Stray Cat Strut-Chapter Twenty-Four - In the Name of the Moon!

Chapter Twenty-Four - In the Name of the Moon!

"Can you Imagine an imaginary menagerie manger managing an imaginary menagerie?"

--Translated excerpt from a question ask by Japanese Ronin Nya during an interview in 2055

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"Don't forget," Lucy said. "We have our first Applied Pol-Sci this afternoon."

"Yeah yeah," I said. "Kiss before you go?"

The source of this c𝓸ntent is frёeweɓηovel.coɱ.

Lucy grinned and gave me a quick kiss before darting out of the Bastion with a skip in her step. She'd been doing that a lot lately. Skipping, not kissing. Well, there'd been a lot of that too, but not much more than our usual baseline.

I think it was the working legs that did it, probably. Or she just liked the way her skirt bounced with every step. It was... cute.

Ah well. I stretched my lower back out and was left unsatisfied when it didn't pop. "What's on the docket for today, secretary Myalis?" I asked.

I'm thinking of making it rain anvils, but less in a cartoony way, and more in a disastrously real way. It would be a very localized sort of rain, with only one raindrop, as it were.

"Maybe you can buy yourself a little comedy AI friend? I can spare a few points for something like that, right? Or some comedy software? Does that exist? Because if it does, you should poke one of the other AI for a copy."

I was smiling despite myself as I stepped off the ship and started towards my morning classes. If Myalis was being jokey, then we were probably okay.

I resisted the urge to skip to class. I wasn't wearing a flowy skirt and also I'd rather die than be seen doing something like that. And, about halfway there, I was met by Olivia who silently slid up next to me and walked along without saying much beyond a 'good morning' and 'how are you?'

I got to class, discovered that it was going to be a lesson-first kind of day, then sat back in one of the seats furthest from the front. I was actually early enough that I had to endure small talk with the guys sitting next to me, but they were pretty chill, if a bit awkward.

Then Professor Rogers stepped into the room and the screen we were all facing lit up. "Let's get right to it," he said. "What's logistics?"

No one said anything. The sudden change of pace kinda fucking with everyone. Finally, someone by the front raised a hand. "In my words, or a textbook definition?" the student asked.

"Textbook."

"Logistics is the creation, maintenance, and management of supply chains. It's the act of dealing with acquiring, moving, and storing equipment and materials," the student said. Probably reading off their Augs.

Professor Rogers paused for just a moment before nodding. "Good enough. In war, artillery is king, but logistics is the queen. That's a chess analogy for you plebs. We're not going to deal with logistics too much, that's an entirely different department and a five-year course. However, you need to understand that logistics will win wars, or lose them."

"How's that?" I piped up.

The professor glanced up at me for just a moment before answering. "A gun is only good as long as you have ammo to shoot. A soldier is useless if they don't have food, shelter, and equipment. But food is eaten, shelter gets bombed, and equipment breaks down. Logistical services keep ammo flowing, get food delivered, build shelters, and replace equipment. You can, broadly, divide logistics into short and long term. Short term logistics are perhaps the reason that samurai are as powerful as they are."

I blinked. I thought it was because we had alien tech and crazy AI in our heads?

"A soldier whose logistics train is lost is, in a word, fucked. A samurai in the same position only has to mutter a few sentences and they're ready to keep going. However, long term logistics are different. They deal with planning for future events and ensuring that stockpiles are filled and equipment is where it needs to be before it needs to be used. Give me examples."

A student raised their hand next to me. "Vaults and shelters?"

"Good. That's more for civilians, but in your roles as tacticians and officers, you may have to deal with civilians at times. A rowdy crowd of pissed off locals who just discovered that the shelters they were sent to never existed will make your life complicated in any incursion. More."

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"AA-guns?" Someone asked.

"Need their ammo before an incursion starts," Professor Rogers nodded. "Good. Add on any heavy machinery to that as well. Tanks don't run on hopes and dreams, they need constant maintenance even when not on the front lines."

Rogers kept on going. He pulled up images of some guy called Montgomery and his rival Rommel. I tried looking more into them with my Augs, because it was kind of interesting, but all that I pulled up was a lot of very weird historical fanfiction, and I don't think the kind of logistics Professor Rogers was talking about was in what I was seeing from that search.

About forty minutes in, just when I was starting to have a bitch of a time paying attention, the professor told us to get changed.

Today was sparring, and I was actually looking forward to it.

I had a lot of pent up energy and a bit of moving around would help a lot. Plus, all I had to do was imagine that the schmucks I was fighting looked like a particular gremlin child and punching faces would be a lot easier.

I returned to the classroom, then came to stand within the group of students that had changed already. It was only a minute or two before the rest arrived.

"We have a special guest today," Professor Rogers said as he came to stand before us all. "A samurai, in fact."

I blinked. Did he mean me? I wasn't a guest, I was here from the start of the course. I mean, that was only a couple of days, bu--

I flinched as the door to the room was kicked open hard enough to crash into the wall next to it. Then a woman sauntered into the room.

I blinked. She was tall and skinny. The kind of skinny that fancy people liked to describe as lithe, with a tight bodysuit on. She was wearing a schoolgirl uniform over it. One of those Japanese ones, with the little sailor bow and the too-short skirt. Big cat ears, very organic looking ones, were poking out on her head, and her eyes were slitted, like a cat's.

The whiskers were a bit much, though.

"Who're you?" I asked.

"Glad you asked! Nya!" the samurai said. She had an accent that I couldn't place. Beyond the weird... cat vocalizations. "I'm the one that's gonna kick your butt! ... nya!"

"Samurai Nya here has agreed to assist with today's combat class. You're aware that we have a young samurai as a student, and I'm worried that that might lead some of you to underestimate an experienced samurai on the field."

Hey, wait a minute...

"In any case, the lesson today is simple. Survive." Professor Rogers glanced at his wrist, where he wore a classic army-style watch. "You have... twenty-two minutes until class needs to be dismissed for showers and the like," he said.

"I'll make it count!" Nya replied.

"What's the exercise, exactly?" One of the braver, bigger guys asked.

Nya's grin was disturbingly cat-like. "Survive! Everything goes! The only rule is I can't kill you and I need to replace any limbs I break! Nya!"

And then she was across the room and the guy who'd asked the question was being Judo-flipped into the mat. He landed with a hard 'ompf' that sounded like it knocked more than just the air out of his lungs.

The entire class kind of just froze for a moment. Violence was cool and fun and all, but it wasn't often that it just happened when you weren't expecting it.

Then Nya spun around, wrapped her tail--oh shit, she had a tail?--around one guy's neck, and yanked him back while using the momentum to knee Olivia right in the chest.

For some reason, that's what snapped me out of it. Seeing someone I knew, even if I didn't care for them much, flung back with a weird, choking cough.

I stepped up and swung at Nya, but she was already gone. Still, the rest of the class started to pick up on it.

It was nearly thirty of us versus one of her!

Then it was twenty-nine of us... twenty-eight, twenty-seven...

Nya grinned from ear to ear, laughing while she bounced, kicked, and tail whipped the entire class.

Then she was on me, and being a samurai didn't spare me from the treatment. I caught her upper arm, spun into a move I'd only just had injected into my brain, and tried to smack her, but she grabbed me in turn and fell downwards onto her back, pulling me down with her.

And then her feet were in my chest and I was sent flying upwards.

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