A Perfectly Logical Guide to a Superhuman Apocalypse: 86

A Perfectly Logical Guide to a Superhuman Apocalypse: 86

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Wordcount: 2500

Commissioned by Arksoul

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When employed in battle, superhumans are best when they’re unknown and unidentified.

Picture this.

John Doe has super strength and is super tough. If he goes speeding into a fight where no one knows that, he tears through problems in a jiffy. Criminals and maybe even other superhumans aren’t a problem. He’ll just go through them, get pictures snapped of him, and win. However, as John Doe keeps fighting, he gets interviewed, words regarding the fight spread, and eventually he either gets killed or becomes much less effective.

Regular criminals start carrying around flashbangs or they get stun guns. Maybe, if they’ve got superhuman supplies, they can get bombs that cover the dude in sticky foam that holds him down. That’s if John Doe is lucky, and they don’t bust out something that can go straight through his toughness and leave him a corpse. The average superhuman doesn’t fare well against anti-tank munitions, though most of those guys probably didn’t survive the world coming apart.

Other superhumans will be a bigger problem. Everyone involved in crime with superpowers has a reason for it. They could be using their power any other way to get money, even as just a gray-zone merc. If they choose a life of crime, they’re on the warpath for one reason or another, and the guys that survive against the world are basically demons. They’ll figure John Doe out, they’ll do something to John Doe, and John Doe will most likely be gone in one way or another within weeks of crossing paths with them.

Again, the main reason the world collapsed was that there were just too many superhumans to handle, and even the ‘heroes’ ended up having too many skeletons in their closet. Not to mention the fact that people out to destroy the world only had to succeed once, and when the best time to do that is when everyone’s at each other’s throats. Who knows how many doomsday plots popped off while everyone was screaming at each other, and if that was what led to nukes being launched and global trade going the way of the dodo.

But back to the point.

When superhumans are unknown, they get the best results.

That fact was made clear when Maelstrom and the others went on to wreak havoc, while I focused on bringing in troops.

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Gunfire, cannon fire, and flashes of bright red beams surged through the sky. The ruined city taken as a base by the power-armored patsies was being ravaged unilaterally by the force I’d brought together across the globe. They were probably prepared for regional powers, or even strike squads from the pseudo-aristocracy that bordered them on their western flank, but a coalition of superhumans across the world arriving on their doorstep was too much for whatever preparation they had.

Maelstrom was their most eminent problem, and she basically owned the skies. They tried to shoot her down and send interceptors after her. The missiles and flak basically didn’t get past her outermost defenses, while the interceptors wasted gas, even though they used so some of high-intensity energy weapon to try and counter her. The sky was filled with wreckages of missiles and remotely piloted drones, both were being thrown over to a predetermined dump, where I could send everything away later. Nothing could touch her up there, and from that vantage point, she could do anything she wanted.

Tanks found themselves lifted up, the people within were pulled out, and the vehicle discarded while she left the people in a deep crater to wait out the battle. For her, confronting the army was pretty much like tangling with flying pests and segregating laundry. All the enemy could do was keep trying to fire on her, using up their resources, just so that they could have a chance at facing everyone else that came to fight them. If they didn’t keep sending interceptors or firing on her, that basically gave her the all-clear to attack, and that attack would devastate their forces.

Though that strategy wasn’t working out very well for them, because of everyone else brought in.

Nori’s forces were being the most effective. Spinning, hovering drones were shot out of the main cannon on the ship and sent over the battlefield to counter large artillery pieces. Anything not aimed at them or at Maelstrom received speeding kinetic kill vehicle, and basically ensured that the forces on the ground didn’t have anything larger than a mortar. The mech Nori unleashed was also a spindly, light-footed thing that was insect-like in its movements. It scurried on walls and the road with frightening speeds, weathered small arms fire with ease, and plucked pilots out of power armor with utmost ease before scurrying away to detain them. It was basically a giant mechanical spider the size of a horse, and it acted like an ambush predator that carried away soldiers/pilots.

It was generating more attention than Maelstrom, and I didn’t fault anyone for trying to put it down over anything else.

Clancy, Lucille, and Edel were taking advantage of the chaos that the two were creating, pretty much acting like a scalpel against any strongpoints that Parvati’s gynoid forces encountered. The gynoids were plenty strong and pretty powerful, but they were pretty much matched one-on-one while facing the power-armored troops, and their numbers advantage was undone by the fortifications set up by the neo-Nazis. As fast and strong as they were, they were still facing off against entrenched soldiers who had autocannons as primary weapons, therefore Clancy, Lucille, and Edel had plenty to do.

Clancy took on the role of breacher and point-man. Wherever he went, he abandoned subltey, and attracted attention by being a massive, armored target armed with a big gun that did a lot of damage. Given his power and strength, he was more than capable of tanking anything short of sustained fire from the tanks, and Maelstrom was making sure those didn’t do much when they popped out of the underground. His cannon raked entrenched positions, broke apart defenses, and when they fired on him Edel and Lucille moved in.

Dressed for combat, both were in some sort of full-plate armor that made them look straight out of the medieval times. The outside was all aesthetics, kind of like the angel motif that Anderson had used, and its insides were apparently high-tech power armor tailor-made for each woman. They were supernaturally fast, like metal blurs beneath the sun as they moved, and deathly quiet as they moved together. They collided with the enemy nearly unnoticed, and whoever they reached was swiftly taken apart with their gauntleted hands. They left imprints of their fists on the armor they collided with, and often broke apart anything that was raised against them, whether that be a fist or a massive gun.

Finally, there were the gynoids. Though they were ‘just’ the main force for the battle, the fact remained that they were heavily armored, very well-armed, and coordinated with one another with ease. The didn’t need to communicate, they knew the plan, and they sensed what their fellows sensed, while also being willing to sacrifice their bodies to accomplish the mission. Heavy weapons teams got covered by small-arms teams without a second thought. If a heavy weapon team got destroyed, but their weapons were still active, they could get replaced in an instant. They were not reluctant to part with their ‘lives’ because losing their current bodies didn’t matter, since they could just get a new one and get back in the fight.

And, the supply line for those bodies was unbreakable, since I was basically a mobile landing zone. If there was even a hint that the enemy was sniffing out where the gynoids were coming from, I shifted to another location. If I spent more than five minutes somewhere, I went someplace else around the city, or even in a recently cleared area, to deliver more reinforcements. Some would say that I’m better used teleporting around with Maelstrom and getting her to the targets quickly, I say that her attracting fire lets me disgorge all of Parvati’s troops and overwhelm the enemy.

In short, the current inhabitants of the city were contending with an enemy who had air, ground, and sea superiority, as well as the numbers needed to press the advantage.

All the while, they couldn’t contest, let alone overcome, the problems the dilemmas that they had on hand.

If I were the enemy commander, I’d go ahead and call for help now, but even that avenue was restricted.

The very first move that we made was to cut off their communications with their benefactors, after all.

Unable to call for help, surrounded by all sides, and all their technological superiority gone, it was no wonder that calls for surrender came within an hour of the attack’s start.

                                                                      …

Since no one else wanted to negotiate with the invading Nazi patsies, Parvati took all the people who surrendered, hashed out terms of imprisonment, and I sent them away to where the AI wanted.

What?

Putting people in the hands of Parvati sounds like a bad idea?

I think incarcerating them and seeding them throughout post-apocalypse civilizations is way worse. Not only that, but they’ve been raiding, kidnapping, and selling people off to their masters up in space. With their ideology and beliefs, they could start something bad since people are still struggling to put food on the table. Civility and good manners only last if people have food on the table, after all. People have gone to more extreme lengths and believed in more horrible things while they’ve got shelter, food, and water. During this post-apocalypse reconstruction period?

Yeah, I went out of my way to convince everyone that Parvati should deal with it, and thankfully succeeded.

Anyway, Maelstrom and the rest kept an eye on the skies for any reinforcements from the enemy, while I worked with Parvati to extract technology and assets. We were being careful with any trackers, so that meant all the electronics were fried and anything with software got wiped. That would normally mean bricking high-tech stuff, but Parvati had the schematics, customizable fabricators, and can code software as easily as it breathed.

Parvati was also the one doing the initial scans for information on the people these guys were helping out, though everyone had their own specialists ready to get their hands on the data once it was copied, transferred to an isolated computer, and ready to read.

Paranoid?

We’re dealing with a bunch of people who can give away energy weapons and power armor to patsies.

Being careful is basically required.

Anyway, with the electrical fields off, I was fine accompanying one of Parvati’s bodies to do the data recovery. While the human interface for the machine was gone, Parvati calibrated the bombs very carefully, so we could still access the rest of the machine after we gave it some power.

The news wasn’t good.

“It appears that I’ve underestimated our foes. They are interspersed across the whole system. They are using a series of very powerful and efficient drives based off of fusion technology.” Parvati reported, and when I made no noise, it looked my way. “If they have such powerful engines for their fleet, it is highly likely that larger defenses will be needed. With engines as powerful as they have, they can have combat viable warship with many, many tons of armor, especially with their headstart allowing them to set up industry in space..”

“Yeah, that sounds bad.” Space was a pretty deadly place, so any ship should have some sort of protection. However, there’d a difference between some protection and having what sounded like similar protection for tanks or warships. “The weapons you have planned aren’t going to work, then?”

“No. I expected their engines to only have the thrust these trips require. The best case scenario is that these are unarmored ships that are also unmanned. If they are manned, armed, and carrying crews, that would mean that they are limited by the physical limits of human beings, but could achieve greater speeds if needed.” Parvati tried to explain as simply as she could, but I shook my head. Insterstellar logistics wasn’t something I was versed in. Therefore, I needed something simpler. Thankfully, Parvati obliged. “I’ll need to return to the drawing board, and reconfigure my planned battle stations in orbit.  They will need to be truly massive affairs covered in weapons and armor.”

“Hey, so long as it secures the high ground, I’m willing to help. I don’t want people who work men to death and take women as pets to rule over the world. If you need anything, I’ll help out. Everyone else will, too. Probably.” I considered my next words carefully, before opening my mouth again. “If it’s that bad, you know we can take the nuclear option.”

“I would rather not, and it’s not that bad. Not yet.” Parvati was going for a conflict that would hopefully keep people in space away from us, and acknowledge the planet as something other than their playground by securing it against their threats. The problem with that plan, of course, was that it was very kind and that it looked to preserve as much life as possible. If needed, if we found them, I could send in a lot of bombs into their space-vessels. It’s highly unlikely that I’d be able to connect and transfer bombs into speeding spaceships, since they’ll be very likely to have a lot of defenses or energy shrouding them as they transit space, but mining sites, factories, and habitats? Yeah, I doubt that those are prepped for systematic, instant delivery of explosives. “I will not aid you in finding them, either. The path you propose will have humanity abandon space in fear of people like you, Designation: Egress.”

“Yeah, yeah. But if they start dropping rocks on us, we need to do it. So, go ahead and look for them, but only tell me where they are if we need to have a deterrence. One that’ll just work once.” Once some electricity fields surround those sites, our method of alpha-striking them would be effectively gone. We could still put bombs around them, just outside electrified hulls, but who knows how long that’ll work before they started filling the void of space with clouds of  machines that emit electricity. The sun’s right there. Some panels, some math, and some machines, and you could take out large chunks of space away from my power out in space. “I’m not asking you to alpha-strike them right away when they’re found. Just keep their locations in mind, and be ready to pull the trigger if they’re not willing to negotiate.”

Did I look forward to being used as a delivery system for very large explosives?

No.

But, did I want earth to become just a place for those with tech to fetch toys and slaves from?

Yeah, I liked the thought of that a lot less.