Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Seventy-Four - I Have The Shy Ground

"That's NOT how recoil works. Hell, that's not how physics works.

No, I don't care that you're a samurai or whatever. While you're human, in this universe, you obey the laws of physics, dammit!"

--Professor K. Dick, Psysics dept. MIT, 2033

***

I tried to be somewhat subtle as I moved through the woods. Shy was ahead of me, and she caught on soon enough that my mech was on the wider side of things. That meant that she mostly picked out a route with fewer trees, or at least more room between them whenever possible.

I was still crashing through the woods, rustling branches and breaking young trees with loud snaps. There was subtle, then there was multi-ton mecha subtle.

There was really only so much that could be done at the end of the day.

Shy half-turned, and I could only just make her out from the very slight shimmer in the air where she stood. Her camo was good, but it still warped a little when contrasted against a complex surface, like fallen trees and piles of leaves.

She raised a hand out from beneath her poncho, a finger raised in a 'one-moment' kind of gesture. I paused, lowering my mech down a little so that I wasn't poking out of the canopy as much.

A flight of Model Ones swooped by overhead. Little raven-like heads tilting this way and that as their too-many-eyes scanned the woods.

Looking past them, into the wider sky above, I could make out distant tracer shots still leaving marks across the sky. There was the occasional 'pop' and 'bang' of flak bursts going off. Sometimes I could hear the whistle of a rocket reaching up into the atmosphere. Those would be accompanies by a small spark, like a tiny second sun for just a moment as something was fucked up way out above the atmosphere.

The number of aliens coming down from above seemed to be slowing down? Maybe? I wasn't sure. The amount of shots going up certainly seemed to have dwindled a fair bit.

Shy gestured me forwards, and I followed. The flock of Model Ones had moved on. It seemed as if they were patrolling the area for a bit before heading off towards the south west a little. The same direction as the Big Gun.

I had to get back there sooner rather than later if I wanted to help.

Shy led me around in a wide arc, and I realized that we were slowly heading back towards a roadway, one with an old stone bridge over a small creek. There were some things discarded on the roadside.

One of those things looked a lot like a gun. A big one. Shy ran over to it, then knelt down while swishing her poncho out so that it covered most of the gun. I could still see part of her though, hands quickly moving over the blocky receiver, checking it over for damage and pulling back the bolt.

"What's that gun?" I asked.

Shy glanced up to me, then back down. I almost caught her saying something before her AI filled me in. "Lady Shy has two specialities. Stealth, which keeps her hidden and discrete, and her weapon speciality is shotguns."

"Shotguns?" I asked. That thing was longer than I was tall. "That's a shotgun?"

Shy looked up to me and spoke for the first time that I could actually hear. "Punt gun."

What the fuck was a punt gun? Shy answered by reaching down to a small case on the floor and carefully flipping the lid with the end of a boot. It revealed space for three shells, but two were missing. The third was about as big around as my wrist. Shy picked it up with both hands, then opened a slot on the side of her gun and shoved the shell in.

She cocked the gun by pulling out a small lever from the side. Then sitting down on the ground, she tugged back with her entire body, like a rower upping back on a paddle.

The gun clunked.

She stood up, patted down her pants, then lifted up the entire gun, seemingly with little difficulty. "How much does that thing weigh?" I asked.

"Lady Shy's rifle weighs eight kilograms. It's mostly made of aluminium and titanium to keep its weight down."

"And that fires one fuck-big slug?" I asked.

Shy shook her head. I actually got a second word out of her. "Birdshot."

She took down a Model Thirty-One with birdshot? That was ballsy.

"What do you usually use? When you're not punt gunning things?"

Shy reached into her poncho and pulled out a smaller gun. Smaller, as in only as long as her forearm, but it had a barrel large enough to fit a few fingers in. "Four gauge," she said. The gun had a weird stock, but I didn't have time to examine it before she disappeared it back under her poncho.

I turned my mech around and scanned the area. It wasn't hard to spot where the Model Thirty-One went down. A few of its flyers were spinning circles above and there was a bit of a trench blown through the forest leading towards where I suspected it was laying.

"Let's finish this job, then I need to head back to the Big Gun, to keep it safe."

Shy nodded.

"Lady Shy understands and appreciates your need to move quickly. She also appreciates your assistance in this matter."

"Yeah, no prob," I said. "Want me to clear the skies while you get close to the big guy and finish it off?"

Shy nodded sharply then she took off running towards the edge of the bridge. I was wondering what she was planning when she jumped up with surprising ease for someone carrying such a big gun.

Two shot guns slid out from under her poncho, held facing downwards by mechanical arms that had to be attached to her back.

They fired, and launched Shy into the air with their recoil.

"The fuck?" I muttered. Physics wasn't supposed to do that.

It seems as though she's invested in a device that lightens her own mass considerably.

So that her own shotgun shots could yeet her through the air? That... was not the smartest thing I'd ever seen. "Couldn't Shy buy a jumpjet pack for like, way less?"

I don't question the purchases of others.

Yeah, fair enough. I realized that I was falling behind. Shy's arc through the air was shifting. She was coming back down, her cloak and poncho fluttering around her as she came in for a hard landing. Then her guns blasted again. They were pretty quiet, though they blew two holes into the earth behind her.

I took off running to catch up, which didn't take long. Sure, she had super jumps on her side, but I had a big mecha.

I caught up even as I started to lock all of the flyers above into my mech's targeting software. Shy landed nearby, then nodded to me once.

"Lady Shy is going to head upwards as soon as the skies are cleared and take the finishing shot."

"Got it," I replied before flicking my Gatlings on. I checked my ammo counter and nodded. A few hundred rounds left. I'd have to order up some more soon, but it would be enough if I stopped the guns from free-firing and set them to only take precise shots.

I switched my 105mm guns to flak, then fired twice.

The burst ripped into the swarm, then my Gatlings started to spit out rounds, a couple a second, each one smacking a bird out of the air.

Shy knelt down close to the ground.

I checked ahead. The Model Thirty-One was right there. It was pushing itself up on the ends of its wings. Its body was riddled in long rents and a few holes. Two in particular looked like someone had attacked it for a few hours with a knife and great enthusiasm.

Shy's shotguns went off and she flew upwards into the air. Her legs kicked at the same time, giving her that much more speed. She hung in the air, poncho and cloak fluttering behind, legs splayed out, big gun aimed downwards.

There was a blast like the sky ripping itself apart, and Shy

zipped

away.

At the same time, a hole a few feet apart opened up where the Model Thirty-One's face was.

I cleared out the sky, then turned towards the direction where Shy had been flung. "Hey! You good?"

"Lady Shy could use some amount of assistance."

Frowning, I ran over to where I'd seen her disappear. It didn't take too long to find her. Her poncho's stealth only worked when it covered her, and at the moment the poncho and Shy herself were both tangled in the branches of a tree.

"You need help up there?" I asked.

"..."

"Yeah, figured," I said. "So uh, I'll help you down, then leave you to it, alright?"

She slowly raised a thumb's up.

***