Stray Cat Strut-Chapter Sixty-Eight - Late, Locked, and Loaded

Chapter Sixty-Eight - Late, Locked, and Loaded

"Fear isn't the mind killer.

Stress is."

--A Corporate's Guide to the Modern World, second ed. 2035

***

"Is it possible to be bored and stressed at the same time?" I asked the ceiling.

Lucy shifted next to me. Her nose pressed up against my arm, it was cold on the end. She pulled herself a little closer, as if she wanted to steal my warmth. "At the same time?" she asked. Her voice was husky and rough from having just woken up.

"Yeah," I said. "Is there a word for that?"

"I don't know," Lucy said. She yawned. "Make one up?"

"Hmm. Bored and stressed... Bressed?"

Lucy sniffed. "Nevermind. Don't make up a new word."

"Did I fail to imbress you?" I asked.

Lucy laughed, and that laughter clearly woke her up some. She poked me in the short-ribs. "You are so... you."

"Don't make it sound like an insult," I said.

"I'm not," she said before stretching up. She pressed a kiss against my cheek. "I love you... you."

I flushed a little, then returned the kiss. "I'm not so bored anymore," I murmured.

"Oh-hoh? Horny and stressed... Hressed? Horssed?"

"Let's not," I said with a laugh. I snaked an arm around so that I was holding Lucy closer, even if I knew that would lead to the entire arm falling asleep sooner rather than later. "I have to go in a bit."

"In a bit isn't right now, though," Lucy said.

"That's true," I said. I cuddled in a little closer. "Later, then."

"When do you have to go?" Lucy asked. "We still have some time, right?"

"Eh, I guess about one, maybe two or so?" I said.

"Cat."

"Yeah?" I asked.

"It's two thirty."

I blinked, then checked the time in my augs. "Ah... fuck me." frёewebnoѵēl.com

"Well, we hardly have time for that, now do we?" Lucy said. She wriggled about for a moment, then pushed me up and off with a shove. "Up up! Get dressed and all that, I'll run and prep some breakfast."

"Oh, fine." I said as I allowed myself to be rolled off the bed. There wouldn't be time for a shower, but that didn't mean I couldn't spray myself down with deodorant and find some moderately clean clothes from the floor heap to wear.

Lucy darted out of the room, and I soon heard her banging things together in the kitchen. I took that moment to open up my messaging apps, only to discover a few hundred pings aimed my way. Gomorrah wasn't amused, but she was also not my mom and if I was a little late, then... no one would die, probably? Not if it was only a little late.

Putting my armour on was a bit of a chore, but I wasn't about to leave the house without it, not today. Then I shrugged on my coat and made sure to sling on a few guns and grenades. I had a bandoleer full of explosive fun, my Laser Pointer, and my old Trenchmaker in a thigh holster. Basically, I was armed for war, which was just about what I expected to encounter.

Lucy's idea of a quick breakfast was a small plastic box filled with stuff. One of the boxes gear I bought came in, repurposed as a lunchbox. There were toaster tarts, a ketchup sandwich in a ziplock baggy, and a fistful of granola bars.

"Thanks," I said.

"If I had longer I'd have time to make something better," she complained as she brought over a plate with some warm toast on it. There was butter covering it and a slathering of real peanut butter on top of that.

"This is fine!" I said as I grabbed the plate and bit into a toast. It immediately stained my lips, but whatever. I took three big bites, wiped my face clean with the back of my hand, then pressed a kiss against Lucy's lips. "Gotta go," I said after swallowing thickly.

"Bye! Have fun killing aliens and corpos! Don't die! And I love you!"

"Love you too!" I shouted as I ran towards the entrance hall. I grabbed my helmet, then was out of the door and into the pouring rain a moment later. The weather was not being very cooperative. It would have been better for us if the skies were cleared, but that was a rare occurrence.

As I took off northwards on my bike, I noticed something strange. A lot of rockets rising out from around the city and slowly climbing up and into the cloud layer far above. There were several loud pops that must have been pretty big explosions, but I didn't see any light or any other signs of anything bursting above.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

I checked my messenger app and found an explanation as I scrolled up a little. The rockets were a gift from Forró, a Brazilian samurai who's gimmick included weather fuckery.

My concerns about cloudy skies were apparently unfounded. By the time I was halfway to Saint-Jérome, the clouds had turned thin and wispy and there were great big holes where I could see the blue of deep sky above.

I flew around the Big Gun site. It was hard to tell from the ground, and when I left the night before it was late enough that I couldn't see it well, but the site had expanded a ton. There were trenches dug out in a wide circle, trees had been chopped down, and large areas had been cleared of bushes and weeds and the grass had been mowed down.

Any antithesis coming to the site from the ground would be seen from some ways off, and that wasn't saying anything about the defences. Palisades were up over the trenches and there were these quick-deploy towers up every fifty metres or so.

Within the defences was a full-fledged army base. The temporary sort, with tents and mobile homes, but still a full-on base. We had to have a thousand or so soldiers here now.

The Big Gun itself was off to one side, the camp spread out around it but still giving it plenty of space. Unsurprisingly, the more Samurai-ish vehicles were all parked in a row by the base of the gun.

I came around and landed my bike next to my mecha. I was barely landed before I saw Gomorrah making her way over. "I should have expected that you'd be late, even today."

"Hey now, would you rather I be late, or early and grumpy because I didn't get enough sleep?"

"You should have had plenty of time to get eight hours of sleep and still make it here before noon," she said, rather waspishly.

"Well, some of us actually get laid sometimes, so life just has to make space sometimes," I said.

She sniffed, then chuckled while shaking her head. "You're lucky I'm so lenient," she said.

"What does that even mean?" I asked as I finally got off my bike. "Is everything ready?"

"As ready as we can manage," Gomorrah said. "We had a few more samurai join in at the last minute. People like you who don't understand the concept of professionalism. Otherwise though, the overall plan hasn't changed."

I nodded. That wasn't unexpected at all. I checked on that map the Family was keeping up and saw that the total number of samurai joining in was in the low two hundreds. That was a good number. Still spread way the fuck out, but that was fine. It meant a good spread of points for everyone involved and hopefully less risk.

"Do we have anything in store for when things go to shit?" I asked.

"There are three rapid-response teams," Gomorrah confirmed. "Mostly samurai who can get somewhere quickly without any fuss, and some PMCs as well. If the antithesis land in bigger numbers than expected anywhere, then they'll be able to respond."

I nodded and started to make my way to the others. Tankette was around... maybe I could grab something warm to drink from her? This felt like a 'walk with a coffee' moment. "Are we still expecting the fucks to mostly be concentrated around here?"

"More or less, yes," she said.

"More or less?"

"The swarm is dispersing. It's still concentrated, but their trajectories have gotten complex. The Big Gun has mostly been firing backwards into them and taking out larger clumps. They're about to reach the outer range of what few orbital defences we have."

So, we'd still have to deal with a lot of the bastards. That was probably good, because it would be embarrassing if, after everything else, there weren't any that showed up and we all just found ourselves sitting here with big AA guns and nothing to shoot at.

Mostly that would be embarrassing for me, the one that asked people to help.

"I think that this'll be a nice day," I said.

***