Stray Cat Strut Chapter Thirty-Seven – Bringing the Heat

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Drear's Ten-Tea-Cle Café (An insane Crossover about cute people and tentacles) - Hiatus

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The Agartha Loop (A Magical-Girl drama!) - Volu Two Complete!

Lever Action (A fantasy western with cha!) - Volu One Complete!

Heart of Dorkness (A wholeso progression fantasy) - Completed!

Dead Tired (A cody about a Lich in a Wuxia world doing Science!) - Ongoing

Sporemageddon (A fantasy story about a mushroom lover exploding the industrial revolution!) - Ongoing

Past the Redline (A girl goes too fast, then she does it again) - Completed!

Magical Girl Crystal Genocide (Magical Girls accidentally the planet, and then try to fix it) - Completed!

Magical Girl Rending Nightmare (A sequel to Crystal Genocide! Cute girls in a soviet dystopia having a picnic on the roadside) - Volu Two Completed!

Noblebright (A shipcore AI works to avenge humanity) - Completed!

The Complicated Love Life of Ivil Antagonist (The Empress of Mars finds love) - Completed!

Pokebun (Broccoli Bunch in the world of Pokemon) - Hiatus

Queen Violence (An Assassin Reborn as a Kitten) - Completed!

No Strings Attached (An Elden Ring/Bloodborne inspired progression fantasy) - Ongoing

Save Scumming (A ti-looping system apocalypse) - Ongoing

Chapter Thirty-Seven - Bringing the Heat

"Ont Bring le Heat!"

Motto of the 12e Régint blindé du Canada, 2036

***

I set the OW to a low trot, then sped up. It wasn't long before I had to slow down again. The Wolverine ATVs were pretty speedy, and the troop transports could keep up without any trouble, but the Rattlesnakes and Pikes were both on the slower side. They were otherwise underpowered, or just heavy as shit, so they couldn't accelerate as quickly as my ch could, which was... fair, actually.

I refocused on the scene ahead.

The mont we were out from under the shadow of the wall, I had a wide-range view of the battlefield, and it wasn't pretty.

Our artillery was dropping a constant stream of shells deep into the Antithesis lines, scattering dirt and sending up thick plus of smoke in the distance. Machine gun fire painted the air above with thousands of quickly-fading tracer lines, and then there was the contributions from the nearest samurai.

Gomorrah was definitely responsible for a good quarter of the battlefield being covered in knee-high flas. It was so much fire that the air was nothing but a hazy mirage. The stuff she'd sprayed around was likely so sort of gel. It was sticking to the aliens running through it, lighting them on fire and slowly burning them out.

Unlike so of the fires I'd seen before, this was a slow burning thing. My thermals painted that entire area as hot, but not impossibly so. More like an active oven than an inferno. Maybe it was a ti thing? More fire for longer was better than scorching the area to dust in an instant?

Hedgehog was helping too. There were entire fields covered in long, narrow quills. There were missiles detonating high overhead, and then ten seconds of so later, areas the size of a basketball court would be covered in a volley of spikes, skewering any aliens that happened to be here, and creating a jungle of needles for any following them.

It wasn't stopping the aliens.

There were hundreds of Model Tens that made it to the wall every minute. Model Threes were being killed by the dozens every second, but there were thousands of them. So of them were making it to the wall, regardless.

There didn't seem to be anything built into the wall designed to allow the people in it to shoot straight down. I think that was a problem solved in like, the 1400s, but at so point modern walls forgot to have overhangs and shit like that.

Instead, I noticed a number of soldiers opening so of the slit windows and just... dropping a frag out of them. That actually did a decent number on the aliens by the base of the wall. They just had to have enough grenades to last the day.

"Attention ahead, right side, incoming," ca over the radio. It was sent by the lead C3 Rattlesnake. Its main turret turned even as the almost-a-tank moved and then it opened fire with its 50Cal, spraying into a small horde of Model Threes escorting so bigger models.

I locked onto the sa group and opened up with my gimbal-mounted guns. Behind , the... wait, what should I call us? We weren't a convoy. A strike group? That made sense. The strike group started to shoot into the gaggle of aliens, and there was enough overlapping fire that each alien was gifted a few new holes each.

"Watch your ammo," I said.

I wasn't sure if it was standard, but there was an app of sorts for the group. It had a readout of each vehicle on it, highlighted in green to show that everyone was still fine. They also had a small indicator for ammo stores, split by gun type. So of them could fire for a damned long ti, but those little ATVs didn't have infinite ammo to fling around.

In theory, with here collecting kills, they did. But in practice, getting the ammo into place would require so maneuvering and I wasn't ready to stop so soon just to reload.

Our destination was maybe a kilotre and a half from the wall. We didn't make a straight line for it, even if that might have been faster.

The issue was that the straight line was drawn right through a minefield and an area that was currently on fire. I was pretty sure I could walk through that with no issues, but the rest of the strike force? The tankettes would be fine, maybe, but half our vehicles had wheels, and I was pretty sure rubber was flammable. Plus, it'd get warm.

So, we were cutting around in a wide arc, then tightening the end around with a sharp turn. Soone in the army was painting the Model Fifteens that were our primary target.

"Myalis, can you help for a mont?"

Perhaps. What do you need assistance with?

"Kinda splitting my attention three ways here," I said. I was piloting the ch, picking out targets, looking over the local map, and listening in on the strike force all at the sa ti.

I could definitely turn on one or two automated systems, and I had. The OW wasn't being auto-piloted, but there was a system that could be turned on to reduce the amount of attention I had to pay to moving it. Basically auto-pilot light. There was sothing similar on for the targeting and such as well.

"Can you handle the big gun's targetting?" I asked with a gesture above to the 155mm cannon sitting atop the OW.

I suppose I can deign to help a little.

"Thanks," I replied a little dry. I would have been more sarcastic, but I had shit to take care of. Myalis did turn the gun, aiming it far higher than I expected, then she fired repeatedly, timing it so that it was between steps. "What are you even aiming at?" I asked.

The enemy.

Right, okay. "We can switch to sothing with more punch. Looks like we're about to hit the main line of the enemy, and I want to flatten them first."

Noted. More AFAP Everglows? Even if Libre suggested otherwise.

"Yup!" I said.

There was a ker-chunk as a new shell was loaded in.

I switched the radio on. "Alright, strike force, slow down for a mont before that next hill about... thirty ters ahead. I'm going to shoot sothing to clear the way. It might get a little warm."

Myalis fired the Everglow just as we made it to a section of old, potholed road next to a small hill. There were a few buildings here, a set of garages and sheds next to an open lot. They'd been struck by at least one shell already, and every window was shattered. Aliens were zipping by between the cover.

Then the bomb went off, and the hill provided us with a nice bit of cover from the sunlight-strong ball of superheated fuck-off just a few hundred tres away.

I winced a little as I heard a lot of the strike force gasp and then bitch over the comms. Yeah, I had a nice, climate-controlled cockpit to sit my luxurious ass in. Half the strike force were sitting on ATVs, and the rest didn't have the sa level of protection.

I checked on thermals. It went from a nice twenty-ish degrees out to the lower forties in a few seconds, then stayed there.

"Focus up," I said.

I'd owe this bunch a drink once this was done, especially since they locked in and opened up on the Antithesis scurrying away from the edges of the Everglow's area of effect.

We waited for the bomb's main core to burst, then I had the OW run up ahead of the rest. "Alright, follow !" I said.

I felt like so sort of action-movie hero. Then I saw what waited for us. The Everblow had cleared so of the smokescreen. The Antithesis had given up on that tactic for the mont, maybe? In any case, from the top of that small hill, I could see the thousands of aliens up ahead of us, many of them sitting just beyond artillery range.

Our main targets were lit up in green, far closer than the big incoming wave.

"We're going to have to be real fast about this, or we're going to get swamped," I said. "Let's move!"

With a roar, the ATVs and tanks pushed up and over the hill, then we were racing across still-steaming dirt towards the enemy.

***

A note from RavensDagger

Hiver, who is a very cool writer over on SB, has been trying their hand at writing an SCS Fanfic, and it's looking real good so far! It's barely a week old, but it's getting content quickly, so... yeah, legit, go check it out!

Link: sforums.spacebattles/threads/a-long-day-scs.1313346/