Chapter Thirty-Four - Mowing Down the Enemies of Mankind |
Chapter Thirty-Four - Mowing Down the Enemies of Mankind
"While the xenos are mostly land-bound, the smaller 'models' are capable of flying, and so some consideration should be spent on providing adequate anti-air capabilities to our armed forces in case of propagation near our borders."
--Threat Assessment of the 'Antithesis' type aliens by NATO Armed Forces, 2023
***
The MEOW had four machine guns on it.
At least I think they were machine guns? I couldn't tell the difference between a machine gun and a gun-gun. They fired 12.7 mm rounds at a rather insane rate of fire and were reloaded from the inside using an interior reload system which could hold up to a thousand rounds for each gun.
They were gimbal-mounted with a sheathed belt and could fold away to hide within the mech's armoured carapace. When the swarm of Model Ones flew forwards, all four of them twisted around, aimed up, and opened fire at the same time.
It wasn't going to be enough.
"Oh, shit," I swore as I leaned the mech way back, front legs stretching out and back legs kneeling so that I could make up for the turret's piss-poor elevation.
I probably hit a few birds on the way, but the 155mm shell went off in the skies far above and didn't do much.
"Myalis, once I'm empty, switch me out to something for flyers," I said.
There are a number of valid flak options. I'll find something with a good quality-price ratio for the kind of enemy you're working with.
"Yeah yeah," I dismissed as I aimed into the biggest bunch and fired again, then again. Eventually the internal magazine was empty. When I pulled the trigger next, what came out was a shell that detonated in mid-air, right in the middle of a swarm of Model Ones. It filled a massive circle maybe ten metres across with a sphere of grey smoke that came down like glitter, with the bodies of every Model One caught in the sphere tumbling out ahead while looking like they had been passed through a blender.
Rapid-acting nano-swarms.
"Nice," I said. "But aren't those dangerous as hell?"
Yes, that's very much the point, Catherine. Weapons are dangerous, if they weren't there wouldn't be any use to them. In this case, however, the nanomachines in question function for all of a few seconds once released. The friction between them and the air and stray molecules is enough to break them apart. They function just long enough to cut through anything they come into contact with for a few seconds.
"And it's cheap?"
Surprisingly, yes. Only thirty points per shell!
I was probably making a profit with that, then. I pulled the trigger again and again, aiming around so that I'd hit as many of the birds as possible, but there were just so many of them.
If there were fifty mechs like mine, all firing into the air at the same time, then maybe that would have been enough to stop the tide.
Instead, I had the army and militia's AA to help.
The guns on the wall opened up, filling the mid-day sky with criss-crossing tracer fire, then moments later firework-like explosions of shrapnel as flak cannons went off amidst the swarm. There were only a couple of dozen AA installations, most of them fully encased turretted guns, but some were the sort of thing that was designed to be installed in minutes and piloted remotely.
They helped. The explosions and scattered fire swept through the swarm, obviously targeting either the nearest of the Model Ones or the largest clumps of them flying by. The air soon filled with cartwheeling bird corpses.
The main artillery guns and the machinegun nests built into the wall didn't stop either. The rushing tide of Model Threes was still approaching, as was the wall of smoke and dust and presumably the rest of the Antithesis army behind it.
But we were doing a number on them.
"Myalis, can I have a kill counter?" I asked. "Just totals. Mine."
Adding it now.
There was a small flash in the corner of my vision, then I had a small readout off to the bottom left of my line of sight with an ever increasing number on it. It was sitting pretty at 275 kills, then the number jumped to 276, 278, and when another cannon shot exploded, it ballooned up to 296. Not bad. I'd have to see what the point total was at the end, but I was more concerned with thinning the horde than sniping the more valuable members of it for now.
Stolen story; please report.
The flyers had made it past me already, and for a moment I was worried that I would be buried in pecking little morons, but instead the Model Ones raced for the wall.
As one, they folded their wings in and did like one of those extinct falcons and dove.
A thousand black blurs gained speed as they shot for the gaps in the wall. Hundred were blown out of the air, and then a few hundred more missed the narrow slits that the army was shooting out of. A few soldiers had shut their windows down, and others had hanging nets before them that caught the aliens.
It was kind of funny, seeing them splat against the wall like bugs on a windshield, but I knew that some of them had made it into the wall.
It was very apparent when some of the manned guns went silent. I zoomed in, and winced as I saw a trio of militia who had been at one gun swinging bats around to try and swipe a Model One out of the air.
The return fire faltered for a moment, but it soon picked back up. I could hear the chatter from the army over the comms. Sergeants screaming for order, people being dispatched through the wall with close-ranged non-lethals to take out the Model Ones without taking out our own people.
My comms crackled, and I heard Gomorrah's voice coming through. "Move aside. Yes, you too, sir. Thank you." Then there was the unmistakable whoosh of a flamethrower doing its thing. "Catherine, I can't help but notice that you're still out there."
"Yeah," I replied. I could tell where she was in the wall by the gouts of fire pouring out of an entire row of slit-like openings. "I'm racking up the kills out here. You should join in."
"I'll consider it, but you might want to consider pulling back as well. I was going to deploy some incendiaries over the area you're occupying to slow the advance down and funnel it into a killzone."
"Ah, right. I'll back up, then."
I probably didn't want to be around when the smokescreen the Antithesis was laying out arrived anyway. I had no way of knowing what was within it, but I was willing to bet that it was nasty.
As if reading my thoughts, the first alien artillery fire started to land near my position. Big, spinning wheels of chitin covered in loose spikes that flew out every which way.
Some of them bounced off the MEOW with a clatter that sounded like someone had just thrown a handful of wooden pencils at a wall. I didn't dismiss them so easily, though. Those spikes were damned dangerous, and it meant that there were Model Fifteens in the smoke.
I started to back up, taking a few more potshots into the air before turning fully and running towards the wall. There was a door set into the wall that slowly started to rise as I approached.
Behind me, another swarm of Model Ones rushed out of the smokescreen. Had they been laying low this whole time?
The flyers weren't alone, however. There were at least six larger birds in that flock. Larger by a whole lot. Model Elevens? They flapped wings three times longer than I was tall and then swept flow, staying below the flak fire that was taking out the smaller, stupider Model Ones.
I made it to the door long before they reached the edge of the wall, but it was in time to see two of the bigger models fly right past the wall, trailing a gaggle of smaller Model Ones in their shadows. They were leaking something as they flew past. Were they shitting on the wall? That was just disrespectful.
"Aerial breach past the wall," Gomorrah said. "Setting minefield now."
A dozen large drones flew up from over the edge of the wall, then moved in a straight line. Gomorrah's doing, at least judging by all the vaguely Christian iconography plastered all over the drones.
They opened up from below and dropped tiny metallic objects that planted into the ground at even intervals, spreading them out in a grid.
I moved a bit deeper in, and the doors shut behind me with a clang.
That wasn't the end of the fight for me, but I could use five to reload and maybe drink something. Once the tide washed off the wall and receded, maybe we'd do a sortie or two to take out their artillery? That could be fun.
***