming back to hit us from the rear.
I was pretty confident that the ships would be fine. Besides, we weren't heading out for long.
Just a quick jaunt over to the baby hive to let the baby samurai have their fun.
"Catherine," Gomorrah said over a private line. "I've noticed that there are no stronger enemies here. Something's up."
***