TBoB - Book 8 - Chapter 18 - Therapy?  (Patreon)

As soon as the Kodiak landed in the hangar, I slammed the lower ramp button and jumped out onto the half-lowered platform. It wasn’t that I had somewhere to go, or something important to do, I was just feeling a little bit antsy whenever I just had to sit around for any length of time.

I don’t know if it was my workaholic tendencies, or the fact that this area had been swarming with Antithesis the last time I was here, or that I’d in near-constant battle for the last month. Maybe a combination of all three; All I knew was that I wanted to move. 

Planting my foot firmly on the edge of the platform, I launched myself into the busy hangar. It was a good thing that I had access to the Command network, because it I hadn’t there was a good chance I would have landed directly on either the squad of beavers busy trying to get a Kodiak’s dead hover engines back online, or the squad of bears rushing to their own transport. Because I did, I managed to lightly land directly in the middle of the two-foot gap between the two groups and gracefully pivot towards the access stairs that led up to the residential area.

“Hey boss, wait for… oof!” Dusty cried.

I turned just in time to see him scrambling up the half-lowered ramp, trying to follow my exit, only to slip halfway up and tumble off the side of the platform. Even though I knew he was probably fine, the loud, echoing clang that rang out when he landed headfirst on the floor still made me flinch.

“Are you okay? You took quite the fall there,” I asked, doubling back so I could help him up.

“Who me?” Dusty replied, jumping to his feet. “Absolutely fine! Didn’t even feel it. We bears are made of stern stuff you know. Look at Bob, he jumps out of these things while they’re flying you know.”“I know, but he has a slightly tougher frame than you,” I said. “And he usually lands on his feet.”“Bah! I may not be quite as tough as him, but I can easily shrug off a two or three story fall,” Dusty said, dusting himself off. “So don’t worry about me.”“Alright… Just be careful in the future, and don’t feel like you have to follow me when I pull shit like that. You can follow at your own pace, it’s not like I’m going to run off somewhere,” I told him.

“You say that, but you have a history of running off, and doing the most insanely unsafe things possible,” Dusty said.

“Well, yeah, but I mean I’m not going to do it now. We’re on the carrier, and not in combat right now,” I replied.

Dusty’s eyes narrowed. “Although I’m glad you’re aware of your faults, saying stuff like that does not fill me with confidence.”“It’s not supposed to,” I replied. “I’m just being honest with you… which I guess means I’m being honest with some aspect of myself?” I paused for a moment before reaching up and rubbing my chin. “I wonder if this counts as therapy?”“Don’t even joke about that. You, and therefore I, are the absolute last people that should be giving therapy advice. Somehow, despite everyone’s best efforts, you still don’t understand how devastating it is to everyone every time you taunt murphy,” the bear grumbled.

“I don’t know why that should be relevant,” I said.

“And that’s exactly why you shouldn’t be giving advice, even to yourself,” Dusty muttered.

“Does this count as self deprivation?” I muttered, before glancing down at the bear and smirking. He frowned and opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, I threw my hands up. “I’m kidding!.. I think.”

“Perhaps we should head up to the bridge before you come up with another terrible joke or idea,” Dusty sighed. 

“Hey! They weren’t that bad,” I grumbled. 

“Yes they were,” Dusty replied, before turning on his heel and walking away.

“I guess I’m my own worst critic,” I muttered, drawing a glare from Dusty.

“Give it a rest already!”“Sorry! I couldn’t resist,” I said, jogging up to him and throwing my arm around his shoulder. “I’ll stop now. I promise.”He muttered something that sounded like it might have been a string of obscenities under his breath as we rounded the nearest Kodiak and headed towards the access stairs, which brought a small smile to my face. A bear after my own heart.

We made it about halfway there when one of the heavy-lifter transports slid into the hangar and turned down the narrow maintenance corridor. I paused, and watched as the boxy vehicle trudged forward. 

The heavy-lifters should have been carrying all the bear-acade panels to the opposite side of the hangar for storage, so I wasn’t sure what this one was doing. That was, until I got a good look at the panel hanging underneath the thing. 

It looked fine from a distance, but as the lifter got closer I could see that the armor plating had buckled in several places. It almost looked like someone had taken a massive wrecking ball and smashed it against the wall several dozen times. 

“Ugh… I didn’t realize how much damage our defense had taken during the seige,” I grumbled. “How many panels do you think are like that?” I asked, gesturing towards the lifter.

Dusty squinted at the panel. “Like what? Damaged or unsalvagable?” he asked. “Because if you’re asking how many are damaged the short answer is: All of them. We faced an even fiercer offensive here than we did during the global incursion. Thankfully, I think Deadbeat and Bandit have only identified a handful of panels that are complete write offs. You know, beyond the ones that melted. From the analysis that those two have uploaded to the network I’d say about twenty percent have twisted frames, shattered supports, or snapped anchors.”“That many?” I asked incrediously.

“What do you mean ‘that many’?” Dusty replied, shooting me a strange look. “Do you remember the shit that the tender threw against us? Half of the new models it threw at us could probably have smashed straight through the perimeter wall of most megacities, and crushed half the populous before someone stopped them. One of them even put Bob out of commission, remember? We’re lucky that the wall held up as well as it did.”

“Well… when you put it that way…” I muttered. “I’m so used to us walking away from a fight with next to no damage, and since we only suffered a handful of major breached I didn’t realize just how fucked up the walls had gotten. I mean, it’s not really a big deal, we can just rebuild the damaged sections, but I didn’t expect the very first panel we retrieved to be trashed that badly.”“Hey, better the wall section than our forces. Replacing a squad of bears takes longer than rebuilding a wall, even if it can be done in a smaller machine,” Dusty replied. “Thankfully the walls took the brunt of our damage, and kept our losses down.”“They kept our losses down here…” I muttered quietly to myself. 

“Hey! You only have yourself to blame for all the units that were lost in the pacific,” Dusty declared. “Seriously, I don’t know what you were thinking, dropping ground troops into the middle of the ocean and expecting them to be even a tenth as effective as they are on solid ground. At least you left most of our forces behind to secure Great Falls when you went out there. I can’t imagine what kind of shape we’d be in if you’d taken, and lost, more troops.”“I admit, I may not have handled the situation out there as well as I could have,” I grumbled. “But I stand-by my decision of deploying, and loosing, all those troops. It sucks, but we can always rebuild the bears we lost out there. What we can’t do is resurrect the samurai who lost their lives during that shit show. If sacrificing all those bears saved even a single life, it was worth it.”“And if they didn’t?” Dusty asked.

“They did, and I refuse to believe otherwise,” I growled. 

The heavylifter arrived next to the manufacturing area access doors just a couple seconds before Dusty and I arrived at the stairs. The massive clamps under it clacked open, dropping the panel from several feet off the ground causing the massive wall the clang to the ground and begin to tilt over.

Before it could a massive bot came rushing out, caught the panel with the oversized servo arms popping out of the backpack melded to it’s back, and began dragging the damaged wall back for recycling.

I paused, and stared for a minute. The bot was obviously based upon a badger chassis, but if had buck-teeth and a wide flat tail. I was about 95% sure that I hadn’t bought the blueprints for anything like that, nor had I been alerted of any design changes.

“Something wrong boss?” Dusty asked.

“Just give me a minute,” I replied, adjusting my trajectory slightly so I could follow the strange bot. “I need to check something.”