Stray Cat Strut-Somnus Deus Ex - Eight

Somnus Deus Ex - Chapter Eight

Daisy fired at the model seventeen, then paused.

The alien was still alive.

She frowned, then fired again, then again. It took four concentrated shots on one spot of its shell to break into the softer meat beneath and cook the alien from the inside. She did get her kill notification though, as well as a somewhat underwhelming fifty points.

The area stilled, no longer lit by the flashing red strobes of her laser. The only sound, other than distant wails and the tortured crumbling of fallen buildings, was the hiss of antithesis flesh cooked by her concentrated beam fire.

Some two dozen lay dead around her, killed by her own hand.

Three times as many were skewered through by shiny metallic bolts.

"Not bad, kiddo," someone said.

Daisy spun, levelling her rifle in the direction of the voice before she thought better of it and turned the business end of the rifle away. Not so much that she couldn't twitch it back on target, but... most antithesis wouldn't start a conversation with her.

A man was standing atop the rubble. She couldn't see him well, not until he hopped down, bouncing from outcropping to broken cement wall, until he finally landed on the street level some ways ahead of her.

He was, she decided, either a samurai, or an idiot.

"Is that a bow?" she asked.

The guy turned, then raised his weapon. It looked like a bow. A rather long one, with pulleys on either end and a complex sight by the middle. The design was sleek, however, and it was clear that it wasn't some off-the-shelf product. That was a samurai's bow. If a samurai had to stoop so low as to use one.

He seemed suited to it, however. A tall man, wearing light armour. He had a sort of jump-pack on, which Daisy immediately flagged as a future purchase. His helmet was angular and sharp, but left his face exposed. It was all coloured a deep, darkish grey, with solid green lines of neon running through it.

"It is a bow, yeah," he said with a smile that lit up his whole face. "That's what I fight with, when I can."

She decided that maybe he was both a samurai and an idiot.

"I feel like you're giving me a look. Are you giving me a look?" he asked.

"I might be," she replied.

"Great, great. Judgement from the pipsqueak."

"Lasers move faster than arrows. Just putting that out there."

Bow-guy backed up a step. "Hey there. I was just stopping by to help. You looked like you were in over your head."

"I might have survived," Daisy said. "And if I did, I'd likely be better off than I am now."

"Wow... you're kinda hardcore, huh?" he asked. Stepping back, the samurai took a seat on a pile of stones. "Name's Longbow. My AI says you don't have a proper name yet. And that you're pretty new."

"I'm Somnus Deus Ex," Daisy said.

"Deus Ex, huh?" he repeated. "Alright, Deus, sorry for saving your life. I didn't mean to yoink all of your kills. My bad. Really."

Daisy eyed the man for a moment. She was used to having to deal with people higher up on the social ladder than her. She didn't like it, but it happened. Coworkers and managers that worked with her father, some of the teachers at school.

She felt like she was above them, in her own way, but that's not how the world saw things, so she played to their tune. She knew how to bow and scrape and be exactly as polite as she needed to.

This was different. As far as she knew, she was now at the top of the totem pole.

And so was this guy.

"So samurai scramble for power at the top?" she asked.

Longbow tilted his head to one side, then the other. A very wishy-washy gesture. "Yes and no. Some compete to be the best, but generally, I don't think we're picked for our competitive natures. We don't all get along when we're off duty, but I think we're all in it for the same thing."

"For peace and quiet?" Daisy asked.

He blinked, then laughed. "Yeah! Exactly. Peace and quiet, made all the better for all the noise we make."

"And your way of chasing that peace is with a bow?"

"Hey, what's wrong with bows?" he asked.

"About two hundred years of history making them obsolete," she said.

He shook his head at that. "Mine's cooler."

She didn't doubt that it was. Bows didn't fling what looked like fifty or so projectiles all at once with unnerving accuracy. More than one of the dead antithesis had an arrow through an eye socket. The rest had their necks pierced, or were struck in the fleshier bits.

Those arrows that had missed seemed to land where the aliens were going. One of them had impaled itself on the spiked back of an arrow, the fletching acting as bards in its flesh.

"I suppose," she said.

"You don't seem new-new, but you don't have the look of a vet to you either. When did you get the invite?" he asked.

"Yesterday," she replied.

Longbow's eyebrows shot up. "No shit, lil' sis? Well well, you're moving fast. Bit of unwanted advice though; don't move too fast. Opportunity is knocking right now, but sometimes it knocks harder than you'd like."

"I see. Thank you, I suppose," Daisy said.

"Aww, don't be that way," he said. "Here, how about I make it up to you... uh." He glanced down at himself, turning this way and that. "Well, crap, I don't have anything on me that you might want. Unless you want an arrow? I can sign it?"

"No thank you," Daisy replied.

She was starting to look forward to the end of this conversation.

"Nah, I feel guilty. Oh, you probably still only have crap catalogues, right? What are you specialising in?"

"I haven't determined that, yet," she replied. "But, ideally, I want to be away from the fighting when it happens."

"Oh, that's a tough one," he said. "I mean, I get it. I've got some turret emplacements here and there, they work, but the point-penalties for at-range stuff is a pain to deal with. Trust me."

"I... see," she replied. She hadn't been entirely aware of that. "So using drones is useless?"

"It's not so bad if you're controlling them directly, one at a time. AI-controlled stuff barely pays for itself, and only if you keep it running for a long time. Trust me, sometimes I wish I could clone myself so that I could be in more than one place at the same time, keeping people safe and earning my way to better gear."

"You mean like cloning yourself?" Daisy asked.

That seemed like a reasonable thing to want.

"I guess. So... you have a drone catalogue? Here, lemme..." A box appeared by Longbow's feet, and he grinned as he picked it up and tossed it underhand towards her.

She caught it, then opened it, trusting that it wouldn't be anything dangerous to her. It wasn't. Within was a sleek, teardrop-shaped machine with a bow and arrow logo on its back. It was all matte grey and neon greens, Longbow's colours, but her augs linked up to it instantly and she could feel it asking for permission to be controlled by her interface. "What is this?" she asked.

"A better drone! Worth about as much as the points you'd have made. It's got a little laser gun in it. You can have all the points it makes, and hopefully it'll keep you safe enough."

Daisy was a little moved.

A little.

"Thank you," she said.

"No problem, little sis," he said.

"Stop calling me that."

"Nope," he said just as easily. Her glare didn't do anything to stop his grin. "I'm gonna keep moving on. Unless you need anything?"

Daisy shook her head. "I'll manage," she said. A few more points, maybe a few more strays picked out, and she'd have enough to continue her progress on to the next step.

"Alright! Keep safe, sis. If you need anything, just gimme a call. Your AI should have my number." He gave her a thumb's up, then bunched his legs up under himself before leaping forwards.

Daisy followed him for a moment, but he quickly flew off. She saw him firing a couple of shots from his bow from way up in the air.

"Weirdo," she muttered before looking down at the drone. She wouldn't use it so easily, of course, not until Lynus reassured her that it was safe. Still, it was a thoughtful gift.

What lingered more was the idea he's casually dropped.

"Hey... cloning technology isn't beyond the protectors, is it?"

***

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