“I don’t get it. We’re starting to see Antithesis scouts along the town’s perimeter, but no assault yet. Why haven’t they pushed us yet?” Wild muttered as the two of us patrolled the perimeter.

  We didn’t have to patrol. I had foxes and chameleons stalking the woods closer to the hive to make sure we had plenty of warning if the Antithesis decided to make a move, but neither of us liked just to sit around and wait. So we walked the wall.

  “Probably because they still have plenty of biomass to harvest in the immediate vicinity of the hive,” I said. “People tend to forget that the Antithesis aren’t malicious; they’re just hungry, and they’ll consume whatever they can get their jaws around. In a town or city, that’s almost always humans, but out here, there’s plenty of flora and fauna for them to gorge themselves on. At least, for now.”

  “How long do you think it’ll take them to strip the surrounding area of resources?” she asked.

  “You’ve seen the satellite scans. They’re like locusts, and they have a ton of massive bioforms to help with the collection process. Probably not long,” I replied quietly. “Hopefully, the orbital weapon platforms will put a serious damper on their collection efforts.”

  “Speaking of which… aren’t they supposed to be firing soon?”

  I pulled up my augs and flipped through until I found the status update stream from the Family. “Very soon. We should probably head back towards the main gate if we want to watch the fireworks.”

  The two of us hurried along the outer wall, keeping one eye on the forest and the other on the sky, until we reached the town gate. Mudflap was already there, pacing at the top of the bear-acade walls, as was most of my command squad.

  “Shouldn’t you all be checking on our defenses?” I asked as we jogged up.

  “We are,” Dusty replied. “The new squad leader AIs just make the process a lot easier. It cuts down the number of bears we have to manage by a sixth, and the squad leaders can handle a lot of the micromanagement, which means we can allocate enough processing power to enjoy the show, just like you.”

  “It might seem like we’re just standing here, but Heavy is still handling the rearming of the Ursas, and Deadbeat and I are overseeing the deployment of the minefield,” Bandit added. “Speaking of which… we have a huge area to defend and not that many self-replicating minefields. How do you want us to deploy them?”

  “Start directly between the town and hive, then spread out from there,” I replied. “Are the bears going to actually deploy the systems?”

  “Don’t worry about that. It was a little awkward when we just had regular line bears, but now that we have the badgers, it’ll be no problem,” the fox replied.

  My augs pinged, and a massive warning message scrolled across my vision. The first platform was coming into range. I nodded to my squad, then stepped over to the Bear-acade and jumped straight up onto the platform running along the top. I wanted to get the best view possible.

  “Which platform is firing first?” Mud asked.

  “The Hand of God, followed by the laser, and finally the missile system. I think the idea is to open up the hive, cauterize the inside, then blow the shit out of any Antithesis outside the original strike zone,” I replied, my eyes locked upon the horizon. “Apparently, the strategists in the Family think that’ll cause the greatest possible damage.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Wild glanced over at me. “You don’t sound that convinced.”

  “That’s probably the best-case scenario, but these are Antithesis that survived the Mars purge. If they survived everything the strongest Samurai on the planet can throw at them, what are the chances that the orbital platforms are going to be able to finish the job?” I asked. “No, it’ll probably slow them down, but I doubt it’ll be a fatal blow.”

  My augs beeped again; this time, the message was much shorter. ‘Rod inbound, watch your butts.’

  My eyes snapped skyward just in time to see something split the clouds and streak towards the ground. Even with my enhanced vision, I had trouble following it, but if it was just a kinetic strike, like the UHR, how powerful could it be?

  I regretted that thought a second later when the pole disappeared into the horizon. Despite the hive being twenty or thirty kilometers outside town, we still felt the tremors of its impact up on the wall.

  A couple of seconds later, a massive gust of wind tore through the surrounding forest, with enough force to uproot trees. When it hit the wall, I was nearly ripped from my feet and thrown to the ground ten feet below. If we’d been any closer to the drop zone, I probably would have been.

  “Shit! That must have been some impact,” Mud muttered.

  “No shit,” I hissed. “And here I was thinking it wasn’t that impressive.”

  Before anyone could say anything else, our augs pinged again. ‘Behold the cleansing light.’

  I looked up just as a searing beam of light split the clouds and burned its way into the horizon. It was so bright that I had to shield my eyes to avoid being blinded — it was like staring directly at the sun. The beam lasted much longer than I expected, nearly 10 seconds before cutting off, and when it was gone, I had to blink a couple of times to clear the spots in my vision.

  “Ugh…” Wild gagged, nearly doubling over, hands clamped over her face.

  “What? What happened?” I asked.

  “Can’t you smell that?” she replied, eyes wide. “It was like we were hit by a tropical breeze carrying the stench of burning garbage.”

  “Uh… no. My armor is environmentally sealed to prevent damage from toxins,” I replied. “I really recommend investing in something similar before the Antithesis arrive at the walls.”

  “I like being able to smell the fresh air,” she whined.

  “You don’t seem to be enjoying it now, and you’ll enjoy it much less if you get a lung full of spores or poison gas,” I said. “Just do it; you’ll thank me later.”

  “Maybe, but not now. The smell isn’t going to kill me,” she muttered, before taking a couple of short breaths and standing up straight. “Is that it?”

  “Naw, we still have the missile strike,” Mud declared.

  I stared up at the sky, waiting for the final weapon strike. The seconds slowly ticked by as we waited for the final attack.

  “Do you think the delay is intentional, or was there an issue?” Mud asked.

  “No idea. There wasn’t anything about a delay in the status feed,” I replied. “I’d guess it was intentional.”

  “Well, they'd better fire soon, or the Antithesis are going to have time to scatter,” Mud said.

  “Or time to gather back at the hive,” Wild replied.

  After another tense couple of seconds, my augs finally beeped one last time. ‘Incoming’

  “I guess whoever’s in charge of this system isn’t much of a talker,” I said as a missile, several times larger than the kinetic strike, slowly made its descent. When it was about halfway down, the missile split open and spat out hundreds, even thousands, of smaller missiles, which spread out and rained down on the surrounding area. The main body of the weapon still made its way down, probably to land directly in the center of the hive before detonating.

  It must have been one hell of an explosion, since we could see the edge of the blast from where we were standing. I learned my lesson from the kinetic strike, so I grabbed the edge of the wall and braced before the blast wave hit us. Surprisingly, it was nowhere near as powerful as the one that came off the kinetic strike.

  “There’s no way the Antithesis survived that, right?” Wild asked. “That was insane!”

  “It was, but I’m not going to celebrate until we know exactly how bad the damage is,” I replied. I scanned the horizon for several seconds, looking for any sign of movement, before hopping down from the wall. “Bandit, I want you to arrange a reconnaissance flight over the hive. I want to know exactly how much damage it suffered.”

  “You think that’s a good idea?” the fox asked. “You know what happened last time…”

  “We’ll have to risk it,” I replied. “We have to know whether it’s time to move in or bunker down. All we can do is send it and pray they manage to make it back in one piece.”

  “Right,” the fox said quietly. “Let’s hope.”

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