It didn’t take very long for the heavy lifters to assemble the bear-acade panels just outside Grand Falls. While not as effective as the titanic concrete walls that surrounded most megacities, they were a much better option than the flimsy concrete fence that was currently protecting the town.

  As soon as they were set down, the ten-foot-tall, heavily armored, interlocking panels automatically drove thick metal pins deep into the ground to anchor themselves. Once they were secure, the nearby bears scrambled up the ladders to man the covered walkways near the top.

  Even though I’d produced a lot of walls over the last year, I didn’t have even close to enough to encircle the town. In fact, I barely had enough to secure the eastern side, nearest to the ever-growing hive. Rather than risk the antithesis coming in at a strange angle and bypassing the main front, I chose to purchase enough panels to block off the North and South sides. The panels weren’t exactly expensive, but between the ICBMs and the new fabricators, I didn’t have enough free points to run them all the way around town.

  “Do you think they’ll hold?” Mud asked, knocking on one of the heavy panels.

  “The Twenties can smash their way through, given enough time, but my heavy weapons should be enough to take care of those big boys before they get close enough. The problem is, we may have some significantly larger monsters heading our way,” I said. “Still, they have a much better chance of standing up against a determined assault than the town walls.”

  “Your confidence is inspiring,” the man grumbled quietly.

  “Hey, I’m confident in my tech, but I’m also a realist,” I said. “I have no idea what the Antithesis cooked up during the conflict on Mars, or what sort of changes they made specifically for this assault. We’ll be going into this fight nearly blind. I’m just hoping they decide to create smaller support models, something we can easily deal with instead of waves of titanic monsters.”

  “Yeah, we’ll see,” Mud muttered. “You heard anything from your contacts in the Family yet? I kind of expected to receive more reinforcements by now.”

  “No, but that doesn’t surprise me too much. I expect they went into full-blown panic mode when the Antithesis changed their drop zones. They would have had to redirect every single samurai in the field to try and contain the damage,” I said, slowly backing away from the walls. My scouts hadn’t reported any movement from the direction of the hive complex, and the bears were in place to intercept any attack, so if I wanted to step away, now was the time. “This might be the only break we get for a while, so we should give them a call while we can.”

  I took a couple of steps towards the main gate, then paused and glanced around. “Uhhh… Where’s Wild? I just noticed she’s not around.”

  “She left around half an hour ago to plant some reinforcing vines and seed pods around the base of your wall,” the man replied. “How did you not notice? She even said goodbye to you before she left.”

  “I was a little distracted trying to set up a town-wide defense and organize over a thousand troops. Forgive me for being a little distracted,” I grumbled. “Should we call her back for the call?”

  “Naw, that girl doesn’t like dealing with the Family unless she absolutely has to. She doesn’t like to rely on others,” Mud said.

  “It seems like she relies upon you,” I said.

  He froze for just a moment, then shot me a grin. “I guess that’s true. I must be the exception that proves the rule.”

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  The two of us wandered back towards the main gate, where I’d stationed a small number of troops to act as a quick response team. There were half a dozen Ursas, fully rearmed and ready for a quick strafing run, clustered around my personal Kodiak command vehicle.

  I noticed Heavy affixing a rotary laser cannon to one of the Orca door mounts. I hadn’t bothered having the bears mount anything ahead of time; instead, I planned to rely on the quick mounting system to put whatever we needed on in the middle of battle. Guess the big bear just wanted to have the extra firepower in case anything happened. I couldn’t blame him.

  When he noticed us walking by, Heavy nodded our way but almost immediately went back to his work.

  As I stepped into the back of my command vehicle, I used my augs to connect to the comm system and place a call to Charlotte.

  “Teddy, please tell me you have good news,” Charlotte said, her voice echoing out of the speakers the instant the call connected.

  “I’m still alive, as are the locals and Grand Falls,” I replied as I collapsed onto one of the side benches. “We’ve started fortifying the area and evacuating the civilians, but I managed to get a sneak peek of what’s climbing out of the main impact site. I’m not exactly confident with our ability to withstand a full assault. Could you let us know the state of our reinforcements?”

  Charlotte was quiet for a moment. “Give me a second, I think we should bring Blackwatch in on this conversation.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Blackwatch?”

  “The big kahuna in Denver,” Mudflap muttered. “Guy’s an asshole.”

  “Don’t hold back, Mud, let me know how you really feel,” a deep, gravelly voice growled. Blackwatch, I assume.

  “I’ve never been one to hide how I feel,” Mud replied casually.

  “Gentlemen, now isn’t the time to have a pissing match,” Charlotte exclaimed. “We need to talk about the current situation.”

  “My apologies, Stalking,” Blackwatch replied. “Who exactly is on the line?”

  “Evelyn Claire, I guess you’d better know me as Teddy and MudFlap. Wild is planting some surprises for our soon-to-be unwelcome guests,” I said.

  “Oh yes, I’ve heard of you, the bear girl. I’m glad you’re there; I was afraid we wouldn’t have enough forces to protect that town,” Blackwatch muttered.

  “Yeah… that’s kind of why we’re calling. When can we expect some reinforcements up here?” I asked.

  “That’s the thing,” Blackwatch said slowly. “You can’t. Not right away.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about? You can’t seriously tell me that you can’t find a single other samurai to help protect Grand Falls until we can evacuate the civilians."

  “Please calm down and listen,” Charlotte snapped. “We’d love to send you reinforcements, but we’re stretched extremely thin right now. All available samurai have been dispatched to try to deal with the initial wave of Antithesis spreading from the impact zones. Even though a large number of Antithesis headed straight for your town, we’re tracking equally large columns spreading out in several other directions. We can’t let them run loose, so we’ve sent strike teams to try and intercept them.”

  “So… what? You didn’t think our little town was important enough to send a defense force to?” Mud growled.

  Charlotte snorted. “Please, you must have seen what Teddy is capable of by now. She’s better equipped to defend your town than an entire squad of other samurai. Besides, we’re not leaving you out in the cold. We’ll send additional reinforcements your way once we take care of the other columns. You just have to hold out until then.”

  “Speaking of holding out,” I said. “Do we have any plans on how to deal with that monstrous fucking hive structure that landed outside of town? Nyx, my AI, was telling me that it’s not going to be easy to dislodge.”

  “No, but we’re still going to try,” Blackwatch growled. “We’ve rerouted three orbital weapon facilities towards the area. A photonic collector array, hand of god, and hard rain system.”

  “A what, what, and what?” I said.

  “An orbital laser system, a platform that drops tungsten rods from orbit, and a missile platform,” Charlotte clarified. “The first one will be on station within the hour.”

  “And those’ll take care of the problem?” Mud asked.

  “Honestly… we don’t know. The biggest pod survived all the superweapons fired at it and still managed to make a controlled entry. It has to be hardy. Not only did it manage to deliver thousands of tons of biomass to the surface, but it managed to sink it deep enough into the earth to fortify itself,” Charlotte said. “It’s not going to be an easy target, but we’re going to do our best to burn it out before it can cause some damage.”

  “What if you can’t?” I asked.

  “Then you better be prepared,” Blackwatch replied. “Because you’re going to be on the frontline of one of the biggest battles this planet has seen in a long time.”

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