Stray Cat Strut Chapter Thirty-Nine – The Difference Between Brave and Stupi

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Stray Cat Strut (A cyberpunk system apocalypse!) - Ongoing

Fluff (A superheroic LitRPG about cute girls doing cute things!) - Ongoing

Love Crafted (Interactive story about an eldritch abomination tentacle-ing things!) - Completed!

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

Cinnamon Bun (A wholeso LitRPG!) - Ongoing

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-Nine - The Difference Between Brave and Stupid

"I think one of the biggest issues is that the new browser--other than the usual things, like selling all of your data--just takes too long to load. Co on, it's 2036! I can't have it taking three seconds to open a page just because your bespoke AI is wasting a hundred tokens making sure that it's what I wanted!"

--NetInforr Cumulus Browser review, 2036

***

It took two minutes before the feed from that main sensor drone cut off. I wasn't even sure what did it, because my attention was split on other things. I just know that between one mont and the next, the cara feed I'd been occasionally glancing at went dark.

"Strike team," ca an officious voice over the comms. Soone from the army, and probably soone sitting in an office sowhere, or maybe in one of those field bases. "Second wave of scout drones coming in. ETA three minutes until they're over your position. Artillery strike was ordered on your pinged coordinates by Samurai Gomorrah. Confirmation?"

"Give a second," I said. I looked over the coordinates, checked on the map I had open in the corner of my vision, then nodded. "Yup, that looks right. Green to go on that arty strike."

"Acknowledge strike group. Battery teams confirming... we have confirmation. Shots incoming in t-minus one minute."

"Thanks," I replied. The coordinates were sothing like fifty tres ahead of where the Model Fifteens had been. If they kept moving at the sa plodding pace, that would more or less hit right on top of them. At least, assuming that the artillery team was accurate enough.

I checked to make sure I was on the full-group comms before speaking again. "Alright. We're moving closer to the baddies. Reload what needs reloading, and then hang on. We're going to ride over, pull a U-ey, then get the fuck out of there and head out towards the river. Got it?"

"Confird."

"Acknowledged."

I nodded through a small litany of acknowledgents, so more enthusiastic than the rest. It was mostly the Wolverine pilots that unnerved . They were far too excited to drive into an Antithesis horde for people riding what was basically an overpriced ATV with a gun strapped onto the top.

Maybe there was so selection bias at work. The sane people didn't ask to beco the kind of person that ended up straddling the pleather ATVs and charging to their early death.

I'd have to pay attention to them, just in case.

Before we set off, I checked the ammo on the OW's main gun, made sure it was full-up on 155mm shells. Then I had the gimballed rifles on the ch's flanks eject all of their unspent rounds and ordered a new magazine. Myalis was nice enough to summon the fresh shells and mags into place already, so all I had to do was confirm the receival through the OW's software and listen to the satisfying ker-chunk of multiple guns racking a fresh round.

The unused ammo spilled out of the ch, like coins out of a winning slot machine, tumbling into four little piles at my side.

Probably a waste, but I wanted to be full-up, just in case. Reloading mid-fight was stupid if I could avoid it.

"Ready?" I asked.

I got more approvals.

"I'll clear the path. Stay close behind. Focus on near targets first. Rattlesnake one and two, you're in charge of our, uh, main targets. Once we're close to those Model Fifteens, blow them the fuck up."

"Yes ma'am, with pleasure," Sergeant Hatner said.

I nodded, then lowered my hands onto the throttle and pushed it up. There was a whole chanism to control the legs individually, so I linked in and did just that. It wasn't that much better than the automatic system, but connecting my augs to it gave a bit more control. I had to put those expensive augs to good use sohow.

The strike group fanned out behind , and I quickly realized that we were going to have an issue. The Pikes, the two tankettes with us, were too damned slow. While they could drive over just about anything with their tracks, they couldn't keep up.

"Pikes, stay back. Uh, which of our troop transports has one of the squads?"

"Two and three," Hatner said.

"Good. Three, stay with the Pikes."

"Do we deploy?" soone from Pike three asked.

I considered it for a minute. That would an having normal soldiers out of their nice protective tank, out in the open where any alien could swoop over and eat them. On the other hand, what use were they stuck in a tal box? They kinda signed up for this.

"Yeah," I said. "Stay close. When we're on our return trip, I want both Pikes and the transport to et up with us. Try to help clear our flanks."

That was, I figured, about the best I could do. Not that it was the best overall, but... well, it more or less matched so of the scenarios I'd seen in my lessons. Damn, maybe I should have been studying ahead in school huh? At least small-unit tactics. Professor Roger's lessons had covered larger-scale things, kind of like the overall engagent. Smaller movents, of a single strike group heading out to take out an enemy VIP, wasn't covered as much.

Still, I think this was a reasonable move.

I was flinched out of my thinking when the artillery raining down across the battlefield just... cut off entirely.

It was strange, the non-stop booming, the flashes of light and the huge pillars of scattered dirt had beco background noise, not having them anymore was a shock.

Not as much of a sock as seeing the ground ahead of us exploding upwards. A shell struck so two hundred tres ahead, then it was only a hundred and fifty or so. We kept moving forwards, and the guns on so of the ATVs opened up.

Behind us, the squad in ATT three ca out and ford a line next to their truck. They started shooting our way, taking out anything that wasn't in our direct line of sight while the rest of the strike group right behind just ripped into anything that ca close.

We rode up an embanknt and onto the road that the Antithesis had been using.

There were always a lot of complaints about Canadian roads, but those were usually not shelled to hell and back and covered in exploded alien bits.

A few of those aliens were only partially exploded, though. I stomped down on a Model Five, spun the ch's main gun around and blew a bowling-ball sized hole through a Model Six, then let my side guns open up automatically on anything that slipped into their range of fire.

The strike group tightened up behind , then we started forward again.

The artillery fire was moving ahead, striking the ground further and further out, which was deeply satisfying because we were really starting to put so speed on and I didn't want to have an accidental hit land in my group.

We reached the spot where the Model Fifteens were in under a minute. Most were dead. One wasn't, and it stumbled awkwardly onto four of its remaining legs from within a still-smoking crater made of the side of the road. Had it been blown up and then back down?

The alien fired, and I winced as the strike ramd into one of the ATVs, foot-long spiked ramming into the armour. The pilot scread, but they were alive.

"Hold here, focus ahead. dics?"

"We're on it, ma'am!"

dics and soldiers poured out of the troop transport, got around the ATV, then rushed back, pulling the injured with them. By then the Model Fifteen was pulped and so were any aliens within a few hundred tres down the road.

That wasn't the end of it, though. I could see a surge of them coming, on the road and off.

"Okay, U-turn," I said.

No sticking around, not when it wasn't worth it.

The strike group did as I asked. We abandoned the ATV. It wasn't worth the effort to tow. Though... "Myalis, Can I buy a few mines? I'd like to leave them behind us as we move."

That can be arranged. What sort?

"No need to be fancy," I said. "Proximity, sothing that goes boom when an alien gets close enough."

I counted the dead aliens. We were up to three hundred kills already, but this was nowhere near the end of this push. This batch of Model Fifteens was out of the fight, though, so I'd call it a mission success.

Now, everything depended on how well things were going with Princess and her sister by the river.

We turned around and left, my OW taking up the rear, turret spun around to pick off anything that looked big in the distance.

There was a lot.

I didn't like the number of big shadows I could only barely see through the approaching wall of smoke. The real push was coming. I think what we'd seen so far was more of a test.

I don't know if we passed it or not. Hopefully that made for good propaganda footage too.

We regrouped with the Pikes and the troop transport, then rushed out at best speed, letting the artillery return to its spread out fire.

***

A note from RavensDagger

Three things to shout today!

First, Cinnamon Bun Seven is out! Woo!

Amazon: Cinnamon Bun Volu 7: A Wholeso LitRPG eBook : RavensDagger: Kindle Store

Second, I wanted to shout out Mad Panda:

sroyalroad/fiction/128191/mad-panda-an-scs-fanfiction

It's an SCS fanfic that's been ongoing for a while, and I don't think I'd shouted it yet! Go check it out!

Third, is... another SCS fanfic, Bite the Stars. It's an SCS-Warhamr 40k fic!

Bite the Stars [Warhamr 40K X Stray Cat Strut]