Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Four - Big Cat Attack

Chapter Four - Big Cat Attack

"A "milk run" was an action that was deemed simple to undertake. The expression coming from the routes taken by milk-deliveries in the past.

Now, with Milk being such a luxury commodity, the expression has faded to irrelevance."

--Oxford Online Dictionary, Premium Definitions, 2039

***

"Hey, there's the wall!" Crackshot said. He pointed ahead of him with his free hand, then refocused on plugging alien heads with his bolt-action.

I fired the last few rounds in my gun into the crowd ahead of us, then stood a little taller while reloading. He was right, over the sea of aliens was a wall. It was some three or so metres tall, made of naked cement with iron girders at the back, and with plenty of holes blown through it. Some sections had collapsed inwards, probably kicked in by the aliens currently pouring into the city.

"Nice! Alright, let's push these fucks all the way back to the wall, then we can plug it up!" I shouted over all the noise.

We were the ones making that noise, mostly. Model threes and the other lower-tier models were usually pretty silent. No roaring or screaming. The only noise they made was when they charged around and even that was their weird feet thumping the ground.

Right now, the entire eastern front of our operation was squeezing in, following the edge of the outer walls of Saint-Jrome. The city was more or less oval-shaped, so we were just now reaching the end of it.

Highway 117 came swooping down ahead, into a line of toll booths at ground level. We were going to have to block those out too, but for now, what was important was plugging the gap in the wall.

I glanced over my shoulder real quick while fitting a new magazine into my Laser Pointer. Knight was hanging back a bit. She had an assault rifle in hand, given to her by one of the soldiers forming a barricade behind us.

Sure, she wanted to kill things with her sword more than anything, but there was a point where that wasn't as realistic. With half the fifth battalion gathering up in one big line, supported by armoured cars and all, the amount of criss-crossing fire into the horde was way too high for one girl to be standing in their way.

So, Knight was given a gun and was plinking away at the carpet of aliens.

I finished reloading and turned my attention back to the front. This area was mostly occupied by apartment blocks. Not the megabuildings I was used to back home, but something similar in design ethos. They were big all-white squares, maybe five stories tall, with a recessed entrance on the ground level. It was gonna be a bitch and a half checking each one for any alien that snuck off, but that would be a problem for later.

I fired a few bursts into the aliens ahead and grinned as those I hit flopped bonelessly a dozen metres away. We were concentrating enough fire on them now that there was no way they'd be making it in, at least, as long as ammo held up and they didn't pull anything funny.

"Myalis, garrots," I said as I extended a hand to the side.

Here you go.

A grenade landed in my hand and I casually flicked its spoon off before tossing it as far ahead as I could. It burst into action near an intersection ahead, sending sliced bits of alien flying every which way.

I called for a few more and tossed them out over the heads of the aliens out here. It created a few spots where the horde was shredded apart. The best bit was that with the aliens pushing themselves forwards, they were being pressed into the field of those grenades without time to move around them.

I laughed as I opened fire again. The front of the hoard was thinning out. Soon, we'd be able to move up another block, and then it was one more until we hit the killzone between the wall and the city.

A click in my ear and a flash on my augs alerted me to an incoming message, this one over the command channel. "Stray Cat here," I said as I clicked into it.

"Ma'am," said Lieutenant Colonel Juno. "I'm with Lieutenant Colonel Britannica, of the Twenty-Second armoured. He's broken through the outside of the city and is ready to spread out to either side."

I frowned, then put it together in my head. The armoured division had gone ahead way at the start of the fight, they had Tankette with them, and a fuckload of normal tanks. They were supposed to reach the end of the city and plug it up for us. "Right, I'm surprised you haven't covered the other side of the wall already," I said as I tossed an empty mag aside and called up another.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"Hrmm," a new voice said. My augs labelled it as the voice of Lieutenant Colonel Britannica. "We met more resistance than we expected. We're ready to play the anvil to your hammer."

"Alright. We'll charge up to the wall, then," I said. With the armoured battalion on the other side, that should stop any more aliens from coming in, and then we'd just have to double back and send search teams through the city to look for any remaining pockets of resistance. "How's it looking on the other side?"

"Alien numbers are higher than expected, but not outside of the bounds of what we can handle," Britannica said gruffly. "We're tracing the direction of incoming xenos to pin down the location of their hives."

Hives, plural. Great, we were going to have to take care of that sooner rather than later. "Okay. Hang tight, we'll be at the wall in ten minutes or so. How's the west flank?"

"Samurai Gomorrah has just arrived at the wall there. The other half of the Fifth battalion is setting up defensive measures now," Juno said.

Damn, Gomorrah had gotten ahead of me. Probably that little break we took. Or maybe we were just moving slower. "Got it. We'll be moving up now. Stray Cat, out!"

Crackshot looked my way. "How're things going?" he asked.

"We're too slow," I replied. "Do you mind if I bring in the heavy shit? We need to speed things up a little."

Crackshot shrugged. "Go ahead," he said.

By heavy shit, I of course meant my mecha. The giant cat mech thumped its way to the front, then lunged over the row of soldiers walking behind us to land with an earth-shaking crunch next to me. I pointed ahead at the aliens still rushing our way. It wasn't necessary to point, but it felt cooler. "Kill them," I instructed.

The mech's front lowered, then its shoulders unfolded, two multi-barrelled guns slipping out from enclosures within the mecha before they pointed ahead. Then they both let out ungodly brrts. Two streams of lead flowed out ahead, criss-crossing and spreading out so that they covered the entire wave of aliens.

What they left behind were hole-riddled corpses, some of them burst apart from the shots they'd taken.

I didn't even need to pull out the big guns for this kind of small fry.

"Well, shit, we could have done that sooner," Crackshot said.

"Yeah, but I want you to get some kills, and Knight too," I said.

Sure, I had a few ways of wiping out a horde this small without too much trouble on my own. Hell, I had bombs for days. If I didn't care about collateral I could turn this end of the city into a series of creative craters, but that wouldn't be fair for the newbies.

They needed a chance to practice their shit and get some early points too.

I suspected that I'd been given the same chance too, way back when I started a few weeks ago.

Deus Ex had been around, so had a few other higher-tiered samurai. They could have probably wiped the floor with any number of aliens, but I suspected that they were leaving little 'bubbles' of untouched space around any new samurai, giving us a chance to get some early levels in.

I was all for doing the same, especially if it meant less work for me. "Alright, let's move up!" I called out to the troops behind me.

I didn't expect to get a cheer in response, or see some hundred-odd soldiers start charging the aliens, but I wasn't about to complain. I ran along ahead of them, the mech charging out ahead and crushing whatever was left underfoot.

The wall came up soon enough, and the entrance there was jam-packed with aliens crawling over each other to get in though a few fallen sections. I don't think they were expecting a counter-charge, but antithesis brains being what they were, their only response to seeing an aggressive attack was to attack right back.

Fortunately, we had guns.

I flicked on the command channel again as I slowed down. There were sergeants trying to get things back in order while some soldiers were repeatedly shooting into corpses or stabbing others with bayonets. "Hey, Lieutenant Colonel Juno? Yeah, we've made it," I said.

***

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