Chapter 32: Alamo

  “The best way to deal with the antithesis is to force them to focus. We funnel them into one position we can bomb to all hell…

  The best way to get them to focus…? I know!

  We dangle a juicy target, full of biomass! Cliff, head for the orphanage!”

  – PMC commander Jaap Brannigan, during the 2043 Chicago incursion, discussion aboard the mobile base ‘Nimbus’.

  ***

  I didn’t want to listen to Johnny Law tell the story of the Alamo. However… You do things you don’t want to do for friends! He’d somehow found the time to tell me some of it. I had serious doubts he’d given me the not-super-biased version, but whatever.

  That’s why I called the defensive position we chose the Alamo. To be honest, it felt like it. I honestly wasn’t certain we could escape this one!

  There was a highway that no one used anymore in the middle of the building. Caped on both ends with steel antithesis blast gates that would stop most models.

  From back in the day before the current era of ‘meh we can reconstruct easily and people are cheap’ architecture became standard.

  I’d never seen them open, especially since we lived on a lower hex-plate. It also kept the good… ish air in!

  There were even sidewalks! The ‘tunnel’ rose so tall that there were retractable ‘sky’walks for the second and third floor in case of high-clearance vehicles. Bella would stay up there, on the third floor.

  The new undersuit camouflaged her enough and a lot of barricaded Mole-Bear ‘hall plugs’ stood between that position and the aliens.

  Apparently they were these instant passage closers that, sure, wouldn’t resist a model six but would stop most things short of that! Just a big slab of alloy that stabbed rods in the concrete around it.

  Good for blocking tight passages, especially for a position that shouldn’t get tons of attention. Garry’s idea to ask, the smart bastard!

  Lila, Francis and I were going to do the attention grabbing… originally. Apparently, I’d royally pissed off the hive since most of the outflow followed me as I ran to our defenses! “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”

  Lila answered over comms. “I’m guessing that means this is you in front of that massive wave?” I could see Mole-Bear barricades covered in spines at the end of the tunnel.

  “Fuuuuuuuck!”

  “I think that means yes.” Francis guessed.

  “Should we start shooting, boss?” Garry asked, dumbly!

  “Fuck’s sake fucking shoot fucking fast right fucking now you fucking fucks!”

  “That’s a yes.” Bella explained intelligently, right before opening up on the bigger xenos. Apparently the quietest enforcer was the only one with her head in the fucking game!

  “Don’t do the bright thing please, couldn’t see.” Bella just kept on being reasonable, as always. That sea of white phosphorus had been bright as all fucking hell! Her shots were rather impressive, blowing up model five and six heads. Although, she started to have problems with those second ones.

  Model sixes seemed to be evolving, growing much thicker plates like the one that’d pummeled me. However, just a bit more power into her shots did the trick! The beauty of helical-coilguns. It felt nice to see those plates crumple inward!

  Since I was running in the middle, Francis and Lila started shooting the sides in a cone. Francis had more success, of course. Heavy machine shotguns were kind of a big fucking deal!

  He used it as a heavy-fragger for now, sending explosive fragmenting slugs downrange. They might’ve been small explosives, but they at least staggered the ones next to the dead xeno.

  That didn’t sound too impressive until you considered that he fired those at 540rpm. That meant nine rounds per fucking second of god damn 16mm explosive slugs! Thanks to that mechanical arm mounting and those recoil systems, he didn’t really need to stop!

  It shot like the goat fucking thing was mounted on a truck! I’d worry about melting barrels if he didn’t have that liquid nitrogen!

  “Switching ammo, explosive isn’t doing the trick…” Francis declared which I thought was insane! Until I realized that… yeah, they were still coming. Maybe Lila inspired him.

  She fired armor-penetrating staballoy bullets at ‘how the fuck is that even possible’ velocity! They pierced through at least three garden hounds each time. Not only that, the hyper-burst mode definitely lived up to the name!

  Four rounds before any felt recoil! Non-stop burst fire came from her position. At the same time, aiming with that many coming at us was kind of optional.

  They were wall-to-wall in the tunnel! On a fucking highway! As I finally got into position, I went for what I knew. “Altany! Cluster shells! Non-stop! Buy a better one that’s not incendiary! I don’t want any of those fuckers to get here uninjured!”

  On it. Please get in a braced shooting position behind that cover over there.

  The cover in the middle of the road covered in spikes already looked obvious before Altany made it glow red. I made myself a hole to shoot through as Altany transformed me into the deadliest mortar in the world!

  These mortars are more expensive but also much heavier, hence you will need full bracing to stay effective. Deploying.

  All the stuff I used whenever I shot hypersonic rounds made their appearance, which was surprisingly comfortable. I had that weird bracing thing that gave me something like a seat.

  The shells are larger and the grenades smaller and less numerous.

  “Then what the hell’s the advantage?” I asked as it fired.

  “Altany! I need a staballoy version of those hornet’s nest slugs!” Francis called out.

  Oh, the grenades are still compressed. The explosive compound, however, is hyper-compressed.

  The sound of a bunch of fireworks reached me and shrapnel flew much harder! It penetrated multiple little shits now! Following that little display, Francis’s fire became a lot deadlier. The slugs and needles penetrated several models.

  It is closer to a claymore landmine’s explosion now. In all directions of course. Using tungsten balls.

  My railgun fired again, much faster than the last time I used cluster shells. Then again, and again and…

  Would you mind if I cannibalized some power going to currently non-useful systems? It would help the fire rate.

  “Go for it! Also, gimme the highest caliber possible hyper-compressed buckshot!” The fire-rate increased as I received a helical magazine.

  Your highest possible caliber is 35mm since your barrel upgrade. I would not suggest your highest velocity possible as that would be… violent.

  I could believe that! To get to the speeds I enjoyed with the last shells, I had to forget about automatic fire. I was pretty sure that even with this carpet, a lot would end up in the ceiling. Actually… I had a shit-ton of bracing at the moment, didn’t I? Standing up, the whole idea wouldn’t work buuuuuut…

  I tried and yes, I could get to fifty percent above baseline velocity and semi-auto bursts! It was rough, even with my strength, the supports and everything, but I had healing nanites so I wouldn’t be sore tomorrow!

  I helped out Lila’s side as she had a harder time of it. She’d been doing better than Francis until the hornet’s nest slugs mark 2. As Garry joined the action next to her, things equalized a bit.

  Now that we were in position and had a chance of holding, I connected to Johnny Law. “Johnny! Alamo is engaged! We have their attention!”

  “Alrighty! Flow’s decreased and we’re sendin’ SnR, clearin’ and defense squads. Plan ‘Inuit Secession’ is a go!”

  I stopped shooting for a second. “Robin?” I asked with a smile.

  “Robin.” He confirmed.

  My hyper-compressed buckshot… grenade shells at this point did great damage! I wouldn’t use them without all the bracing and shit though. Even at normal velocity for a shotgun, 35mm was no fucking joke!

  It launched way more than twice the buckshot though! How did volume work again? “A tube with twice the diameter has… Altany?” A sigh came to my ear.

  My vanguard is bad at math. This is a tragedy. Can I interest you in a learning module? I would rather not have to explain this to other AIs.

  I shrugged. “Free corpo programs don’t give a fuck about good math.”

  Fair. I’m still going to insist on that module. The answer you are looking for is four times the volume.

  I blinked. “I’m firing roughly thirty six slugs right now?” I asked, a bit awestruck.

  Yes. Tungsten slugs, which are almost twice as dense as lead ones, going approximately 750m/s into a crowd of aliens so thick you cannot miss. I’m proud of you, this is an impressive display of destruction for the point expenditure.

  “Thank you Altany, I think so too.” I said with a smile. It created massive holes in the carpet, as well as in the antithesis!

  However, some of the smaller ones slipped past the main vegan meat-grinder. Especially those rat-like model threes. I needed a solution for those. They forced Lila, Garry and Francis to split their attention. “Altany, six turrets, set them to killing mainly those who escape the main massacre!”

  The targeting software is rather simplistic, I will only be able to set a range. Would you like an upgraded model?

  “Yes please! Buy four of them plus two for Bella’s sides!” I’d love more security around the building that wouldn’t put my people at risk.

  New purchase: Spiney Spiners Mark 8 x 6!

  Points Spent… 900 points!

  “Shit, these are expensive.” I said as they appeared. They were much bulkier and had eight coil arms instead of the previous six. The plating on their front looked a bit better though. They also seemed to use a big ammo box, so probably reloadable? “Stop shooting those that escape!” I told the others.

  When a fucked up rat-equivalent got skewered and… shredded, I understood why the price increased that much. For one, much better velocity. Second, instead of those needle filled sabots, the bigger needles now grew barbs. A ton of thin spikes with slightly bladed fronts. I shuddered. “Alright, worth it.”

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  They also have a much smarter targeting program and can take much more complex instruction. They even have a rather impressive friend-or-foe analysis program for the point cost.

  My eyes went wide. “Wait, do you mean the others…” Altany didn’t let me finish.

  It is not that hard to have a ‘don’t kill the walking monkeys’ mode. Same for an ‘aim for plants’ mode. You may have lost what little greenery you had in the second section.

  “You mean potted plants?” I asked with a snort. That ‘park’ in the middle of the section had never been anything but a homeless camp in living memory and every plant was extremely dead.

  We’d been fighting for a good long five minutes when artillery started raining on our position. I’d been throwing around enough shrapnel with the cluster shells to suppress ranged xenos close to the holes.

  It took that long for a model fifteen to get the brilliant idea to stay a bit further. Lila put Garry behind her as shell after shell started hitting close, but not quite there. They hadn’t dialed in our range yet. “Bella!”

  “I got ‘em.” She said with her very calm ‘I’m taking a shot’ voice. Right after that, a louder than usual bullet cracked the air, soon followed by six more, just as loud and in quick succession. “Altany, external battery?” She asked, as verbose as ever.

  On its way. I made it a long cylinder that attaches under your barrel, that way it will look like a gas or magazine tube. Since Johnny seems to go for a wild west theme, this would fit an 1886 Winchester repeating rifle.

  “Thanks.” Poor Altany. It sounded like she tried to compensate for Bella’s lack of words with vomit of her own. The helical coilgun did look like a wild west lever gun… with a big drum magazine and some glowy stuff. Hey, it had a wood stock!

  “You’re on long range fuckers duty Bella!” I said as I fired even faster than usual, letting off a few shots above the heads of most xenos. It also fucked with my shoulder a bunch.

  “Yup.”

  “I mean… It does… Look like that… type of gun… Bella!” Lila said between hyper bursts. I knew for certain her barrel would have melted if not for that liquid nitrogen system. Same for mine actually. Both our guns were letting off quite a lot of mist that we had to be assured came from the nitrogen.

  “Cool.” Bella said with a perfect deadpan.

  Francis chimed in! “You know, it would make for better conversation if you used more than single words, Bella.” His voice sounded strained from his constant effort.

  “Sure.” Yeah, Bella was fucking with us at this point, in her own, weird but cool Bella way.

  Is there anything more you would need, Bella?

  “Optics.”

  … As in an upgraded model? Would you like long range infrared sights? Higher zooming capabilities? Maybe even a terahertz imaging system?

  “Yes.”

  I suddenly received the mental impression of someone throwing their hands in the air and growling in frustration. It made most of us laugh as we kept up the fire. Now we had to compensate for Bella having to focus at longer distances.

  I had to admit, Bella shot pretty god damn well with her new gun! Apparently she’d learned everything she could about the weapon. Velocity, bullet weight, usual drop, how the wind affected them, all that good sniper stuff.

  I had no idea why you’d give a fuck about wind in the middle of a mega-building but whatever. My favorite sniper worked the action at stupidly high speed without disturbing her aim in the slightest. Maybe not her first lever-action?

  ***

  Twenty minutes in, everything started going to hell. We all felt pretty fucking tired already when we got the announcement. “Plug 1 is down!” Garry yelled. Even with helmets and hearing protection, with this much firepower, you just needed to shout.

  “What?” I asked dumbly.

  Garry stayed on the ball though. “We installed plugs in every side passage leading to this position, boss.”

  We had two corridors right behind us. This position was the best option available, but that didn’t make it a good one. If a single model six decided to come by, we’d be fucked. “Plug 2 is down! There are three more between us and them!”

  “How do you know?” The stupidly massive amount of cumulative recoil I’d endured ended up dazing me some. Nanites only did so much.

  “We installed cameras and put reconnaissance drones in the hallways!” That was why I liked Garry! I probably wouldn’t have thought of that… I should have thought of the plugs earlier too…

  “There’s a model six breaking through them!” Oh. Not good…

  I was tired and dazed. I really needed to wake the fuck up! “Altany, give me a wake up and focus cocktail or whatever… Cocaine? No, I don’t want cocaine. Something a fuckton healthier? Same for everyone?” Francis answered rather quickly.

  “Also something to help me hold up this fucking gun! Power armor upgrade? Fuck I don’t know…” Lila went with something different.

  “Gimme a medical nanite suite, that recoil is killing my shoulder even with all the fucking mitigation. Also better recoil whatever…” It looked like everyone was flagging. It made sense, we’d been in very active fighting since everything began.

  “Bella, want the wake up shit?” I asked before receiving a quick and tired answer. “Yeah…”

  Would you like anything else? Any upgrades or augments?

  “No.”

  I smiled. She’d been keeping that up for the past twenty minutes. It was pretty funny, even to Altany I suspected.

  We had to redouble our efforts every time someone drank the ‘holy fucking shit I can fucking fly to the fucking moon in a single fucking jump!!!’ juice, full of essential nutrients, caffeine, amphetamines and things we probably didn’t want to know about.

  I felt pretty damn wired! Still had a job to do though.

  “Altany, HFUG over here! Garry, you’re learning how to use one right fucking now!” Garry jumped to it! We didn’t want to use one before since they were too stationary, but fuck it. We hadn’t moved in a while. This position worked! Might as well make it semi-permanent.

  “Oh, and, Altany? Remove the safeties. Garry, try not to shoot the walls, go for the middle. Altany, can I get something like a… mortar coilgun turret to send out those cluster shells for me?” I asked with the distinct impression I should have asked much earlier.

  Of course. It will be relatively expensive, but the point cost will be deferred by the effectiveness.

  I didn’t doubt it. Our efforts resulted in a massive carpet of corpses. It didn’t reach the ceiling because, for one, the antithesis dragged bodies back. Also, anything smaller than a model five got trampled into paste. For bigger bodies, I sometimes sent some incendiary shells to keep them from becoming cover.

  Even then, Bella did pretty good at taking care of them before they got close. She’d been on long-range duty so more made it through, but thankfully, the woman worked god damn fast with that lever action!

  When everything was set up, I stayed just long enough to watch the HFUG fire without safeties. “Fuck me…” It created lines of expanding meat shrapnel! I wanted to watch it going for a bit but I didn’t have time.

  That model six had broken through more plugs. Only two before we’d get attacked. “Open the door, Altany.” I said, knowing full well there wasn’t one, but not giving a shit!

  The plug took out its anchors. I pushed forward and it fell easily. I didn’t replace it since, well, if they needed me I’d probably be in a hurry.

  Thanks to my suit’s flexibility, I could crack my neck and limber up before shit got real. Still, I made a quick call to Johnny. “Hey, Johnny, how’s the plan going?” I think my jittery energy must have shown.

  “Hey Mad, you’re on stims too? It’s goin’ damn well. That hive’s super focused on you, almost nothin’ up here, it ain’t hard to do our thing!” I smiled at that.

  “Thanks for the good news, I’m about to get really intense in my area of expertise, hive’s flanking! Gotta go, see you soon!” He laughed.

  “Have fun down there, holler at me if you need, see ya!”

  Just like that, I could focus. I was doing a good job, the right thing and what was best for my people!

  I was also about to have fun!

  Sure, shooting the shit out of aliens was fun, but it got boring. I’d just been eating recoil and watching aliens get poked by the same ammo over and over again!

  I couldn’t experiment since I had to do what worked! I couldn’t test out new, interesting ways of killing them! Now?

  “Hey, Altany, you know those staballoy hornet’s nest slugs? Want to test them out at higher velocity? Hell, want to test out a 22mm version?” I asked with a smile on my face. I might have been slightly high.

  It would be my pleasure. 22mm hornet’s nest staballoy warheads coming right up.

  I’d switched over to a better quality propellant, that way I could push up to higher velocities, but also not reload as often. It made higher velocity shots a lot more workable.

  I switched out the magazines just in time! As my new helical mag clicked into place, the model six broke through the plug and rushed me. I didn’t go for my usual methods.

  No, this time, as it lowered its head to strike, I jumped backwards! Not super fast, but enough to avoid his strike. Most importantly? It positioned me perfectly to kick it under the chin, arrest my momentum and start shooting!

  My tail went straight into its belly, shredding all it encountered! At first, I went for high velocity shots to its less armored underside, but then, I aimed for the wound. At this short of a range, I could feel the hydrostatic shock in my boots! Amazing.

  The fucker died rather quickly and I barely made it out without getting buried. The passage was narrow and the asshole would’ve probably gotten stuck trying to turn around, so he made a great barrier if anyone escaped me!

  Behind him waited a lot of nice little new friends! Actually not so little. Maybe those counted as the equivalent of a strike team? Maybe? Fucked if I knew but they were big model threes and model fives for the most part.

  I shot the model fives first. Those slugs did great as I pushed the velocity to three times normal! They kicked back hard, but I could still do semi-auto. The central slug made it all the way through and into whatever was behind them.

  I used those to destroy everything I saw, creating even more of a plug, but one more model could climb over, and they did! A lot of them.

  ***

  Fifteen minutes of killing aliens later, I felt rather satisfied at the jam I created! They’d clear it soon, but it would still be one hell of an impediment! I kept piling them on top of each other almost to the ceiling, before jumping over and starting all over again!

  I’d made a dozen barriers like that. “If I retreat, we’ll have so many of these we can just leave a turret and be done with it!” I said with a huge smile.

  I suspect it will not be cleared enough to be a danger by the time you get reinforcements.

  “Yeah, I should probably head back. I’m guessing there’ll be another crisis real soon.” I said, my smile fading a bit.

  I was still very happy! I’d done good work! I loved the satisfaction of doing my job well, one of those things that felt like capitalist brain washing but probably wasn’t?

  Anyone gets satisfaction from making good art, right? I looked at my meat plug, or at least the one outside my pants, and giggled.

  Please do not call your genitals a meat plug. It is disgusting.

  “How’d you know?” I asked, confused.

  You were looking at a ‘plug’ made of plant flesh and then the parts of your brain linked with sexual arousal, Robin and humor lit up.

  I… Alright, impressive deduction. I hadn’t been thinking of Robin though… did my sexual thoughts always involve Robin, even subconsciously?

  Yes, yes they did. I was also very fine with that! I’d have to plug… Fuck, now that Altany’d said it, it did sound disgusting, yeah…

  Told you so.

  I snorted. “Alright, let’s put out the next fire.” I didn’t make it to… plant barrier eight before it presented itself!

  “Boss! The other plugs are going down! Fast! There’s… something coming on top of the ceiling! Fuck, it’s getting a lot closer!”

  “Fucking ape raping son of a god damn whored cow…” I had to think it, didn’t I!? Now I had some weird eldritch tentacled fuck coming my way! Actually, I should say a new weird eldritch tentacled fuck!

  I mean, seriously, those fucking aliens had too many tentacles!

  As I jumped over the first model six corpse, only two plugs still stood! “Release this one!” I said to Altany a second before I bowled it…

  “Fuck!”

  It is not an instant process Louis.

  I moved my shoulder around a bit. Apparently, my armor could compress a bit when I flattened myself to a plate of metal by accident. I pretended not to hear Lila’s mad cackling. “Altany, can I open the goat fucking thing?” I said with clenched teeth. That had actually hurt.

  Yes Louis, you may.

  I pushed it over and ran towards the end of the corridor. This one was wider, but not by much. I was only halfway when the plug fucking flew back at me! This time though, I actually braced and angled. The door bounced to the side, revealing a…

  “Altany, what the fuck is that th-fuck!” Before I could finish, the tentacled… thing rushed me at insane speed! Faster than me-speed!

  This is a model thirteen type-H. They are hive defenders, which means the hive now feels a true threat from your interference here. It can whip its tentacles at supersonic speed.

  I noticed that as I thankfully saw the whip coming. It was a fucking squished squid the size of a god damn hover-van! On the fucking ceiling! It had three totally bizarre masks with odd eyes in the sockets but no mouths.

  The most concerning part? It had horse cock sucking cum gargling metal scales!

  When that whip impacted my blocking arm with the shield deployed? The top of my shield buckled in! Then it impacted my shoulder and then that threw me at the god damn wall! Hard!

  They act as waste disposal. When the hive finds materials it does not need, it will put them in a model thirteen. With such a high input of sewage sludge including industrial waste, the hive had an overabundance of materials. In this case, it creates a Type H of the model. The metal of its armor is poor in comparison to yours, but expect it to be thick.

  “Where the fuck’s its brain?” I asked as I ejected the damaged section of my shield.

  It has three.

  “Of fucking course…”