Magazines loaded, rigging set for proper weight distribution, combat protocols warming up. G36 pulled herself into the chopper first, reaching out for the next doll in line.
"Thank you." Zas21 said, grasping G36's gloved hand to be pulled in. One by one, the maid doll helped her teammates into the chopper, a sort of nervous buzz through their normally quiet network. Of all the dolls of this ad hoc echelon, Zas had the most combat experience, but it was G36 who had been placed in charge by the commander.
She didn't have the same programs as the other field command units and she could barely keep herself from overheating when under duress, but she had their respect. One of the original dolls, one of the commander's first, the one who was both everywhere on the base yet also always working out of sight. They'd listen to her.
And that was what overtaxed her emotion module the most.
That nervousness was radiating from her, not them.
At that realization, G36 shook herself down, a shiver flowing through her epidermal surface that was beyond her ability to control. A pulse from her emotion module, gradual but steady as she looked to her teammates.
Zas, G3, Skorpion, and her sister 36c… none of them were the elites, but they were being flown in regardless.
"In support, Thirty-six. Just like you do for everyone on the base, you can do in the field. I know you can do it." 36 replayed the commander's voice in her digimind, recalled the feeling of his hand on her shoulder as she left for the armory. If he was going to try his best to hold down the command center with miss Kalina… then G36 must uphold her end of their silent agreement. Her master had faith in her; a trust that came from not just knowing G36's specs, but how she had grown under his observation and tutelage.
Or perhaps he had seen just how much this deployment meant to G36. How a human could pick out illogical permutations in her own emotion module better than G36's own breakdowns was part of the mystery that kept her so glued to her master. It was why she could even call him her master in the first place.
"We are secure. Take off when ready." G36 wired through the radio, feeling that buzz in her circuits as the wheels left the ground.
'Big sister?' G36c pinged privately, no doubt as hypersensitive to the older model doll as she were to her.
'I am fine.' G36 pinged back, sending with it a calm, warm note from her emotion module. Something a human couldn't do -or receive- a direct stimulation of gratitude and reassurance to the recipient. 36c shifted in her seat, her face neutral, but G36 could feel a brief pang of doubt.
'I am fine. Nervous, but fine.' G36 sent, to which her sister bounced back the feeling of a reassuring hug almost immediately.
Now wasn't this vexing? According to G36's programming, the older sibling was supposed to be the reassuring one, was supposed to be the reliable senior. She flagged the feeling, putting it under a scrutinizing lens- after all there was nothing better to do during the flight.
A devaluing of one's self; curious considering she knew her exact value, down to the New Euro cent. She had been losing value in the most logical sense. Age, wear-and-tear, lack of firmware updates… G36 certainly was not the same price as she had been coming off the manufacturing line according to market trends.
But that wasn't this feeling.
The more she picked at it, the more she felt it overwhelm her emotion module. It had to be some sort of corruption, some strange permutation of code. She would isolate it and have it sent to IOP for further-
A body bumped into her, shaking G36 from her inward analysis. C had leaned against her, eyes closed. Her status was set to short sleep mode, but C sent one final ping, a warm pulse- comfort, confidence, and a firm urge for 36 herself to rest.
And she could feel it; the heat of her processors. That feeling crept back in, latched to a thought processes like a tick; 'If you can't even run a self-diagnostic, how can you operate a fire-team?'
"Thirty-Six. Thirty-Six come in." The radio crackled, the soothing voice of her master sprinkled with the snowy dust of white-noise.
"Yes, master?"
"Remember, standard operating procedure for emergency deployments. Run the team on the preassigned tasks I planned out for you. Even if you have to deviate and it is stressing your processes, call it in and I will issue the commands manually if needs be. You'll be fine."
"Yes, master. Thank you."
"...good. Command out."
Yes, humans couldn't receive the direct stimulation that a doll could. They had to pick it out from the words, from the tone of voice, from the body language. Nuance created by thousands of years of evolution that dolls could only poorly mimic. And why did they need to mimic it? Electronic communication had rendered such evolution pointless, and yet at the same time made it all the more impermeable and illogical. Perhaps that is why G36 found humans so fascinating.
She smiled, glancing down to the doll that was programmed to be her younger sister. Just because G36 knew how this model was meant to be programmed, didn't mean that she would act that way either. Nothing in G36's predictions of her sister had expected the younger to call the commander out of concern.
Perhaps… perhaps dolls were just as fascinating as well?
G36 stole a glance at her teammates, watching a Skorpion excitedly gestured to an overwhelmed G3, the assault rifle's eyes wide and mouth open in silent gasp. How Zas quietly shook her head, their silent conversation firing back and forth on the network.
Yes, it was fascinating that no matter how fast the communications between dolls could be, that in such a casual environment, they purposefully slowed it down, they mimicked the same inefficient body language as humans.
They could send the impulse, the intent of an action or an actual playback of said programmed action alongside their message and have it be perceptible to the recipient, but why did they feel the need to act it out?
G36 found herself overheating once more as she approached the wall of her digimind's physical limitations. She quietly hissed the heat from between her teeth, careful so that the others didn't notice what was happening. When she looked down at her motionless sister, there was a smile on the doll's face.
There were all sort of logical problems in just a simple expression. Sleep mode halted all processes and put them in standby, meaning that C had to have purposefully set the expression to hold during sleep mode meaning that…
G36 caught herself once more, slamming down hard on her own thoughts. No, no more thinking. As gently as she were handling an infant, she plucked C's crimson beret from her ashen hair, holding it tight in her hands before she shifted herself closer to her sister.
No more thinking. There would be plenty of time for that when they landed. G36 began slipping her surface level programs into standby mode before relaxing. Her body tilted, leaning into her younger sister, her head coming to rest upon C's.
There was no logic behind it, no programming for it, no protocol set to explain the feeling, but as G36 slipped into standby mode, she could feel the cooling wave of relief wash over her finally.
"Chopper Two and Three are inbound, ETA is… thirty-minutes." Kalina continued to tap away at the screens, flipping through operational data. Not as fast as 36 would, but the commander appreciated Kalina's assistance regardless.
"Put in the order that they're to resupply and carry what spare is left over to M-Four's team. Thirty-six knows to mark and secure any accessible landing zones they find."
"You think the operation will take that long?" Kalina tilted her head. She wasn't questioning his authority or planning, she seemed genuinely surprised that the Commander seemed so pragmatic about it.
Well, he'd use the word pragmatic, but it seemed more pessimistic from the outside.
"We're dealing with a Ringleader." He reminded, "If they are anything like Hunter during Stargazer, we will need to encircle and destroy them completely. No room for underestimation." Scrambling every available Echelon hadn't exactly been in the gameplan he sent to Helian earlier, and the paperwork for all of the back-end would bit at both him and Kalina later...
But if the extra caution produced less casualties, he'd gladly pay that price- hell, he'd pay the difference in supply and ammo out of his own pocket if needs be. Persica would approve of the move as well as long as he spun it as being support for Anti-Rain, so he could at least count on that lethargic woman to stand in his defense on that matter.
Well, hopefully.
He was giving her a lot of credit based solely on the fact that he seemed to be the only human commander that M4 synched well with. If a more competent one surfaced somewhere down the line, there was no doubt 16lab would cut ties with the former "terrorist" as soon as they could.
The commander washed that bitter taste away with an equally bitter gulp of cold coffee. Check in with M4's team would be soon and he'd need to be ready to take command of any one of his echelons at a moment's notice. There was no telling just what this particular Ringleader would be capable of; if command had only the model name but no specifications… then it was a new model, one developed by the Sangvis Mastermind itself for whatever specific task it needed done.
A bump of turbulence pulled G36 out of her sleep-state. Well, not a true sleep state, of going deeper into Level Two, but more… well more like what she had observed her master's restless naps to be. An unquantifiable unease, something not based in logic. Had the bump spooked her? A bit of turbulence, of a chaotic moment of air forcing the helicopter to do something unexpected. Certainly there was a fear of not being in control, but she wasn't the pilot, she never was in control. Comfort came in knowing what it was, knowing it as a possibility, knowing it as something so simple to manage that even a basic flight computer could do so-
But something in her digimind quaked. A shiver that manifested not through her faux-muscles, but through the sparking of her circuitry.
She'd turn inward, scanning herself over and over with her emotion module, trying to make sense, trying to match it under what she had observed from her master.
Nervousness.
Nervousness? For what? She was a T-doll-
Nervousness at failing. At letting her master down. At seeing his pained face smiling when she came-to in the repair bay after being uploaded into a new frame.
Another cold shiver, circuits flaring to life even when she tried to cut them off. She knew the root cause: she wasn't an elite command doll. She hadn't the programming, no control protocols like miss M4 had. She was just the trusted adjutant, the one doll that all others on the base respected enough to listen to… but when it came to combat, she couldn't control them like miss M4 could.
And she knew that would cost the frames of her friends… of her little sister.
No amount of logical responses she poured on top of the problem seemed to put it out. There was only one thing she could do to quell it.
"Master. We are thirty minutes from the designated landing zone." G36 radioed in. Though the commander told her such reports were unnecessary, she knew him, she knew he'd want constant updates… or at least that was the excuse that she told herself to snip that particular fraying wire before it unraveled into further logic flaws.
Near-silence hissed back at her, a brief twinge of interference- they shouldn't have had any equipment problems, they weren't even in the area of operation yet.
"Affirmative." The commander radioed back after a moment of anxiety-provoking silence, "Keep me updated on landing."
The commander's voice… sounded different. It didn't have that strain behind it, that bit of frayed nerves whenever G36 wasn't in the command room beside him.
"Master. I detect discrepant inflections in your voice. Are you alright?"
"...everything is fine. G-Thirty-Six."
His voice was halting, scratchy, ultimately lacking in that essence that made G36's emotion module warm up. Whoever this was, it was not her master. She sent a ping through the local network, a sharp, snapping alarm. Though the other girls didn't know exactly what was wrong yet, and they didn't need to know that this was all based on an illogical leap.
"Are you sure, Commander?" She radioed on last time, this time vocally so that all in the chopper could hear her. She felt them tap their radios as well.
"Return to radio silence and maintain the plan." Was all the commander said to reassure her. No questions of why she was calling, no picking up on just how tentative G36's words had been.
No empathy.
'Full radio silence. Break network connections. Something is wrong and we're turning this chopper around.' G36 commanded the moment that the radio channel went dead. Though she lacked the command module to force compliance, all of the dolls here knew 36, respected her for her as one of the commander's first subordinates. Who else could possibly know an imposter better than she or FAL? There were no questions, only the little blips of nervousness and quiet, barely audible whispers now that the network was cut off.
G36 moved through the rear of the chopper, up to the cockpit. The co-pilot glanced back, no doubt seeing the frown on the doll's face.
"Problem?" He radioed through the headset. Despite it being a closed channel, even just hearing the radio's electric sizzle made G36's nervous.
"Can you fly by instruments?" She asked, raising her voice modulator to the appropriate decibel level.
"Can you squeeze the trigger without your firing core?" The human pilot sounded insulted, but she didn't want to waste processing power on figuring out if it were true or false.
"So your answer is yes, just poorly."
The pilot grinned, giving G36 a thumbs up.
"There is a problem back at base. Turn the helicopter around and fly dark." G36 commanded. Well, if she had no command module to affect the dolls in the echelon, who the hell was she to order humans around?
That must be what the humans were thinking when they radioed back in to base and received only dead-air in return. The co-pilot glanced back at G36, who only nodded in confirmation that something was wrong.
They didn't need to know that G36 had forcibly shut down their chopper's transceiver, so no matter what they said, it'd reach no one… but she couldn't risk these humans alerting whoever was impersonating the commander that their helicopter was on its way back. Hopefully whoever it was wasn't paying keen enough attention to notice that the helicopter would just vanish from the tracking either.
And if G36 turned out to be wrong about this, well then she would take whatever punishment miss Helianthus dealt; after all her master would be far too light on G36 if such were the case.
The helicopter banked, the g-forces sending all the dolls deeper into their seats. A physical pressure, of G36's decisions literally weighing them down. This only wore on her circuits more. No command module, no commander, everything was completely upon G36 and her flawed, aged processors.
Was she making a mistake? Were they going to arrive back at base to a confused commander, to miss M4 and her team…
Miss M4- was this what she went through every mission? G36 breathed out, the heat of her processor coming out as a wisp of steam in a cold cabin.
An alarm blared, the piercing klaxon echoing through all the halls. It was the physical alarm, one that couldn't be electronically disabled. A breach in the perimeter, the bunker complex itself. The commander scrambled for the cameras, only to find them all blacked out. Electronic attack on top of someone forcing their way into the base. It explained how they managed to get into the bunker perimeter in the first place.
"Kalina, get to the armory and start emergency distribution of ammo and supplies!" The commander barked, not wasting a moment as he slammed down the emergency communication line. His voice would broadcast over every intercom and speaker in the base now.
"All dolls, intruder on base! Direct command from identification UAS-zero-seven: weapon restrictions are free and ROE swap to anyone without proper IFF signals or biometric recognition." He gritted his teeth. No information; no idea where the breech was, the number of attackers, or even who they were. He had suspicions, one of which he had to shake from his head- she was capable, but she would never do something like this. Had to be Sangvis.
Too well timed with the departure of his away teams… had the signal from M16 been a bait? A thousand, thousand variables that he just didn't have the ability to process. If he were to assault his own base, it was what he would do. Jam the outgoing radio and satellite signals, copy them, make it seem like nothing was wrong, buy time to complete the overall objective… which was what?
Response; procedure and protocol. Lock down the command room and organize the defence. Without the base's network he'd have to send and receive everything through the intercoms, meaning the enemy could hear as well. Dammit, he hated giving up the initiative.
The click of the intercom for the whole base.
"Set defensive perimeters at all major points of interest, M-nineteen-nineteen, I want your defense team positioned at the armory. SASS, BAR, and Springfield activate your emergency command lines and form temporary reaction teams from those who fall back first. All units who make contact call it in immediately." The commander barked before clicking the intercom clear and taking a large, desperate sigh. Keep calm, take in the facts, adjust the plan as the situation evolves.
Defend the armory, the repair bay, power routing, and command center. If they held those four sectors, they could hold out until the outside realized that something was wrong. Well… that was the hope, at least. If it came down to it, he'd have two options; have someone make a run for it and radio for help when they were clear from the jamming, or abandon the base completely-
"Sangivs! Sangvis dolls in the base!" The intercom crackled, a doll's voice frantic, "Main entrance security station! We'll hold them as long-"
The communication cut, just like that. What felt like minutes of silence punctuated by the sizzle of the intercom coming back to life.
"Applaud, human, for the show has begun, and the lead actress has taken to the stage." A womanly voice cooed, her tone as haughty as it was sickly sweet, and that sent a shiver down his spine.
A Ringleader, here? How had she even found the base, let alone infiltrate its networks enough to compromise the sensors, cameras, and surface communication networks?
"Intruder." The commander hissed back through the intercom. It was in her damn name, now wasn't it? Best not ask questions and just keep her talking.
"Oh? You know of me already? I thought I was stuck playing the small stages, but for my wonderful audience to know my name sends me the greatest joy. Perhaps you will admire my work shortly?" Intruder replied, finger no doubt still pressing down the intercom button just to taunt him. If he could keep her talking, keep her occupied it bought the defense teams more time-
"I will be sure to make your death mercifully painless, my admirer. Please wait where you are- I'll be there shortly for your private performance~"
The channel cleared, she was on the move then, and from what the Ringleader coldly implied, the commander knew the Sangvis objective for this breach. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise? If it had been human intruders he'd have to issue kill-overrides to every doll on base, and that came with its own host of issues.
Ready the base for lockdown with a five minute delay… barring no immediate resistance, that'd be enough for him to get to the armory and command the defense from there. He went for his desk, pulling his backup sidearm and shoulder holster from the locked drawer. Shove the readied moon-clips in his pocket, keep a few loose bullets on hand as well, just in case. A crack the cylinder, six magnum slugs already readied… when had he prepped this? He shook his head, clicking the revolver shut and throwing on the holster.
Do or die, no more different than all those times he picked up a Kalashnikov and waded out into the snow… except this time he had no idea how to turn the tables on his hunter.
This time he had far more people close to his heart to protect than before.
Deep breaths.
Plunging into the bright white halls, there was an eerie stillness despite the droning klaxxon. He dashed for the emergency stairs- scaling up two sets, moving counterintuitively towards the breach in the upper floors. It was there he heard the first echoing snaps of gunfire. Incoherent shouting, panic, and he wasn't even near the armory yet.
Sidearm readied, he bolted towards the sounds of combat. Two hall turns was all it took to find beleaguered dolls running in a panic, though luckily straight towards him. P38 and Type 63, and both looked absolutely terrified.
And the commander could see why- the Sangvis dolls behind them were hot on their heels. Brutes-
"C-Commander!"
"Comrade Commander!"
The barrel raised with no hesitation, full faith in his dolls to react exact to their programming as he pulled the trigger all the way through its poundage. Purposeful and clean, just like another day on the range-
The dolls leapt to the sides as the slug slammed into the chest of the closest pursuer, its daggers already lashing out for Type 63's back.
"Sixty-three, fix bayonet!" He ordered, cracking a second slug into another Brute barreling down towards them, "Thirty-eight, assist Sixty-three's targeting."
The panic was still there, but now that they had firm orders, the dolls went into action, spinning to face the enemy as the commander emptied the cylinder down the hall. The rest of the Brute link was closing, but Type-63 was set now.
Rounds of three different calibers all cracked down the hall in concert, making two more brutes stumble face-first into the tile, but the last one-
A click instead of a bang from the commander's sidearm, those daggers lashing for Type-63…
"The brave one wins!" 63 shouted as she lunged forward, bayonet ready.
It lanced through the brute like a spear tip, the Sangvis doll impaled all the way down to the barrel tip, stopped dead in its tracks.
But that hadn't stopped it from swinging.
"Hiiiya!" 63 screamed. One of the daggers bit deep into her chest, ripping and tearing through the circuitry there while the other caught her across her face, biting through the epidermal mesh and sending a spurt of cooling fluid flying.
All before he could reload. All before he could do anything to help.
P38 responded faster, pumping off nearly two-entire magazines out of her antiquated pistols until the brute was still. The threat neutralized, both he and 38 dove to the downed doll.
"Comrade Commander, I-I'm in bad condition… I'm sorry…" Type 63 sobbed, half of her face unable to make expressions with the deep gash that still dripping with coolant. If it were a human… the wounds would have been fatal.
Was that why he had told her to fix bayonet? Was that... why she could sell her life so easily? Bad things to think when under attack.
"We'll get you fixed up, don't worry." The commander tried his best to give the doll a reassuring pat on the head, but even he couldn't hide just how uncertain everything was. If Sangvis was already this deep then who knows how many defensive positions were even manned currently?
"I-I'll get Sixty-three to the repair bay commander. The others… the others need your orders!"
"Go." He urged the pair, eager to just get them away from him. A chill was working its way up his spine, a deadly premonition. He couldn't see the big picture, he couldn't command when he had no damn eyes in the battle.
"C'mon." The commander snapped at himself when he found his confidence slipping, "This is no different. You let the technology make you soft and reliant."
Thank god his dolls weren't around to hear his mumbling or see him slapping himself across the cheek. They'd most certainly have him sit down for a psych evaluation if that were the case…
Deep breaths.
This was no different than the small-unit tactics he worked in the very beginning. Think to what he could control- this was his base after all. Intruder may have broken in, but this was still his turf, these were still his people. Names and places had changed, but the heart was still right there, still fighting.
Yes, no different than before, and that thought alone had a grim grin crawling upon his face.