Chapter Forty-Two - Earning the Tier

“At lower tiers, the effectiveness of a single samurai on the field is actually questionable.

That might lead some to wonder; if a samurai is little better than a small battalion of trained troops, then why not replace them with just that?

The answer is that while a low-tier samurai might only be that powerful, they won’t be low-tiered forever.”

--A discussion on the value of samurai on large scale battlefronts, 2028

***

I was just planning my route, a map open in the corner of my vision, when some clever asshole decided that a large mass of bunched-together aliens would make for a great target for some artillery.

Something screamed above, and I raised my head and tracked a tiny black speck through the air. Its parabolic arc ended with it smashing into the ground a good fifty metres ahead of the wave.

A loud boom echoed out, while dust and smoke rose out of the impact crater as a massive column. “Nice,” I muttered. “Myalis, can you get in touch with whomever fired that? Tell them they missed.”

On it.

The wave was undaunted by the blast. I think most human armies would start running faster to get to cover or something, but the sea of bugs charging towards the city didn’t change their breakneck pace at all.

I looked at my map again. There were lots of streets to cover. “Okay. We’re going to push them down... Mapleway. I need... these six bigger roads blocked off, and all the alleys along them before the blockage.”

The city was laid out as a grid, with some concessions made for the underlying terrain. This wasn’t New Montreal, built on a massive platform raised above the ground, but a more normal cityscape like they used to build before.

I couldn’t funnel the entire wave. There were too many of them. But maybe I could funnel in a fraction, a good chunk of those heading in towards the city. It would concentrate them, sure, and that would be fucking awful if they ever reached the defenders covering the gap, but I didn’t intend to let that happen.

Funnel them into a big group, then bomb them back to whatever hell they’d crawled out of.

“I need mecha,” I said. “Six... no, eight. See these roads. I want them blocked off. Foam, maybe pepper in some resonators for if they try to climb over.”

I quickly drew some lines across the map. In the end, my design looked a bit like a square-stepped pyramid, with the tip pointing towards New Montreal itself. Every blocked road would be next to an alleyway or a side street that would let the wave move closer inwards. If we blocked off enough alleys and the previous side-roads, then they’d have no choice but to be pulled in. At least, if they didn’t stop to sniff around.

Fuck, I was treating the entire wave as if it were made of water or something, not living things.

“What are the chances this works?” I asked Myalis.

Relatively high actually. Otherwise I would have cautioned you against it. Though it will act more to crowd the wave in than to kill the members of the wave.

Right, that made sense. “Other plans?”

Use the height afforded you by the rooftops to drop proximity charges and other explosives onto the largest mass of aliens. A little dull, but no less effective. In fact, you might want to consider doing that all the same. The numbers in the current wave would overwhelm more barricades, and some will instead find themselves breaking into the buildings around them.

I glanced down at the street. Most of the bigger buildings had shops on their first floors, and most shops had a lot of glass in front of them. Big display windows and shit. I didn’t doubt that a few were designed to be bulletproof, but that wouldn’t stop the aliens for long.

“Alright, let’s get to it. Mecha with ‘nades. Whatever you think is best for creating a barrier. Maybe a few guns on them to keep them safe. And can you ping me the location of any particularly big motherfuckers? We don’t want anything in the twenties to reach the gap.

Understood.

Eight cat-mecha appeared on the rooftop. A bit slimmer than those I had guarding the house. Longer legs, with a few little limbs tucked into their sides, and what looked like a laser array similar to my turrets on their backs.

“Nice,” I said. “Payloads?”

As you suggested. Expanding foam bombs, resonators. You will likely want something with more direct stopping power to remove bigger threats and thin out the bigger knots of opposition. If your intent is to crush the enemy, then perhaps a literal application of that? Gravity grenades, with a limited range to avoid collateral damage, can destroy most things they hit.

I shrugged. “Alright.”

I’d see if they were as impressive as Myalis claimed.

Budget?

“Doesn’t matter, as long as we come out on top pointwise, and I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”

Another shell screamed across the sky above. This one exploded right above the forward edge of the wave. Then another exploded, then another. There was a constant booming from the city, like heavy rain on tin as a whole army’s worth of artillery opened up. Looked like they wanted to thin the herd before it reached the more urban parts.

Boxes appeared next to the cat mechas, and the robotic cats opened them up to reveal a selection of grenades in neat rows, held in place by plastic moulding. The cat mecha picked up the grenades in a long strip, then clamped them onto their sides with the little arms sticking out of their backs. Everything folded neatly back in, and I was left with a pride of Rambo-looking mechanized cats.

“Alright,” I said. “Let’s go.”

The cats darted off in two directions, to the left and right of the oncoming wave.

I wasn’t going to sit back and let them do all the work though.

While artillery rained down on the aliens I ran towards New Montreal. I stopped by the first alley I had to clog up. “Sticky,” I said.

Myalis obliged, and I caught a grenade out of the air as it appeared next to me. The pin flew off to one side, and the bomb dropped down into the unlit alley. It clanged against the ground, before bursting. In the space of a couple of seconds off-white foam was pouring out of the passage, more of it was expanding upwards to create a wall that I hoped would slow the aliens down.

But in case it wasn’t enough... “Resonator.”

That one dropped down into the foam with a dull splat. It managed to stay afloat as the foam expanded, a tiny screaming present for the first fucks to try and claw their way over the wall.

I jumped over the alley, legs bunching up so that I’d clear the gap. Kinda forgot I had a jetpack for a moment. “Next one,” I said.

The artillery fire started to grow less coordinated and precise. I could tell that some shots were flying much further out, and I winced as a shell crashed into a building that immediately exploded, fire and cement siding flying everywhere.

At least some of the shrapnel would probably brain a few of the xenos.

A glance over my shoulder revealed that the wave was hitting the city proper. They slipped around abandoned cars and over guard-rails. It was hard to tell the individual models apart, they were jammed so close together.

Then I noticed something in the dust behind them. Wings, beating fast.

A swarm of flying models swooped out of the dust. Little models, no bigger than pigeons, but also huge fuckers with wingspans like private jets.

“Ah, fuck,” I muttered as I whipped my gun around. I didn’t fire. There was still a ways between them and me, and the chances that I’d do more than take out a few of the smaller ones with some stray pellets wasn’t great.

The wave hadn’t even hit my barriers and already my plan had gone to shit.

“We need AA,” I said.

Something screamed through the air. Not a shell, something bigger and faster, accompanied by a loud buzz. A glance above and I found a squadron of prop-planes shooting forwards. The guns fixed under their wings opened fire with a mechanical humm and lines of bright-green tracers flitted through the air and into the swarm.

Maybe I didn’t need AA just yet.

Large hovering vehicles were rising above the gap, with guns afixed to their sides. They started firing, and the air exploded with black-grey bursts of shrapnel around ahead of the flying aliens.

I turned and continued running across the rooftops.

This wasn’t a one-person effort, I realized. There was an entire army here.

For a moment, I wondered what I could do alone. But then, maybe my job was just going to be picking up the slack.

I flung another pair of grenades down a maintenance passage between two buildings and then kept moving.

Soon the swarm would be on me, then I’d have other shit to worry about than how useful I could be.

***