“The antithesis are relentless. They hunt, they kill, then they take our dead back to their hives, recycle their bodies and make new antithesis. Not even in death are you safe from them. So when I saw a Samurai take the dead antithesis and force them to fight against their former allies, I found it fitting. Almost poetic.”

  Anonymous commenter on the Samuraiz Forums, 2050

  The way back was surprisingly calm. Really, it was too calm for my tastes. It wasn’t as if we didn’t find any aliens. But after seeing how many xenos had gathered at the diner, not to mention the amount of death and carnage around that area, I would’ve thought that more aliens would make their way over. The breeze wasn’t exactly weak and it did carry the scent of blood and death.

  The reason for the ck of activity was revealed once we arrived at the bend in the walkway not far from the shelter. Again, the trees around us, so overbearing before, now started to open up into the open area right before the shelter entrance. Even from here I could hear gunfire, and yelled comments. That didn’t bode well.

  The only folk around these parts that had legal access to guns, at least that I knew of, were police and PMC’s. And, from those, I only knew of the PMC nearby. The direction the sounds came from lined up with that as well.

  Increasing my pace, I more or less pulled Zuri with me, already prepared for the worst. Rushing around the bend, not quite fully running yet, I found a scene straight out of one of those Samurai movies.

  The shelter was still closed up, heavily fortified doors locked tight. In front of it, split up into three rows, were the soldiers, ying down fire against a horde of xenos coming from alongside the western wall of the park. In typical PMC fashion, they didn’t hold down fire so much as trying to take potshots at the leading Threes. Probably to conserve ammunition.

  I was vaguely aware that that was standard protocol of a lot of PMC’s, to keep their resupply costs low, but generally, every soldier disregarded that once the shit hit the fan. If they didn’t, that meant that they most likely didn’t have the ammunition to keep firing blindly. Be it through corporate greed and understocking, or just using up what precious reserves they had, one way or another they were limited in how much they could actually do to hold off the aliens.

  From the amount of dead antithesis nearby, I would guess it was the tter in this case. Which, at least, spoke well to the mentality of their employer.

  “Zuri, try to get as many pheromone traps as you can in there. Don’t waste points, keep enough to get some gear and medical supplies if you need them. Maybe head over to the soldiers in the back.” I didn’t have time to formute an eborate pn, this one would have to be handled quickly and directly.

  “And you?”

  “I’m going to do my best to keep them from getting overrun,” I replied, before I broke into a full on sprint.

  Breaking through the underbrush, I noticed the heads of a few of the soldiers snap into my direction, but luckily they didn’t start firing at me. With fshes of silver in the daylight, I threw five of my throwing knives into the horde, before I pulled out my pistol with one hand, and one of my daggers with the other.

  With a mighty leap, I jumped over one of the Threes that had crashed to the ground, after my smaller bdes had hit it directly in the chest. A single shot was enough to finish it off, and a moment ter the dim fsh of neon green signalled its recruitment to my forces.

  With a quick step to the side, I stepped around the cws of another alien, trying to ssh at my side. My dagger found its shoulder, and a moment ter, the back of its neck. In the same motion I turned, levelling my pistol at a model Four that had just broken through the underbrush. The shot hit center mass, right where the heart of a human would have been, and the thing stumbled, then fell, and finally died.

  Pulling out my bde from the neck of the dead alien in the same motion, I took two steps backwards, then one to the right to escape a model One diving for my head. This close, I didn’t even have to look at the thing to shoot it, the sound of its wings more than sufficient for me to know where it was.

  Counting the number of aliens still pushing towards the shelter, I found more than I was confident in sying, before they got close. It also didn’t help that the aliens that I shot weren’t turned into undead. But for that, at least, I had a pn.

  With methodical precision, I started to target everything that could pose a higher than average danger to the soldiers at the gate. In most cases, that meant the model Fours around, but it also included two model Twos trying to divebomb them.

  The fourteenth shot rang out, the st of my bullets spent. With another sidestep I evaded the wounded Three, desperately trying to get its fangs into my leg, and stowed my pistol. Stabbing the nearly dead alien, I flicked two throwing knives towards two of the dead model Fours, one after the other. My pistol wouldn’t revive them, but my throwing knives could. And the dim fshes of neon green confirmed my theory.

  Of course, I already had a couple of undead by this point. Basically all of my first wave were immediately shot by the soldiers, but soon after they seemed to have figured out that they were different. Or maybe Zuri told them, I wasn’t sure. Either way, by this point none of my undead died to deliberate friendly fire.

  With three model Fours now on my side, the st one had joined the ranks thanks to my dagger, the tide turned. Zuri had done her best to get some of her pheromone traps into the mayhem, but that hadn’t really worked. Oh, she had put some of them down, but that was mostly around the shelter. At least that way the xenos were far less likely to try and push too hard toward it. But it also meant that more of them focused on me.

  I stuck close to my undead, using them as shields. If I didn’t have them with me, then I would’ve already suffered some pretty severe wounds. This way, most of the attacks that hit me barely qualified as gncing blows. Only one had even pierced my armor, and that one hadn’t reached deep enough to actually scratch my skin.

  A benefit of everything focusing on me, though, was that that made it far easier for the soldiers to take their time to aim properly. I really didn’t enjoy the thought of being in their cone of fire, but I also didn’t want them to stop picking off the ones a bit further away from me.

  Chucking another set of throwing knives into two Threes on my left, I stabbed the one that had just more or less colpsed in front of me, falling over the now corpse of one of my undead. Another fsh, another Nanite-zombie, and I left it behind to complete its transformation.

  The fight hadn’t taken all too long, but the enemy numbers had fallen drastically already. Most of that had been my work, but the soldiers hadn’t been scking off either. And even Zuri managed to kill an impressive number of those that disregarded the brawl in favour of the shelter.

  Collecting the throwing knives still stuck in one of my undead, I threw it at the st alien I could see, just barely missing the center of its eye due to its limping gait. Two of my undead were upon it a second ter, and a moment after that it was dead.

  The quiet that followed was a very startling contrast to the chaos of before, and I took meticulous care to spot anything else amiss. Having aliens this close to the shelter certainly wasn’t good. The st thing we needed was them being overrun.

  Despite my thorough check, I couldn’t find anything else. That was a good sign. It meant we would at least get a moment to restock and resupply. With a nod, I began to collect my weapons. Most of them were stuck in still active undead, but some I hadn’t had the time to collect before another alien had killed them. With my knives back in their sheathes where they belonged, I pulled out my pistol, and after a quick word with Stryx, pocketed the empty magazine, and repced it with a new one.

  When I was finally done, I made my way over towards the entrance of the shelter, my horde of nearly a dozen undead behind me. It was less than I had expected, but also more than I had hoped for. Even if the soldiers hadn’t used them for target practice anymore, it wasn’t as if they’d tried their best to avoid shooting them either. And since my undead weren’t any tougher than normal antithesis, the adversary didn’t have any trouble tearing them apart.

  Zuri was already speaking to one of the soldier types, and they turned when I approached. Then another soldier interrupted us, before Zuri could even finish opening her mouth to say something.

  “Ma’ams!” The newcomer gave us both a sharp salute. From his voice, I was pretty sure that this was the one we had spoken to before. “We’re very grateful for your help. How did the scouting go?”

  Zuri winced, shaking her head solemnly. “We found the diner, but we were too te. With how far the market area is, we didn’t think it smart to get there. And good thing too.”

  “Yeah. We were quite surprised when they suddenly came flooding in. Thank you again for that. At this point, we have all known civilians that were nearby in the shelter and have closed up for the time being. There is an evacuation convoy already on the way, although they ran into some trouble.” He stopped, but it was very clear that he wanted to say more.

  “Oh? Are they okay?” Zuri jumped on it immediately.

  “Sort of. They ran into a rather rge horde of xenos. They are confident that they will be able to reach us, but it will be with a rather significant dey. Considering how many aliens we’ve already seen, the Major is worried about the people in the shelter.”

  “We can look into it. If we can clear the area, it would go faster, right?” Zuri asked, nodding to herself. “First I need some better gear, though. I’m not going to run around without any armor. Once that’s done, we can go take a look.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. I’ll have the shelter opened shortly, you can use the facilities to change if need be.”

  “Alright. Anything you can tell us about what’s going on out there?”

  With a quick gesture, the soldier ordered his colleagues to open the fortified door, before he returned his attention to Zuri and I. “No, ma’ams. Apologies. The Major wasn’t quite clear on what the situation looks like, although it is likely that a Hive has formed nearby. It’s still young, but the number of aliens running around seems too high for just a single drop pod.”

  “A hive? Already?” I couldn’t quite keep the surprise out of my voice. I didn’t know much about how an incursion went down in detail, but that seemed a bit fast, even for antithesis. It’s only been a bit over an hour up until now.

  “Yes. Not that surprising, really. There’s a lot of biomass around for the xenos to fatten themselves up with. It would be more surprising if they hadn’t settled somewhere yet. It’s why you typically don’t see non-gene-engineered pnts around anymore.”

  Wonderful. The one thing that made me actually like the pce, was the reason everything was going to shit. Well, whatever. It wasn’t as if that was too much of a surprise.

  We were just about to head towards the shelter entrance, when a commotion caught my attention. Rushed footsteps, ragged breaths, stumbling through the underbrush. It wasn’t aliens, that was clear immediately.

  Turning, I fixed the direction it came from with a gaze. A moment ter, a middle aged woman broke through the underbrush, panting and obviously very much exhausted, despite looking to be in pretty good shape. She wore pretty typical clothing: pants, boots, a shirt. It was all in dark colours, but the dirt and mud that was smeared all over her was still pretty obvious.

  “Thank fuck! Please, I need help! It’s my husband, he’s gone missing!”

  Epigraph written by TheWackyWombat, the one and only! Wombat wrote Teddy Bears on Brigade, as well as Tarnished Honor. Both are fantastic reads. If, by some miracle (seriously, how did you end up here without having read TBoB yet?), you haven’t checked them out, please do! TBoB is the reason I ever started writing SCS Fanfictions (and thought about doing writing seriously in general).

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