Interlude - Crisis Mode One

  She woke up with a start, her alarm going off in her augs and blaring music in her head. It was a new song every day. A new song to add to the growing list of music that she didn't want to hear again.

  Groaning, she pressed her hands over her eyes and shifted. She'd ended up curled up as she slept, a small, tight ball with her knees up and back curved. Now that she was awake... more or less, she stretched out, blankets falling away and cold are grasping at her exposed skin.

  It was six. She'd gone to bed early yesterday. It was one of those rare moments where she had some time to herself, and she'd chosen to spend it in luxury. A shower, then nine hours of uninterrupted sleep, her first long rest in a couple of weeks.

  "I feel awful," she said as she sat on the edge of her bed. It was a lumpy thing, military surplus. Her room wasn't anything special either, she was sequestered to a corner of the militia headquarters. An officer's room, but that didn't mean much.

  It's just the lack of sleep and exhaustion getting to you. You should consider taking on a lighter load for a day or two. Changing your alimentation to something a little better couldn't hurt.

  "Hmm," she muttered. "How many points am I at?"

  With the daily allowance having come in, you're sitting at seven thousand six hundred and twenty points.

  "Good amount," she said. It had been earned, though. The Antithesis had been testing them day and night for the last three days. It had been... what, a week and a half since their last big push, and that one was followed by the same sort of probing attacks.

  The aliens were nothing if not predictable... some of the time. She worried that they were just predictable enough that they'd fall into expecting a pattern from them, then they'd break it and all hell would break loose.

  I do have some good news. It might be enough to improve your morale.

  "I'd take some good news," she said.

  Samurai Stray Cat has replied to your correspondence.

  "Oh, that was fast," she said. She didn't know what kind of relation Crylin had with any of the other Protector AI. It seemed like there were things she couldn't ask, especially when it came to other samurai. If she could, she'd ask what was wrong in the head of some of them. "Can I see what she said?"

  The message was sitting in her inbox. Kind of old-fashioned, but maybe that Stray Cat woman was just that way.

  Hi,

  My friends and I are heading to Quebec in two days, and we'll be bringing a brigade of soldiers with us. There will be between two and four samurai in our group. We're all relatively new, so don't expect too much, but we should be able to help deal with some of your problems with some fresh firepower.

  We're arriving around noon in two days.

  --Stray Cat

  She read the message, then re-read it from the start, dissecting everything as she did. Two days. The message was sent yesterday, so that was tomorrow. Already, she could feel a bit of weight pulling off her shoulders. Two to four samurai. That would double or triple the number in Quebec at the moment. That they were new didn't matter, it was that much more firepower.

  The brigade of soldiers was nice, but she wasn't sure how much help that would be. Already they had five or six times as many militiamen on the wall as soldiers, and the line was blurring every day. Bringing in fresh troops couldn't hurt, though.

  A samurai could hold a large chunk of a wall for a while. It would mean a massive flood of points, a quick escalation of power... until it wasn't enough and they died and then a whole section of the wall was left undefended.

  That was a rough lesson to learn. Worse, the enemy adapted. Libre might have been an ass, but the man was clever. He had them rotating positions and tactics whenever something went down. Every time the Antithesis pulled out a new trick, he had them preparing to counter it if it happened again and she knew that he'd taken some steps to prepare for tricks they hadn't tried yet.

  She didn't like him, but he was good at keeping things going with basically nothing at hand.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  A week and a half ago, the Antithesis had made another push for the wall, but it had seemed smaller, weaker than usual. There had been more of them, then.

  Libre had insisted that they put up nets along the 'cracks.'

  Those were long, narrow openings about a third of the way up and a third of the way down the wall. Some of those had mounting points for machine guns, and all of them had large metal shudders that could be pulled down to keep them closed. It was where most of the militia stationed itself to fire down at the incoming aliens.

  The Antithesis used ranged attacks to hit the cracks. Model Fifteens flinging organic artillery, or Model Fives who got close enough to toss needles up and into the cracks with surprising precision. Still, it was a force-multiplier for humanity.

  The nets were a pain to install, but he had insisted.

  It came hours before the Antithesis sent in a wave of Model Ones large enough to blot out the sun, all of them aiming for the cracks in the walls instead of trying to fly up and over the wall itself.

  The nets had saved them. Though the cleanup afterwards had been... a lot.

  Libre had a few moments like that. Sparks of genius, or tactical insights. He was good at predicting things.

  She saw why he was a samurai. That didn't mean that she liked him. He was abrasive and annoying and...

  She shook her head and refocused. There would be time to complain about her nominal superior later. For now, she had to get her ass into gear.

  And speaking of gear...

  Hers was tossed along the floor, discarded where she'd slipped out of it. It wasn't anything too special. She didn't want to stand out, though the quality was kind of self-evident. It wasn't the tossed-together military-surplus that most militia had.

  She slipped on a pair of thick, padded cargo pants. They were tear and stab-proof, with extra armour along her inner thighs and knees, and they had pockets. Then she shrugged her way into a sweater that was a bit snug over the camisole she'd slept in. Both pieces were this pale, sky-blue, a colour that she'd always kind of liked. It made her stand out a little, but not too much.

  Then the armour. The shin guards were the most annoying to put on, but only because she had to kneel for it. They were snug, with a flexible rubbery plastic sleeve over and under her knees and harder metallic armour over the rest. Then the top half of her armour, a sort of gorget with a panel for her upper back and connected pauldrons, then a breastplate with a raised plate to protect her neck and webbing covered in pouches.

  She had a helmet too, and gloves, as well as boots. Each piece was snug, perfect for her. The armour was always white, except in a few spots where she'd scrapped against something and that had left a mark. Never from the armour itself. Everything else was just not as hard. At least, so far.

  She'd bought it all piecemeal, a dozen points here, a hundred there. It wasn't top-level stuff, but it was a lot better than what anyone in the militia had. It was good enough for her.

  Moving over to the door, she found the last bits of her kit. A little SMG, and next to it her case, with the international symbol for first aid slapped on the side.

  Before all this, she was an office drone, sure, but an office drone with medical training. Her work required it. She needed base medical knowledge in order to properly refuse people's claims.

  She'd hated that job. It was strange that now she was actually putting some of that knowledge to work.

  "Alright," she said as she tugged up her sleeves a little. "Where is Crisis Mode needed today?"

  The north-western quadrant has been posting about unusual activity and the probing attacks have become more popular from that direction in the last three hours. If patterns hold, there might be a push from that direction.

  "I think I can handle that," she said as she picked up her bag. "And maybe we can grab something to eat on the way? I am a little hungry, I guess. And yeah, it can be something healthy."

  Just one more day. One more day, and reinforcements would be here.

  ***

  https://www.scribblehub.com/series/1484262/shinobi/

  - Shinon

  - Fighting Aliens

  - Getting Points

  - Buying stuff with points to kill aliens better

  - Corpos being evil corpos

  - Gay girls doing gay things (eventually)