Chapter Seventy-Five - Triggering, But the Fun Sort Where Things Explode

“People go on and on about what can turn a lady on. Nice men, nicer women, fat stacks of cash. Power.

They’re right about the last one. We do love power, especially when it’s nice and packaged and easily weaponized.

Some folk think that the purest form of that is the cannon, and it’s true; bitches love cannons.

But a lady?

A lady likes explosives.”

--Salamander Storm, 2041

***

I wasn’t an endurance runner. Or any other sort of runner.

I was more of a ‘sit with Lucy on my lap’ kind of girl.

My breaths came hot and fast, my heart beat all crooked, as my thighs and calves burned. Still, I didn’t have the option to stop and catch a breather.

“My-Myalis, ammo,” I huffed, my Icarus raised in one hand. A magazine appeared before me and I caught it out of the air and slapped it into place.

I barely aimed as I ran sideways for a bit and held the trigger down. Most of the aliens behind me were Model Threes, but there were others, Model Tens riding along, and farther back--but catching up--were Model Thirteens.

I’d be swarmed soon.

I needed a moment to think and act. “Garrote!” I caught the grenade, jammed my thumb over its trigger, then flicked it behind me underhand.

That wouldn’t do jack to stop them, but it might mulch a couple before they caught up to me.

I needed something bigger, that didn’t explode. “Gas!” I said. “Acid.”

Another grenade, this one a canister. I flipped the top off and dropped it by my feet a second before it started to hiss and spit. A glance behind me showed that the gas was expanding and climbing to the ceiling. It would mess with the Model Thirteen then.

I was pretty sure it wouldn’t kill it, but maybe injuring it would be enough. The others might live too, but every bit of damage was good in my book.

I spun around a corner, the same one where Gomorrah and I had encountered the first aliens in this mine. And right there, like some sort of angel, was the woman in question.

“Go left,” she said, her head nodding to her left.

I ran past her, then sighed as I felt a powerful wash of warmth at my back.

My run slowed down, and I veered off towards the wall. Slumping against it while I sucked in air. My railgun and plasma caster were both out of ammo. My Claw and Trench Maker too, though those hadn’t been terribly useful. All I did was take potshots at the aliens. My Icarus had... six HE rounds left.

I wondered if I had time to reload. At least, until I looked over and saw the wall of fire ahead of Gomorrah. It was bright and thick enough that the only things making it through were the half-melted remains of some of the faster models, their momentum enough to carry them past the fire.

My mecha cats were stationed around Gomorrah, one on each side while the third came over and stood near me. “Thanks,” I said as soon as I turned on our comms.

“No problem,” Gomorrah replied. “That Model Thirteen that came this way was something.”

“Nasty, huh?” I asked.

“It kept avoiding my fire. Your cats ended up doing a lot of the damage. I need to invest in faster-firing weapons.”

“Yeah, cool,” I said. “Can you cover me for two minutes, I need to reload everything.”

Gomorrah nodded. I trusted her to keep me alive for a couple of minutes. “Myalis, I need a reload on everything.”

I raised my Icarus, switched to HE, and fired the last shots remaining down the tunnel the aliens had followed me from. Figured I might hit one of them if I was lucky.

Reloading my shoulder-mounted guns was a bit of a pain. The rest wasn’t too bad. Myalis was giving everything to me one at a time, so I was moving at my own pace, more or less.

“I think we’re clear,” Gomorrah said. She lowered her flamethrower and let the wall of fire die down a little. If I squinted, I could make out the darkened forms of burning aliens slumped over here and there.

There weren’t as many as I imagined, but maybe I hadn’t had a good look at them.

“Good work,” I said as I slid the last magazine into my Claw, then tucked it away. “That was stressful.”

I’d need a good shower after this. My coat might have been cool, but it was still warm, and all the fire and running for my life didn’t help.

“Did you find the hive?” she asked.

“Yeah. Nasty place. A hundred or so more models over there. I don’t know if they’ll stay put or not.”

Gomorrah nodded. “I’d like to see the footage later.”

“Uh, sure,” I said. My cybernetic eye had probably recorded all of that. I bet Myalis had, at the very least. “There’s a tunnel past the hive that I didn’t get to inspect, otherwise, I think I covered it all.”

“Did you plant any bombs?”

“Yup. Canisters full of chlorine trifluoride.” I was pretty proud that I didn’t stumble on that one.

Gomorrah turned her head my way. “Canisters of what?”

Did I mispronounce it?

“How many did you place?” she asked.

“About... I don’t know, twenty?”

Twenty-two canisters.

“Twenty-two, according to Myalis,” I said. “They’re pretty big. Thermos-sized, you know.”

“How much of the stuff is in each?”

Ten litres, liquid and hyper-compressed.

“Ten litres,” I repeated with entirely unearned confidence.

Gomorrah hesitated. “We... should probably not be so close to them, in that case.”

I’d lost a few of my nine lives to bombs already, so a bit of caution wouldn’t be amiss. “Sure. I’ll call up Cause Player at the same time. Want to back out of that entrance hole?”

“Sure,” Gomorrah said.

I stretched my back out as I dialed up Cause Player. It felt like I’d had a weight lifted off my back, just from being so close to Gomorrah and out of the tentacle-range of so many aliens.

“Stray Cat,” Cause Player said. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. We’re both fine. But you might not be. Gomorrah and I are about to set off the mother of all firebombs, and I wanted to make sure you weren’t in the burn radius.”

“Uh, thanks. I’ll send you my coordinates. I’ve been mostly exploring the off-shoot tunnels near the entrance. Not much more than some lower-level models here.”

“Good. The hive’s not that big, I don’t think. It’s also covered in explosives. We’re clearing out of the blast radius ourselves.”

“Right, can you send me the projected area of effect?”

Sending now!

“Got it.... Looks like I’m way out of it, should be fine. But thanks for calling.”

Myalis had been kind enough to let me see that same map, with Cause Player’s location blinking away on it, and Gomorrah and I represented by two blinking lights. The centre of the blast zone was blue, turning to purple, then red, then orange all the way to green.

We were still in the yellow, but it looked like that was about to end soon.

“Here,” Gomorrah said a hundred or so metres later. Right on the edge of the yellow zone, according to Myalis’ map. Seemed safe enough.

“Okay,” I said. I had twenty-one canisters marked as functional, with one of the lot marks as damaged but operational. The UI to slave them all together was as simple as checking off the ‘select-all’ box. “Do you want to do the honours?” I asked.

“You set them up,” Gomorrah said. “Blow away.”

“... Was that innuen--”

“Just set them off,” she said.

I grinned and pressed the metaphorical red button.

A whole lot of nothing happened.

“Uh,” I said. The ‘Trigger’ button was greyed out. I couldn’t even jab it a few extra times.

The canisters are spraying their load out into the air. The aerosolized chemical needs time to disperse and travel. It will trigger the actual burn when ideal saturation is reached. That is, when there’s a good amount of chlorine trifluoride in the air without it being either too thick or thin. Which should be happening... now.

I turned, my ears picking up a sharp ‘tack’ sound from down the tunnel.

It meant that I could see the wave of dust rushing towards me. Not that I could react.

My coat flapped and I took a step back as a blast of air shot past. “Whoa!” I said.

“Was that it?” Gomorrah asked a moment later.

Then the air turned and was sucked back down the mineshaft, and in the end, like some sort of vision of hell itself, came a wall of fire. The floor started to tremble, slowly, then with growing ferocity.

“Maybe we should run?” I asked.

***