Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Forty-One - Anti-Air

“Top 10 SUREFIRE Tricks To Stopping Any Aliens From Eating You!

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-Except from a popular Vlog, 2027

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“I’m sure it’ll work,” I said with the tone of someone who was very much not sure it would, in fact, work.

In one hand, I had a funky looking grenade that was meant to fuck with gravity, or mass, or whatever. In the other, I had no hand.

Your certainty is certainly novel. I do look forward to the results.

“That was the cuntiest way of saying ‘it’s not gonna work’ that I’ve ever heard,” I said.

The artificial mass grenade had a handy little dial on the side, with tick marks for the number of g’s you could add to it. I flicked the dial to max with my thumb, then wiggled the ribbon tied around it to make sure it was on tight. Fortunately, the grenade was a long cylinder, and was easy to tie to something.

The cord dropped to the ground, passed underfoot, and went all the way over to the car where it was wrapped around the rear bits of the frame.

I figured if it was good enough for Bugs Bunny, it was good enough for me. I flicked on the mass grenade and tossed it off the side of the roof. Then, because I wasn’t a brain-dead moron, I ran off to the side and hopped over the railing next to the stairs leading to the roof access.

The line went taut for a moment.

I knelt down and waited with baited breath.

If the grenade made any noise on activating, it was too far away for me to hear it, but the van jerked on the spot, its undercarriage, with its hover lifting bits and all, scraped across the corrugated steel cover.

It stopped for a moment.

“For fuc--

The van rushed backwards a dozen feet, rammed against one of the poles lining the area around the hatch, then started to strain, the rope pulling it hard enough that its front started to lift into the air.

“Alright!” I said.

Then the rear part of the van, bumper and all, flew off with a crack and took off over the edge.

I lowered my arm from where I had raised it to cheer, then winced as the front of the van crashed back down. “Fuck.”

INCOMING CALL FROM... BIG BROTHER LONGBOW

I jumped as the words flashed into my vision. It only took a bit for my heart to settle. “Answer,” I said.

My vision split, a box hovering to the side filled with a cackling Longbow who was clutching at his stomach. “You should have seen your face! No, wait, lemme show you.”

His image was replaced by one of me, crouching next to a railing, dark hair plastered to my scalp. My arm was raised in cheer, but my eye was wide in disappointed horror.

“Can I post this on the Samurai subs? I’m posting this on the Samurai subs.”

“I will fucking murder you,” I said.

Longbow laughed even harder. “Nah. Tell you what, I’ll only post it on the private channels. Samurai-only.”

“Don’t you dare,” I said.

“Too late!” he said with a shit eating grin. “My little sister’s first meme! They grow up so fast! Now, think you can blast that thing off? I mean, what you tried was cute. A-plus for trying. But you can just blow it up. My guns can take a bit of a beating.”

I cursed the man’s stupid name, but maybe he had a point.

“Incoming, by the way,” he said.

“Huh?” I looked to the air and saw a flock of creatures flapping their way closer. I wasn’t a betting girl, but I would place good odds that they weren’t pigeons. My little tactical visor, which was working hard not to go too fuzzy when rain ran across its projectors, lit up the incoming birds with dozens of red points. “Fuck. Myalis, set my guns to fire at will. And I need a bomb!”

The two guns hovering behind me snapped around and, after giving the Model Ones a few seconds to get closer, opened up with a stream of whistling flechette rounds.

Might I suggest a Mark I Concussion Grenade? You might need to find cover before it goes off, but slipping back into the roof access area should be sufficient. They’re merely five points each.

“That’ll do,” I said.

I opened my hand before me and caught the grenade that fell into it. Of all the neat explosives I’d played with, this one was the most traditional-looking. I tugged the pin out, let the bar thing fly out, then tossed it under hand over to the van.

It rolled to a rest just within its shadow.

I turned and rushed down the stairs, mindful of the still-firing guns atop my shoulders, then dipped into the opening that led into Longbow’s AA gun’s storage area.

My guns stopped firing. Both of them twisted around and a pair of smoking magazines clunked to the ground next to me before the arms retracted and I felt a pair of fresh ones near my hips being pulled out.

I didn’t spend time marvelling at that. Instead I closed the door shut and prayed that one grenade wasn’t enough to collapse the entire shithole building.

A loud ‘whump’ sounded out from above, the floor trembled, and for just a moment, the rain ceased before it all came back down.

“Good job sis,” Longbow said. “Might wanna call your friends. And if you don’t mind, keep an eye on my AA gun, yeah? It’s got a few blind spots. Told the architects about it, but the owners of the building really wanted a VIP parking lot.”

Something deeper in the room moved. Poking my head around the corner showed the AA gun slowly rising, the ceiling above splitting apart to let in a deluge of rain that sloughed off the sides of the weapon’s platform.

“Right,” I said. “And then I'll go back down, I guess.”

“Nah, I told you. Cavalry’s coming. You just hang on tight, okay?”

“Not in the habit of trusting weird guys who call me without me having given them my number,” I said.

“Ouch, you hurt me,” he said while tapping at the middle of his chest. “Right here in my primary cardiovascular sub-system.”

I rolled my eye and yanked the radio Simmons had given me out of my pocket just as the AA gun’s gatling guns started to spin up.

The noise a moment later was enough to have me wincing back, it was like having a pair of chainsaws chopping through sheets of tin. Bullet casings, each as long as my hand from wrist to middle-finger, thumped onto the floor in a rain of brass.

I yanked the door to the outside open, then stepped out and slammed it shut behind me. The gunfire was still loud, and now there was the drum of rain on the roof, but it wasn’t quite as loud as inside.

The radio connected to Simmons with a beep. “Samurai?” he asked.

“Yeah, it’s me. The gun works!” I screamed.

“I can tell. The doors are opening and the busses are heading out... thank you.”

“Yeah... yeah, you’re welcome old man. See you on the other side!”

“You too, ma’am.”

The line cut off. I pocketed the radio.

“That was cute. ETA for your evac is, like, five minutes or so? Depends on whether she believes me or not, really. Anyway, you keep the low-flying bastards off my rig, alright? Maybe get a few points while you’re at it so you can buy yourself a shirt.”

I glared ahead of me, then nodded. “Yeah, okay. Thanks Longbow.”

His grin widened. “No problem sis. Remember, you owe me a drink!”

The call went dead.

A peek over the edge of the roof showed the huge AA emplacement twisting this way and that, lines of displaced rain cutting through the sky and ending at whichever alien was dumb enough to poke its head out. The thing had to be firing hundreds of rounds a second, and its bigger cannons weren’t even going off yet.

I heard the tell-tale whine of hovercar traffic and jogged to the edge of the roof. A dozen busses, all of them gathered together in a big lump, were racing out of the museum’s lower floors and towards the far, and hopefully safer, end of the city.

They weren’t uncontested though. I saw flocks of Model Ones poking out and flying off towards them. They were too low for the AA gun to target.

“Myalis,” I said.

Targeting now. At these ranges, you’ll be wasting a lot of ammunition for every hit.

“Who the fuck cares!”

I didn’t think you would. Opening fire now. Oh, and if you would be so kind as to drop to a knee and stop fidgeting for a moment, that would help.