“I don’t suppose you know anyone in town that specializes in saturation bombing?” I asked Helen quietly as we stared at the Kodiak’s external camera feed.

  Since Bandit was already in position to defend Chestermere, I decided to head to Airdrie and take command of the defenses there. I’d expected a fair number of Antithesis, Bandit wouldn’t have called me if the situation wasn’t dire, but the horde we encountered on the way exceeded my wildest expectations.

  The Antithesis must have completely emptied their hives in order to make their attack because the area below us was absolutely flooded with antithesis.

  “How often do you think the average samurai encounters hordes like that?” Helen grumbled. “Most of us have never seen anything close to that, never mind specialized in fighting it!”

  “Plus, if someone DID have that speciality I guess they probably would have been recruited to help scour Mars," I muttered despondently. “Guess we’ll have to do this the slow way.”

  Helen turned to look at me with a calculating look. “You seem awfully calm right now, considering there appear to be hundreds of thousands of Antithesis charging towards the local towns. I know I stuck around you because I wanted to get in on some action, but this is well beyond my wildest expectations. How can you not be concerned with what we’re seeing down there?”

  “Because I haven’t seen anything bigger than a fifteen down there yet,” I replied, “and in case you’ve forgotten, I’ve kinda specced quite heavily into area denial and dealing with hordes. Now that the incursion has been dealt with, I’ve got more than enough bears to hold the line. I just hope that Stalking and the other samurai have a way to deal with huge swaths of antithesis. Otherwise this is going to be a long, grindy battle.”

  The Kodiak quickly outpaced the oncoming horde, so we arrived at Airdre’s perimeter long before the swarm did. The bears had arranged themselves in a long semicircular line along the southeastern part of town, creating a thin, fluffy line between the people and the Antithesis.

  “Deadbeat, I want you to oversee the battle here. It’s probably better if we let Bandit concentrate on his own battle than force him to split his focus,” I said as the Kodiak made a hard turn to bleed off speed before heading for a small park just behind the line. “Evacuate as many people back to the city as possible. Although I expect the line will hold, I don’t want to take any chances.”

  I paused. “How many bears do we have here anyways?”

  “Two Hundred Forty, or sixty squads,” the little bear replied with a frown. “I’ll pull thirty-six off the line and half the Kodiaks to help with the evacuation. Although two hundred bears sounds like a lot, against that many Antithesis…”

  “We’ll have to make do,” I grumbled. “There are two more towns that need to be defended, and I wanted to keep a decent garrison in the city. Charlotte’s already informed the other samurai, so I expect we’ll see some support swinging by shortly.”

  “Hoppy?” Helen asked.

  “She and Amy were going to head to Chestermere,” I replied. “I haven’t heard from Saber, so it’ll just be whatever reinforcements that Charlotte can find.”

  “Assuming we can hold out until they arrive,” Helen muttered.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  I slammed the open ramp button and stepped out onto the ramp before it was even half open. “You only have yourself to blame for this situation you wanted to be where the action was.”

  Although I couldn’t see the antithesis, I could see a dust cloud slowly building in the south.

  “I thought that only happened in stories,” I mumbled.

  “Why haven’t the bears dug trenches, or put up walls, or anything?” Helen asked as she walked towards the line.

  “Because I can’t afford to wall off the entire town. The bear-acades aren’t that expensive, but they’re not exactly cheap either,” I muttered.

  “Please don’t tell me your walls aren’t actually called bear-acades,” Helen sighed.

  “Don’t blame me, blame Nyx,” I muttered, “and the bears didn’t dig any trenches because they wouldn’t do much good. The Antithesis only have a few ranged attackers, so the bears don’t need to dig in to avoid them, and it would have taken too long to dig traps deep enough to actually slow the antithesis down.”

  The horde was rapidly closing, and I could now just make out a thin band of green and brown on the horizon.

  “The bears did lay out razor wire to slow the Antithesis down, which’ll buy us a couple extra seconds of shooting. Plus, I still have a few tricks up my sleeve,” I declared.

  “You might want to pull those out, otherwise this’ll be a short fight,” Helen grunted.

  I could just make out individual models charging across the open plains when the first explosion went off, blasting a hole in the front lines. The Antithesis charged on, unaffected by their losses, but soon there was a second explosion, and then a third.

  “Self-replicating minefields,” I explained to Helen. “Something I tinkered with in Seattle. The main body is compact enough to be stored in a Kodiak, and once the device is buried, it’ll keep creating mines in a small area around itself. They’re much more effective against slow, repeated attacks, but hopefully they’ll be able to even the odds a little bit. I don’t like deploying them inside the city since there’s always a chance that a mine might get missed in cleanup, but out in the open? They’re great.”

  “I can already tell they’re not going to be enough,” Helen hissed. “The front line has already crossed your minefield.”

  The first Model Threes broke away from the main swarm, sprinting forward, trying to close the gap between us and them. In response, the entire bear line raised their weapons in perfect synchronization, ready to meet the charge. When the plant dogs finally closed within fifty feet, the closest bears opened fire. They didn’t waste ammo on full automatic--just a single burst directly into the alien’s heads was enough to send the creatures tumbling to the ground, dead.

  These were just the forerunners, though, and a few seconds later a literal wave of antithesis hit the kill line. It was complete bedlam as hundreds of bears opened up on thousands of antithesis. The sound of several hundred rifles was joined by the deep thump of the Kodiak’s coilguns firing on the larger models, oftentimes through multiple rows of smaller models, and the whine of the rotary laser cannons carried by the moose.

  Despite their incredible losses, the Antithesis kept pushing forward. They lost hundreds of lives for every inch, but they slowly, but surely, inched their way closer.

  “I hate to tell you this, but I don’t think this is working,” Helen yelled over the cacophony as she emptied her magnum into the Antithesis lines.

  “Well, I don’t see you helping!” I snapped.

  The woman stared daggers at me for a couple of seconds, then stepped back and said something under her breath. I didn’t catch what she said, but a few seconds later a series of samurai delivery boxes appeared spread out, all down the line. They broke open on their own, as the devices inside telescoped upwards, revealing something that looked like a heavy machine gun but with an oversized barrel.

  Swiveling under their own power, the automated turrets began launching forty millimeter grenades deep into the Antithesis lines.

  They didn’t explode, like I would have expected, but instead released a thick cloud of rust-colored gas that didn’t seem to affect the Antithesis in any way.

  I twisted towards Helen, a string of expletives ready on my lips, but she cut me off before I could even start. “I know what you're thinking, give it a minute,” she shouted.

  As I turned back to the line, I realized that the constant pressure the Antithesis had been exerting had lessened, and they’d given up ground. I stared at the enemy line in confusion, looking for an explanation. At first I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, just a wall of Antithesis flesh, but then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a Model Three lunging forward and clamping down upon a nearby Five.

  I stared at the pair in confusion for a moment before I noticed the scene repeating again and again all down the line. There didn’t appear to be any pattern to the attacks, they weren’t consistent, but they were often enough to blunt the Antithesis’ charge.

  “Psychotropic gas,” Helen yelled over the noise. “Drives some of the smaller models into a frenzy. It’s not as effective on the ones that have already found a target. It’ll just cause them to hyperfixate in that case, but against those that are unaware of or haven’t seen prey, it causes them to turn on each other.”

  She turned towards me, scowling. “How’s that, helpful enough for you?!?!”

  “It’s a start,” I grumbled, firing into the never-ending wall of antithesis flesh in front of us. “But I have a feeling we’re going to need a lot more before this is over.”

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