Chapter Thirty-Three - Smokescreen |
Chapter Thirty-Three - Smokescreen
"The worst thing the Antithesis can do is exist in your vicinity. The second worst thing? I guess it's adapt."
--Longbow, podcast interview, June 08, 2055
***
The Antithesis started their attack without much fanfare. Not even a quick 'we're breaking up' text.
I was looking up a few things in the M.E.O.W., mostly zoning out while preparing my next loadout of shots and listening to the radio chatter with half an ear when the army and militia started to talk a lot faster, the tone in their voices changing from casual if a little confused to bordering on panic. A few louder voices barked order, which calmed the rest down.
In any case, it was enough for me to start paying attention. From where I was, by the edge of the river, there wasn't much worth noticing. I glanced over the cameras I had in the mech and its sensors, but nothing came up.
The livestream drone's feed was a whole different story. The camera had spun around, facing away from the wall and towards the distance where the Antithesis were coming from.
Model ones were fast little fucks, but they weren't the most graceful thing out there. They had more in common with a drunken seagull most of the time than something regal and swift like a crow. Still, they managed not to smash into each other as they spread out and flew in a great big spiral that soon broke apart and became multiple smaller swarms.
I started to run back towards the section of the wall that was nearest to the swarm. It wouldn't help anyone if I was out of position when the aliens came.
I kept an eye on the swarm as it circled around. It was such a big show that it kind of distracted from what was brewing beneath. There were a few hundred smaller models visible already. Mostly model threes, the four-to-six legged dog-like monsters were gathering in clumps, then spreading out. It looked almost like they were keeping an even amount of space between each other. Weird.
I didn't like it when they started to act weird.
Amongst the group were a few others, some lumbering model sixes, and a lot of those tentacle-covered model fours.
Overall, maybe three thousand of them in all. That was a lot of bodies, but it wasn't going to be enough to overwhelm the wall. They'd need to either break through metre-thick concrete, or pile enough bodies up to make it over the top, and I couldn't see either option really working.
So, unless they were stupid, there was something else going on.
I was almost in position when they started to move.
First, it was the land-bound models. The front row of model threes charges ahead, moving like greyhounds at a track. Now that I was back close to the wall and up on a slight rise, I could make them out myself. They were clocking in at nearly seventy kilometres an hour. They'd be here within a minute.
The models behind started to move as well. The model fours, mostly.
Then they did something I'd seen them do before, but in a whole new way. Model fours could spit out this gas. It came from their central body, sometimes from little pores on their tentacles. I'd caught a whiff or two of that gas before. It had some sort of drug laced into it, but was usually pretty transparent.
What they were spewing now definitely wasn't.
They wiggled their tentacles while stumbling forward at an awkward run, thick plumes of gas spreading out above and around them and coating the air with a sort of grey-ish gas that expanded outwards.
Almost right away, my sensors started to glitch out a little. The positive readings on models behind the model fours started to come back as uncertain. The gas was also thick enough to obscure. It was like every model four was carrying a few military-grade smoke grenades and they'd all been set off at once.
There wasn't much wind today. A slight breeze was coming in from the west, so the gas was generally flowing back and over the main body of the Antithesis, but mostly it just created a low wall of smoke.
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
"What the hell," I muttered. "Have they been watching world war one documentaries or something?"
I believe this is one of the first times you're fighting entrenched Antithesis, rather than raiding a hive or fighting an incursion or raid. Their tactical doctrine, if you are inclined to use that term at all, varied a lot in this kind of situation.
I flinched when a big gun on the other side of the wall fired. There was a faint tremor that ran through the ground. Then, several seconds later, an explosion blossomed ahead of the running model threes, tossing up a couple of bodies and about half a ton of loose dirt.
More joined in a moment later. I could pick up something like five guns, all firing at different paces.
I had to wonder how effective that would be. The way the model threes were spreading out meant that a lot of shots were hitting one or two at most.
Still better than nothing. Once the main force was closer, the shots would take out more of them per shell. Though I imagined that once that smokescreen approached, it would also mean that a lot of those same shots were going to miss outright.
I still didn't know how they planned on making it over or through the wall, but I couldn't imagine the Antithesis were stupid enough to just charge at it and die.
We'd have to find out. And it was going to be relatively soon, because for all that the model fours spewing smoke were only moving at a jogging speed, they were getting closer.
The first wave of model threes came rushing closer. At some ill-defined point, they crossed the line where they were within range of the guns within the walls. A dozen machinegun emplacements opened up, spraying bullets across the gap. Some had tracers, which left visible lines even across the mid-day sky.
I could tell which gunner was army and which was militia, or at least which was a veteran or not. The army gunners fired and swayed their fire into tight pattern-eights, then switched targets while the dust settled. It resulted in a sort of burrrt-pause-burrrt kind of firing rhythm. The less-experienced gunners pulled on the trigger and didn't let go.
The results were predictable enough. Nine misses for every one hit, but when firing hundreds of rounds a minute, that added up to a lot of dead aliens pretty quickly.
Fast moving model threes were caught mid-stride and tumbled forwards ass over teakettle to eat dirt while some shots actually caught the smoke-spewing model fours at the back. Those tended to explode rather violently into big puffs of smoke when they were hit.
It was a lot. The livestream had gone from almost quieting down out of boredom to fully active in the span of a minute. Some people were cheering, there was live betting going on off-site, and the people with gun-tism were trying to figure out what each weapon that had fired was based only on the sound.
For all the artillery and machine gun fire and eventually even mortar fire, the Antithesis continued to move.
The front row of them went down. Then a fresh and new front row ran out ahead. The model fours were hit, and new ones came stumbling out of the smokescreen, spewing more gas into the air to plug the gap.
And I couldn't forget the flyers.
The wall had AA emplacements at regular intervals. They spun up and started firing air-burst munitions into the swarm of model ones, taking them out by the dozen and sending tiny, torn up bodies to rain down.
That didn't make much of a dent in their overall numbers as the swarm continued to fly in great big circles, slowly approaching while keeping only slightly ahead of the main Antithesis body so that they were dipping in and out of the smokescreen.
Until they weren't.
I didn't notice any signal, and maybe there just wasn't one. All of a sudden, every model one turned and faced towards the wall, then started flying straight at it.
"Ah, shit," I muttered as I started to back up just a little. Then I aimed the gimballed machine guns upwards and let them have it. I wasn't sure if the defenders could handle a couple of thousand birds crashing into them, but we were going to find out.
***