I stuck around for about another half an hour to help my friends plan and make sure that Deadbeat, Bandit, and Bob had all the troops they needed before I finally slipped away.

  Since most of my squad mates, and all the ground troops I’d brought, were involved in sweeping the tunnels, the Kodiak felt extremely empty when I climbed inside. I was so used to having half a dozen bears following me around at all times, not to mention Bob, that the silence was almost suffocating.

  As I collapsed onto the bench near the front of the vehicle, silently prodding the driver to take off as I did so, I glanced back at the only other passenger.

  Heavy looked rough.

  Even though all my bears had a robust self-repair function, they did have some limitations. They couldn’t replace entire limbs, and even though they could replace the facade, they couldn’t clean it. Heavy’s fur was heavily matted and covered in gore and viscera, and his replacement arm was still the wrong color.

  He didn’t seem to care that he was a mess. I wasn’t even sure that the Class II bots could care, but he might if I upgraded him.

  I sighed and leaned back against the side of the Kodiak. “Nyx, how many points do I have to work with right now?”

  Right now? Just a little under a hundred and fifty thousand.

  “What?” I yelled, jerking forward. “How is that possible?”

  Well, you were approaching eighty thousand when you were injured down in the tunnel, and you had to kill quite a few Antithesis while chasing the Thirty-Seven. Including dozens of Twenty-Threes and even another Thirty-Four.

  “Yeah, I don’t buy that. I killed far more Antithesis during the sieges than we did in the tunnels. There’s no way I made seventy thousand down there,” I said.

  Well, there was also a point influx for saving the people of Okotoks, which I couldn’t reward until the town was secure and the people released from the shelters, and the points Spooky earned you in Montreal.

  “Wait, I thought I was just getting a slow trickle of points from him over time. Not a lump sum when he got back,” I mumbled.

  When did I ever say that?

  “Are there any other lump sum point rewards that I haven’t received yet, but should expect in the future?” I asked through narrowed eyes.

  One or two. The biggest are from Bandit and Deadbeat. I’ve been tallying their gains separately and will reward them to you once they retire from the field.

  “Why not just reward them to me now?” I asked.

  Because I’m already tracking thousands of bears and calculating how many points to assign you based on how far you are from the combat and how much of a contribution you make. When there’s an intermediary, I have to do each one of those calculations multiple times. It’s easier for me to keep track this way.

  “It sounds like you’re being petty because I’m making you do extra work,” I replied.

  I won't completely deny that.

  “Fine,” I sighed. “So a hundred and fifty thousand plus. That’s already more than I was expecting.”

  I glanced over at Heavy. “If I inject Heavy with the ascension serum, will it clear up that gunk on him and fix that mismatched arm of his?”

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  With the base serum, no, but I could definitely include a few extras to make sure that happens.

  “Expensive?”

  Compared to the serum itself? No, maybe an extra hundred points. I should mention that since Heavy is, well, a heavy model combat bot, his upgrade will cost extra. Twelve thousand and five hundred instead of ten thousand.

  “Where will I ever find the points for that?” I whined sarcastically. “Gimme the serum.”

  I grabbed the injector as it materialized, pushed myself to my feet, and wandered over to the oversized bear.

  “Don’t worry, this won’t hurt a bit,” I whispered as I jammed the injector into his shoulder. “Probably.”

  Heavy immediately began to twitch violently. That wasn’t a surprise; most of the squad had done the same when they’d been injected, but unlike the others, he also began to sizzle and smoke. Within seconds I could feel the heat radiating off him, like there was a miniature furnace under his skin.

  “Nyx…”

  Everything’s fine. Heavy had several levels of super heavy armor, which are now out of date. Since they were bound to his frame, they needed to be broken down and reformed. The new armor will be both significantly lighter and tougher.

  “No more waiting for him to trundle around?”

  Well… He still won’t be the swiftest bear. You didn’t ask me to upgrade his servos, but he probably won’t faceplant while trying to get out of a Kodiak anymore.

  “Let’s not mention that to Heavy,” I whispered. “Probably not his proudest moment.”

  While we were talking, the heat around Heavy started to dissipate, and all the matted hair fell out, replaced by a pristine white coat. A moment later he blinked, his mechanical eyes focusing on me for the first time.

  “General!” he shouted in a gruff voice while snapping a salute. There was just the faintest hint of some sort of accent, which I didn’t recognize.

  “Put your hand down. You don’t need to salute me,” I snapped. “How do you feel?”

  “Fine, General, ready for action,” he replied.

  “Well, you weren’t a couple minutes ago. You get tonight off. The only duty you get tonight is hugging duty,” I said.

  Heavy cocked his head to the side. “I’m not sure if I understand, General.”

  “You will soon, take a break for now,” I replied, patting him on the shoulder.

  The big bear shuffled anxiously for a couple seconds, seemingly unsure what to do, before taking an at-ease pose.

  Since Heavy didn’t seem all that talkative, I headed back to my seat.

  “That leaves me, what? More than a hundred and thirty thousand points?” I sighed. “I forgot what it was like to be point rich like this. I’ll need the Badger blueprints, which is another twenty thousand, but what to do with the rest of it?”

  If I could make a suggestion, perhaps a new headquarters. Although the Shelter has worked for you until this point, you’re rapidly running out of space to store bears, and it doesn’t have the best access to the rest of the city.

  “I like having the bears around for security though,” I replied.

  I’m not suggesting that you move everything, you can still leave security forces around, but consider how much effort you needed to put in to add a docking clamp for the Marsupial just so you could fit it inside.

  “You’re not wrong…” I muttered. “So a new command center sounds fine, but I think I need to prioritize picking up some sort of support or indirect fire weapons. Things were a little touch and go when defending Chestermere and Airdrie, at least until Bern intervened. The bears are great at defending choke points, or fortified positions, but they’re a little less effective when defending a wide front. Things would be different if I had an easy way to set up and move the bearacades and other defenses, but I’d need a ton of heavy lift transports to set those up.”

  Well… You can either buy a transport for every one or two wall panels, or one large transport to carry them and a handful of smaller transports to set them up.

  “Yeah, not happening. As much as I’d like to have the walls wherever I go, I have to prioritize fire support and storage first,” I grumbled.

  What if I had an option that would cover all three of those requests at the same time? Nyx asked.

  “I’d say it’s almost certainly out of my price range,” I grumbled. “One hundred and thirty thousand sounds like a lot, but I know it doesn’t take long to eat through it. Plus I only have, what? A dozen tokens? So I can’t afford to break open very many Class II catalogs.” I muttered.

  This won’t take all your tokens, although it might take the majority of your points to set up, and you’ll definitely have to invest in upgrades in the future.

  “Alright… I’ll bite. What is this miracle tech that’ll solve all my problems?” I grumbled.

  Let me show you.

  My augs blinked, indicating I’d received a file. A quick scan showed that it was an AR blueprint, so I opened it up. After a second the space in the middle of the Kodiak flashed, revealing a slowly rotating airship.

  “Nyx, I already have the Marsupial. Why would I need another, different airship?” I grumbled.

  Just a moment, let me insert the Marsupial for scale. I might need it for the demonstration anyways. Nyx muttered.

  A moment later the Marsupial blinked into existence right next to the other ship. When it did, I shot to my feet.

  “No fucking way! How big is that fucking thing?” I asked, approaching the display.

  Well, this particular Strato carrier is approximately six times as long and three times wider than the Marsupial. That’s three hundred meters long and seventy-five meters wide at the widest point. It has a landing bay and storage area in the back large enough to carry both Kodiaks and walls, a docking station for the Marsupial on the underside, and the ability to mount four battleship-sized weapon systems, along with a number of smaller armaments.

  I stared at the thing. It was huge, unwieldy, and probably expensive. On top of that, more than seventy-five percent of my fights with the antithesis had been in underground areas where the stupid thing would have been useless. On the other hand…

  “Nyx,” I said slowly. “Tell me more.”

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