Stray Cat Strut - Volume Nine - Chapter Thirteen (Patreon)

Chapter Thirteen

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Lemme know what you think of Libre here?

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It wasn’t long before Gomorrah arrived and with her the entire army.

There were some large gates around the city, but most of them were for smaller overland transports, so a larger set of doors further in had to be open to let the army column enter. It all happened rather efficiently, though. The militia cleared out, and soon enough Juno was chatting with the local commanders about... army stuff.

I wanted to stick my nose into that, but before I figured it might be best to have a talk with the local samurai. Notably, Libre. 

So, once Gomorrah was landed next to the base inside of the walls and the Bastion was properly relocated, I joined up with her and Crisis Mode, then started to head towards the centre of operations for the Quebec city militia and samurai.

That centre was a building on the far north-eastern end of the city. A narrow concrete tower, with no windows but with several walkways around its exterior and with a large AA-system on the roof. 

It was strange being in the walls. Quebec city proper was... a little smaller than the big walls around it would have suggested? There was a space, maybe some quarter-kilometre wide, that was basically free of buildings on the inside of the walls. Then the more suburban sprawl started. 

Crisis Mode and I, as well as Hedgehog and Gomorrah, took a bus towards the command centre from the military base. It was a little awkward to load into plain public transportation, but this one had been converted to military use. That just meant that everything comfortable had been stripped out of it and it was running 24/7. 

I didn’t like walking into Libre’s space without a few tons of armour at my back. I didn’t expect things to go wrong, but... yeah, a big part of me suspected that I would butt heads with Libre as soon as we met. 

Still, it wasn’t just me. Gomorrah was there, as well as Hedgehog. Shy and Princess were staying behind to help the army and get things set up, and a little to spy on the situation for us. If Libre wanted to turn this into a situation it would be him versus three, and I gave us good odds. 

We made it to the base of the tower, and Crisis Mode led us out. “Libre’s office is here,” she said. “I mostly stay at one of the barracks.”

“A barrack?” I asked. “Not like... somewhere comfortable? Or did you turn it into your own pad?”

She stared at me as if I’d grown a second head. “No? I mean, I have my own room. It’s an officer’s room.”

“Alright, I guess,” I said.

“Not everyone can casually take over an entire floor of a skyscraper,” Gomorrah said.

“I mean, no, but we can,” I replied. It was weird that Crisis Mode didn’t have her own place, but maybe she didn’t care much for it? I could see some folks not caring about where they laid their heads at night. “I’d at least get a hotel or something. A place with room service, you know?”

“That’s an idea, I suppose. It would make it harder to get to the wall in an emergency,” she said. 

“We have flying cars,” I pointed out. “Buy one with points, or take one from someone who looks rich and whose car you like the look of.”

“That’s theft, Stray Cat,” Hedgehog said.

I shrugged. “It’s borrowing without permission.”

There was an elevator within, one guarded by a pair of men with assault rifles and a bit of decent-looking gear. They wanted us to surrender our weapons, but I didn’t even have time to tell them to fuck off in an interesting way before Gomorrah’s flat ‘no,’ did the job. 

After a short ride up, the doors opened into a decently open room. To one side were computers and a dozen small offices with people working through paperwork. I wasn’t one to judge offices, but they looked busy, multiple ongoing calls and desks with dirty mugs and lots of black pockets under eyes. 

In the middle of the room was a holographic map. A massive one, set about a foot off the ground on a platform, with the wall poking up about ten centimetres up and the bigger megabuildings standing about knee-high, more or less. The map was large enough that a good deal of the surrounding countryside was visible.

Standing on that map was a man that had to be Libre. 

He looked... not like what I imagined. For one, he looked like he was short on sleep, with a bit of stubble on his cheeks and chin. His eyes were down, staring between the map and something I couldn’t see. He moved his hands, probably touching some interface, and hundreds of red dots appeared on the map and moved. The Antithesis? 

“Crisis Mode,” he said without looking up. “And our interlopers.”

“Interlopers?” I asked. “You must be Libre. I’ve heard nothing about you.”

He blinked, then looked up properly. “Hmm, that would be the blackout, which you sound upset about?”

“You think?” I asked before I crossed my arms.

He stared for a moment longer, then scanned over Gomorrah and Hedgehog. “Miss Gomorrah, I believe you have large-scale fire-based equipment, yes? You mostly used that in the media records I have.”

“That’s accurate,” Gomorrah said.

Libre nodded, then gestured a few more times. The map shifted to the northern end of the city, then three long blue lines appeared. “Could you establish three lines of fire along this area? They would need to last approximately sixteen hours and preferably be hot enough to damage soft tissue up to half a metre underground.”

I shook my head. “Are we skipping all of the chit-chat and accusations and shit?” I asked.

“Do you want to play that game?” he asked. “I have a few accusations of my own, if that’s the case.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

“Like not informing me of your arrival. You’ve set back a few plans. Not disastrously, but... more than I would have liked. See?” He gestured and the map shifted it replayed the fight along the north-western bit of the wall, then our arrival with big blue circles where rockets had hit.

“You’re pissed that we came to save your militia’s asses?” I asked.

“They were in minimal danger,” he said.

“I saw a few dead,” I shot back. “Crisis Mode, you’re a medic of some flavour. How many died?”

“I... don’t know? Three, maybe four?”

I gestured. 

Libre didn’t seem to understand and merely stared blankly. “As tripe and cruel as it sounds, so many loses are within expectations,” he said.

“What the fuck?” I asked.

He shifted back, then sighed and ran his hand through his hair. Then the map shifted back to a larger, more zoomed-out view. “What I have to work with here is an understaffed and severely underfunded force, with a large wall to defend at all times. A single break-through would cost us hundreds of lives. If the Antithesis make it to the city, we don’t have full clean-up crews, and that’s assuming we can contain them post-break.”

“Okay,” I said. “And you’re throwing lives away for that?”

“No. I’m using them to their full potential,” he said. “I don’t waste resources lightly. The Antithesis and I are playing a game here.”

“A game?” Hedgehog asked.

“Yes. One they will win,” he replied. “But they’re playing for keeps, and I’m playing for time. Time which is usually on their side. However, there are historical precedents. The Toskent, Uzbekistan defence, and more importantly the Devestrians’ long-running planetary siege.”

“The who?” I asked. Uzbekistan was... some place in Europe, probably. The other I had no clue about.

“The Devestrians are a Protectorate affiliated species. Some nine thousand years ago, Earth-time, one of the two habitable planets in their home system, was invaded by the Antithesis. Their homes tend to be... roofed domes? The atmosphere is complicated. In any case, it mattered not to the Antitheis. Seeing as they had limited defensive capabilities, the Devestrians’ created a system for prolonging Antithesis sieges that has repeatedly functioned--for limited times--on nineteen other worlds.”

Libre gestured at the map, and then there were waves of red dots by the thousands, moving in patterns that I could tell were patterns but that I couldn’t quite make sense of.

“The Antithesis are smarter than you or I, but they are operating under the correct assumption that they can come and eat their fill of the city’s citizens whenever they please. They are opportunity hunters, when it pleases them. They don’t anger, they don’t seek revenge. With that in consideration, the best you can do is to eliminate them in a decisive way. I don’t have the capability to do so.” He smiled, tired, but happy. “And now maybe we do.”

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