TBoB - Book 7 - Chapter 75 - Aftermath (Patreon)

“You look like shit,” Macy said as she sank down and sat cross-legged on a shattered piece of coral behind me.

“Yeah, well… I did almost lose my arm, again, due to what was only a glancing blow. Plus I took a fucking armour-piercing spike full of flesh-eating fungus to the gut,” I said, putting my hand over my freshly healed abdomen. “I may be tough, but I can’t just walk shit like that off.”“Wait, those spikes were full of flesh-eating fungus? Nasty,” Macy said, her face scrunching up in disgust. “It’s a good thing you identified it before it caused a lot of damage.”“I can’t take any of the credit; it’s all thanks to the fact that Nyx decided to add a medical scanner to the medical unit they bought to remove the spike,” I said. “I’m actually lucky that I have decent bionics, or the fucking thing would have killed me before I even knew it was there.”

“We’re lucky it didn’t unleash that shit during the fight. I can’t imagine how much damage something like that could cause,” Mako said.

“Well, I can. It was using something similar in Great Falls to harvest and recover biomass during the battle. Nasty stuff; we were barely able to keep it at bay,” I muttered. “Maybe the Tender was trying to modify it to be aquatic, couldn’t do it, and turned into a weapon or something. Who knows? I’m just lucky that Nyx was able to identify it quick enough to develop a countermeasure.”

I pushed myself to my feet. Well, I tried to anyway. Between my slow, clumsy movement and the gut full of writhing nanites, I couldn’t quite manage to get to my feet in a single motion, and had to drop into a drop into an awkward crouch before I could manage it.

When I turned, I saw that Macy had an amused look on her face, but didn’t say anything.

“Did you manage to disable the hive already?” I asked, glancing over at the wrecked reef. “I kind of expected it to take you longer to fight to the core.”“I didn’t have to. Once I breached the tunnels, with the help of Depthcharge and your moose, the Antithesis just… stopped coming,” Macy replied. “It turns the Anttihesis didn’t have infinite biomass available down there; The Tender forced the hive to completely burn itself out, making all those Models. It canabalised itself until there wasn’t anything left but a withered birthing chamber. I was able to take out what’s left with a few well-placed grenades. Depthcharge is still down there, sweeping the area, looking for any remnants.”

She looked around for a second. “By the way… where’s Sharron? I thought she was cleaning up the dregs out here.”

“She was, but when things started to calm down, and I managed to get my wounds taken care of, she went topside to see what was going on with the Retribution,” I said. “Both Hel and my bears are up there, and we hadn’t received an update for a while, so Sharron thought she should go take a quick look. I assume the Retribution fell foul of some variation of the chaff we’ve been dealing with. I have no idea why that would have prevented it from firing, though.”

“So were you heading up to take a look? You know it’s going to be hard to walk up there; it would be easier to swim,” Macy joked.

“Yeah, sure, after the day I’ve had I’ll just strip all my armour off, surface, and immediately suffer the.. What was it called? The bends? My insides are already writhing due to the war between the nanites and fungus as it is.” I grumbled. “No, I’ve been chasing the Gene Tender for so long that I wanted to take a look at it. Did you two destroy it already?”

“Yeah. After seeing everything it cooked up, and knowing what it put everyone through over the last week, do you think we’d really keep that thing around? Who knows what it was capable of, even with half its body missing. For all that we know, it might have had regeneration or something,” Macy exclaimed. “I’m sure that, in the right hands, we might have learned something to help us fight the Antithesis, but we didn’t think it was worth the risk.”“Fuck studying it, I wanted to taxidermy the fucking thing and use it as a punching bag,” I growled. 

“Well, although I would have loved to see that, it still wouldn’t be worth the risk,” Macy replied. 

“I know, I know…” I muttered. “You manage to get through to the rest of the fleet yet?”

“Intermittantly. Even after letting the purifier run for a while, there’s still too much gunk to get a stable signal. I sent up a drone to relay our situation before heading into the hive, but I haven’t picked up a reply yet,” Mako replied. “I was thinking about heading topside to see if I connect to anyone.”“Well, it’s cleared up enough for me to access my command network, which is good because I’m sure that fucking thing would have sqewered me if I hadn’t,” I muttered. “If you want, I could route the comms through that and save you a trip.”

“I’d appreciate it,” Macy replied.

I sent her a quick comm request, then began using one of the bears up on the surface as a comm repeater in order to connect us both to the comm network.

“Anyone reading? Did I set this fucking thing up properly?” I asked when I didn’t immediately hear any activity in the room. 

“Teddy? Shit. Shannon filled us in on what happened down there, you okay?” Alise asked.

“I’m fine, I lost my future punching bag though,” I muttered. 

“What are you talking about?” Claire immediately replied.

“Nevermind,” I grumbled. “I’m fine. We ran into some… difficulties, but we managed to take down both the Gene Tender and the hive it was using as a hiding place.”“What about the Samurai who were down below when that leviathan detonated? You find any of them,” Claire asked.

“Uhhhhh… We found one of them. I’m going to be honest: so much has happened since I came down here that I kind of forgot why I was down here in the first place,” I admitted. 

“Well, I’m still alive,” Macy said, helping me out. “And so is Depthcharge. Kingfisher, Sea Star, and DJ Blackfin are dead. One of the mutant Antithesis strains down here got to them, then used their bodies like puppets. It wasn’t a pretty sight.”

“Oh… shit,” Alise muttered. “What about everyone else?”“We haven’t seen them,” I said. “The interference down here is even worse than it was on the surface, and in addition to that, there’s some sort of oily goo that’s blocking our vision. The Antithesis took out my entire recon team after I sent them out to search, and then the ambush happened, so we haven’t really had a chance to do a through search.”“Shit,” Claire hissed. “Well, with both the Gene Tender and the Hive off the table we should be able to send some people down to search. The Destiny is in position just outside the combat zone, so Alise and I can lead the charge if need be.”

“Speaking of ships, what’s going on with the Retribution? I never thought it would be taken down by a handful of smaller Antithesis,” I said.

“Well, I wouldn’t say taken down, more like temporarily disabled,” Alise said. “Seems like there were a couple customized Antithesis models mixed into the flock of Model ones that tried to overrun the ship, and they detonated inside the cannons, plugging them with some sort of quick-drying goo. I’m guessing it has a lot of the same properties as the chaff down below, because we lost communications with Warspite shortly after the first batch detonated.”“Smart, because while the Retribution can withstand an unbelievable amount of punishment, if the shells in its main cannons detonated prematurely, it would be more than enough to cause serious damage,” Claire muttered. “It’s fine though. Even with the Retribution's main guns disabled, that ship is filled with defensive tech, inside and out. It would take an army to storm its corridors.”

“While I’d like to take your word for it, I still feel better knowing that Sharron and my bears are storming the corridors and clearing out whatever got inside,” I said. “So besides the Retribution, has the situation stablized topside?”“Yup. Hel used her ice to plug any holes in the damaged ships, which gave us a chance to arrive and stabilize them. We’ve actually had it pretty easy compared to you; the only thing we’ve had to deal with since you went below is the occasional rogue Model One,” Alise said.

“Lucky. I cannot wait to get back up there,” I muttered. “I’ve realized that water and I don’t mix. I’ll wait until you two come down, then head topside again. I’ve got a few things I need to take care of.”“Anything we can help with?” Alise asked.

I glanced back towards the purifier, where Heavy’s body was still lying. “Maybe later. I need to see how bad the damage is,” I said. “I just hope it’s not to late.”