Chapter Twenty-Six - Intel-chan

“A cult is, in essence, one of the best businesses you can possibly run. The cost of running your own cult is extremely low, and the power, credits, and influence you gain from running a cult cannot be overstated.

Here at C.P. Morgan’s Cult and Pseudoreligion Department, we have experts of all sorts to prepare you and your fledgeling cult for the future and to ensure a happy, healthy, and profitable following.”

--C.P. Morgan, CPD Pamphlet, 2035

***

“That helped,” the anime girl avatar said as I returned. The screen had a view from that same gunner’s helmet, only this time he was looking at a crater with some antithesis bits on the edges while bits of dirt were still raining down from above.

More aliens were coming, but now they had to go around or through the pit in the ground, and I suspected the shock had slowed them down a little.

All the guards needed was a little bit of time to reset though, and they’d been given that.

Now if only Arm-a-Geddon and Gomorrah’s drones could hurry up and get there, then we wouldn’t have as many issues. Or maybe we would. “Myalis, can you give us a heatmap of Antithesis locations?” I asked.

The screen shifted, and the anime girl avatar found herself flickering over to another nearby screen. She frowned, looking peeved at the sudden motion but didn’t complain. The screen now showed a map of Burlington, with some parts painted blue, while plenty of areas were shaded in oranges and deeper reds. The areas along the edges of Downtown and River Heights were clearly marked, and both had a decent amount of red right next to them.

“There are as many antithesis right up against River Heights as there are next to Downtown,” I said.

That is correct.

So we’d need to defend River Heights against the same number of xenos as Downtown. That... wouldn’t work out. We didn’t have the ability to do that, we didn’t have the manpower, and I didn’t have the time to take care of two places at once.

For the time being, my plan was to protect Downtown and let River Heights take care of itself, but if it was going to face a tide as heavy as what I suspected was going to hit Downtown, then the whole place was fucked.

“We need to evacuate River Heights,” I said. “Myalis, can you send Baker a text? Tell her to organise everyone to leave River Heights. They have half an hour.”

I imagine she won’t like that.

“She’s not gonna like that,” the anime girl said.

“I don’t care,” I replied to both at the same time. “We can’t afford to split our attention, not for long in any case. So let’s not. Get the civilians from River Heights to Downtown, shove them somewhere where they won’t be trouble, and then pull back all the troops we’re wasting over there. The place has automated defences, right?”

“It does,” the anime girl said. “Turret emplacements, shaped charges, deployable denial-of-passage cover, and a few other things as well. River Heights invested heavily in its own protection about twelve years ago. The systems are dated, but they’ve been maintained.”

“They didn’t have the budget for the same defences around the rest of Downtown?” I asked.

“Some were installed, but a number of installations were stolen and the city decided not to keep up the maintenance of those in the... financially disadvantaged areas.”

I should have seen that coming. I couldn’t even be angry. I was totally the type of shit to steal a city-placed thing to make a quick buck if the opportunity arose. “Alright, fine,” I said. “Can we set their automated defences to distract the antithesis once we’ve evacc’d all the civilians from the area? It’ll maybe keep one front busy while we take care of the rest.”

“Tactical genius,” the avatar said.

“Shut up... whatever your name is,” I said.

“Intel-chan,” Intel-chan, apparently, said.

I think now would be a good time to deploy the nanomachines. We need them to disperse after deployment and it will take some time before they start to have any noticeable effects.

I nodded. “Alright, launch the nano-whatsits, if the people on the edges of Downtown aren’t on high alert yet, now would be a good time to inform them that shit’s about to hit the fan.”

“Sending a militia-wide communique,” Intel-chan said. Then, to my horror, she did some moe bullshit with her hands and little sparkly hearts raced across the screens. “Sent! I sent a memo to the civilian defence as well. They have a new operations lead.”

“Lucy?” I asked.

“That’s the one,” Intel-chan said. “Is she a specialist you brought in?”

“Uh, yeah, something like that,” I said, feeling a little self-conscious about the choice. Was putting Lucy basically in charge a good idea? If she messed up, then people might actually die, and then I’d be to blame for putting Lucy in a position where she was responsible for that kind of thing, which didn’t sound like something a good girlfriend should do.

“Yeah, she’s whipped them up into a frenzy. I haven’t seen people this pumped since the last big idol show,” Intel-chan said. “Is she like, one of those social experts that train in cult creation?”

Or maybe Lucy would just be Lucy and would manage everything far better than I expected.

I’m helping her where I can. Mostly with logistics. Don’t worry overly much, if anything goes too wrong I can alert you. In the meantime, this is a nice learning opportunity, don’t you think?

I let out a held breath. “Yeah, she’s pretty fantastic,” I said. I looked for a place to sit, found none, then placed my hands on my hips, then let them fall. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I’d heard, in passing, that being a soldier was a lot about hurrying up to wait, but I’d never really lived it myself. At the moment I had a dozen plates spinning, but I couldn’t do anything until one of them started to wobble and fall.

Myalis was kind enough to overlay the nanomachine spread atop the antithesis heatmap, with a more accurate diagram showing the location of the tunnels under the city, or what we’d scouted out of them so far. Most of the bigger tunnels had been found, from the looks of it, but there were dozens of little branches that didn’t look any bigger than a person that spread out every which way. Sometimes they reconnected with the rest, other times they spilled out into little underground chambers that I was certain were filled with plenty of hive flesh.

Once this incursion was stopped dead, we’d have to spend a few billion searching out the entirety of the underground for those little pockets.

That would be someone else’s problem.

“Problem,” Intel-chan said. She spun both hands around, then pointed to an area on the map. “Street cameras in this area have captured this.”

One of the side screens showed a group of model threes pouring out of a nondescript building’s side. They’d slammed the door out of the way and were stumbling out, first a few, then a good dozen of them followed by a model four. One of its tentacles flopped off and fell onto the ground where it was trampled by the others.

All of them were looking like extras in a zombie movie, with flayed skin and lumps of flesh looking like they were ready to slough off of them.

One model three looked like it was having a fit, shaking its head before it charged across the street and rammed hard into the side of a building on the other side.

“Oh hey, your thing worked,” Intel-chan said. “Congrats.”

“Thanks,” I said, flatly. “Myalis, can you set off the rest of the bombs we have down there whenever it would be best?”

I can. I think I’ll wait until each one will hit the largest number of antithesis.

“Cool,” I said. Now, where was that group? More and more aliens were pouring out of what was clearly one of the places where their tunnels rose up to the surface. A glance at the map revealed that it was about a block west of Downtown’s outer defences. “Intel, can you alert that end of the wall that they’re going to have company soon? And if you have a line to Manic, ping her as well, she’ll want to be on the front lines.”

“Can do!” Intel-chan said. She didn’t need to make a little heart with her hands though.

I made a note not to introduce Daniel to this guy because this was exactly the kind of crap he’d get into and I wasn’t sure I wanted that in my life.

After the initial excitement of seeing the Antithesis finally appearing, I got to wait some more.

This whole leadership thing wasn’t nearly as fun as just being on the front lines blowing shit up, I realised.

***