TBoB - GI - Chapter 1

So, what's this? Well... I have a very clear idea of where I want book 3 to go, but I'm not super happy with it right now. I don't want to throw it away, but it doesn't flow as well as I want it to.

I fully intend to finish it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to release the thing to RR/SH as is. I considered creating a 'Tales from the undercity' story to handle this while I write something more interesting.

And what's that? The Global Incursion of course. I just... wanted to jump ahead and write about Teddy's trials during the massive world wide war. Will I move the current storyline to a substory, and release this? IDK, but I wanted to start this storyline and get the juices flowing again. I think it turned out pretty well too. Expect more GI chapters later.

“Teddy, we need to talk,” Jane declared as trudged by her heading for the couch. She’d been sitting at the table, occupied with a tablet, so I thought I’d be able to sneak past without an issue. I was dead wrong.

“Jane… I spent most of the day doing my weekly inspection, and then when I got back I was told that there was a problem in the hydroponics bay, so I spent the last hour trying to get that sorted away,” I grumbled. “What could be so important?”

“You’ve been cheating on your homework, haven’t you,” Jane asked, her eyes narrowing slightly.

I froze. “Noooo… of course not,” I lied. “What makes you say that?”

“Your last assignment was signed ‘Comrade Teddy’,” Jane declared.

Jeniffer, who was eating cereal at the table, snorted. “You let your bears do your homework? That’s low.”

“They’re smarter than me, and I’ve been busy lately!” I said, trying to defend myself.

“You’re the one that asked me to put a lesson plan together, so you could improve yourself,” Jane harumphed. “And all these ‘projects’ you’ve been working on have just been busy work. You’ve been bouncing off the walls out of boredom ever since the last incursion.”

A warning flashed across my augs, causing me to reflexively pull up the calling bear’s stream. It was staring upward as the sky turned red and was ripped asunder. Massive alien tendrils reached through the rifts, and dozens of pods rained from the sky.

I zoned back in to find that Jane was still ranting at me. “What could you possibly have going on that’s so important? If you didn’t want to take these lessons anymore you could just say so!”

“Ummm… Incursion,” I tried to cut in.

“Teddy, there hasn’t been an incursion in months, that’s not an excuse for…” Jane continued to rant for a few seconds, before being cut off by the city wide incursion alert.

“I have to go now,” I said simply, before bolting towards the door.

“We’ll discuss this later Teddy! Don’t think you’ve gotten away with this!” I heard Jane yell before I disappeared into the garage.

As I reached the middle of the garage Sharron stepped off the elevator, already suited up in her Class III armor. Giving her a floor to live on, instead of being stuck in that RV of hers apparently had its advantages. “How bad is it?” she asked 

“Spooky is in charge of setting up the quarantine, and Bob is trying to punch the seed pods before they hit the ground,” I explained as I checked on my bears. 

“That’s… very Bob,” Sharron said diplomatically. Even though I couldn’t see her face through her helmet, I could tell she was trying not to laugh. “So, we're going right there?”

“That’s the plan,” I replied quickly as I headed towards my personal Grizzly, where the rest of my squad had gathered. Overhead the Marsupial detached itself from the roof, and slowly floated down towards an open area so it could load up. “Any word from the Family? Any ‘suggestions’ on how to handle the situation?”

Sharron snorted. “Nothing important. Zetta’s creating a realtime map so we can track the incursion in real time, and Angeline is planning to pick up Hoppy and hit the hordes from the South. Other than that? Weapons loose I suppose.”

“Just like old times then,” I said with a smile as the Grizzly’s loading ramp closed behind us.

I felt the vehicle smoothly lift off the ground and slip out through the doors, following the other units as they poured towards the rift. Sharron just shook her head as she watched the procession. “How many bears do you have now?” 

“I stopped counting around three thousand,” I admitted. “Most of them end up staring at an undercity intersection and keep the peace, so…”

Sharron shook her head. “You should have just turned off the machines,” she mumbled.

“Then the salvage teams wouldn’t have had a purpose,” I told her. “And that would have been a waste. Besides, having this many bears means containing this incursion will be a breeze.”

As I said that the Grizzly slipped out of the undercity access, and headed above ground. I heard the PAWS APS immediately open up, so I ducked down to see what was going on outside.

The rifts were enormous, and Model Ones were flooding through them. The roof mounted anti-air emplacements all over the city were firing constantly, ripping into the swarm, but they were barely making a difference. Even with all the help, the point defense units were struggling to keep up. “Are they supposed to be that big?” I asked Sharron, pointing at the rifts.

“I don’t have a ton of experience with incursions, but I don’t think so,” she said, staring at the sundered sky.

As we approached the combat zone the rifts spat out a second, then a third wave of pods into different parts of the city. “Now I know that’s abnormal,” I snarled. “I’ll have Bob take over the primary parameter, Spooky can establish another one around the East, we’ll take the west.” Even as I said it the column of IFVs split in two, heading for the new landing areas.

As we approached the ground I just had enough time to throw on my armor and check my rifle before I felt the tell tale bump of the vehicle landing. I wasted no time, jumping out the back and swept my gaze over the area. Despite landing quite a ways from ground zero, so we could attempt to establish a perimeter, there was already a small wave of Model Threes rushing down the road towards us. I left them to Sharron and the squad, as I tried desperately to get the remaining IFVs into position. 

It took a minute, but I managed to get a couple bears on each road out of the area. It wasn’t perfect, but it would probably hold until reinforcements arrived to completely lockdown the area.

“The smart move would be to stay here and make sure the perimeter stays secure,” I shouted to Sharron over the IFVs coilgun. “But I’m a big fan of thinning out the antithesis numbers before they try and push out.”

She nodded, maybe even replied, but I couldn’t tell over the cannon. 

The bears scrambled up the side of the IFV, finding places to sit, or hold on, before I ordered the vehicle forward; Heavy had some serious problems climbing, so he had to hop on the still open ramp to watch our rear. Sharron simply used her tentacles to raise herself up, then land gently on the roof, while I simply hopped straight up over the driver as the Grizzly approached me. 

I had the IFV approach the center at a constant speed, which allowed the squad to cut down most of the loose antithesis. As fast as they were, Sharron was faster. Her Class III suit didn’t have the same range restrictions as her previous two models, and was able to quickly and reliably cut entire swarms apart before they could approach. 

Most of the antithesis we ran into were small models, nothing larger than a Six until we got closer to the impact zone. We were about ten blocks out when the real opposition started showing up. The Model Elevens were first, trying their best to divebomb us and destroy the IFV. They were too large for the PAWS to deal with, not large enough to survive a couple rounds from my LCARs. Next were the Twelves and Thirteens, trying to block off the street while the smaller models flooded the streets around them.

I smiled. “Man, I missed this,” I shouted. “You and I, slaughtering our way through a never ending wave of alien monsters. Beats doing homework any day.”

Sharron’s head slowly turned in my direction. “I have NO idea where that last part came from, but I admit, it feels nice to be useful again.”

The Grizzly slowed to a near crawl as we approached the impact zone. Not because the lower level models were a huge threat, but so we could be as throughout as possible. When we broke through to the first landing zone I expected to find a massive landing craft, but what we found instead was a massive pile of debris. There were large, bark-like plates scattered everywhere, and a thin central section with hundreds of vines embedded in the ground, but it certainly didn't look like the giant bulbs that had fallen through the rifts. The only remarkable thing was there were about half a dozen eights, slowly chewing up the debris.

“I was expecting more,” I admitted as I fired a number of rounds into the nearest Eight, slowly destroying its distributed nervous system.

“Why? In order to land the maximum number of models the antithesis pretty much just lash every model they can find into a ball, then surround it with armor. As soon as the shell breaks the ones that survive scatter into the surrounding area, while the ones that don't get recycled. That’s antithesis efficiency at work,” Sharron replied as she quickly picked apart the other eights. “The problem is each one of these carries several hundreds of models, and how many landed in this area?”

I shrugged. “Maybe a dozen.”

“Then we should take care of this quickly and move along. These Models may not be a huge threat to you or I, but if they go to ground we could have some serious problems in the long run.”

I just nodded in response.