If you want more to read, consider joining my Patreon! Or check out my other original works:
Stray Cat Strut (A cyberpunk system apocalypse!) - Ongoing
Fluff (A superheroic LitRPG about cute girls doing cute things!) - Ongoing
Love Crafted (Interactive story about an eldritch abomination tentacle-ing things!) - Completed!
Dreamer's Ten-Tea-Cle Café (An insane Crossover about cute people and tentacles) - Hiatus
Cinnamon Bun (A wholesome LitRPG!) - Ongoing
The Agartha Loop (A Magical-Girl drama!) - Volume Two Complete!
Lever Action (A fantasy western with mecha!) - Volume One Complete!
Heart of Dorkness (A wholesome progression fantasy) - Completed!
Dead Tired (A comedy about a Lich in a Wuxia world doing Science!) - Ongoing
Sporemageddon (A fantasy story about a mushroom lover exploding the industrial revolution!) - Ongoing
Past the Redline (A girl goes too fast, then she does it again) - Completed!
Magical Girl Crystal Genocide (Magical Girls accidentally the planet, and then try to fix it) - Completed!
Magical Girl Rending Nightmare (A sequel to Crystal Genocide! Cute girls in a soviet dystopia having a picnic on the roadside) - Volume Two Completed!
Noblebright (A shipcore AI works to avenge humanity) - Completed!
The Complicated Love Life of Ivil Antagonist (The Empress of Mars finds love) - Completed!
Pokebun (Broccoli Bunch in the world of Pokemon) - Hiatus
Queen Violence (An Assassin Reborn as a Kitten) - Completed!
No Strings Attached (An Elden Ring/Bloodborne inspired progression fantasy) - Ongoing
Save Scumming (A time-looping system apocalypse) - Ongoing
Chapter Sixty-Four - Hot and Bothered
"While the enemy doesn't understand psychological warfare, we as humans do. It's why we give soldiers armour that looks good, weapons that look fearsome, and why we paint our heroes as great and unkillable."
-Propaganda and You, a guide to the eternal war against the plants, 2053
***
The Bastion came around on auto-pilot, rear hangar doors open and moving in sideways so that a whipping wind was shoved into our faces even as the ship started to drop out of the sky.
"Myalis, anything?" I shouted over the wind.
The ship's scanner suite has picked up motion ahead of you. While it's not enough to confirm the presence of a hive, it certainly suggests some amount of Antithesis movement.
"Got it," I said. I glanced to the side where Princess was clinging to one of the floor-to-ceiling bars right next to the bay door. "Ready?" I called out.
She removed one hand from the bar and gave me a shaky thumbs up.
Behind us, the others were a lot more calm about the rather hot drop. Nya was standing at a thirty-degree angle against the force of momentum, and Shy was casually holding onto a railing to stay afoot.
"Myalis, open up our landing zone!" I shouted.
Firing.
The turrets on the underside of the Bastion rotated, and then they opened up. There was a cacophony of loud, repeated booms. The noise, somehow, reminded me of New Montreal traffic. People talking with their horns, only a little less honky and a little more boomy.
Then the Basion launched a pair of rockets straight downwards and the explosion rattled the ship and shook the entire forest we were approaching.
Landing zone cleared.
The Bastion
dropped down, more even now, gimballed turrets shifting from side to side, looking for a target. The ship's legs came down and clamped onto the muddy, recently-blown-up soil, then the rest of the ship lowered itself. A small ramp shifted out of the side, making it easier to climb in and out."Alright, Princess," I said. "Let's get moving, yeah?"
"Yup!" Princess said. She looked outside with wide eyes, then glanced back at me. Instead of walking out, I walked in, then all the way up to the MEOW. Or... rather, the Mechanized Exploration and Operations Walker Mk IV.
I'd purchased the walker just a few days ago, after the whole phobos incident. It had drained a lot of my points to buy and I'd never once used it.
Now felt like a good time for it, though.
I smacked the mech on the flank as I passed it, then linked up to it through my augs. It was surprising how useful repairing the Nyanzerfaust was in ways that I hadn't initially expected. Learning about one mech's function taught me a lot, if only by osmosis, about working with others.
The side of the mech opened, and a set of small steps unfolded out of the bottom. The MEOW's interior, unlike the Nyanzerfaust, was a bit more wide and open. The 'cabin' section was located between the front legs, in the 'trunk' of the body and beneath the main gun. There was the usual crash-seat for the pilot, but also a pair of small fold-out seats at the rear with their own controls.
None of the rear seats needed to be occupied. The pilot could control the mech, the guns, and all the sub-systems all at the same time via a link and the rows of buttons and knobs around the forward seat, but... yeah, a second pair of eyes and hands wouldn't hurt.
"Come on, Princess!" I shouted.
"Coming!" Princess said as she darted over.
I pulled myself into the mech and fell onto the pilot's seat. Princess hesitated at the entrance, then clambered in. She smoothed her skirts down so that they wouldn't catch on anything, then sat on the seat to my rear and right.
Hooking myself into the mech's interface, I started it... her? Yeah, I started her up, then moved my hands onto the appropriate joysticks. "Okay... do you have decent augs?" I asked.
"Uh, yes. Sis told me that it was one of those things I should invest in first."
"Cool. Sending you a link to the MEOW's interface now. I'm setting you up as gunner."
The mech had seven guns. Four were gimbal-mounted small-calibre things. Basically not much stronger than an autopistol.. Those were tucked away in armoured compartments near the shoulders and at the flanks, so they could shoot in all directions.
Then there were the guns near the neck. They could only move a few degrees in any direction, so I'd have to face the entire mech in the direction I wanted to fire them.
The guns were just above me, actually, and I could see the cases for their 75mm rounds to my left and right, with chains leading up along the inside of the cabin to the guns. It wouldn't be too hard to tug a round out and insert something different, if I wanted.
Then there was the main gun. A cute little 155mm sitting in an armoured turret on the mech's back. It only had a five round capacity. One in the tube, and two small two-shell magazines on either side.
But I figured that anything that required more than five 155mm rounds to the face to go down was a bigger problem than I was equipped to deal with.
"Anyway, here's the controls for the main gun," I said as I greenlit Princess as gun operator. "And here's the controls and camera feeds for the gimballed ones. Try not to waste big gun shots."
"This is so cool," Princess replied.
She was already figuring it out. Not that it was too hard. There was a sort of game-controller-ish interface at the back for her to grip onto, with a button to switch guns and a trigger to fire.
I... made sure the firing was disabled for the moment. I didn't need to blow up my ship from the inside.
Though I was pretty sure we'd survive it.
The MEOW might have been severely underarmed, but it was tanky to make up for it. It was meant to fill that specific role. The indestructible heavy mecha that could take on higher-tier models without... well, without me dying. I was pretty sure the mech itself could be rendered inoperable but the cabin was armoured as hell and had food, a fold-out shitter, and air-recycling designed to keep a person alive for a year or more.
Basically, we were in a spaceship. With legs. And a fuck-off big gun.
I stomped forwards, flicking on the exterior PA as I did. "See you guys in a few," I said.
"Bye bye!" Nya said with a wave. Knight, next to her, waved a little awkwardly as well. Probably worried for her sister.
I turned off the outer comms, then leaned back. The ride wasn't as smooth as the Nyanzerfaust, which had longer, more articulated legs, and a better suspension system. The MEOW had an extra inch of armour instead.
"Okay," I said. "We've got the approximate location of the hive. Don't know if we can bring this mech right into it, but we can walk closer without having to worry too much, set the bomb, then run back."
"Is that what we're going to do?" Princess asked. "I've never really..."
"Yeah," I said. "That's how Gom and I did last time. Find the hive, figure out where the middle of it is, then set down a large bomb. One detonation later, and the hive's a crater. It's... not ideal, though."
"Mhm! I've read about this kind of thing. The explosion sometimes kills the hive, but bits are all over, so they start to regrow. And then the army needs to come in with cleaners and that takes a lot of time and money."
"Right," I said. Really? Fuck, I didn't know, but it made sense. "Better having to send in cleaners than having an active hive, though. And if the hive is tough enough to grow back, then at least you're setting back the growth for a while, you know?"
"That makes a lot of sense," Princess said as she blindly believed my bullshit.
I nodded along. "Right. Well, eyes peeled? The gimballed guns have an auto-target, but it's not always the best." That was a lie. I trusted the auto-targeting way more than Princess, but...
Sometimes, the kids at the orphanage needed encouragement. That was usually Lucy's job, but I'd seen her do it. It was praise for when they did something basic and easy and didn't completely fuck it up.
"Yes, captain!" Princess said.
I laughed. "Alright, let's see if we can't find these alien fucks and give them a nice New Montreal hello."
"Delivered in big booms?"
"Delivered in big booms, that's right," I replied.
Well, at least she was enthusiastic about the right kind of thing. Maybe I was worried about nothing.
***
A note from RavensDagger
:3
Gonna be at Dragoncon next week! Made a news post with more info here:
/posts/137060955