Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Forty-Eight - Push My Red Button

"What's the big red button do?

Why don't you push it to find ou-- wait, don't actually push!"

--Transcript of a Recording of the Russian Incident of 2025

***

There was this strange thing that happened whenever something big and unique was going on.

I'd first seen it a few years back. A large cylindrical truck had swayed around something on the road and rammed into one of those metal guardrail things on the roadside.

The cab was totalled. The driver was very dead. And then some other truck drove right into the first's rear. They'd had time to slow down a little, so it wasn't nearly as big of a bang, but I could still remember the sound of it.

I'd been a block or so over, and I knew that the noise didn't come from gunfire. It was too... crunchy? Anyway, I'd wandered over to find that people had split into three camps. Two or three guys were checking on the driver, looking for a pulse, trying to get him out of the truck's cabin. I might have been tempted to help, but by the time I arrived they were already giving it up as a bad job. Dude's brains were across the dash anyway.

The other two groups were much more populous. The truck was transporting fresh water. The people in the second group had grabbed buckets and were stealing all they could. Water was expensive. Clean water moreso.

The last group, the one I'd been part of that day, just milled around a dozen metres away. Rumours spread, someone who might have seen the accident repeated their story a dozen times, and we all partook in some head shaking and complaining about whatever shit had caused the accident.

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It wasn't a memory I called up often, but the moment felt pretty damned similar.

The Big Gun was done.

Major Tinwhistle was standing tall and proud, hands on hips and eyes stained red by strain and stress. "It's done," she announced to Grasshopper.

There were only two groups this time. The onlookers, composed of all of the engineers and soldiers who'd been roped into the project, and the samurai. Well, some of us, at least. A few had contributed what they needed to, and were just milling on the edge of the much bigger onlooker group.

"Stray Cat, Gomorrah," Grasshopper said. She smiled at the both of us, then started towards the very back of the Big Gun. Or was it the front? The bit where the shooting would start, in any case, not the end with the exit portal.

That part of the gun was like a small shack. A well-built, brutalist's ideal of a small shack. The walls were foot thick concrete poured over inch-thick metal plates.

The inside was a cramped little space that I was pretty sure came from one of Tankette's catalogues. There were a few small adjustable seats in front of a complex set of screens and buttons. All analogue, at least on the surface. I did notice a few ports for data-jacking into the gun, like connecting into the Mesh.

Grasshopper went to the furthest seat and sat, then she gestured to the other two. One was next to Grasshopper, the other at an angle near the rear of the room.

"What are we going to open with?" she asked.

"You mean what are we shooting first?" I asked. "We need to make a solid first impression."

"Something with good penetrative power might be best for now," Gomorrah said. She looked across the screens and muttered something I didn't catch, probably to Atyacus. They lit up. Diagnostics flashed by, and then a long list of status readouts. It looked like we were green across the board.

There was only one item that was flashing. Hypervelocity Round Missing.

"What about that Casaba-Howitzer?" I asked. "You'd mentioned those, Grasshopper, and I looked them up. They're hot as hell."

"That should carry some amount of penetrative power," Grasshopper agreed. "Load it in!"

I blinked, then looked to my left where there was a heavy metal breach held closed by a chunky looking handle. "Oh," I said. I tugged the handle back, exposing a hole that was in a block of iron a foot and a bit wide and tall. A small engraving on the plate said INSERT SHELL HERE, which was pretty self-explanatory. "Myalis, got a casaba-howitzer for me?" I asked.

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Certainly. Only two hundred points for one designed to fit into the Big Gun.

I winced. Only my ass, that wasn't cheap if we were going to be firing once an hour. Maybe we'd go for cheaper rounds later though, we did want to start with a literal bang. "Fine fine," I said.

A shell appeared by my feet. It was in the usual cat-themed case, though this one had handles to better be able to grip the shell within. I opened it up, grunted as I pulled the bullet out, and then wondered which way was meant to go in first. The bullet was a cylinder with flat faces on either side and was made of what looked like polished steel.

The right end goes in first.

I nodded, then slotted that into the breach. It slid in with a faint whisper as air could just barely slip out along the edges of the round. Once it was settled in nice and neat, I tugged the breach closed and locked it with that big handle.

The floor shook for a moment, and I could hear things moving beneath us.

The screens lit up, and Grasshopper smiled at me before turning towards them. She pulled out a small datacord from her suit and plugged it into the machine. A moment later we had telemetry displayed before us.

A plotter, similar to the one Keiretsu had used to show where their drones were, but a little simplified. It showed our satellite on one end, and Phobos way out in the distance. "Auto-targeting on. Let's aim for centre mass?"

"Sounds good," I said. "It won't detonate right on the moon, right?"

"We can adjust the detonation range. We do want it to be relatively close," Grasshopper said. "One thousand kilometres?"

"That sounds far," I said.

"We don't want to be intercepted," Grasshopper replied. "Not before the howitzer fires. Closer is almost certainly better, however, when it comes to dealing any damage."

"Right, right," I said. "Go on, then."

Grasshopper tapped a few keys on a little numberpad recessed into the console, then reached over to the centre where there was a large red button covered by a clear plastic shell. She flicked up the shell, clicked on four toggles, and then paused as the Big Gun started to hum.

Text appeared over the main screen.

BOOT UP IN PROGRESS

SHELL LOADED

MAGNETS ON

CAPACITORS AT... 100%

TARGET LOCKED

BLINK PORTAL TEST... PASSED

READY TO FIRE

"Does anyone in particular want to do the honours?" Grasshopper asked. She gestured at the large red button with the word FIRE stencilled across it.

"I don't particularly care," Gomorrah said. "Catherine?"

"I mean... yeah, shit, I wouldn't mind," I said.

Grasshopper smiled and leaned over so that I could reach the button. I touched it, then pressed down. It made a satisfying little 'click' noise.

Then I felt every hair on my head pulling upwards and suddenly there was a deep and foreign itch in my bones. Text scrolled by on the screen, too fast for me to read. Then the Big Gun fired.

There was a single thump. It was as if someone had dropped a fifty-five gallon drum off the top of a mega building and recorded the noise it made on meeting the ground. Everything rocked back and the dozens of readouts in the room flashed.

"Oh shit, we good?" I asked.

"We are well, yes," Grasshopper said. "Everything is still green. Look." She pointed to the plotter.

There was a flashing green dot that had left Earth's orbit and was now slowly crawling across the screen towards Phobos. The fact that it was moving at a speed that I could see, though, probably meant that it was moving at an obscene speed out there.

"Nice!" I said. "When is it gonna hit?"

"We have time for a small break," Grasshopper said. "Should we stock up on ammunition in the meantime? I somehow doubt this one strike will be enough to take Phobos down."

"Right, not a bad idea. Do we want to try a few different things? I've got some ideas for what we can throw at them," I said.

Gomorrah perked up. "Atyacus and I have been talking as well. Can I have the next shell?"

"Go right on ahead," I said with a gesture to the breach. There were more holes like the breaches all along the back wall, where there was room to store a lot more shots. Something in my gut told me we'd probably need all of them before this was over.

***