TBoB - Book 8 - Chapter 7 - Great Falls (Patreon)

Hey everyone. Just wanted to drop a quick note to say: Sorry about Friday. I wish I had a good reason for skipping out on posts, but the truth is I just couldn't get anything done, no matter how hard I tried. It wasn't burn out, it was just... a bad brain day I guess. At least I'm back on schedule. Hope you enjoy today's chapter.“Bear Force One you are now free to approach. We ask that both you maintain a distance of five kilometers from the city, and your support vehicles go around the city instead of through it as much as possible to avoid cluttering the skies over the town. Thank you for your cooperation,” a pleasant yet vaguely mechanical voice declared over the bridge speakers.

“Did Great Falls have a traffic control system the last time we were here?” I asked. “If there was I may have completely ignored it last time we were here.”

“It wasn’t,” Spooky said, not taking his eyes of the bridge window. “One of the other samurai must have put one in after everyone converged on the hive. There were over thirty samurai involved in maintaining the perimeter while we were sieging the hive.”“That many?” I exclaimed. “I knew there had to be a few in order to keep that fungus under control, but thirty? That’s more than there are in most megacities.”

“It was a big job, and not everyone had the equivalent to a multinational PMC at their beck and call,” Dusty said. “It takes a lot of people to monitor and clear such a huge perimeter. What was is at the start? A hundred kilometers?”

“Maybe in some parts,” Spooky replied. “I don’t think it was consistent, it really depended on when each samurai arrived and how far the fungus managed to progress in their local area.”“I’m just glad that Wild managed to come up with a reliable countermeasure to the fungus, otherwise our troops would still be out there burning that fucking shit back,” Dusty grunted.

“So Wild did manage to find a solution to the phage after I left, eh?” I said.

“Yeah, well, remember how fast that shit was adapting to all her countermeasures, and how often she had to create new versions of her plants don’t you? Turns out that once the Gene Tender left those adaptations all but stopped. We didn’t even notice for the first couple hours, and by that time Wild had already created a couple new iterations of her plants, and they just destroyed the remaining phage,” Dusty explained. “We barely had to do any cleanup. Of the Phage, the tunnels are a completely different.”“How many bears are still active? Still supporting the samurai around the area?” I asked.

“Not many, less than two dozen,” Dusty replied. “More than half of those are badgers, cleaning up compromised tunnels.”I glanced back at the bear. “Are there any tunnels that weren’t compromised in the area?” I asked.

“Sure… the ones we dug ourselves,” he replied. “All thirty feet of them.”“Great,” I snorted, “That must have saved everyone a good thirty seconds of cleanup time.”“Hey, a second saved!” Dusty replied cheekily. “So, are you planning to pull everyone back at once or…”“No, we can leave a handful of troops with dedicated transports to help the locals and other samurai,” I said. “I’m more concerned with retrieving the stuff we can’t retrieve remotely, like the Bear-a-cades, and the Mauler. Since we only have two heavy-lifter rigs on board, it’ll probably take a couple days to get all that stuff on board and I’ll use that time to talk to the other samurai, see how everything is going and ask what sort of forces they want me to leave behind.” I paused for a moment and turned to Spooky. “Do we even know how many samurai are still in the area?”

Spooky cocked his head to the side. “According to the comms chatter? Between five and fifteen,” he said. “You know, you could easily find that information by connecting to the command network.”“Yeah, probably,” I said with a shrug. “However I think I might have pushed my implant a little too far during that last fight with the Gene Tender; I’ve been having headaches whenever I use it lately, so I haven’t been using it that often.” 

Both bears turned and stared at me. “You burned out your brain!?!?” Dusty exclaimed.

“No… Well, probably not, I have to take a lot of meds to keep my arm intact. I expect the nanites would have fixed any brain damage I received. Pretty sure it’s just the implant,” I said, tapping the side of my head. 

“You probably should get that looked at sooner, rather than later,” Spooky growled. “It’s probably dangerous having a malfunctioing implant inside your head.” “That’s probably true,” I admitted. “I really should have made it a bigger priority, but since it still works and I can get by without using it, I just haven’t gotten around to replacing it.”“Do it right after leaving here!” Spooky exclaimed. “No, scratch that, do it now!”

“I’ll do it after I leave,” I said. “I have a couple other upgrades and purchases I want to talk to Nyx about, and I might as well do it all at once.”“Don’t forget,” Spooky grumbled. “If you don’t, I’ll stick Deadbeat on you, and you know that she’ll never let you hear the end of it.”“I know, I know,” I said. “She’s been spending too much time with Jane.”

“I think it’s more that she’s absorbed the parts of your personality that has been molded by your exposure to Jane over the years,” Dusty said. 

I grimaced. “That’s probably more true than I’d like to admit,” I muttered, before turning back towards the massive bridge window. 

Although most of the view was obscured by the forward section of the ship, I could just barely make out the lights from Great Falls off to the port side of the ship. 

“Did the civilians return to the town already?” I asked. “Even though this is still an active combat zone?” 

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it active,” Dusty said. “ There’s cleanup going on, but by the time I left to help with the hunt actually engagements with the Antithesis were rare, and there were more than enough samurai around to deal with them long before they became a threat. From what I understand most of the people wanted to come back as quickly as possible so they could make some money. Pay off their debts to the company.”“Yeah, I’m sure the people were super eager to come back, and not pressured at all, so they could pay off their debts,” I grumbled. “I hope the corp wasn’t stupid enough to send the same overseer back after they ran off without setting off the incursion warning alarms.”“Dunno,” Dusty replied, scratching his muzzle. “I know that Mudflap went to ‘discuss’ a few things with the corporate representatives when they first arrived back in town, but I wasn’t there. All I know is, there weren’t any explosions, or people thrown through windows while they were talking.”

“Ah, so the corp was a lot more reasonable than most,” I said, before pausing. “Either that or Mud was out of missiles at the time.”

“I can’t tell if that was joke, or if you were serious,” Dusty muttered.

“I guess it would probably be hard to tell since some samurai are known to do shit like that, while others aren’t. I’ll be honest, I meant it as a joke, but after getting to know Mud, I could see him blowing up someone that pissed him off,” I said. “Has anyone tried to contact us yet?”

“Not yet,” Spooky replied. “Although I expect that’ll change once we get closer, and people notice our arrival.”“Well, alert me when those messages come in,” I said, turning away from the window. “I’m going to quickly take care of the implant problem, and maybe make a couple other purchases. Get the admin out of the way before I get busy again.”“And prevent your brain from burning out,” Spooky grunted.

“That too,” I chuckled nervously as I walked away. When I was a couple feet away I muttered under my breath. “Nyx, it’s time for us to talk.”