CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE - GOLD STAR #2

"The Pop Feminism movement of the 2010s could be argued to have accomplished something for the average woman... though it wasn't much.

The Super-Pop Feminism movement of the 2040s, however, reintroduced militarism and violence to the mix, to great success!"

--A History of Feminism, 2054

***

It took an hour before we finally left, and I took none of the blame for that.

To be fair, it was kind of fun.

Lucy came down with leftovers, and then we sat around, ate, talked shit, and sampled some of Grasshopper's home cooking, which turned out to be pretty decent. Too much spice, though. I think Grasshopper's idea of a 'pinch' was more of a fistful. Her chili was spicy enough to make my eyes water.

I still ate two bowls of it though. I think it was real meat... or maybe some sort of substitute that tasted close enough.

Anyway. Post-eating required a bathroom break, and then, finally, we were ready to take off.

I slumped my way over to the control seat for the Bastion

 and then flicked things on. Everything came back green, so I closed the doors after making sure everyone was onboard, then carefully took off.

Princess snuck into the cabin then, eyes darting around to take in all the knobs and dials and little screens with cool looking readouts. "Whoa!" she said. "It's like the cockpit of a fighter jet."

"Mhm," I agreed. "Maybe more like one of those huge bombers? I think fighter jet pilots aren't able to just stand up when they want to."

"You know what all of these things mean?" she asked with a gesture to the dozens of dials and readouts around me.

"Enough so that we won't crash," I said.

I checked the radar, then jacked into the ship's cameras. Grasshopper's little flying ship was coming out of the parking garage behind us, but it was far faster and soon zipped by and started to fly big circles ahead.

I locked in the coords to a space a couple of kilometres away from the first hive location, then unbuckled myself. "Alright," I said to Princess. "Back-back. We're going to the loading bays to talk over the plan."

Probably should have done it over lunch, but here we were.

I gathered the others over as well. There was a neat projector tool in the mechanical bay that could display stuff for me. So I booted it up and drag-and-dropped a map of the New Montreal countryside into it.

"Alright everyone," I said.

"Everynyan," Nya repeated.

I chose to ignore her. We had Princess and Knight to one side, Shy near the back, and Nya to my other side. "First... is Grasshopper patched in?"

"I am!" Grasshopper's voice came over the ship's PA. "I can see and hear you! Go on!"

"Cool. So, what we have here is the location of every suspected Antithesis hive within fifteen kilometres of New Montreal. Some are a bit past that. This is data gathered from the army, some corps, satellite footage... people who like to speculate on the internet, and from eyewitness reports. Today, we're going to be hitting these points here."

I dragged another image onto the map, and it appeared in an instant. Dozens of dots, spread out around the city, with thin red lines linking them all together. "Wha! That's a lot of hives," Nya said.

"Is it?" I asked.

She nodded quickly. "The last time Nya saw this many was when there was a huge ocean incursion near Tokyo. That was years ago!"

"Well, once we're done today, we'll hopefully trim the numbers down a little. This mission has two goals... three goals."

"What are they?" Princess asked.

"First, destroying hives for the sake of destroying hives. If we let them grow out of control they'll become a problem later, and we have enough problems as it is."

Everyone nodded at that. It was a pretty sensible thing to do, and... kind of our job, as Samurai.

"Second, points. I'm not greedy for them or anything, but having more in the bank never hurts. That'll go double for Princess and Shy who are still getting basic gear going. Hell, I fit with that too. I've got this big brute of a ship, but I'm still gearing up in other spaces."

"Nya's fine for points," Nya said with a stretch. "Perfect as I am."

"Uh-huh," I said before ignoring her harder. "Our third mission is to send a message."

"Send a message?" Princess asked.

"Yup," I said. "Right now, we set the gangs and the corps on edge. Some probably don't care too much, mostly those that weren't doing anything bad enough to get samurai attention on them in the first place, but others... yeah, they'll be nervous. Feeling cornered."

"Kyūsō neko o kamu," Nya said.

"Sure, whatever," I replied. Wait, no, I was supposed to be ignoring her.

"It means that a cornered mouse will bite a cat," Grasshopper said. "And I think that it's a fitting idiom. We're, in a way, acting to threaten those gangs and corporations. Do you want to explain how this plan of yours will help?"

That last bit had the same delivery as a teacher encouraging someone to get to the damned point. If Grasshopper had a single mean bone in her, I might feel a little insulted. "Yeah. Point is, we're cornering them, and they don't like it. So today, we'll show them that we're not just... a cat that the mice can bite. We're a giant mecha cat with armoured plating and cannons and biting us would be stupid."

"Oh! I get it!" Princess said. "We'll look so scary and cool that they won't dare even try to hurt us?"

"Yeah, that," I said. Not the way I wanted to phrase it, but it got the point across. "That means... selective footage. The Bastion has high-def cameras. Most of us have augs. Does anyone have video-editing software?"

Shy slowly raised her hand.

"Cool. Do you mind?"

She shook her head. "I can," she said.

"Nice. So, we film what we're doing, maybe livestream it in parts, then let the world see us fucking some aliens up."

"Well done!" Grasshopper said. "Gold star! Now, how are we going to attack the hives?"

I leaned back. "That I don't know. I don't know what everyone here has in terms of weapons and such. If I was going about it solo, I'd drop bombs atop the hives first, soften them up, then see from there. But that's me. I don't know what kind of gear and such you guys are bringing to the table. So to speak."

Nya and Grasshopper, I was pretty sure, could clear out hives solo with no problems, and that was without big flying ships and ridiculous numbers of bombs.

"Teamwork!" Princess said. "We should work on our teamwork first. Then later on we can maybe split up a little?"

That made some amount of sense. "Okay. So fixed teams or do we rotate?"

"Rotating would be nice," Grasshopper said. "I'd love the opportunity to work with everyone here."

"Cool," I said. "Myalis, can you help me draw up a list? We'll do this... we're an uneven number unless Knight's cool with going without Princess a few times?"

"I don't mind at all," Knight said.

"Nice. In that case, let's split things up. Can you help, Myalis? Easier hives to the less experienced teams so that nothing goes pear-shaped, and from there we'll see how long it takes. If it's too long, we can do groups of three and three instead. More samurai should go faster, right?"

I wasn't sure if that was true or not. Was two teams of three faster than three teams of two? Or for that matter six solos? I supposed it really depended on how tough the aliens were once we got around to them.

Myalis did draw up a list, and I winced as I saw my name and Princess up at the top.

Well, at least there was something to say about getting the most painful one out of the way first. "The Bastion can drop teams off, then circle around for pickups. Just send me a text and I'll have it link back. Also, if you're in trouble, let the other teams know. The Bastion can be pretty quick and a quick bombing run can solve a lot of problems."

"I'll lend my own vehicle for the same task," Grasshopper said. "It won't have as much firepower, but it's quick and accurate!"

With all of that planned out and the details being looked over, I walked back to the front and checked in on the instrumentation in the cockpit. We were flying out of the city at that very moment, so we were only minutes away from our destination.

Time to grab the last of my gear, and then it was going to be feet-first into the nearest hive.

Hopefully this was all going to be worth it by the end of the day.

***

Legit sorry this chapter is so late. I had to go to the airport today and... yeah, 3 hours of Montreal traffic 3 Sorry!