Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Forty-Eight - Rail Shooter

Samurai are separated by Tiers which classify them as follows:

Tier 1: Capable of matching a Squadron-level deployment of modern soldiers.

Tier 2: Capable of matching a Main Battle Tank

Tier 3: Capable of matching a UN-Standard Artillery Battalion

Tier 4: Capable of matching a Navy Flotilla’s firepower

Tier 5: Capable of matching a Mid-Yield Thermonuclear Device

Do NOT Antagonize Samurai at or above Tier 4 under ANY circumstances. They are to be considered Free Agents, Independent of any chain of command.

--Excerpt Cross PMC Samurai-Military Decorum Package, Sixth Edition, 2054

There was only one box left to open. It was a big sucker, maybe half a meter long and a foot wide. “This is meant to be my new gun?” I asked.

In a manner of speaking. The term ‘gun’ might be incorrect, though it does fire a projectile.

And now I was worried again. I knelt down, my awesome new coat pooling around my feet before I used both hands to snap the box open.

What greeted me had me pausing until a stupid smile touched the corners of my lips. “Myalis. Is this a railgun?”

Not exactly. It’s a magnetically assisted silent-firing bolt launcher. The projectiles fired do not break the sound barrier, and are rather heavy compared to standard ammunition.

The not-a-railgun was that same dark-blue as my back-mounting, with a faint pinkish glow coming from between two ‘forks’ that ran the length of the weapon. Everything about it was angular and sharp, from the pistol grip in its middle to the rubber padding on its shoulder rest. Even the scope above it was squared off.

I picked it up, surprised by how light it was.

At the front, just before the foregrip, were a pair of little legs in a folding mount, and the side had a box that was obviously meant to be yanked out. There was even a strap on a little spool built into the stock that unwound like one of those old-school belt buckles.

I had to stow my giddiness and get down to brass tacks. “What does this fire?” I asked.

Pick an explosive from your Esoteric Explosives Class I catalogue and for a small fee, a magazine’s worth of bolts can be produced for firing. It is currently loaded with ten silent concussion bolts.

“Oh Myalis, you do know how to get a girl off.”

There’s a catalogue for that.

I blinked. I thought about Lucy and her reaction to that news. I blinked some more. “Remind me later. Uh, what’s, um.” I tried to get my thoughts back in order. “The rate of fire and stuff?” ꞦἈNôВЁs

Sixty rounds per minute. It is not meant for rapid fire, but instead precise target-specific attacks.

“Fair enough.” I hugged my Whisper close for a moment, then sighed as I stood back up. Time was moving on.

A look around the room showed me how many things I’d failed to loot, which was just a sin. So I took a neat looking handgun from a rack and shoved it in the holster opposite my Trench Maker, then I nabbed a few magazines for it.

Finding a box full of fragmentation grenades at the back was also a treat. They even had a neat belt with pouches for them.

I could get you better for a fraction of your remaining points.

Ignoring Myalis’ jealous moaning, I kicked open the door and stepped out, I was an entirely different girl than the one that had stepped in.

I caught the eye of the soldier that had followed me, then looked up to one of the nearby mirror-windowed skyscrapers.

I had to hold back a downright goofy grin as I saw myself. In my stomach-revealing black auto-loader and my pitch-black trenchcoat I looked like the hero in a classic action flick. The huge gun strapped to my back and the cargo pants covered in explosives helped sell the look. My new eye, which allowed me to see everything so much clearer, had a slit pupil down its centre that glowed a faint pink when the light caught it just-so.

Catherine Leblanc looked like a badass.

And then, because I wasn’t paying attention, I missed a step on the rickety stairs and tumbled down ass over teakettle.

The soldiers looked down at me. Then the younger ones turned to look elsewhere, their shoulders trembling with something that I doubted was fear.

“Are you okay, ma’am?” the big guy leading the bunch asked. He sounded utterly unphased by my little accident.

Red in the face, I rolled onto my front, then got to my feet. “Sorry. New limbs, new eyes. You know what it’s like,” I said.

“Certainly,” he replied.

“So, uh, where to now?” I asked.

He stood a little taller. “Major Hunt wishes to see you, ma’am. She has more details about the push into the incursion area.”

“Cool, cool,” I said. “Bring me to your leader.”

I got another unnecessary salute and then we were off. We were getting a lot more attention now. The normal folk on the other side of the barrier were pointing, and some were taking pictures. The soldiers running around did so while standing a little taller and no one blocked our path.

Did they know I was a Samurai? I certainly had part of the get-up, but it was nowhere near as obvious as someone like Deus Ex.

I walked a little taller, just in case. Image was important, or so Lucy always said.

We reached a line of trucks and tents all parked in neat rows some hundred meters from the line of tanks and sandbags holding off the incursion. The occasional bark of a rifle, or the splutter of automatic fire would sound from over the wall.

“This one, ma’am,” my escort said as he moved to a prefab building with tin walls and opened a door before it.

I nodded my thanks and stepped into what my pop-culture fed mind immediately labelled the ‘command room.’ There was a row of comfortable chairs at the back, each one with someone jacked in sitting on it, their eyes twitching like mad as they surfed the net. Before them was a projector table around which a few folk in nicer uniforms were pointing and talking, the mouth pieces over their lips suggesting it wasn’t to each other.

At the far end stood a tall woman in the fanciest uniform of them all. She looked up as we walked in, orange hair catching on the shitty LED lighting. “You’re the newbie Samurai?” she asked.

“Um. Yeah,” I said.

She nodded. “Just awakened today?”

I wasn’t the sort to balk at authority, but this bitch looked like she ate cats for lunch, and not in the fun way. “A few hours ago. Inside the incursion. Had to hitch a ride over.”

She glanced at my gear, then grinned. “You did well for yourself in a few hours, I see. Killed plenty of those god-forsaken xeno scum! Good work.”

“Thanks?”

“But the reward for good work is more work.” She moved over to the projector and shooed the other away from it. A moment later there was a 3D map of New Montreal with a spreading red cancer in its middle and a blue tide all around it. A few green points were moving around too.

She pointed to part of the map.

“This is where we are. We’ve got one other tier one samurai in the area. We’re not at the epicentre of the incursion, so we’re only catching a dribble of the bastards for now. That will change. There are six hours left before the big guns turn the centre of the city into a pockmarked hellhole. That’s six hours to evac every last civvie we can.”

More shapes appeared in purple. Boxes across the entire city.

“Priority targets. The Children’s Hospital was cleared by a Tier Three, as was everything that had a single thought about fucking with sick kids. But that leaves a few other care places unassisted. The smaller boxes are vaults. They need to get evacced. We’re sending ten teams from here, each with priority targets. I want you on one of them.”

“So, an escort mission.” I said as I tried to keep my jitters down.

“You can fuck off at any time if you want to kill more of those weed bastards. I’d appreciate my boys and girls coming back though.”

I nodded. Was I getting swept up in something again? Lucy said I didn’t have a backbone sometimes. I licked my lips, then nodded again, harder this time. “I’m in.”

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