TBoB - Book 3 - Chapter 23 - Mayhem

“Call Hel!” I yelled as I bolted into the garage, summoning the squad to my location. My augs rang several times before she finally picked up.

[Please tell me we have forces in place!] I yelled into my augs.

[No, the council has deployed all their PMC units to the war, and what’s left, from the unaligned companies, account for less than ten percent,] Hel growled. [That means the perimeter is entirely on you.] She paused, I heard something ding, an elevator? [I’m heading directly to the combat zone, I’m tired of trying to be diplomatic to all these factions, I want to hit something.]

[Right,] I huffed, [I’ll do what I can. I’ll send you an update as soon as I can.]I spotted Spooky jogging out from behind one of the Grizzlies, so I sprinted in his direction. [Talk later,] I said as I disconnected the call.

“Spooky, we’ve got a full blown incursion going on and all the fuckwits are busy fighting each other, so we need to establish a perimeter, ASAP,” I yelled as I made my way over.

“I don’t think we have enough bears for a full quarantine though,” the bear replied helplessly.

“Fffff…. Nyx, please help Spooky optimize our deployment, and do I have enough points for walls?” I asked helplessly.

Not even close. But, if you wanted to spend your remaining points wisely you could purchase enough laser fences to create a fairly secure perimeter. It’ll only be a couple per Grizzly, but the bears can throw them on whatever road the Grizzlies can’t cover.

“Great, let’s do that,” I shouted as I jogged towards the nearest Grizzly. Even before I arrived a large pile of boxes had built up around the loading ramp. “Nyx, take a note.” I grunted as I started throwing the boxes inside, not caring if they fell open or not. “I need to invest in the blueprints for these. If I can’t build walls on demand, the laser walls are the next best thing, so I want to fill the Grizzlies with them.” 

Sensible.

“Second, I want fucking walls. The PMCs have those collapsible walls, I need something I can deploy too.”

There are usually between ten and twenty thousand troops to put those in place

“I have a Class II area denial catalog, and that doesn’t have anything better than the standard troops?” I growled, as I kicked the last fence on board and stepped inside. Since I really hadn’t done a good job packing Bob needed to pick Dusty up and throw him at the driverseat to get over the pile of fences. Luckily there was still enough space for the rest of the squad to squeeze in, even with the mess.

There are options, just nothing that would fit on the Grizzlies. You’d have to unlock quantum miniaturization or something similar to make them fit.

“Fine, bring that up later,” I huffed. “Finally, I need a dedicated command Grizzly. I don’t mind grabbing a random one occasionally, but I really don’t want to have to kick out a few stray bears, or have to load my own vehicle during an incursion!”

That’s your own fault. You could have just asked me to not fill this vehicle.

“I was in a panic and didn’t think about that at the time,” I snapped. “Spooky! Status report!”

The little bear did an about face and threw up a salute. “Thirty percent of the Grizzlies are either in the air or on site. We’ve spotted a couple samurai already in the area, but haven’t made contact. Estimated time until the perimeter is established, twenty minutes.”

“Good,” I muttered. I turned towards the back of the vehicle, where Deadbeat had dumped my armor and weapon. I’d forgotten to retrieve it myself, but someone had remembered. “Nyx, can you please send out an update to the other samurai? Include a rough estimation of the perimeter, and include a request they send any available PMCs to reinforce the line,” I said as I shucked off my hoodie and started pulling on my armor.

Done.

The IFV shuddered as the coilgun opened up, and I could hear the tell-tale sign zaps of the PAWS point defense systems opening up. “We’ve reached the air combat zone,” Bandit reported. “Approximately one minute to landing!” 

“Stop by one of the already deployed Grizzlies, we need to drop off these fences anyways,” I replied quietly as I slipped on my cloak. As I reached over to grab my rifle the Grizzly jolted to the side, throwing me helmet first into the wall. 

“What the fuck was that?” I snapped as soon as I righted myself.

“Tank shell,” Spooky replied casually.

“What? Which assholes are shooting at us?” I yelled. 

“That one was the Denver forces,” Spooky reported.

“That one?” I repeated.

“Both sides have taken pot shots at us, they may have mistaken us as support aircraft or bombers,” the bear explained. 

“We have a FUCKING antithesis invasion, and their still more worried about support aircraft and bombers than stopping it?” I felt my eye twitch. “Boooooooooooooobbbbbb.”

Everytime you send Bob away you end up in some sort of trouble. Deal with the problem at hand, THEN send Bob to sort out the PMCs.

“Fine,” I grumbled. “Note four. END any PMC that opens fire on the bears.”

I think you’ll remember that one.

The Grizzly set down with a slight bump, and I immediately popped the back to check out the damage. Surprisingly when I rounded the side, there wasn’t much damage. The armor was smoking, and a thin layer of armor had been chipped away, but it was barely even noticeable unless you were looking for it.

This is a class II armored vehicle which can withstand a hit from a Forty-Four and remain functional. Did you honestly think a traditional tank shell would be able to penetrate it?

“I’ll admit, I was slightly concerned,” I admitted. “This is a lot less than I expected though.”

Probably an anti Eleven vehicle, higher caliber than most anti air, and highly accurate. Still lower caliber than most land units.

“Whatever, at least the Grizzly isn’t too banged up. I would have been really pissed if it was inoperative after that,” I grumbled.

Indeed. Now that you’ve confirmed that the vehicle is fine, perhaps you should concentrate on the antithesis?

“Right,” I replied, as I stepped away from the vehicle. The main antithesis forces landed in a heavily residential area which was not only away from the main battle, but away from any of the garrison forces posted around the city. I couldn’t see much through the mass of skyscrapers around me, but there was smoke coming from deeper inside the area.

“Spooky…?” I said looking over my shoulder.

“Five minutes boss! They’re dropping off the last of the fences now!” the bear replied.

“Good. I want you to stay here and coordinate the defenses. If anyone shows up and needs to know what to do you can connect them to me, but your priority is containment, understand?”

“Yessir!” Spooky replied with a salute. 

“Bandit,” I continued, turning to the ghillie suited fox, “Find me the biggest concentration of antithesis you can find.”

The fox smiled, “Yes sir.” 

I hopped straight up and landed on the top of the Grizzly, and waited until the others clamoured up, before banging on the roof to signal Dusty to advance. Heavy lived up to his name, and couldn’t quite make it, so he just hopped onto the back ramp as we drove by.

As the APC slowly accelerated I sent one last message to all the samurai on my contact list.

[Perimeter will be complete in five minutes, but my bears can’t contain this mess forever. I’m heading inside.]

I have the positions of Hel, Bright, Humboldt, and Hoppy, along with a few other samurai already in the zone. Do you want me to highlight their locations?

I nodded. “Put them on my hud. If we can get two or three people together we might be able to charge the center and deal with a lot of the horde before the antithesis can scatter, but only if I don’t have to go out of the way. Time is of the essence right now. Who’s closest?”

Hoppy, she’s about five blocks away. Hel and Humboldt are together, on the other side of the zone.

“Then let's go pickup some backup,” I said as I sighted a couple Model Threes that emerged from an alley a few blocks up. “Time to clean up.”