Chapter Sixty-Eight - Late, Locked, and Loaded

Chapter Sixty-Eight - Late, Locked, and Loaded

"Fear isn''t the mind killer.

Stress is."

--A Corporate''s Guide to the Modern World, second ed. 2035

***

"Is it possible to be bored and stressed at the same time?" I asked the ceiling.

Lucy shifted next to me. Her nose pressed up against my arm, it was cold on the end. She pulled herself a little closer, as if she wanted to steal my warmth. "At the same time?" she asked. Her voice was husky and rough from having just woken up.

"Yeah," I said. "Is there a word for that?"

"I don''t know," Lucy said. She yawned. "Make one up?"

"Hmm. Bored and stressed... Bressed?"

Lucy sniffed. "Nevermind. Don''t make up a new word."

"Did I fail to imbress you?" I asked.

Lucy laughed, and that laughter clearly woke her up some. She poked me in the short-ribs. "You are so... you."

"Don''t make it sound like an insult," I said.

"I''m not," she said before stretching up. She pressed a kiss against my cheek. "I love you... you."

I flushed a little, then returned the kiss. "I''m not so bored anymore," I murmured.

"Oh-hoh? Horny and stressed... Hressed? Horssed?"

"Let''s not," I said with a laugh. I snaked an arm around so that I was holding Lucy closer, even if I knew that would lead to the entire arm falling asleep sooner rather than later. "I have to go in a bit."

"In a bit isn''t right now, though," Lucy said.

"That''s true," I said. I cuddled in a little closer. "Later, then."

"When do you have to go?" Lucy asked. "We still have some time, right?"

Within the defences was a full-fledged army base. The temporary sort, with tents and mobile homes, but still a full-on base. We had to have a thousand or so soldiers here now.

The Big Gun itself was off to one side, the camp spread out around it but still giving it plenty of space. Unsurprisingly, the more Samurai-ish vehicles were all parked in a row by the base of the gun.

I came around and landed my bike next to my mecha. I was barely landed before I saw Gomorrah making her way over. "I should have expected that you''d be late, even today."

"Hey now, would you rather I be late, or early and grumpy because I didn''t get enough sleep?"

"You should have had plenty of time to get eight hours of sleep and still make it here before noon," she said, rather waspishly.

"Well, some of us actually get laid sometimes, so life just has to make space sometimes," I said.

She sniffed, then chuckled while shaking her head. "You''re lucky I''m so lenient," she said.

"What does that even mean?" I asked as I finally got off my bike. "Is everything ready?"

"As ready as we can manage," Gomorrah said. "We had a few more samurai join in at the last minute. People like you who don''t understand the concept of professionalism. Otherwise though, the overall plan hasn''t changed."

I nodded. That wasn''t unexpected at all. I checked on that map the Family was keeping up and saw that the total number of samurai joining in was in the low two hundreds. That was a good number. Still spread way the fuck out, but that was fine. It meant a good spread of points for everyone involved and hopefully less risk.

"Do we have anything in store for when things go to shit?" I asked.

"There are three rapid-response teams," Gomorrah confirmed. "Mostly samurai who can get somewhere quickly without any fuss, and some PMCs as well. If the antithesis land in bigger numbers than expected anywhere, then they''ll be able to respond."

I nodded and started to make my way to the others. Tankette was around... maybe I could grab something warm to drink from her? This felt like a ''walk with a coffee'' moment. "Are we still expecting the fucks to mostly be concentrated around here?"

"More or less, yes," she said.

"More or less?"

"The swarm is dispersing. It''s still concentrated, but their trajectories have gotten complex. The Big Gun has mostly been firing backwards into them and taking out larger clumps. They''re about to reach the outer range of what few orbital defences we have."

So, we''d still have to deal with a lot of the bastards. That was probably good, because it would be embarrassing if, after everything else, there weren''t any that showed up and we all just found ourselves sitting here with big AA guns and nothing to shoot at.

Mostly that would be embarrassing for me, the one that asked people to help.

"I think that this''ll be a nice day," I said.

***