21 – BREACH OF PROTOCOL
Patton and the rest of Lemon Squadron, gathered again around the kitchen table, were once again discussing previous missions (due in part to his former team mate's habit of telling everything) when Clair came and informed Patton that yet again someone was at the canyon base entrance.
Good Lord, who could it possibly be this time? he wondered.
He excused himself with a curse and followed Clair as she led him along the route to the canyon base entrance, grabbing Lucy from her place at his side as he did.
"I'm beginning to lose track of the number of times someone's been at the door today," he commented. "Let's hope this is the last one. You check who it is?"
"It's the chocolate name guy," said Clair. "No idea what he wants, though."
Patton cocked Lucy. "Whatever the hell it is, it better be really good. I'm not in a merciful mood. He's either going to be a funny as hell Green or a dead as hell Green."
They reached the door and Clair hit the control pad to open it. They could see that the sun had gone behind the eastern canyon wall. Shadows of great length crept up the canyon. Standing in the doorway was indeed the commanding officer of the Green replacement team, Ferrero Rocher. In his hands he held what looked like a tray of muffins of some kind.
Patton gave the Green his traditional greeting; a shotgun barrel in the face and a bark of "What the hell do you want?"
The Green hesitated for some seconds and then replied: "I…I came to apologize for this morning."
"Apologize?" Patton, stopped, shocked. This he hadn't been expectiong.
Then he laughed. "Apologize? But why? That was the funniest thing I've ever seen in a long time. I should be thanking you."
The Green shrugged off Patton's comment and continued: "To make up for it I made blueberry muffins." He held out the tray to the two Yellows.
Clair hesitantly took one and gave it an analysis, looking it over with the practiced eye of both a cook and a medic. "Looks good to me." She took a small bite, chewed thoughtfully. "Boss, these are actually really good!" She quickly grabbed the tray from Rocher. "Well take 'em. And thanks."
Deciding to rush to the point, Rocher said: "I just wanted to say that I'm sorry-"
"You made us muffins. Good muffins, according to Sinclair," Interrupted Patton. "Which means you get to survive this encounter. Now have a nice evening, and fuck off before I change my mind and shoot you. Bye!" He hit the control panel, and the door slammed shut in the Green's face. "Moron," he mumbled under his breath.
"Yeah, that was pretty dumb," agreed Clair. "But at least we got muffins out of it."
"Sure thing," concurred Patton before taking a bite of a muffin for himself. "Mmmm, you're right, these are good. Think I'll go take some to Hobar and Stone. And maybe that new guy too."
"Just save one. I wanna see how he made it."
Patton paused.
"You wanna reverse engineer a muffin?" He asked. "Is that even possible?"
"Entirely." Clair shrugged. Patton returned the motion.
Clair went back to the monitoring room while Patton headed back to the kitchen, took a minute to finally finish up the last words of this conversation with the rest of Lemon (which had been going on for many times more than long enough by this point anyways), and then went to the warehouse to see how the progress on the Falcon upgrades was going. He chewed on the muffin as he went, enjoying the lingering warmth from it's recent baking.
As he entered the large room he saw the new recruit, Wilson, and Amber standing behind Ryan, who was at a laptop. Patton approached them slowly so that he could take a look at what they were doing before they noticed him. Eventually managing to get behind them, he saw that they were looking at something on YellowTube.
He recognized it instantly; it was the video of the Green taking off his armor that Ryan had posted much earlier in the day. To Patton's amazement, the video had already garnered 59,049 hits.
Nearly 60 grand in views, and in less than a day after it was posted! Damn, this incident was even more hilarious then I thought.
At the moment the other three Yellows in the room were watching the video for what was probably the umpteenth time and laughing loudly. None of them realized that their CO was standing behind them until Patton cleared his throat. The instant he did the others snapped to attention.
"Boss, hi," Ryan gave as his usual greeting whenever Patton had been watching him without him knowing it. "What's up?"
"As I remember, you were all supposed to be working on the Falcon," Patton recalled. How's that been going?"
"Ah, yes, the Falcon," Wilson said. "We've made a lot of improvements to it. Let me show you." He motioned over to the Falcon, and Patton followed his gaze. "We refitted the air intakes and fuel injection system to increase fuel efficiency, just like I told you we could do earlier," Wilson explained. "We also replaced the ammo in the gun turrets with a lighter round type that can travel faster and deal a lot more damage. It's also a smaller than standard rounds, so we can fit more ammo into each gun."
"Yeah, Wilson introduced us to it. It's great stuff." Amber said. "Never seen it before, but it works beautiful."
"Is it something you brought with you from Command?" Patton asked Wilson.
"Um…yeah," Wilson replied hesitantly.
"Then why haven't I heard about this?"
Wilson stopped dead for a second before quickly replying: "Uh, because it just came out right before I left. Yeah, just an hour before. They gave me the schematics before they shipped me out. Perfect luck."
"Hmh," Patton thought aloud. Something about the new recruit's answer seemed insincere, but it was still plausible enough that Patton had no problem buying it. After all, new things were invented at Command every day, but most didn't see standard use for months, if that. Ryan had exploited this the very first time he had been at Command, three days earlier. In fact, the weapons specialist still had several prototypes sitting in his quarters that he had "borrowed" from the orbital space station.
"And I think that's all we've had time to do so far," Amber informed her CO. "Because after we finished reloading the turrets is when we decided to show Wilson the YellowTube video about the thing this morning, and since then, well…"
Patton nodded. "As long as the Falcon upgrades get completed by the end of today, that's fine. Nearly sixty thousand views though, that's kind of amazing."
Ryan nodded. "Yeah, it's kinda scary how popular it is. It's already beat out that dancing fat guy, that weird frog thing, and that chorus of kittens singing the Star Wars theme. We even beat Catception!"
Patton grumbled in surprise at that last point. "Who would have known a stripping Green was funnier than cats planting ideas in people's heads." Then Patton remembered the other thing he had come to the warehouse to do. He motioned to Amber. "Stone, could you come with me for a moment?"
Amber nodded. "Sure boss." She followed him into the hallway. "What's up?"
Patton slung Lucy over his back and crossed his arms. How should I say this? He cleared his throat. "Um, recently, I've noticed that you've been talking to a fusion coil."
Amber nodded, as if this was perfectly normal news to her. "Yeah, Vincent. He does talk. I really should have you meet him." She led Patton to her quarters, a minute's walk away.
Please don't let her be nuts, Patton prayed silently to no deity in particular. Please don't let her be nuts!
They walked into her room and she took out the fusion coil. "Now, Vincent, I know that you're a little shy around other people, but c'mon. It's time to introduce yourself."
The fusion coil did nothing except glow, something not unusual for a coil to do.
Oh, no, thought Patton. She really has lost it. But perhaps I can still shake the sanity back into her...
He pulled Lucy from her place on his back and held the shotgun at the ready to make himself seem as authoritative as possible. "Stone, this is going to stop now. I don't know if this is some kind of weird joke you're trying to pull or if you're psychologically compromised, but whatever the reason you have to stop this."
"Look, I can explain-" Amber started.
"Make it fast then." Patton growled. "Or I'll use this coil as a test dummy for the new solid slugs Hester brought with her."
He inserted a round into Lucy and coked her for dramatic impact. And then something odd happened.
The fusion coil began to glow brighter than normal, making itself seem almost like a desk lamp, and without warning Lucy shot out of Patton's hands (an impressive event considering his possessive grip on the weapon) and stuck to the fusion coil, along with several other metallic objects in the room that happened to be laying in the open, including Amber's dogtags, which literally flew from her neck. Patton reached out to grab Lucy, which was stuck quite solidly to the coil.
"What the fuck?" he murmured. "This is weird. Must have increased its magnetic polarity somehow. Probably defective." After a couple moments of struggling he finally managed to pry Lucy from the surface of the fusion coil and then quickly slung her onto his back before he lost the shotgun again to the magnetic pull of the coil.
"You know what?" he said to Amber while taking out his magnum, which was lighter and less subject to the magnetic field due to its hard chrome plating. "Forget explanations. This has gone far enough. I'm destroying this coil here and now-"
"It's a tape recorder." Amber interjected.
"What?"
"It's a tape recorder," Amber said again. "I placed one inside of the coil so that when I record audio logs it feels more natural, like I'm talking to a person. I doing them the way you're supposed to and...it just didn't work." She scratched her neck and looked sheepish. "And then, uh, I got more into it I guess, and I ended up named the fusion coil Vincent."
"Oh." Patton let out a relieved sigh and lowered his pistol. "Oh, is that what's been going on?"
Amber nodded. "It was all just an exercise. Sorry if it got too far."
"That's good," said Patton. "'Cause for a while there I was beginning to wonder if you were compromised."
Amber laughed nervously. "No, definitely not."
"Good. You're the best sniper I know. I'd hate to lose you." Patton sighed explosively and straightened. "Well, I'm glad we got that sorted out. Carry on, Stone." Patton exited her quarters and paced down the hallway with an easy strut, covering his unease with professionalism.
As Patton walked away, the coil's glow dimmed again and the metallic objects still stuck to it fell to the floor with a series of tinkles.
As soon as her CO was out of earshot, Amber turned to Vincent and shouted at him: "Why wouldn't you say anything?"
"I need to maintain my cover in this base above all else," Vincent replied matter-of-factly.
"But he almost killed you!" Amber exclaimed. "And I had to lie to him to stop him from destroying you. If you'd said at least something-"
"I have powers far beyond your comprehension," said Vincent smugly. "I could easily have destroyed him before he could so much as touch me."
"What do you mean?"
"I was given a mission to observe someone at this base, and I am going to continue with that objective no matter the cost to you or your team."
"Why do you have to be so cryptic all the time?" Amber growled. "You disappear off to who knows where several times a day, keep mentioning things that you say are 'beyond my comprehension', and refuse to talk to anyone but me. Why can't you just be-" She just barely stopped herself from saying why can't you just be a normal talking fusion coil, having realized how stupid a sentence that would have been.
"Look," said Vincent bluntly. "All you need to know is that I am taking residence at this base for a very important purpose and that I am vastly more powerful then you are, no offense."
"Fine," Amber growled again, then stomped out of her quarters and began walking back to the warehouse, having had more than enough annoyance for one conversation.
"But you better start changing, or we'll see how 'powerful' you are against a sniper round."
Patton was heading towards the security monitoring room to check up on things when he encountered Hearts in the hallway, calmly leaning against one of the walls. Lemon Squadron's sniper motioned to Patton that he needed to talk.
"Hey Pinkie, gotta tell you something." He said quietly.
Patton conformed to Heart's walk in seconds, old training returning to his mind. "Yeah, what's up?"
"Well, that guy who used to be a Blue. Brian, I think his name is."
"That's the guy. What about him?"
"The thing is," Hearts hesitated, not entirely sure how to say what was next. "I'm not sure he's entirely all right. I mean, aside from being a Blue and all."
"What do you mean then?"
"Well, last I saw him, he kept going on about how he thought this fusion coil was always staring at him, and even following him. In fact, he told me this fucking weird story about how last night this fusion coil actually went up to him in his bed and said some pretty odd stuff." Hearts shrugged. "I dunno, it was probably just some sugar induced fantasy dream of his, but I just think he needs attention."
Patton nodded. "Yeah, well, he's under my command. You let me worry about it. Still, thanks for the tip."
Hearts nodded. "Sure thing, Patton. No intel is bad intel, right?"
"No intel is bad intel," Patton replied.
The two of them reached a junction in the hallway and they went their separate ways. It looked as though Hearts was heading down to the lower levels to interrogate the Green prisoner. Or possibly get more lemonade. Both rooms were in the same area.
Patton simply bumped fists with him and turned off.
As he headed for security, Patton went over in his mind what Hearts had said.
Now it's the Blue who's talking about this coil. Maybe Stone's story rubbed off on him? He's certainly impressionable enough. No, the Blue's barely been around her today. It probably is the tape recorder thing like Stone said. Still, something strange is definitely going on here.
A minute or so later Patton completed his walk to the security monitoring room. He entered to find Wilson looking at some of the monitors.
Now that's a little odd. He doesn't have clearance to be in here.
Wilson continued to stare at the monitors, completely oblivious to Patton's presence. After a couple tens of seconds Patton cleared his throat loudly. Wilson jumped and upset the chair he was sitting in.
"How did you get in here?" Patton asked him firmly. "Weren't you just in the warehouse working on the Falcon?"
"Ah, yes, hello Commander," Wilson replied nervously. "I was just, um…"
"This room is classified above your clearance level," Patton elaborated.
Now it was Wilson's turn to clear his throat, though after doing so he suddenly became less nervous, perhaps managing to get his bearings over the surprise of this encounter. "I…got lost. Yes, I got lost in the central access corridor when I had to get something. I realized that you just showed me around this base a few hours ago, but it's just so big and-"
"The central access corridor is one straight long path," interrupted Patton. "It was built to help people avoid getting lost. How could you get lost from one path?"
Wilson stopped. "You know, I really should get going now," he stammered. "Lots to do on the Falcon." He started for the door, but Patton stepped in his way, crossing his arms. He actually had to look down on Wilson, he noticed. The new soldier was a head shorter than him.
"I'll escort you back to the warehouse, make sure you don't get lost again." He said, voice icy.
Wilson shook his head. "No, that's not necessary sir. I was using the camera feeds to look over the base layout. I think I can find my way now."
"I'll escort you back to the warehouse." This time, Patton made it clear it was not a suggestion.
Reluctantly, Wilson nodded. "Yes, fine."
They walked slowly back to the warehouse. Wilson continued to make certain excuses every now and then about why he should be allowed to go by himself, but Patton sternly refused to let him. In going into the security monitoring room without permission he had committed a severe breach of military protocol and Patton was going to make damn sure that it didn't happen again. The recruit was still just on his first day, and he didn't want to have him court marshaled that early.
When they arrived back at the warehouse, Amber and Ryan walked back over to him, as well as Clair, who had recently begun helping on the repairs also. "Wilson, where've you been?" Ryan asked. "I turn my back, and you're just gone."
"He was in the security monitoring room," Patton explained.
"Are you sure boss?" Ryan asked. "I'm not sure recruits have clearance to go in there. Hell, I don't have clearance to go in there."
"They don't," Patton confirmed. "And I think you just earned yourself the right to."
"I had to get something and got lost, then went into security so that I could use the camera feeds to see the layout of the base," Wilson elaborated.
"That area is restricted," said Clair firmly. "You shouldn't do that again."
Wilson nodded. "Fine, I won't. Don't worry."
"Wait, how'd you get past the lock?" Amber asked. Patton spun to face Wilson. That was a good question; the locks on the security room were some of the best in the Yellow Army.
"The door wasn't closed," Wilson explained. Patton glowered, but accepted the explanation. It wouldn't be the first time this happened. The security room door was supposed to close and lock by itself, but more often than not the computer code to start the mechanism failed. Yellow Command was working on a software patch, but it was low on their priority list. Patton made a mental note to ask them to hurry it up.
With that subject taken care of, the group resumed work on the Falcon, with the help of Wilson. Staying back to watch them (Wilson in particular) Patton made note of the team he had built.
He's very new and kind of dumb in terms of following protocol, but skilled enough that he's definitely an asset to the team, Patton decided.
Still, if the recruit decided to breach protocol like that again, then there would be consequences.
Even so, he was impressed with Wilson's abilities. Even from here, without flying it, Patton could see the Falcon was much more efficient and powerful then it had been a few hours ago, before Wilson had arrived. And once he had finished working on the Falcon, there were lots of other things he could have the recruit work on, like improving the damage for the many weapon prototypes the Hobar had borrowed from Yellow Command and fix the minor glitches they had picked up. All in all, a good man, and part of a good team. And maybe, just maybe, able to withstand the Red's assault, when it finally decided to come…