LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 15 – The gates to… Hell?
“In the mid 2010s and early 2020s people had kind of gotten used to the whole rush hour thing. Streets were utterly overfilled, everyone seemed to need their own car, nobody could get anywhere. After the antithesis started invading and the protectors stepped in to help us, the problem just shifted into the air. Now we have entire highways in the sky. Still, most of the time you are still stuck in traffic. Just that this time you have to worry about an alien landing in your floating convertible.”
- Car Nuts, episode 148
When Chloe had said that xeno activity had picked up, she meant it. We couldn’t get five steps before we had to deal with a patrol consisting of Twos, Threes, two Fours, three Fives, a Six, and a Nine! The only reason we didn’t get utterly swarmed was because Snuffles had just finished with her last group of aliens only a street over.
“Fucking hell!" I muttered, breathing heavily after the encounter was over. It was a short but brutal battle, no finesse, just straight up brawling. They had come out of nowhere and we didn’t have the time to think about any fancy plans. The Nine had almost taken Jenna’s head off, only her Sentinels had stopped it in its tracks. Snuffles was busying herself on the remains of the Six and the Fives, while I looked down at myself, covered in alien goo… again.
“We gotta be more careful," Chloe said, equally breathing heavily, “This could have ended very differently.”
“Agreed," Jenna said, still a bit in shock, “Let’s take things slow, yeah?"
I nodded, scowling inwardly at myself. It was my fault that we were surprised, I was the one with the fancy sensory shit, yet I hadn’t paid attention and it had nearly cost them dearly. This was unacceptable. If I fuck up and pay the price, okay, tough luck, but if I fuck up and someone else does? Inexcusable.
It didn’t take long for Snuffles to eat the remaining xenos, especially since her brood was helping her with the task. It looked… really weird, watching them devour half melted and half ripped apart xeno flesh, but to them it was tasty. Which, I guess, was even weirder. I could taste the things they tasted and I liked it! Normally I probably never would have, but my Hexclaws were having a field day.
Our trip continued soon after, although much slower this time and with me paying very close attention to our surroundings. One normal model Nine was bad enough, I really didn’t want to miss that new variant Chloe had talked about. It sounded like a pain.
The trek to the entrance of the undercity wasn’t a particularly long one, at least from our position. It also wasn’t the only entrance, of course, but it was the only one in this district and it was typically used rather often by the gangs to trade goods and shit. And, of course, another reason was that the redlight district was just a half step above the undercity in social hierarchy.
“I hear more xenos that, and that way. They aren’t coming closer, seem to be out of our way, but they could ambush us further down the road.” I muttered while we walked.
“We can’t stop for every group. We’ll never get anything done that way,” Jenna muttered in reply and looked around. Both she and I had drones running around to kill as many xenos as we could, but we didn’t really make much of a dent in the population.
“We need to hurry up with the lures,” Chloe said in a low tone, a frown on her face that I saw more with my hearing more than with my eyes, “I really don’t like how things have changed. Yesterday it was all model Ones, Twos, Threes, maybe the occasional Four or something bigger. Today we have Fives, Sixes, Sevens, Eights, Nines, Elevens, Twelves… I really don’t want to know how things will escalate tomorrow. Or god forbid the day after.”
Jenna and I both nodded agreement without stopping our collective scouting operations. Shit was going to go sideways soon if we couldn’t deal with things.
“At least we are getting points. Might be able to make quite a few before we head over to the Hive. Would really love some options there. I have some ideas of what to buy, but all of that is fucking expensive,” Jenna added and I agreed. Options would be good to have since we couldn’t know what exactly would await us there.
She was just about to add something when I raised my hand, silencing the conversation, “Xenos coming up shortly. Mostly Threes, couple Fives. Can’t find a Six or Nine, but keep your guard up.”
Without another word we got ready, sticking close to the run down house next to us and keeping an eye on the ruined intersection I heard the xenos coming from. Snuffles was laying low, primed to pounce the aliens, while my Hatchlings started clambering up the wall on both sides of the street. They were actually quite mobile, their strong back limbs allowing them to easily climb up even pretty smooth surfaces, as long as it was soft enough for their strong jaw-like claws to bury into it. Not that we had anything even remotely smooth in terms of walls around here, most of the buildings either had cracks or badly patched holes in them, which made climbing for them a cakewalk. Hell, I probably could have climbed up if I really wanted to, risk of cutting myself on rusty metal or broken windows aside.
It didn’t take long for the xenos to arrive, and the moment they came around the corner we struck. I focused mainly on defence, walling them in to prevent them from running away, while Chloe and Jenna started cutting them down. In Jenna’s case that was literally true. She seemed to like the sweeping blades my Pristine Fortress could produce and used it as her main weapon.
Chloe of course had her rifle to decimate most of them, but the Fives were a bit too tanky to take out instantly. I did my best to project Hard-Light shields to block their quills, but it was a close thing. Two of my Hatchlings died, crushed by the Fives, and I was just about to panic a bit when Snuffles finally moved and jumped. A moment later she crashed into the two model Fives, jaw wide open and biting one of their heads off, while the other got crushed beneath her body and skewered by her long tails.
The fight was over quickly after that, which was just fine by me. I took deep breaths and tried to calm myself down a bit, while Snuffles once more went back to eating. It took roughly half an hour for her to produce two Hatchlings. I could accelerate it a bit, if I didn’t mind the Hatchlings being a bit weaker, but right now I needed them at full strength.
I was just about to relax when every sense in my body screamed at me, reflexively I threw up a Hard-Light shield, barely intercepting a large quill the size of my forearm. A moment later Snuffles pounced again and utterly decimated an old decrepit car, which turned out to be one of those model Nine variants. It died instantly, but I didn’t dare to let my guard down. Heart beating a mile a minute, it had nearly taken Chloe center mass which even her armor probably wouldn’t have helped against. After scanning our surroundings again, then once more, I slowly let the tension dissipate.
“Fuck, that was close.”
“Yeah… Thanks,” Chloe muttered and gave me a slightly panicked smile. I smiled in return, though I couldn’t help the small bit of dread in the back of my head about her possibly dying.
Once we had calmed down a bit, still on full alert, we continued, Chloe and Jenna much closer to me now, not that I would complain about that.
I had Snuffles run ahead a bit, keeping an eye out, while the remaining Hatchlings and Jenna’s Sentinels fell in around us in guard formation. What I found interesting was that I didn’t actually give my Hatchlings the orders to do so, they had organised that all on their lonesome, which I found a bit… confusing.
“Kaysa, are these things smart?”
Yes and no. Hexclaw Hatchings do not possess much intelligence when birthed by a Protector grown Progenitor model. But they do have their instincts, and their main priority is to keep the Hive alive, which in this case means protecting the Hive-Queen. Namely, you.
“Shouldn’t Snuffles be their Queen or whatever?” This was a bit surprising and confusing to hear, I wasn’t quite sure I liked the implications of me being their Queen or whatever.
Snuffles birthed them, but you are the one in control of the Hive.
“Guess that makes sense…”
I ignored Chloe’s questioning look, we could go over this later, right now we had different things to focus on.
The closer we got to the entrance to the undercity, the more aliens we found, although more and more in smaller groups. While bigger models were still around, most of them were scouting units. Kaysa reasoned that that was probably because we walked away from the Hive, which I guess made sense. It was also interesting to see how my Hatchlings worked. After the previous conversation I had with Kaysa I paid a bit more attention to them. They were at best animal intelligent, but they were capable of some interesting manoeuvers. Each Hatchling could easily take on a Three and four together could beat a Six, if given enough room. That didn’t mean things went without incidents though. I lost two more Hatchlings, leaving me with nine. I just hoped that Snuffles could replenish them quickly.
Around an hour later, I hadn’t checked the time too closely when we had left, we arrived at the entrance to the undercity. Normally we would have been quicker, but the amount of xenos we met on the way had slowed us down considerably. It was good for our point total though, I was sitting at a relaxed 1745 again, which was nice.
The entrance itself was just as unimpressive as the rest of the district, if not a bit less. A giant half rusted gate that was held together by makeshift welds and permanent temporary fixes, surrounded by buildings in similar states, all while looking even more rundown than the rest of the area. But it was still intact, and that was pretty much the only important part.
The three of us were hiding behind a corner nearby, nobody wanted to risk a panicked soldier opening up on us. I might be able to see, but they probably couldn’t see well, since it was still dark out and the lighting around the area wasn’t exactly modern. Sure, there were some street lamps illuminating the dark, but they were the old kind, those really old ones with old school light bulbs and shit. The kind of shit you wouldn’t find anywhere near the center of the city.
“Uhm… Nobody there?” Jenna asked, looking over the entrance a bit confused. There were signs of action, a couple of dead xenos laying around. Nothing much, only a couple model Ones and Threes, but to any normie it would have probably been terrifying.
“No, they are there. Hidden, but there,” I muttered, then looked around the corner. I could see the people hiding behind old booths with my echolocation hearing fuckery, not well but I knew there were nine of them. Four on one side, Five on the other, all split between the couple of booths that were around the area.
“Hey!” I yelled out, “Anyone there? We have three Samurai here, please don’t shoot at us!”
After a moment of waiting, just to make sure they didn’t immediately open fire, I left my hiding spot and made my way over. I could see a couple of heads looking out from behind old booths, rusted and rotten, one even without a roof.
“Who goes there?! Identify yourself!” a rather shaky voice spoke, the bloke couldn’t be more than 20 and sounded like he was about to shit himself, even if he tried to hide it.
“I just said, we are Samurai. I’m the Crimson Princess, with me are Jenna and Chloe.” I explained, holding up my arms just to ensure they understood my peaceful intentions.
“Wait, the Princess and the Queen?” another voice asked from behind a different booth.
That had me pause for a moment. I wasn’t quite sure who they meant with Queen, although I would bet on Jenna, considering her whole design and stuff.
The people who had hidden themselves behind the booths slowly came out, weapons at the ready but still pointed to the ground. Most of them seemed to be around twenty, a bunch of mostly guys, but I saw two girls with them. Or rather, a girl and a woman. They all looked to be from the undercity if their haphazard collection of styles and clothes was anything to go by, not from a single gang, at best maybe a collection of allied gang members. They were lacking the uniformity for that though, so I figured they might be independent.
One of them stepped forward. He was an older fellow, around fifty or so, with a bald head and a rather impressively dishevelled beard.
“Thank fuck you’re here,” he muttered, stopping halfway between us and the gate. The three of us walked up to him and I smiled.
“Hey there. You doing okay? Need anything to hold the position?”
“Meds would be a godsend, although anything would help, really. I ain’t wanna whine like a babe, but ammunition is runnin’ low, meds are runnin’ low, and Blitzer ain’t got the points to spare for us.” The man was pretty straight forward in his wishes, but I could see from his expression that he was serious about needing them. So far lots of people had shown reverence and respect towards us, this man was more grounded than that. Oh, he was respectful, in his own way, but he seemed to be used to working with Samurai.
“I think we can help a bit. Maybe even leave you something better than those peashooters. Oh, uhm… I have some drones I could leave behind, but they are kind of fucky looking.”
I said with an uncertain frown. I didn’t want nor need these people to start shooting up my Hatchlings. Mainly because I wasn’t sure they could even kill them, which would waste ammo, or if they could, it would waste ammo and my drones. My biggest worry though was that maybe the Hatchlings would defend themselves. Not that I would order them to kill anyone unless they tried to kill me willingly, but they did show some agency of their own and I really didn’t want to test the hypothesis.
“You mean like that fucking oversized dog you got?” He asked.
“Kind of, just more… human looking. They’ll eat the xenos and get stronger from that. Also means less xenos to try and get the biomass.” I explained, trying to reason with them. Some of their number looked less than impressed, but the old guy just nodded.
“I don’t care one wit about that shit. If they kill xeno’s they can nibble off the rest of my hair for all that I care. Normally all we have is Blitzer’s help, god bless the guy but he ain’t got nearly enough points to help the entire undercity. Yet, for some reason, today we got four Samurai trundle in tryna help while usually folk wouldn’t even let us clean their asses. Not sure what the hell is going on but I can’t wait to see what kind of thing bends me over the table and turns my asshole inside out with how much luck we are having recently.”
I snorted at that comment, it was a familiar feeling. “Who was the last one to come along? Shrapnel? Martin?”
He shrugged, “Some girl about your size in a huge fuckoff mech, or power armor or whatever. Dropped the xenos dead, gave us some munitions, but she ain’t got a lot to share and apparently no meds available.”
“Dominium Fortress then. Yeah, she’s alright for a pipsqueak. I can give you some meds and I think Chloe can leave some ammunition for you?” I turned to glance at Chloe, who nodded immediately.
“I have some basic ammo that’s pretty cheap, plus a couple cheap weapons for you to use. Won’t be the world but I can promise you that they’ll be better than your crap.” Chloe said.
The group looked… torn. I could guess why. Gear like that was liable to get you mugged, so before they could say anything I spoke up.
“Make sure the weapons look shit though. Won’t help ‘em much when the first idiot that sees them having alien tech and stabs them for it.” It seemed to calm the nerves of the people, although some obviously looked disappointed. Chloe seemed a bit confused at that, but she shrugged, then nodded.
“Thanks, lasses. We’ll try our best to keep them out from the down low, got enough shit going on there already, don’t need an incursion on top of that.”
“Anything I could help with?” I asked. If I could without compromising the mission, then I would. It was the kind of stuff I was used to and honestly if it meant stabilising the undercity it would help the redlight district as well.
“Unless you fancy breaking up a four way gang war I don’t think so. Grey Wolves and Sweeping Dragons are currently duking it out in ol’ Sirius territory, and it seems like Napalm and Wasps are tryna take advantage of it. Even heard tell some topside gang is trying to move down or something.”
I shrugged, “Gang shit is not something I involve myself with. Not until they try and threaten the redlight district.”
“Well, it might,” he said with a frown, “Purple Haze is doing some deals with some fuckwits down there. Don’t know the details, but I heard one of them thinks they can get their hands on White Doves. There’s always one fucktard that tries to take advantage of the aliens showing up.”
Oh well, that did change things. Haze was not a gang I was too familiar with, I knew they were poking at the Crows and I also knew they were not far from the redlight district. I thought them smarter than trying to start bullshit while an incursion was ongoing, but I guess I was wrong. Not that I could do something about it now.
I sighed and shook my head. “Maybe once all is said and done I’ll look into it. Right now though we need to focus on the aliens.”
He nodded, “Agreed. Fuckers have been a lot more active since a couple hours ago.”
“We know, it’s why we decided to speed up destroying the hives,” Jenna said.
“Well, Kaysa, put together a good box of things these folk could use. Meds and stuff. Call it… Ah, to hell with it, make it a 100 points and make sure they’re settled for a couple of days if possible. If they fall we’ll have an entirely too fucked situation to deal with,” I said, much to the surprise of the good man in front of me. He seemed to have some inkling on how much that was worth, though the rest really didn’t seem to grasp it.
My trusty brainworm compiled an extensive list that I decided to ignore, too focused on keeping my senses sharp, and soon I was down a hundred points and up one relatively large sized box that appeared at my feet. Chloe also got a box for them, this one a bit bigger and roughly the same point value if I had to give it a guess.
The old man looked down at the two boxes and looked at us severely. “Thanks to the both of you. I know how much this shit is worth, not lots who would push that much value over to beggars and homeless folk.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said, “I know quite well how you feel. We gotta stick together to survive against the antithesis, and if we can help, we will.”
With a mental order I assigned four Hatchlings to remain with these fine folk. The moment they stepped out of hiding to start the grizzly task of disposing of the xeno corpses everyone seemed to tense for a moment. But since neither the Hatchlings nor us were showing any signs of immediate danger or battle readiness they seemed to get the message that things were fine.
“If you need any help just talk to my Hatchlings, I’ll get the message. Not sure how quickly we can get here though, need to deal with Paradise Hills and then the Hive.” I explained, although I didn’t miss his shift in posture when I mentioned Paradise Hills.
“You, uh… Don’t know by chance what happened at Hills, do ya?” He asked, glancing over to the younger woman with the group.
I frowned, “It got raided pretty much the moment the incursion began. Far as I know there are no survivors.”
Both he and especially the girl jerked back at the news. They obviously had some emotional attachment to the place in some way.
“Couldn’t they have gone to the shelter nearby?” she asked, almost desperate in her attempts to reason with me.
“It’s toast,” Chloe cut in, shaking her head sadly, “Some Sevens got in. No survivors. Even if some of them entered the shelter they are dead anyways.”
“Might I ask why you ask?” I asked the man, keeping a close eye on the girl. She seemed… struck, wounded, but desperately tried to remain calm. From her expression I was pretty certain she had quite the good self-control, she looked like she wanted to stomp off and deal with it herself, but remained quiet. Good kid that one, if she has some smarts she could make it far in a gang.
“My wife, her mum, worked there.” The man muttered, eyes downcast. “We haven’t heard from her yet… Quite proud she got a job around here, but now…” He shook his head, “We won’t keep you any longer. Thanks for the help and good luck out there.”
I nodded, “If we find something about her we’ll let you know. If only to give you some closure.” It was the best I could promise under the circumstances. Again a heavy weight settled down upon me, another sob story, another family ripped apart by the bullshit going on outside. It wasn’t new, of course. It wasn’t any kind of news in these parts. But it didn’t make the emotions any easier to take.
We bid farewell and turned around and started the trek back and towards Paradise Hills. This day couldn’t end soon enough for my tastes.
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