Stray Cat Strut Chapter Sixty-Eight - Darkness

Chapter Sixty-Eight - Darkness

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***

The darkness was... strange.

No, alright, it was normal darkness. Just a lack of light from above. The thing is, I could still see perfectly well. My cybernetic cat eye was pretty good about low-light, and it was ssing with my head that my at eye wasnt.

Strangely enough, the ears helped see more.

I hadnt noticed how accustod Id gotten to my new ears, I guess. They were supposed to have so sort of sonar to them, and I had noticed that I could see a sort of ntal image of things that were around a corner, but it was all very subtle. A sort of impression that faded into the background when I wasnt paying attention. Sothing about the system had to be there to prevent it all from disorientating .

Now, in the deepening darkness of the mines, that system ca into play again. Or it would be more accurate to say that I noticed it more. I couldnt see into the deeper darkness, but I could sense what was there anyway.

Freaky.

Kinda cool though.

My grapple system lowered down tre by tre until finally my foot touched the ground. Id left Whisper in the Fury, figuring that a long-ranged, low-rate-of-fire weapon like that wouldnt be of much use in a mine. Looking around, I had the impression it was the right choice.

The mont I touched down, I deposited the two cha cats I was holding. The suckers were pretty heavy, but at least they had little handles on them. The cha deployed while I looked around.

There were big chunks of rock and stone all over, fallen pieces from whatever had caused the hole above, I figured, but the walls themselves were smooth, as if soone had polished them.

I unclipped myself from the grapples harness, then used an aug-command to send the whole thing wheeling back up.

Reaching into my coat, I pulled out my Trench Maker, then tugged up the hood on my cloak. The cat-ears on my helt actually served to keep the cloak in place, which was handy.

Then with a flick of a switch, I turned on the cloak and faded away. My coats invisibility ca on too, and with the two combined, I figured I was nearly entirely covered. My head from any direction but straight ahead, my legs from the sa. Only the bottom of my boots and maybe my hands and guns when I stuck them out would be visible. That was pretty decent, I figured.

Myalis, I muttered. Remind to get a stealthy gun.

Gladly.

My Trench Maker was fun, but it was the loud kind of fun. Ill need so silent grenades too.

I see three options there. Either chemical grenades, that spread toxins or solutions to break apart Antithesis, or Flesh lters. The nanites are silent. Both options are fairly slow-acting.

And the third option? I asked.

Black hole bombs, by dint of being what they are, do not let any sound escape.

Huh, I said. Thats sothing. I didnt have the points for any gear like that just then, which was really starting to get annoying. I liked being able to buy my way out of trouble. Lets wait for Gomorrah to arrive, then we can look into farming for points.

Wonderful!

Gomorrahs timing was on-point. I heard the faint whine of the grapple system from above, and my favourite nun ca sliding down like a spider on the end of a thread. She touched down and swung her fla-thrower around in an arc, the gun tucked under her armpit. Her other hand held onto the handle on the back of one of my cha cats. Cat?

Hey, I said while bringing a hand out from under my cloak to wave.

Didnt see you there, she said. Honestly, I cant see much. Are we safe?

Safe-ish? I tried. I couldnt see any Antithesis, but I hadnt been looking all that hard. The ground was a dusty ss, and thanks to that, it wasnt hard to see the trails left behind. Paw-prints, or the nearest thing to paws that the aliens had, other spots where things had dragged across the ground.

Gomorrah removed her mask, then pulled sothing out from within it. The insides? A box materialized by her feet, and she knelt down, opened it, and replaced the insides of her mask with a new insert.

Whats that? I asked

Night vision, she said. Or dark vision? Im not entirely sure of the chanics. It lets see in low-light. And I wont be blinded by sudden changes in brightness.

Neat, I said. Why not just get a whole new mask?

I have modular gear, she said. Most of its covered by my habit.

Interesting. It only made sense that shed have her own way of doing things. Probably less wasteful than my own, actually.

That way, I think, she said, pointing off to one side.

Ill go ahead, I said. We need so way for you to know where I am.

My friendly fire does tend to be a bit literal, she said.

With your permission, I can send microsecond updates on your relative location to Gomorrah, and with the assistance of Atyacus she will know where you are at all tis.

Sounds fair, I muttered. Gomorrah, Myalis is sending Atyacus my location information. No need to try and get hot and bothered.

Adorable, she said. Ill send you the sa, I guess.

It took a bit of fiddling, but soon Gomorrah had an outline around her whenever I looked her way, one that moved whenever she did. It was kind of neat. Ready? I asked. The sa aura appeared around my three cats too. They werent stealth models, but they were pretty quiet already.

Lead away.

I stepped out ahead, Trench Maker low to my side and attention out ahead. The mines got a bit cleaner as I moved past the spot with the opening above. Sohow, I didnt expect to feel the weight of all that rock above pressing down. Not literally, just a sort of... awareness that there was a lot of shit above , and it might not stay there.

Kneeling down a little ways into the tunnel, I brushed my at fingers over the floor. How is it so smooth? I asked. It wasnt smooth-smooth, but it wasnt as rocky and pebbly as I would have thought a mine would be.

From the company records, it seems as though they adopted so Vanguard-level technology to mine. Mostly to discover mineral deposits, but they also use a plasma-jet system to burn into the earth.

Hmm, I said. So sort of lting effect would explain the smoothness. It reminded a bit of lted plastic, like leaving a bottle on a heating vent for too long.

The company is supposed to back-fill so mines once they are done extracting from them, but in most cases they mark the shafts as filled without doing so, or fill them with what seems to be industrial waste.

How surprising, I said, my tone about as flat as the floor.

The mine bent a little, and it was as I moved forward around that bend that I noticed the first Antithesis to greet .

A Model Four, one that seed to be injured.

I raised my Trench Maker, then hesitated. Loud. It would attract all the rest, which was both good and not.

Then more aliens joined my new pal, so Model Threes that seed a bit smaller than I was used to, and with a strange shuffling, a large worm appeared. A Model Eight. I hadnt seen one of those in a while.

The Model Threes surrounded the Model Four, then on so unseen signal, they tore into it, chopping the Model Four apart and tearing limbs off before tossing them to the worm.

You missed out on so points there.

What the hell?

Antithesis have no sense of individuality. No more than a leaf on a tree can think for itself. This is the hive pruning itself for more resources. A good sign.

I tucked my Trench Maker away, then pulled up my Icarus. I had so options for the kind of explosive I wanted to thump ahead from the launcher, but really, there was an HE option and I was a high explosives kind of person.

Lining up the shot took a second, then I pulled the trigger and felt the launcher kick back with a satisfying fwump.

The HE round landed right in the middle of the pack and I flinched back as an explosion rocked past .

I hadnt considered what being in a tunnel would do with an explosion like that.

At least it was significantly worse for the aliens.

Targets Eliminated!

Reward: 60 points

New Total: 95 points

I grinned. The worm alien was missing its front half, and the Model Threes were scattered across a few dozen tres, the bits of them that were still recognizable.

I was going to pat myself on the back for a job well done when I heard so motion coming from deeper in the mine. A lot of motion.

How many aliens are we dealing with? I asked.

Likely several hundred to the low thousands, depending on how entrenched the hive is. As long as it has biomass, that number is likely to redouble every twenty-four hours.

Ah... shit.

***