Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Seventy-Seven - Dead Samurai Tell No Tales

Chapter Seventy-Seven - Dead Samurai Tell No Tales

"Samurai are our saviours. Our heroes. The people we follow, the madmen and women who force the world to change.

And sometimes they die."

--President of the United States, Silver Hoop's eulogy, 2035

***

The Family squad ahead of me landed in an open roadway. Three quadcopters coming down with military-grade precision in the centre of an intersection with their fronts turning so that they formed a sort of triangle.

I brought my mech carrier up and into the centre of that formation, then let the clamps go. There was a heavy thump as my mech landed, but I was strapped in well enough that I barely felt it.

The choppers' opened up aIt the rear and disgorged three fireteams out onto the road. These were men and women in all-black armour, with just a few small patches for identification.

I felt like I was getting used to working with soldiers, but these people moved differently.

I'm not sure if I could point it out, exactly, but it was... tighter? More practised? They swept out of the rides, guns sweeping around as they scanned everything. They all had identical equipment, at least as a base. Small, stubby SMGs strapped to their sides, and a much larger rifle as their primary.

I couldn't see anything about the soldiers under the armour, though. They had face-covering helmets with nubs for night vision and thermal sensor and full-body armour on. They looked like the kind of troops elite corporations would use to send a message.

They formed a circle around my mech, every-other soldier dropping to a knee and facing outwards. The worst part was how damned quiet they were about it.

Incoming message. The squad leader wants you to connect to their group communication network.

"Let's do it," I said.

A moment later someone spoke up. Male, from the voice, scratchy and rough. "Samurai Stray Cat," he said. "I'm One. Good to have you here with us."

"Pleasure's all mine, One," I said.

I had no idea which one of them One was. They had little patches on them, but they didn't have easily readable numbers. At least, not from my angle. "Are you here for the same reason as we were dispatched?" One asked.

"Yeah, probably. Three samurai downed in this area. ToeJam might still be alive, the other two are apparently dead. I intend to find out what happened. If it's aliens, we kill them, if it's some corpo-meddling, uh, the same."

None of the soldiers reacted to that, not even a twitch or a nod. I did notice that a couple of them had some cybernetics. A pair of metallic legs here, some arms that bent in strange ways there.

The quadcopters rose up, then shifted away as one. It looked like we might have some air-superiority as long as they hung around, but they were also moving far enough above that it might take a moment.

I sent my carrier out to wait near them, and that left me and all of my new, silent soldier friends standing around in absolute silence.

"Acknowledged, Home," One said. I had the impression he wasn't talking to me. "Samurai Stray Cat, our missions align. We're moving to the last known location of Samurai ToeJam to secure him and proceed with medi-vac. Teams Bravo and Charlie, scouts to LKL of Cavalier and Track Pad Lad. Go!"

Two soldiers knelt down and dropped their packs to the floor, as well as their rifles. In seconds they'd pulled out long hooded cloaks and wrapped them around themselves. I heard the faint click of buckles being clipped together, then they went semi-transparent.

It wasn't nearly as good as what I had, or even Shy's invisibility, but it wasn't bad, and it looked like it wasn't Protector tech either.

The two took off in a rapid sprint in two different directions, and the way they moved and bounced up unto rooftops... yeah, they weren't running on human 1.0 hardware.

The rest of the soldiers formed up into three small groups. I had a seven-man squad ahead, and two six-men ones on the side. "Moving," One said, and they all started to walk forwards down the road.

I pushed my mech to move after them, then quickly activated some of the sound stealth stuff I had. My mech had good 'ears' on the exterior, to let me have a good sense of what was going on around it, and I could only barely tell that there were people there. They moved at a slow, careful walk, their centre of gravity held low, their guns pressed to their shoulders already.

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I'd seen army soldiers clearing Saint-Jérome out. They wished they could move with this much smoothness.

"Do we know where ToeJam is?" I asked.

"No," One said. "Tacnet suggests he's one hundred and fifty-five metres ahead. Eyes peeled."

Well alright, mister-tightwad. I wanted to grumble a little, but this guy had his shit together, and so did the rest of this bunch. Honestly, looking at this group kind of made me feel antsy. Their guns looked good, their armour top-shelf, and they looked like they knew what they were doing.

How would this bunch match up against the average samurai? Probably pretty well. What set us apart was that I had access to all the toys. Cool toys were one hell of a force multiplier, but I was still feeling like...

I guess it was like when I played something like ping-pong against the kids. We had a table at the orphanage for a bit, and I got semi-decent at it. It was fun playing against the little shits and showing off, even if they had the advantage of two arms and sometimes bigger, less-shitty paddles. This was the other way around, I supposed.

I had the big paddle, currently in the form of my fuck-you mecha, and they had the experience.

Well, whatever. I kept my eyes peeled, like One asked.

Mont-Tremblant was a nice place. The apartment buildings we were walking next to were all modern, square things with flat roofs and large windows opening up to a pretty nice view of some hilly landscape.

A few of those buildings looked like they'd been fucked right up by something large. I saw some flying model corpses splattered here and there too. There'd been some fighting here, but it looked... pretty light? I wasn't an expert, but from personal experience, heavier fighting usually involved a lot more property destruction.

"Confirmed," One said. "Charlie scout has found Track Pad Lad. Confirmed KIA."

"Fuck," I muttered. "Any idea what did him in?"

There was a decently long pause before One replied. "C-Five, tell us what you can about the mark's condition?"

A second voice finally joined in, the scout that I presumed was C-Five. They sounded feminine, a little, but I might have been off the mark. "They've been dead for at least twenty minutes. Possible exsanguination. I see several lacerations across their chest, armour was penetrated. Arms are both broken, legs might be as well. Lower torso was crushed."

"Fuck," I said. A shiver ran down my spine. It was... clinical, but I could still imagine it. "Their gear?"

"Mark's gear is still present. Armour is heavily compromised. Weapons... seem intact. Mid-calibre assault rifle and unknown Protector-tech. Can't divine the state of their electronic gear."

I nodded. If it was all still there, then I could probably rule out a corporation being at fault. Plus, no mention of bullet holes or explosive damage. Rents and crushing was more an antithesis way of doing shit.

I was still walking along with the soldiers, so I noticed when they all suddenly tensed and stopped moving.

"What's going on?" I asked. I did a sensor sweep, but nothing strange came up.

"B-Five is down," One said.

B-Five had to be the other scout, the one sent to Cavalier. "Where?" I asked.

My map pinged, and I found two pins added to it. One the location of Track Pad Lad, the other Cavalier's last known location. B-Five's location was also there, a little dotted line showing them travelling over, then circling around the body before moving in... then they were thrown way the fuck back.

Unless they'd gained a lot of speed all of a sudden, it looked almost like they'd been ejected out of the area.

"Change in objective," One said. "Alpha Medic, take Alpha Two and Three, rendez-vous with ToeJam."

Three of the soldiers, including one with a slightly bigger pack that had a discreet red cross on it, took off at a fast jog.

"Alpha squad, on the samurai. We're keeping her safe. Bravo, vanguard, Charlie, take point."

The group rearranged itself in an instant and I had to do a little step-dance to get my mech facing the right direction. I wasn't liking this whole 'not being in charge' thing, but as the group started forwards with a bit more pep in their step, I figured it might come in handy to have a bunch of dudes with guns when shit went down.

***

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