Chapter Forty-Eight – Bag Issues
Chapter Forty-Eight - Bag Issues
"A caste system is not slavery. It's a system by which people judge each other based on class-signifiers, and from there, determine the worth of another. This can be done with relative ease and great rapidity, and it serves to keep people of different strata apart from each other and functioning within their primary roles in society."
--Cybercastes and You, a primer, 2051
***
I ran with the fat bastard riding my back, leaping over uneven terrain and then coming to a hard stop near the hill I'd just blown up a few minutes ago and which the fucker had come from in the first place.
The sudden stop had a few tentacles fling off of my mech, but the fucker managed to stay on. Worse, as I watched, a few of the readouts I had were switching from a bright, cheery green to a concerning yellow-green. The fucker was actually damaging my mech.
I spun my gimbal-mounted guns around, blasting into the monster from every which way, then I folded them back into hiding.
All except one. The tentacles fuck grabbed onto it, and I winced as the gun was pulled out and away, then there was a horrid snap, and the forward-right gun was ripped right out of its socket.
"Where's that fire?" I shouted.
"Ma'am, are you sure?" Hatner asked.
"Yes!"
"You want us to shoot you with the 75mm airburst?" the Sergeant asked again.
"Right now, please!" I snapped.
"Firing!"
Say one thing about big guns, it's that once the pain was on the way, it didn't take long to arrive. A half-second after I gave the order I was rocked to the side, hard. My senses, plugged into the mech as they were, went a little haywire, and I was flooded with this impression that the entire world was spinning in the wrong way.
I shifted the MEOW to the side, paws digging into the dirt.
A few tentacles bashed into the mech's side, ramming it with increased desperation. So, I spun around, trying to shake it off, and when that didn't work. "Again!" I ordered
This time there was no hesitation, probably because I'd made it out of the first volley more or less fine. Now that I was expecting it, I actually got to witness what was happening.
A 75mm shell zipped over, almost too fast to perceive, then when it was several metres away and above, it detonated.
My mech, and the area all around it, burst into little puffs of flying dirt as shrapnel from the shell peppered every square centimeter with fine, fast-moving particles.
The alien grappling onto me was shredded, blood and bits of flesh flying off of it every which way. Two of its three bodies were pissing blood-like juices and were quickly deflating, like a soccer ball someone had gone over with a knife.
The third body, the centre most, had taken its share of damage, but a few of its too-damned-many eyes were still functional, and locked onto my mech.
I shifted around, reaching up as far as I could with the MEOW's foreleg, then gripped onto the alien and threw it down onto the ground before me. It landed with a splat, and immediately tried to fight back. Of its three dozen tentacles, only a few were still able to fight, however. They still stabbed at my armour, hard tips clinking uselessly off of hardened plates.
Stepping up, I pressed a clawed foot onto the alien's body, then activated the claws on the end. They sucked at the air around them, a vacuum pulling in loose debris and flecks of alien blood.
"Sorry, bud," I grunted before putting the mecha's weight into a hard stomp. The alien exploded like an overripe fruit.
"Ma'am?" Hatner came in over the comms.
"I'm good. Give me twenty seconds. Check in on the strike group, I want a report in thirty seconds."
I didn't give half a shit about official reports, but it would keep everyone busy while I recentred myself and figured out the next steps.
The MEOW's condition readout now had a smattering of yellow-greens. The gun that had been ripped out was fucked, obviously, but the reloading mechanism for it and its internals were fine, and the armoured plates that closed around it were fine. So, that was... not great, but not bad.
The rest of the yellow came from a few spots where either the alien's tentacles had managed to find a spot between joints or where the shrapnel from the 75mm airburst had plinked off of something a little more delicate than the heavy plate of the mech.
The MEOW could probably sit pretty in an oven for a few days without feeling warm, and I was pretty sure I could be hit by some pretty strong anti-tank artillery strikes and just shrug it off. This thing was tough. But the little sensors, cameras, and other doohickeys that needed to be on the outside of the mecha in order to function? They didn't work so well after being crushed and shot at.
Overall, though? I shifted the mecha up and down in a sort of full-body squat. There didn't seem to be any lingering issues with any of the joints. I shifted the main gun left and right and winced as there was a slight snag. It cleared up with some repeated movement, but that just meant that something had jammed into the threading somewhere. That was going to be a bitch to repair. I'd need a crane or something to pull the turret off.
Fuck it. More work for future me. Overall was good, so I was overall happy.
"I'm back," I said as I trotted back to the main strike group.
Two of the Wolverines were fucked. One of them was straight up crushed, another was laying on its side and the metal bracing that held its upper half in place was bent out of shape.
The pilots... well, one of them was walking in slow circles with a limp, and it looked like he was doing that awkward 'I didn't die, but my shit got rocked' waddle while a trooper looked him over. The other was in a bag.
"Fuck," I muttered.
"Ma'am? Are we still a go on the plan?" Hatner asked.
I pulled my eyes away from the bag with some difficulty.
That... happened. And it was my fault. I'd deal with that later. "Let's keep moving. We have the initiative still. Can we still move?"
"All vehicles that are functional can move, ma'am," Hatner said. "Sending the report now."
I nodded, even if no one could see it, then I got a ping on my augs. The famous report. It was only three pages, but they were dense. The strike group had their own team AI thing compiling information for them and it didn't look like it was designed to summarize anything.
Private Mavlov. That was the name of the man in the bag.
I licked my lips. Should we turn back? We were close enough that I could fire a few big bombs over, and they'd churn up the area real good. It wouldn't be as complete as salting the earth, but it would count for something.
That would mean putting the soldiers in more danger. And hell, maybe even myself, too.
On the other hand, they were soldiers. They'd signed up for this. They knew what they were getting into long before I came into the picture.
"Hammer, we're moving on," I said.
There was just a moment's pause before the agreement came through. The body was scooped up by two men and dragged into the ATT, then every soldier was squirreled away.
It was too bad about that Wolverine with the bent rollcage. It was definitely recoverable, but it wasn't worth putting the mission at risk for a bit of materiel. Damned thing probably only cost a year's wage for the average schmuck.
Probably cost ten times as much to the army because of procurement bullshittery.
We rushed forwards, and I leapt into the lead. It had been a solid few minutes since the last shell bombarded the enemy's position, so I was a little worried that whatever shellshock they had was gone by now, but if that was the case, they weren't coming out to meet us. Not in any great numbers, in any case.
A few smaller models came rushing out of the bushes, and were promptly gunned down. I was feeling the loss of that shoulder-mounted forward gun already. It meant that I now had this entire arc that wasn't covered as well as I'd like.
The Wolverines made up for it.
Then we were on sight and spreading out.
"Okay," I said. "Plan's simple. I'mma have a chat with Myalis, then we're spreading hella toxic shit over this entire area. It'll preven--"
I froze up as I was interrupted by a noise. It was a howl, a hellish, deep, impossible howl.
There was this one thing that was often repeated. The Antithesis didn't communicate audibly. So, they didn't need growls, caws, or barks. In fact, they didn't make a sound except for whatever noise was naturally produced as they moved.
So... that being the case, what the fuck had just made that ungodly noise?
***