Chapter Sixty-Three - Mechcatular Nyanzerfaust Activate


    Chapter Sixty-Three - Mechcatular Nyanzerfaust Activate


    Knowledge download tech was seen as a massive step forwards in the early 2030s. It allowed someone, anyone, to instantly become an expert in a specific field. Things like learning a new instrument or a new language in an instant is fantastic, and all it costs is a small fortune, but sometimes that price is worth it. A thousand hours spent learning Spanish, or thirty-thousand USD? Whats worth more to you? Tons of people signed on and got those early operations, and initially everything was fine.


    Then the downsides started to show up.


    What happens when your brain suddenly has a lot of new data with no concrete memories to go with it?


    It starts to make things up to fill the gaps. People imagined, and believed, in entire false backstories that didnt mesh with reality just to match the knowledge they now had.


    Then you had what we started to call PBS, or personality bleed syndrome, which is still barely understood, and yet can lead to all sorts of new and terrifying mental issues.


    --Doctor Lopez, McRill neurosurgeon in an podcast interview, 2037


    ***


    I jumped back, all four legs spreading wide even as they opened up and the jet engines mounted into them fired.


    It wasnt enough thrust to lift me up, but it was enough, combined with a backwards leap, to send me flying off the pier. I landed roughly on all fours, claws digging furrows into asphalt until the mech came to a full stop.


    I paused then.


    All of that had been reflex. Like twirling my arm to stop myself from falling after catching my foot in a carpet or something. It was all done without thinking. And that would be fine, usually, only it wasnt my body that Id moved, but the warmechs.


    I ran over every action Id just taken. There had been several inputs on the two joysticks, and Id pressed it on the foot pedals a few times too. Fuck, I hadnt even known that this cockpit had foot pedals a moment ago. Myalis, this is some weird shit, I said.


    It can take a moment for newly uploaded knowledge to begin to feel natural. If you dislike the feeling, then we can always focus more on training modules in the future. Several vanguard have suggested a strong dislike of memory downloads in the past.


    Yeah, I can see why, I said. It didnt feel wrong, but it sure as shit didnt feel right either.


    A tool then, neutral depending on how it was used.


    For something like this, needing to learn something right then and there with no time to practice or do things right, that was acceptable, I supposed, but it still felt off.


    If I had learned how to move this mecha myself, would I have moved the way I had just then? How much of me was there in my actions if they were actions downloaded from some file or something.


    I didnt like it, basically.


    Well, no, that wasnt entirely truthful. I didnt like the mind fuckery bit. But piloting a multi-ton warmech so well that I was practically dancing between explosions? That was fucking awesome.


    If the antithesis were going to line themselves up for me, then I wasnt going to complain. I had a whole lot of points to make up for.


    The railgun charged in a split second, and I felt every hair in my body standing on end while I aimed the entire warmechs body at the biggest alien in the bunch.


    Then I pulled the trigger, and before I could register what happened to the alien, I felt the temperature in the cockpit jump up a dozen degrees all at once.


    It immediately started to cool down, but still. Damn.


    The alien got pretty hot too.


    I watched as it floundered, a hole large enough to crawl through punched right through its massive frame.


    The model twenty-two stumbled, then its eyes turned towards me and it let out a long, low note, like someone imitating a fog-horn with one nose plugged, only at actual fog-horn levels.


    The other antithesis started to rush forwards, and the sides of the model twenty-two opened up to vomit out dozens of smaller models all over the ground.


    It trampled on a few of those as it continued to move.


    How in the fuck is that still alive? I asked.


    Decentralised nervous system, mostly. Its essentially a mobile hive, after all. Try your cannons. The first two rounds are high explosive. They should help to carve into the model twenty-two.


    My cannons slid out of the warmechs sides and I barely had to aim before opening fire. Surprisingly, the kick from these was easier to handle than the kick from the Gatling guns. It was just a question of shifting the mechs weight down a little after every shot as opposed to fighting back against constant recoil.


    I fired a round from each cannon, this time paying a lot more attention to the hit itself.


    Both rounds punched into the mass of the model twenty-two, then almost immediately exploded, sending fire and plant guts and shrapnel flying.


    The model twenty-two, now missing three of its six limbs and a good chunk of its body, crashed to the ground.


    Nice, I said as I checked my ammo. The cannons were magazine fed, with each internal magazine holding five rounds of high explosive armour-piercing gyro-stabilised discarding anti-personnel bullshit. What even are these rounds? I asked.


    Theyre twenty-five points each. The primary sabot is surrounded by plastic-coated balls of cesium that disperse in a tight cone ahead of where you fire, ensuring that even if the main projectile misses, the target will still be peppered with supersonic projectiles that will immediately ignite.


    I watched as the number of aliens ripping themselves out of the water kept growing, even if a number of them were on fire.


    I hope thatll be enough, I said.


    ***