RavensDagger - Stray Cat Strut - Volume Nine - Chapter Sixty-Five

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I asked about Gomorrah’s location, and received decent directions for the main command area. It was within Libre’s tower, which... yeah, that tracked.

The guy might have been punted from his command position, but that didn’t change the fact that his tower was a centralized location for information and such. It might take some reshuffling and maybe some changes in priorities and procedures, but there was no reason to get rid of the infrastructure entirely.

I dipped into the Bastion and scanned around for Shy, only to jump as I discovered her silently standing next to me. “Hey,” I said. “Uh, we’re gonna go meet with Gom, then see where we’re needed. I mean, you can run ahead, if you want?”

Shy looked down for a while, then shook her head. “No.”

“No?”

“No, I mean... I’ll come.”

“Alright,” I said softly, then I remembered that Shy was an entire grown-ass woman and I didn’t need to treat her the way I’d treat some of the softer kittens. She was chronically anxious or whatever, but she was old enough to like... pay taxes and shoot people, so I straightened my back and gestured with my head for her to follow.

The space around Libre’s tower was unsurprisingly busy as hell, with transports moving all over. It looked like there weren’t that many troopers around, mostly I was seeing logistics people, but they were moving with some speed, loading pallets onto the backs of trucks. 

Guns and ammo and the sorts of supplies you’d want nearby if you were fighting for your life. Nothing like food or water or housing materials. That was somewhat concerning, but I walked past it all and into the less-loud chaos within the command building. 

We rode the elevator up, having to squeeze in next to some office-worker sorts that looked more than a little nervous to be in the same ride as us, but this was hardly the time for special treatments.

The main command room was like a storm, one with a vortex in its centre around which everything circulated.

Gomorrah was there, leaning over a hologram-projecting table with that looked like a live-feed of the wall, with dozens of IFF markers all over it. Next to her was Juno, currently talking to someone while cradling a receiver next to his head, a small line-up for officers waiting for him, and then there were a few others that I only vaguely recognized. Commanding officers of one sort or another. There were a lot of markers and stripes on those uniforms, so I figured they were important enough.

“Cat,” Gomorrah said when she saw me. “And Shy, hello. Come, look at this.”

I walked over and stationed myself next to her, then scanned over the image of the wall. It wasn’t demolished, but it was certainly taking a beating. Tiny red dots representing sighted Antithesis were crawling all over it, and swarming over the top. 

Gomorrah gestured and the interior-facing walls blinked away, letting us see the inside of the wall like a giant museum cutaway. There were hundreds of blue markers within. Soldiers and militia, and they were fighting a slow retreat away from the tide. “We’re losing section 43 of the wall,” she said.

“What the fuck happened?” I asked.

“Early warning systems went off, but our response was too slow,” Juno said, then his attention was pulled away again. He went off, screaming at some intern-looking guy about how he didn’t care about some procedure or another.

I turned my attention back to Gomorrah for an explanation. “We saw them coming, and we didn’t do enough to stop it,” Gomorrah said. “They started with flyers. Carried on the backs of grounded units. So, they took off within a kilometre of the wall. Section 41, 43, and 45 had their mobile AA implements moved this morning... yesterday morning, I mean, to help with the north-eastern wall.”

“That was enough for them to get through?” I asked.

“It’s a reduction of about twenty-percent as far as the total number of anti-air guns in that one spot,” Gomorrah said. “Not that huge of a difference, but enough to give them an edge. They moved in, took out more with several suicide waves, and then they overwhelmed the artillery possitions on this side of the wall.” She pointed to a few concrete bunkers about a half-kilometre back.

“Fuck,” I said.

“Agreed. The rest is the usual, though they have been using that sticky-web technique on the walls again. They’re also using models that are filled with strong acids. Flyers that have been crashing into the wall and slowly melting through.”

“How fast?” Shy muttered.

Gomorrah glanced at her for a moment, then shrugged. “If you mean how fast does it act? Fast enough to be a problem. We have some aliens in the wall and are being forced to evacuate that area. That means fewer machine guns and emplacements firing out. It’s letting them form a staging area right up against the wall.”

“And we can’t do anything about it?” I asked.

“I was waiting for you to show up before doing something about it,” Gomorrah said. “Would you mind escorting me to the wall? About here?” She pointed to a space where there was a large set of ramps behind the wall. It looked like something that had been put there back when the wall was being built, or maybe they were for maintenance or something? 

“And then what?” I asked.

“I’ll burn everything on the other side,” Gomorrah said simply. “It’s just making it to that spot that’s difficult. Hedgehog is... here, holding back the larger flyers. Princess and her sister are closer to the city, taking care of stragglers.”

“Stragglers?” I asked. “How many made it past?”

“A lot more than anyone is happy with,” Gomorrah said. “But it could be worse. There are second and third lines of defence, but they were undermanned.”

“Because we shifted everyone around,” I muttered.

“Yes.”

I worked my jaw, then nodded. “We’ll go with you. Or, I will, at least. Shy?”

“Ah... no,” she said. “I’ll go clear some space. I’m better alone.” She licked her lips, then pointed to some of the tunnels on the map. “These, the red overlay means?” She let that hang leadingly.

“That we don’t know whether there are enemies there or not,” Gomorrah said. “Once we’ve slowed the push down, we’ll invest more in scouring the interior sections for Antithesis. The walls were designed to have bulkheads and multiple dead-end sections. They’re meant to waste the Antithesis’ time and be easy to clear out after a breach.”

“Didn’t know that,” I muttered. It made plenty of sense, of course. “Alright, I think we’ve wasted plenty of time already. Should we get going?”

I waved a goodbye to Juno, who was too busy keeping fires out to really notice. The guy looked like he was operating off of caffeine and adrenaline. Hell, a lot of the people here looked the same.

If the breach happened late into the night, and it was now an hour or two shy of sunrise, then some of these people had been going at it for nearly twenty-four hours. If this lasted long enough, then there would be sleep rotations and such put into place. So, these moments right now were the most dangerous. 

People were tired, running on fumes, and being pushed to the extreme. Information was probably sparse on the ground too. I bet the average soldier had no clue what was going on beyond their immediate surroundings, mostly because command didn’t seem to have a grip on things either.

“Let’s go,” I said. 

An awkward ride down later and we split from Shy. She bobbed her head to us, then ran off.

I saw her move towards one of the transports heading to the front... then she lingered around it, seemed to want to ask to get on, then when it started to leave she just watched.

She went invisible, and I was pretty sure she was walking to the fight. 

Whatever, she’d make it there eventually. If we had to rely on Shy’s presence to keep morale up, then we were fucked anyway. I had the BOBCAT walk out of the Bastion, making enough room for Gomorrah’s mech to stomp out and park itself nearby. 

The initial checks were done in a hurry. The little CAT drones scurrying off back onto the ship to take care of things there.

And then we were off, stomping ahead towards the wall. The BOBCAT’s four-legged gait gave it quite the advantage and I was soon running ahead. It was only a kilometre or two to section... fuck, what was it? 43? Whatever. It wasn’t too far. 

It wasn’t long before I could see the splash of sporadic gunfire. The way was just ahead. It was time to raise morale and fuck some aliens up.

***