Chapter Sixty - A Unique Combat Doctrine

    Chapter Sixty - A Unique Combat Doctrine

    Samurai have a wide array of fighting styles and doctrines. Ranging from long-distance destruction of targets, to close-up melee fighting. The styles are as varied as the Samurai themselves, and their little AI partners seem to only encourage this diversity.

    Its exceptionally rare that two top-tier Samurai will have combat abilities that are even remotely similar.

    And that makes them a nightmare to fight. You can train people to take down one Samurai, but only that one. The next might be using gravity weapons instead of drone armies, or perhaps theyve focused on biological weaponry, or they fight in close-quarters while also using alien predictive software to avoid being shot.

    Its one of the many, many reasons why trying to use the army to subdue a rogue Samurai is a terrible idea.

    --Major Huygens, in a brief before Operation Feudal, May 2027

    ***

    The doors opened with a squeal of metal grinding against metal. I could only imagine what it sounded like to those caught within the shelter.

    To my surprise, I didnt find a sea of terrified people waiting for me, but instead a large empty room. It was a dozen meters long and wide, with cement walls all around that had shoulder-height windows cut into them. There were openings for people too, of course, and thats where I saw the first of the survivors.

    They looked... grumpy.

    The first few to come out from hiding were bigger men in rough-cloth uniforms. Some had old rifles, others large wrenches. They looked at me as if I was a two-bit hooker, then thought better of it on seeing the gun held casually by my side and the drones moving about around me.

    You Stray Cat? One of them asked.

    Yup, I said. We cant evacuate everyone here at once, not yet. Their grumpiness moved up a notch. Ill need truck drivers and whomever has a gun and knows how to use it, as well as some folks with good arms.

    What? The man I chose to name grumpiest asked.

    We dont have enough transports for everyone here, I said. So were stealing some.

    Whatcha stealing?

    Trucks, I explained. Were stealing a whole fuckload of trucks. I need help emptying them out so that we can carry people out of here. We have maybe ten minutes before the worst of the waves hit this area.

    One of them, slimmer and lankier, pointed back into the shelter. We could stay here.Ge?t latest novel chapters on nov(e)lbj/n(.)c/om

    No. You cant. I saw him about to protest. It was surprising how kitten-like some adult expressions were. Because I said so.

    Thats not a--

    Wonderful! And once the Antithesis set off every mine?

    Ah, then Im going to have to start shooting them a lot, I guess.

    I see. Do try to remain inconspicuous.

    I grinned. That much I can do. Cloak on! My cloak turned invisible around me, and I pulled it closed over my chest so that I became little more than a pair of boots and hands floating in the air with a very large crossbow.

    Screaming the command phrase to turn invisible is so counter-productive that I dont know where to begin chastising you for it.

    Oh, shush, I said. Its not like anyones around to hear it. I began to weave between cars at a decent jog. Not too fast that I was out of breath, but a good clip nonetheless. What kind of bombs should we be using for this? No more thermobarics by the way. Id like to keep whats left of my face untoasted.

    You have some area-denial options, but Im afraid that if you use too many, the smarter Antithesis will merely circumvent the entire street. It might be best to use simpler, but still destructive. A combination of Hyper-Adhesive Foam and a Resonator might be best.

    How do you figure that? I asked.

    The foam spreads out over a large area around its point of detonation, and tends to be ignored by most of the less intelligent models until they find themselves stuck in it. With enough time and effort they can remove themselves. The Resonator would then have time to work, while being nearly impossible to destroy by passing Antithesis unless they use the bodies of their comrades to reach it. Also, the property damage would be light compared to using high-explosives. And if one of them goes undetonated, you wont be responsible for killing any of the clean-up crews after the incursion is cleared.

    I sighed. Thats fair, not as fun as big explosions, but okay.

    Reaching the next intersection over, I paused as I took in the three paths the aliens could be coming from. It was a lot of road to cover, with all sorts of stalled vehicles and crap blocking lines of sight.

    I wont be able to cover all of this, I realized.

    Then perhaps you dont need to. You have short-term use auto turret emplacements available for twenty points using your Auxiliary Weapon Utilities catalogue.

    At that price... Ill need to give it a gun myself and it cant reload?

    It can reload a simple weapon. Assuming you purchase some ammunition for it.

    I sighed. Of course. Did I ever tell you that sometimes your solution to everything is predictable?

    I could spice things up.

    Please dont, I said. Her idea of spicing things up probably involved me being humiliated.

    I surveyed the street again, this time with an eye for places where I could place small auto-turrets so that theyd mess up the optimal number of alien baddies.

    I didnt know how much time I had left, exactly, but I figured I could make the aliens passing through the area regret ever being born. Or hatched, or whatever.

    Point was, I was going to mess someones day up. And for once, it wasnt my own.