Stray Cat Strut - 5Chapter 65

Chapter Sixty-Five – T-Rex Vs Giant Mecha Cat

“SexyHawk: Ohhh! Go catmech!

TigerA: What’s the t-rex looking one?

SDC: Cant be a trex, no feathers

Storyteller: stfu, you know what they meant. It’s an m23

October: can we get an interior view?

Someone: Mess them up Stray Cat!”

–Witch commentary on the live drone footage of the Burlington Incursion, 2057

***

I ran, and the model twenty-three chased.

A few things became immediately obvious. While I had a lot more manoeuvrability and could turn and move in the air much faster than it could, the damned thing was fast.

The other thing that became obvious was my lack of rear-facing weaponry.

The Gatling guns mounted on the mech’s shoulders could turn all the way around to fire backwards, but that was about it, and while a constant stream of armour-piercing 10mm was doing something, it wasn’t doing something fast enough.

I came around a corner, claws throwing up sparks as I scrambled for purchase on an old school cobbled road.

The t-rex looking motherfucker behind me just rammed through the building on the street corner then opened its mouth wide to try and take a bite out of my ass while masonry crashed and skid across the road.

I kept moving, whipping my thagomizer-equipped tail into its face with its void terminus blades lit and extended. The crack of tail-meeting-face made the model twenty-three flinch aside, and it scored a long cut across its face.

Not nearly enough to kill the damned thing, but hopefully enough it hurt it.

I kept running, ducking into an alleyway between two smaller businesses, The model twenty-three paused at the entrance and glared at my back.

It couldn’t follow through the narrow gap, not without ripping through the entire thing and risking getting itself stuck.

So it went up instead, powerful legs bunching beneath it before it leapt, ripping apart the road beneath it before it crashed onto the roof of the building to my right.

It instantly collapsed under several tons of rampaging alien mass. I swore as I ducked down lower and pushed myself to move faster and slip out of the far end before I was the one to get stuck in the crashing building.

“You okay?” Gomorrah asked.

“Ask me once I’ve killed this fucker,” I snapped.

I needed to hit it with something better.

I dug one claw into the ground and used that as a pivot to turn around while the model twenty-three ripped its way out of the ruined building. I didn’t quite have time to fire my railgun, but that didn’t stop me from unfolding my 105mm cannons and firing both.

At the same time, the mortars on the cat’s back popped open and fired, all six of them tossing grenades forward with a nearly silent ‘thump,’ that I felt more than heard. “What were those?” I asked.

Resonators. I equipped you with those since you seem to enjoy them. Forgive me, they’re not quite as useful in this situation.

The grenades clanked around the alien, all six screeching but probably doing very little to the bastard. The 105mms reloaded and I fired another volley at it. The armour piercing sabots rammed into its armoured chest and detonated, sending some plant meat flying.

But not enough.

As the smoke cleared I discovered the alien was too damned close, jaw almost unhinged to reveal teeth nearly as long as I was tall.

I jumped forwards and to the side, narrowly avoiding getting bit as I slid past the alien while pulling my guns back in.

It wasn’t quite fast enough.

My world suddenly spun and I was thrown around inside the cockpit, even with the harnesses in there keeping me as snug as they could.

The mech had been spun around, so I immediately grabbed onto the controls and spun it back to its feet, found a cleared stretch of road, and ran while my attention wandered over three things. What the hell had just happened, where the hell the alien was, and what the hell had broken.

The first was easy to check. A quick recording from five seconds prior showed the model twenty-three basically horse kicking me as I went by.

The damned thing had stumbled forwards after the kick, but it had regained its footing and was coming around, salivating for a taste of some good Cat.

The damage was… not great, but not awful. One of my Gatling guns was ripped off, and stray shells were clinking out of their chain and onto the ground as I moved. The 105 on that side hadn’t finished sliding back into place when I got struck, and now some of its parts were reading orange on the damage readout. Otherwise, everything seemed more or less fine. A few yellow-greens, but nothing that would interfere too much.

“Reload the mortars,” I said.

High explosives?

“No, something sticky,” I said. “I want to glue the fucker down.”

Interesting. Loaded.

“This thing needs rear-facing guns,” I said.

Noted. I wasn’t expecting so much running, but I’ll add a note for any future modifications.

I had a good idea of where the model twenty-three was in relation to me, so as I ran I took a sharp right, then spun around an abandoned minivan and immediately kicked on my stealth features. The skin of my mech warped a little bit, as if I was seeing it through a heat haze, then it faded away, and I was entirely invisible.

The model twenty-three came rushing around the corner and kept going, but I saw its many eyes scanning around, trying to spot me.

So I fired my mortars again and grinned like the cat who’d caught the canary as they exploded all around the alien, covering it in expanding mounds of sticky foam.

That won’t stop it forever.

“Reload with HE,” I said. “And tell me where that asshole’s brain is.”

Upper chest, about half a metre below the nape of its neck. Highlighting now. Mortars are loaded.

My mech’s chest opened and I pulled the trigger.

Immediately, the cockpit warmed up as I fired the railgun.

The alien’s chest gained a hole I could crawl through even as six high explosive grenades landed in the goop around it and detonated.

I waited for just a moment, then shrugged and fired the railgun again, then unfolded the 105mm guns and fired the remaining rounds I had left before needing to reload about where the model twenty-three was.

Then I waited, and as the dust settled it revealed a very fucked up alien, its upper body shredded apart, one arm missing, and head flopped to the side.

It’s technically still alive.

“Wow,” I said. “Well, let’s make Gomorrah proud then. I’ve got to have some sort of burning grenade that’ll melt that thing.”

I watched for a few merry moments as the model twenty-three cooked. I was feeling pretty good about myself, all things told.

“If you’re done, can you do something about the rest of the aliens?” Gomorrah asked. “They’re making it past the firewall, and I’m busy over here.”

“Ah, right, got it. Consider me on the way,” I said. I let go of the mech’s controls for a moment and rubbed at the back of my neck and shifted my legs a bit to stretch them. That had been kinda awesome, but also stressful as hell.

Who knew giant mecha on monster combat could be so nerve-wracking.

My break over, I checked my GPS, realized that I’d gotten turned around at some point, then realigned myself with the shore and took off running while ordering up a reload of everything. More mortars, more shells for my guns.

I’d live with just one Gatling gun for now. It was something I could fix later. And maybe I’d use replacing it as an excuse to upgrade my new toy, because I couldn’t see myself not using this in the future.

Would Lucy fit in the cockpit or would it be too tight? Or would she have to like… ride on top.

I could very vaguely recall her once saying that she wanted to ride a horse one day, back when she was much younger and really into ancient horse movies for whatever reason. I wondered if this was a suitable replacement for a horse.

Giant robot cats were so much cooler than horses. (Although, now that I was thinking about it, some of that obsession might have been inspired by riding pants.)

“Cat, are you getting there, or not?” Gomorrah asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” I sent back before pushing the mech to move a little faster.

Once I got closer to the pier, I could see why Gomorrah was getting nervous.

There were a lot of aliens here. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them. Most in the single-digits, but a few bigger ones, though none as large as the model twenty-three I’d just killed. There was a mobile hive left, however, slowly trudging through the burnt ground without a care in the world.

I’d have to change that. Remind these aliens that there very much was a reason to worry.

***