Chapter Twenty-Five - Trickle Down

“While the very concept of trickle down economics was proven to be utter bullshit, we still haven’t figured out whether the samurai’s trickle down technology has the same bullshitty smell to it.”

--Edward Denless, political commentator, 2032

***

Things went well for all of thirty seconds after I cut contact with the general. Then, of course, things got complicated.

Arm-a-Geddon gladly accepted a ride to River Heights onboard a troop-transport loaded up with militia guys. They’d reinforce the front line over there, which was getting complicated. The militia had cameras lined up so that I could check on things with some ease, and from the looks of it they were getting swarmed mostly by small-fry antithesis, but I didn’t think that would last.

Gomorrah agreed to send some of her drones over, which meant three of them were flying across the gap between River Heights and Downtown already.

They were going to lay down some literal fire on the antithesis. That would help, but her drones weren’t the fastest things around, so we had a minute or three to wait before they arrived.

In the meantime, I had to deal with Manic.

“What do you mean you don’t want to?” I asked.

Manic didn’t sound impressed over the line. From what I could tell she was sitting by one of the walls on the west end of the city. “I mean I don’t wanna. Never been told no before?”

“Fuck,” I said. “The people there--”

“Are spoiled rich fucks. They’ve decided to hole up in their little mansions. Let them.”

I ground my teeth together. I couldn't even be angry, her attitude was exactly how I would act and... wait, did that mean that I was a bitch? Shit. It wasn’t time for self-reflection.

“Fine,” I said. “You’re staying by the area you’re in?”

“If the plant fucks are moving on River Heights, they’ll be hitting Downtown soon. I’ll break them before they get far.”

“Right,” I said. “You do that.”

I cut the line off and took a deep breath. Now what? Manic would have been useful in River Heights. She had a lot of AOE stuff as far as I could tell, and she was good in a scrap. I placed her higher than Arm-a-Geddon and Sprout as far as combat abilities went, but she wasn’t available, so I’d have to live with that.

Your ride is here.

I glanced up and stared as a massive vehicle lumbered along the road, taking up two of the three lanes that bisected Downtown’s centre.

The militia had a single mobile base, and I imagined the reason for that was related to their budget. The mobile base was an eight-wheeled, two-bus-long thing that was squat and fat. It had gun emplacements on the front, sides and rear, and looked like it could just barely manage to move at a double-digit speed provided it was going downhill.

It had escorts, of course, a half-dozen armoured trucks with mounted machine guns on top of them. They all had Burlington Crowd Control stencilled on their sides.

The machine came to a grinding stop, a door on the side opened and a set of hydraulics whined as steps dropped to make it easy to get in. An officer type jumped out and jogged over. “Ma’am,” he said. “The general wanted to invite you into the mobile command centre. We’re at your disposal, ma’am.”

“And where’s the general?” I asked.

“Headquarters, ma’am,” he said.

I shook my head. “Alright, I think... you know what, screw it. Let’s go. Can you drive this thing to the west side of Downtown?”

“We can,” the soldier said. “How close to the defences do you want to be?”

“What’s the range on the turrets on this thing?” I asked as I headed in.

“Three hundred metres, optimally,” he said.

“Then about that far,” I said before grabbing a handhold and pulling myself up and into the mobile base.

I wouldn’t be staying in there for long, I knew that the moment I stepped in. The interior was like a mobile home, but cramped, with every spare bit of space used up for something. Storage, both guns and MREs, not including the other supplies, and then there was seating for a dozen, as well as a whole medical section and an area where the walls were covered in screens. The militia only had one person jacked into the mesh onboard this land-boat.

I didn’t bother heading to the front where the driver was sitting. The mobile base started to move with a faint lurch and I stepped into the electronics and command area and looked over the screens in a hurry.

It looked like every street-side camera was being used to paint a somewhat decent picture of Downtown and a bit of the space beyond that. A representation of the city was on one screen, with various areas coded in different colours and militia positions marked with green triangles.

Some spaces were painted a deep red, and a little legend off to the side said those were critical infrastructure. “What makes those things critical?” I asked while pointing to the screen.

Surprisingly, it was the guy laying down on a compact Mesh bed that answered. An avatar appeared on one of the screens, and as the avatar spoke with its voice coming from a set of speakers tucked away somewhere, the guy on the bed spoke at the same time.

Of course, his avatar was some anime chick and he looked like he was on the wrong end of his thirties.

“Ohiyo! The critical infrastructure includes two data centres, the Burlington Private Hospital, and the city’s three privately-operated nuclear reactors.”

“Why the fuck does the city have privately-operated nuclear reactors?” I asked.

“For... power?” the anime-girl on screen said. She looked far too sassy compared to his real body. Her real body? I wasn’t sure which applied. Digitalized gender was a confusing mess that I wasn’t going to get into.

“I guessed that much,” I said as I stepped closer to the screen with the map. The map then shifted to one of the larger screens without my prompting. It looked like most of the critical-red infrastructure was more or less in the centre of the city. The exceptions were on the north and south ends, fortunately.

I added a reminder to myself to worry about that later. “Okay, how are things in River Heights?”

“Not going so good,” the anime girl avatar said. The main screen switched to what was obviously the helmet-cam of someone on the front lines over there. They were manning one of those big chain-fed guns which rattled and barked out lines of fire that ripped apart aliens.

They’d gotten to the point where the bodies were starting to stack up and form little barricades of mulched flesh. I could almost smell the scene. Gunpowder and that strange mowed-grass scent the antithesis gave off when they died.

A glance at the local map suggested they had all of seven guys holding the line, a line which was as wide as a nice upperclass street, the sort with wide sidewalks and houses with yards on the side.

“Shit,” I muttered.

“It’s not looking so good,” the avatar said.

“Myalis, where are my mortars?”

They’re moving into position. It’ll take another three minutes until the first has a clear line of fire. Gomorrah’s drones will arrive in four minutes, and the transports with reinforcements and Arm-a-Geddon will be in place in seven.

I watched as the gunner mowed down another line of antithesis, but one of them, a scrappy little model three, slipped past the fire, jumped onto a sandbag, then latched onto the face of one of the militia men.

His buddy next to him was quick to turn and punt the alien off, then he fired three rounds centre-of-mass, putting it down while the guy who’d been thrown back scrambled to pick up his rifle again.

“Yeah, no,” I said.

We were doing something to help. Many somethings, but I wasn’t going to watch as these guys just died because the help I’d sent their way was too slow.

“Myalis, I need something that can hit their location now,” I said.

I have a multitude of options!

“Got rockets or something? Just a quick up-down-kaboom?”

Not point-efficient, but I certainly have a few options.

“Let’s not fuck around,” I said as I started to walk towards the back of the base. I’d noticed a ladder leading up to the roof as I did my mini-tour of the vehicle. I grabbed on and climbed up and out the top. I expected it to be windy but... well, we were moving at a walking pace.

Myalis was quick to give me a crate that had what was obviously a rocket launcher within. I picked it up, aimed high, and let loose, the backsplash scorching the top of the mobile base even as the rocket screamed into the sky.

Damn it was nice to feel useful sometimes.

***