“What do you mean, don’t light a smoke? I always have a cigar after a battle. It’s how I come down, you know that, Sadnyss. Wait, what? That gas is explosive? The one we spread all over to kill off the aliens? Well, why didn’t you…”

  --Famous Not-Last-Words of Samurai Wade McBeerbelly

  ***

  “What? Where?” Laurie said. Even through the text-to-speech app, I could hear the panic coming through. “I don’t have any defenses against those.”

  “One of the Fifteens fired a ball of them at me. You’re safe. They can’t infect you through the remotes,” I said while continuing to target the small aliens with laser fire.

  “You’re right. Flack, I...I don’t think they’d be sending Sevens after some rogue machinery anyway. Do you have Seven pills?”

  

  --You’ll be fine for a couple hours at least, even if one gets to you. You’re almost guaranteed to have the one point needed to afford them.

  “I’m good. If needed, I can buy them; they are dirt cheap.”

  

  --I was wondering why you were just shooting them one by one.

  "Purchased: Acidic Seven Servicer, Mark 1

  Cost: 10 Remaining points: 5,188”

  A cylindrical device appeared, and I had to juggle it against the pistols to keep from dropping all three. The acid sprayer looked like a small fire extinguisher, complete with the pin to pull. Instead of foam or dust, a cone of clear liquid shot out and ate anything it touched: the bodies of the Fifteens, the grass, and especially the small wormlike M-7s. It even had a convenient cap for when I was done.

  When I rescued my blade from the M-15e’s head, the end of the hilt was a little charred but otherwise undamaged.

  “Confirmed two Fifteens down, moving to the next one.” I jogged around the front of the pair of capital-class corpses, pausing to check for any ambush when I left the little shelter.

  “I found one body the hard way. Think I bent something on it.” Laurie said. “Corie says there’s another behind it. I’ll pin it down and see if I can distract it.”

  “If the spines light up, it’s about to fire over the head. That’s where the Sevens came from on mine.”

  “Eep! Yeah, I’ll be sure to stay to the side. If I can.”

  Another group of Fives resolved from the smoke, and I dove into their midst. A few of the quills bounced off my helmet, but I left behind a pile of bodies and neared the next Model Fifteen tracker round.

  This time I went uphill around the body. The dead model’s tail was still wrapped around the Model Eight that had been feeding it. I jumped over the junction where it was smallest and ignored the Eight. I’d deal with it later. But I did have to use a couple of laser shots to eliminate the M-10.

  Attaching to the Eights limited the Fifteen’s movement, so I stayed uphill until I ran into the next Eight and followed it down to where the tail of the capital class model started. At the joining I ran into more Fours and an M-10. As I shot them, the Ten let out a shrill whistle, not unlike an M-6 directing a battle. I moved east, away from the M-8/M-15 joining, and switched to the Deuce. Just at the limit of my ability to sense the joining, I took a knee and asked for a new magazine.

  

  I traced a rapid trail of High Explosive from the joining to the tracker round, following up with the final Cryo round centered on the tracker signal, in case the HE wasn’t enough.

  The sounds of my rifle fire, or maybe the call of that M-10, attracted three more antithesis. A quick swap and four laser shots cleared the way. I wondered if we were starting to run out of the smaller models since fewer came after each disturbance.

  A quick turn, and another mix of HE and Cryo riddled the next M-15e—going by the angles, the live one was closer than its partner. I slipped to the east again and checked both Fifteens. Two more bodies growing colder by the second, one faster than the other thanks to the Cryo round. I set the trackers as confirmed kills, but I still had to be careful; there were still M-15e’s unaccounted for, and who knew how many small fry?

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  The entwined tail of a Fifteen came into sight as an M-4 placed a thin-skinned ball on the tail where the plates tapered out. To the side, a harder-shelled ball lay in the grip of another Four, ready for the next launch. They never had the chance, however, as I descended upon them like a swatter on a lazy fly. The Fours died to quick laser blasts, and the wobbly ball got the acid treatment. I left the hard-shelled ball alone since it survived the drop to the ground, and I didn’t trust it not to explode in my face.

  Then I ran up the back of the Fifteen, firing into it as I went. While passing the second pair of hips, a knob caught my eye, and I stopped to focus my fire on it. That must have hit something special, since the Fifteen started thrashing about. I dismounted, falling flat on my face in the mud. Again.

  The wide head swept past me as it whipped around to bash into its own body with a meaty thud. I rolled and filled its head with lasers, but it ignored me, continuing to beat itself again and again. In the end, it collapsed, and as I moved on to the last Fifteen, I remembered that not all of the vulnerabilities in my anatomy training were direct kills. I must have triggered a brain spasm or maybe an extreme itch reflex.

  Laura was cussing up a storm as the combine’s wireframe appeared, painted by millimeter wave radar. “Flacking flackity flackin beast! I’ll see your flackity spawn rot in flack.”

  The combine was dented and torn, and chunks of machinery lay exposed to the elements. One of the rear treads sat askew. But it had given as well as it got; the Fifteen’s sides were bruised, and one of the hind legs was cocked at an odd angle. As I ran up, the Fifteen rose up on its five good hind legs to bite down on the combine while grabbing the sides with blunt forelegs.

  They pushed against each other in a contest, which the combine lost quickly since its treads spun in the mud, unable to get enough traction. The Fifteen shook its head for a second, then, with a full-body twist, threw the machine off to the side, where it rolled down the hill and out of range of my radar.

  I ran in, sending lasers into its back, working down the spinal cord. As the sound of the combine’s crashing continued and Laura’s voice cut off, I focused my fire on the lower torso of the alien, drilling through and probing around with lasers until I hit the right pocket. The alien’s side burst with a gout of fluid, and it collapsed.

  I raced around the latest corpse to confirm the last fifteen’s death and found a cooling body riddled with the fist sized HE holes and not moving.

  

  --Purchase incoming. Pull the tab and toss it away. Do not expose the resulting compound to an open flame for the next hour.

  

  --Only for an hour and only slightly. More like the way tar is flammable. You have to work hard for it to produce that satisfying explosion like you’d get from gasoline.

  Grumbling, I pulled the tab and tossed the can away from me. It landed in the mud and hissed. Soon, a light mist formed that grew heavier and heavier. I could see farther and farther, and I readied the Deuce when I spotted some M-5 in the distance.

  As the smoke turned to rain, I ranged out, killing the few remaining small fry.

  Beside each of the Fifteens, I found a small pile of the leathery balls I’d pegged as being filled with Sevens. After taking several images of them for the commander, I soaked them in acid and left them to melt.

  The only surprise came from finding a small cave dug out behind the Model Eights. Behind a wall of M-4s and their slain bodies lay a half dozen hard-shelled models covered in eyes. In shape, these reminded me of the EYRIE; they were smaller than the average M-3 and broader, neckless with a tiny mouth on the end. They pulled back into the shallow cave when I blocked the entrance.

  Model Seventeens, master controllers and producers of fine Model Sevens everywhere, these were immobile and without any minions to call for a rescue. So they quickly developed an allergy to high-velocity guided flechettes and expired silently, like all good antithesis.

  Searching around the cave after their deaths did not turn up any threads leading out, which Corie said meant they had either just gotten to the area or had been too busy pumping out the Sevens used in the ammo balls.

  I circled the battlefield, enjoying the light breeze and quiet noises of the forest returning, while occasionally breaking the peace to put down a wounded alien. Looking over the carnage I’d wreaked, it sunk in that I had solo killed over twenty capital-class antithesis. And, other than the spines while on the rooftop, I came out undamaged. I rubbed my thigh while I thought back over the battle. The spine had, by coincidence, hit the same leg that I’d nearly bled out from back in my first incursion.

  Granted, I’d stacked the deck in my favor: they were blind and effectively incapacitated before they knew what was up, but even that was something to be proud of. I recalled my conversation with Corie at the train station this morning and shook my head at how worried I’d been.

  The EYRIE came up the driveway and ran into the remains of the combine first. Using the AI’s assistance, I launched a couple drones to check the area for more aliens and had one fly around the crumpled combine, making a recording for the insurance.

  The best description I could think of was demolished. Several of the treads had bent at impossible angles, and another was missing entirely. Debris littered its path down the hillside, and I wouldn’t be surprised if half its mass lay spread across the hillside. As I sent the little drone in for a closeup, however, it picked up the faint sound of a voice, broken up by coughing and cussing up a storm.