Chapter Twelve - Salt The Earth

"–We don't have permission, sir.

–How far do you think we can sexualize this? I mean, the market is young girls and nerds. Nerds have more money, so like, obviously.

–We are going to die, sir.

–I was thinking two sets of clothes, of course, one can be that armour made of plastic, and the other can be lingerie. Maybe cat-themed?

–We don't have permission."

--Overheard discussion about My First Stray Cat Dolls, 2057

***

Gomorrah and I let the newbies have their fun for a while. Eventually, there was the usual mid-fight upgrade, but that really just amounted to Tankette buying different, more effective rounds for her mini-tank, and Princess buying Knight a proper samurai-grade weapon. In this case, an assault rifle that had a sword built into it. It could transform back and forth between a really shitty assault rifle with terrible ergonomics, to a short sword with equally awful ergo.

It did look kind of cool though, so good for her.

I tapped my way into the team comms while looking over the field below our little rise. It was currently filled with a whole lot of dead aliens, and some that were going to be dead soon on account of all the holes in their bodies and the missing limbs. "Alright, newbies, you do know that there's a hive to kill, right?"

"Oh," Princess said. "Right! We should go out and do that, right?"

Hedgehog decided to cut in before she could go skipping along. "Normal procedure is to hold in a defensive position and then let the artillery or specialists take care of an active hive."

I stared at the man for a long moment. "Bud, we are the specialists. And unless you've got a mortar emplacement in that spikey coat of yours, we don't have artillery."

"We have your mech, Miss Tankette's tank, and Miss Gomorrah's Fury," Knight said as she gestured to the three vehicles. "Those could serve as artillery, or at least big weapons."

I scrunched my nose up, then gave her a reluctant nod. "Fair. This is a test for you bunch, so that cuts down on what you've got as options. Keep in mind that we're supposed to not explode the hive."

Crackshot hummed. He was still laying on his belly on the ground. He took a quick shot at one of the aliens in the heap below, nailing it in the head and sending it down. "We're gonna need some special munitions then. What are our options? I've got a catalogue for weird rounds on me."

"Oh!" Princess cheered. "My AI suggests cutting the area up. I have something for that too."

I was gonna suggest they buy something off of my own catalogues, but this might work out for the best. I watched as Tankette opened the top hatch of her tank and poked her head out. "Um, I can take any 25-millimetre shell, if we're going to use my tank."

"I suppose I can afford a few mortars as well," Hedgehog said. "Disposable ones aren't overly expensive. Though if we're going to use mortars, we'll want something larger than what Tankette's using."

"Just got to find a kind of bomb that won't toss up too much dirt, then," Knight said. She coughed. "I don't know if it's just in my head, but I feel like my throat's all scratchy already."

"We should probably take some healing stuff after this," Princess said with a nod. "I don't want super cancer."

I stepped back and watched them work. The group came together, argued for a bit, then nodded between each other. Hedgehog bought a pair of mortars, the classic sort, with a tube and some arms and a doohickey on the side to adjust the angle. It was maybe a bit higher-tech than the fully manual sort carried by soldiers. It looked like it could auto-adjust, at least.

Crackshot summoned up an entire crate of shells, and Princess skipped over to Tankette's tank and the two of them looked into the back where I supposed the tank's ammo stowage was.

It took a minute or two for them to be ready, but then Tankette drove around to the edge of the hill and turned her turret out towards the aliens. "Ready!" she called out.

"Ready here," Crackshot said. He, Knight, and Hedgehog were manning the mortars a little ways back.

"No point in delaying this," Hedgehog said as he dropped a shell into a tube. There was a satisfying thump and I darted my eyes up to follow the blur of a shell as it went up high. It arced far above, then became harder to see as the smoke trailing it broke off. Still, it was pretty easy to tell where it landed because there was a big wump sound, and suddenly there was a hole about a metre across that lacked any dirt or rocks or any alien bits.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"What was that?" I asked, pitching my voice down and keeping it off the comms.

That seems like an anti-materiel shell of the dimensions-shunting variety. You have a few grenades with similar effects.

"My blackhole grenades?" I asked.

Indeed. Though those use a much smaller opening and the pressure is weaponized. They also create an inordinate amount of dust, which these avoid by shifting matter in one go without disturbing the soil around the point of impact too much. It's still rather ineffective.

I nodded at that last. The hole was pretty large, but there was a lot of ground to cover. At a guess, we'd need to destroy the entire coast along this side of the river, then some ways into the woods.

Knight dropped a shell, then Hedgehog fired a second, Crackshot knelt by the crate, picking them up and handing them over.

It was... not the most effective way of doing things, I figured.

Then Tankette opened fire, and I reconsidered.

Whatever she was firing lanced across the ground digging long furrows into the dead grass and exposed roots of the hive. The few still-moving aliens that happened to be close were blended apart.

"What's she firing?" I asked.

A variation on the garrote grenades you've used previously. The round opens up soon after being fired and whips out a set of monomolecular wires that are spinning around the centre of the round. They cut through anything that the round passes close to.

"Will that work?" I asked.

It'll certainly damage any root system the hive has in place without disturbing the top soil overly much. It will definitely destroy the hive eventually, but without destroying the biomass the hive is made of. A fresh hive will be able to reclaim this area with little trouble.

"Hmm," I said before leaning in towards Gomorrah with my arms crossed. "We might have to salt the earth around here, so to speak."

"Yes. This is effective, they'll destroy the hive, but I don't know if it'll be enough. I've been talking to Atyacus, and we've come to the conclusion that most of the chemicals that we don't want to agitate won't be carried upwards if we boil the water that contains them."

"I don't see where you're going with that," I admitted.

"I'm suggesting that we heat up the lake a little," Gomorrah said. "To, perhaps a hundred degrees celsius."

"Is that supposed to mean something special, or do you just want a round number?" I asked.

She turned to look my way. "That's the temperature that water boils at."

"Huh, I thought the numbers were kind of just arbitrary."

"Water freezes at zero degrees. How do you not know this?"

"Whatever, I probably knew and just forgot," I dismissed. I had watched a science show or two, maybe. It was good enough. "But yeah, if the newbies can't find a solution to the lake, then we'll boil it. Or you will, I guess. Hey, does this feel too easy to you?"

"Are you trying to jinx us?"

I shrugged. "Would jinxing us mean that there's more to do, because right now, it's kind of boring."

Gomorrah sighed. "Atyacus, can we expect any trouble?" she asked. I saw her nod, then nod again, then straighten up. "Oh."

I was mostly split between being worried that something bad had come up, and happy to see that I wasn't the only samurai that talked to her AI. I always had the impression that Myalis and I had a bit of a special relationship. "Was that a bad oh? Because it sounded like a bad oh."

"It is," she said. "The other eight model twenty-twos have turned away from the city. They're heading back here. Along with all of the smaller models escorting them."

I glanced at the newbies. They were working together still, launching more shells up, though they were taking turns now and Princess had joined them. Tankette was putting rounds downrange, shredding any alien to pop up.

Could they handle that many model twenty twos and all of their escorts? Maybe. Probably. But it would distract them from fucking up the hive a whole lot. "Yeah, alright, I guess it's time that we step up and do some work too. If we intercept them far enough from the lake, do you think we'll be safe to explode things?"

"I would hope so, yes," Gomorrah said.

***