Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Sixty-Five - A Change in Tactics

“There are different sorts of incursions, but for the most part, the opening salvo of Antithesis forces will concentrate on overwhelming numbers.

Each fruiting vine can hold anywhere from a hundred to three thousand flowers, each one a fruit which will grow into a man-killing alien in an afternoon. The more time passes, the more biomass the hive collects, the greater the number of models it produces.”

--Excerpt from ‘The Most Dangerous Weed,’ 2025

***

I slapped the side of the truck’s cabin. “Go!” I shouted.

The truck revved, a high pitched whine escaping from its electric engine a moment before its rearmost wheels spun with a crunch of gravel on asphalt and the whole thing started forwards.

I ignored the tons of steel moving right past me and brought Whisper up to take a few shots at the bastards sticking their heads over our road block.

“I’m lighting up the wall!” Gomorrah called back a moment before the temporary blockade we’d built up across the street turned into a flaming barrier, the few aliens scrambling up the side flopping back down on the wrong end of toasty.

A glance over my shoulder showed the last truck taking the corner at a speed that would have earned it a ticket in normal circumstances. “That’s it,” I said.

No more civilians. Nearly two thousand--or maybe a bit over that since I hadn’t really been counting--all removed from an area that was about to get swamped by enough aliens to drown in.

Gomorrah shifted a bit. She’d gained a pair of shoulder mounted flame throwers, similar to my own shoulder mounted guns, and her backpack had changed a bit, getting smaller and more compact. I wasn’t sure when she’d picked up the new gear, but I couldn’t throw rocks from my glass house.

I was planning on finding a nice calm spot soon to equip some new toys of my own.

“How are we evacuating?” Gommorah asked.

“Uh,” I said. I looked back down the road the trucks had gone down, then towards the other side where the antithesis tide had been stalled if only for a little bit. The aliens seemed to take that as an excuse to start breaking into every building along the sides of the roads. “There are a few more shelters to check out, but they’re on the safer side of the hospital we’re using as a rendez-vous point,” I said.

“Well then, perhaps we should reach the hospital first. If there are more soldiers there then perhaps we could use them as aids to evacuate the other shelters.”

I nodded along. “That makes sense.”

We both just stood there for a bit.

“So?” Gommorah asked at last.

“Yeah?”

“How are we getting there?”

I reached into my hood and scratched at the nape of my neck. “I don’t know. We could walk?”

The nun stared at me, the unmoving face of her mask not hiding the fact that couldn’t pick an emotion. “You don’t know? You mean to tell me that we just sent the last transport away with no way to get out ourselves?”

“That’s simplifying it a bit,” I said.

“Please do explain then,” she said.

That stereotype about nuns being on the acerbic side was proving itself true. “Look, we can probably jack a car and drive out of here,” I said. “I mean... you know how to drive, right?”

“You... No. No I don’t!”

“Ah,” I said. “We can walk then? Maybe a bit of jogging. It’s cardio. Good for your health.”

Gomorrah’s fists tightened by her sides before she spun towards the far end of the street and started stomping off.

“That’s the spirit,” I said. “One step at a time and all that. Isn’t that what Jesus said?”

“He never said that!” she shouted back.

I snorted back a laugh and jogged to catch up with her. “Come on, it’s not that bad. The boring logistics parts will all be over by the time we get there. Plus we can kill a few more aliens on the way over. More points!”

“I won’t argue that having more points in the bank would be a good thing,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that I want to seek them out in such a reckless way.”

“In the bank?” I asked. I figured she was being metaphorical, but for all I knew there might be an actual bank for points and the like.

“You know what it’s like to go weeks without gaining a single point. The higher-tier Samurai do their bit to help, but we’re still left waiting for an excuse to make a few points. The daily allotment is laughable.”

“Uh huh,” I agreed. And then Myalis sighed.

What she means, and what you’re afraid of asking about because it will ruin your reputation, is that Incursions are, at best, difficult to predict. A Vanguard could go weeks without earning any more points than what they receive from their daily allotment. That allotment is ten points per day, before you ask.

That... meant that however many points I got were about all I would get for a while. Damn. I was wondering why points were so easy to come by. It was because the points I did make was all I would be making.

“Are there any other ways of making lots of points out there? Other than tossing yourself into every Incursion.”

Gomorrah looked my way for a moment. “Healing people or saving them, I suppose. It’s a lot of effort for one or two points a day. Other than that... not truly? You wait until an incursion appears within your territory.”

“Right,” I said.

The nun pointed off to the side, towards the entrance of the shelter. “You’re forgetting your gun.”

I blinked over at the gun in question. The fake Antimatter cannon was hovering away next to the shelter’s entrance. It didn’t look like anyone had tried messing with it. I wasn’t sure if that was because the civilians we’d been moving were smart, or if it was because the thing looked like it was advanced enough to take care of anyone handsy all on its own.

“Yeah, that’s a fake,” I said.

“What.”

“It’s fake.” I gestured at it dismissively. “It’s not real. A prop? It’s a decoy meant to make people think twice.”

The nun was staring at me. “You bought a fake gun?”

“It worked,” I said in my defence. “It was a valid bit of big gun diplomacy.”

“If I hadn’t seen you summoning things, I would genuinely question whether or not you’re a Samurai Saint.”

I shook my head. “I’m the farthest thing you’ve seen from a saint, trust me.”

“I think I’m starting to see that,” she muttered. Then, with a sigh, the nun gestured in the general direction of our destination. “Shall we?”

I was about to agree that we should when something at the end of the street caught my eye. A bit more motion that turned out to be a Model Three sprinting around the corner. It wasn’t the first to make its way around the block. We had a few of the soldiers keeping an eye on strays the entire time we were loading up civilians.

This one wasn’t alone.

More Model Threes came rushing around, a wolfpack of salivating wolf-like aliens that scrambled across the ground and pushed towards us. And then the Model Sixes, huge and tanky as all hell, came lumbering around the bend.

“Oh, fuck,” I said. The tide had finally come around.

Whisper hissed three times in quick succession as I tried to nail the Model Threes in the lead. Spinning garrote wires tore through the pack, but they just widened their passage and came around.

The sound of crashing from behind had me turning to see the barricade being blown aside by a heavy Model Four, its bristling form standing amidst the flames like some sort of creature out of some preacher’s nightmare.

“Ah, double fuck.”

“Alleyway,” Gomorrah said as she pointed.

“We blocked that one,” I said.

“Then we’ll unblock it,” she replied. A lick of fire burped out of the nozzles tucked under her arms.

I nodded and started to back towards the alley while taking pot shots at the approaching aliens. A flick of my eye activated my shoulder-mounted guns, adding to the fun as they started to riddle the faster aliens full of holes.

Gomorroah rushed to the nearest side passage, brought her arms up, and turned the tipped over cars and dumpsters into so much scrap. Her twin jets of fire went from an orangey white to a brilliant, eye-searing blue, and all the crap in her path started to melt away.

I left her to it, the heat around the alley, even two dozen meters away from me, was enough to warm my back up to an uncomfortable degree.

I was just considering asking Myalis for some ammo with a bit more kick when I suddenly found myself falling over.

Something hot screamed through my leg, but in that moment I was far more concerned with the ground rushing up to meet my face.

***