Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Forty-Three - Danger Close

“All locations in proximity to a samurai in action are to be considered danger close.”

--US Armed Forces NCO Basics manual, 2027

***

When I thought the swarm would be on me ‘soon’ I meant in a few minutes.

I severely underestimated the speed that a few thousand aliens could pick up when they were hungry for human. The tip of the swarm poured down the streets below me. Teeth glistened, eyes narrowed, and they started their mad search for threats. No growling, or mad howls though. The creeps were as silent as ever.

So I decided to make up for their silence all on my own.

“Thanks,” I muttered as I caught a grenade out of the air. I tugged the pin off, then underhanded it down the street.

Dropping to one knee, I watched the explosive disappear in the swarm.

Then it detonated.

A loud whomp filled the air while a circle a couple of metres wide appeared in the swarm. Every alien in the circle was flattened to the ground, as if they’d just been stuffed into the world’s biggest hydraulic press.

Body parts flipped along the edges of the effect, entirely detached from the rest of their bodies.

“Not bad,” I muttered.

The hole filled itself up a half-second later. There were just too many of the bastards for it to make a difference.

“Not bad, but not enough,” I said. I glanced around the city. Lots of apartments, plenty of shopfronts. All fucked now. “Yeah, we’re giving up on the no-collateral thing. We can rebuild, but only if every last one of these fucks is dead. Myalis, I need something that’ll wipe the street.”

There are hundreds of options.

“Not fire,” I said. “Don’t want to step on Gomorrah’s toes. How about... hey, do you think we could melt them all?”

An acid? There are grenades that can spread acids around them. There are even some that will hover over the ground and mist the air with highly corrosive chemicals, some of which are tailored to melting Antithesis flesh.

That wasn’t what I had in mind, but it sounded really cool. “Yeah, I like that idea. Gimme something to drop, I want to see how it works.”

Myalis summoned a box next to me. It had a container with a sloshing liquid within, and three little propellers on stalks around it. It looked a bit like a cheap toy drone.

Toss it ahead of you after pressing the activation button. It will move to hover over the street. It has cameras with which to find the best location.

I pressed start, then tossed it out ahead of me. The drone flipped twice, then fired up with a high-pitched hum. It bobbed in the air for a second before a nozzle opened beneath it and it started to spray a mist of glowing green liquid.

“Is the acid glowing?” I asked.

Yes. Humans are more cautious around dangerous chemicals when they glow.

The mist hit the monsters below, and I could see fur falling off in great tufts and skin blackening and peeling off. A few of them got some in their eyes and they went rabid shaking their heads.

That worked.

I stood up, checked the sky for trouble, then started running again. Every time I jumped to another rooftop I’d drop another grenade down to block the alleyway, at least those I’d marked out on my map. Myalis provided me with a constant supply of acid drones. They hovered over the street, and soon the entire road glowed a faint green as the mist was carried over everything.

The shit was eating through the paint on abandoned cars and peeling ads off of bus stops, but it was doing a number on the model threes too.

The bigger models not so much. Model fours were hit hard. They had a lot of tentacles and all that, but I think something about their skin might have made them more resistant, though not by much. The model fives were just tanking the damage. They were big and thick enough that even my latest war crime of a grenade wasn’t killing them quickly or efficiently. Maybe it would weaken them, injure a few, even, but unless they chose to stand under the acid shower, then they’d still be a threat.

“Need some gravity nades,” I muttered as I leapt onto another rooftop. Myalis obliged, and I underhanded a couple of them over the crowd of aliens.

Increasing the gravity in an area or whatever did a number on the bigger, tougher bastards.

The cat mecha on the other side have completed your project. The swarm has started to funnel into one road, though the Antithesis have found some ways through via the interior of various buildings.

“Got it,” I said.

I ran faster, pushing myself so that I’d be out ahead of the swarm.

If they were being pushed onto one road, then that meant that the ideal place to kill them would be... I scraped to a stop and glanced down. The last open alleyway to join the swarm was one building away from a large intersection. That’s where my funnel ended. A glance behind showed that it was working. Aliens were pouring out of the sideroads and pressing into each other on a straight path to this one passage.

A few dozen had sprinted by already. A concern for someone else. I’d be doing a lot more good by killing the tide here.

“Let’s turn this place into a killing field,” I said.

Myalis provided me with a pile of those acid bombs, and I tossed them out so that they’d cover the entire road. A thump or two behind me announced the arrival of my cat mechas, their missions accomplished.

The cats on either side of the road shifted to the edge of the roof, the guns on their backs deployed, then they started to fire their lasers down into the crowded aliens. It would take a couple of seconds to kill one, but with eight lasers spearing out into the street...

“Myalis, need a way to kill them all,” I said as I watched a chunk of the swarm sprint by. They were injured, painted green by acid, but still alive enough to be trouble. The main mass of the swarm would slip right on by. “Give me some resonators.”

Certainly. Though while you toss those down, I should warn you that at the speed the swarm is moving, neither the resonators nor the acid will be sufficient to kill even the smaller models.

“Right,” I muttered.

What else could I do?

“Ideas?” I asked.

You essentially need weapons that can kill the antithesis in a sustained way. Turrets placed above, combined with area-denial explosives such as your garrot grenades. Though, both would eventually be overrun.

“Yeah, maybe, but it’ll blunt the edge of the swarm, and I think that’s what we need right now. Push the worst of it back so that they can get on with building the wall. Nades first.”

Myalis dropped a box full of grenades next to me, and I kicked it open, picked up a few, then flicked them down and onto the road. My aim wasn’t perfect, but I didn't exactly need accuracy for the oncoming horde. When the garrote grenades went off, it created pockets where everything was shredded apart.

The swarm pushed into them as if trying to blunt the edge of the grenades with sheer force of meat.

The grenades won out, though one of them did spark and break apart as a model five charged through it. The tougher hide was able to blunt and eventually break the explosive, though not without killing the model five first.

“Give the cats a few of these,” I said. “They can toss them in, keep the area deadly.

Fewer aliens were making it past, and those that did often flopped over dead a few dozen metres past the intersection. Too many cuts and acid and melting internals.

Still, the wave came, and I knew there would be more big fuckers to come.

I set down a few turrets, one near the middle of the roof, just to ward off any flyers, another near the roof-access doorway, for when some halfway clever alien inevitably snuck onto the roof.

In the meantime, I kicked the door open and ran down myself. Just offices and break rooms and a sea of cubicles. I ran to the nearest window and started setting up more automated turrets. The cheap laser ones that could recharge themselves over time with a bit of sunlight. Cheap, weak, but dependable.

I left proximity charges next to each, for the first lucky alien that came around and tried to grab a bite out of them.

I glanced down onto the street and grinned.

The pile of melting bodies was already hip-high in places, and it was only growing bigger as the wave pushed against itself, like meat through a strainer.

“This is going pretty well,” I said.

Which is about when the artillery started to hit my position.

***