Piling out of the helicopter, Groza pushed aside a lot of the frivolous conversation, doing a cursory review of the situation. Her orders were clear, take her squad along a north-western path. Unlike the flight maps for PP-2000, the Commander provided only a few maps, although miles of information about patrol patterns, and enemy concentrations came packaged alongside them. None of the marked objectives were in an area with expected enemy contact, the Commander expressing a strong belief that the target had not outrun the Sangvis search parties, and would be found behind enemy lines, thus they were quite deep into occupied territory.
FAL volunteered to take the southern targets, and Groza suspected the other squad leader specifically did it to keep her as far away from combat as possible. A tension remained there, but it would have to wait until they returned from the mission. Meeting her compatriots' eyes across the clearing, they traded nods, and FAL set off, her team already fanning out around her as they moved.
Catching SV-98's eyes, she received a nod from the sniper, and Groza started pushing orders across the network. If PP-2000 were on the ground she would have sent the two SMGs scouting ahead while the other three moved as a group, but with the blonde SMG taking over piloting duties, they would have to spread out more generally instead. OTs-12 gave her a thumbs up, and OTs-39 saluted when they received instructions, and they set off.
She checked that no one else was listening before speaking. "Commander."
It took a moment for him to reply. "Yes?"
Now that time came to speak, Groza felt her throw close for a moment. "Are you familiar with the practices for backing up Neural Clouds in the West?" A few minutes passed, either as he thought about the answer or maybe he looked it up.
"Post war, not much. Most western nations tend to, for lack of a better term, pawn off responsibility. Postwar, the German Defense Ministry maintained a limited backup for all Dolls who fought in the war, and bi-weekly Neural Cloud backups of all Dolls in their employment, and most private companies I know of did the same." A rustle, and a few words said to someone not her. "Why?"
"Just a thought." Groza deflected the question, and she could all but feel the stare across the radio connection.
A sigh. "Understood." And then the dismissal, leaving her to continue into the trees in silence.
-Faded Glory-
Ian paced about the Command table; narrow eyes tracking arrows representing the Dolls as they moved he stewed on Groza's question, the ever-increasing pile of information and questions not quite adding up. Small video feeds went ignored in favor of a building headache, and Ian rubbed at his eyes.
"Still no contacts on drone footage." Lena, recognizing the break in his thought process, spoke up. "I have lost visual contact with Echelons Artemis and Lightning. Continuing to track via GPS beacons."
Aleksander pulled a microphone back from his mouth, slouching back in his chair. "Nighthawk is expected back in eight minutes, all footage remains clear."
Ian nodded, absentminded, eyes flickering farther up the map to the cluster of ruined homes that marked the first important point on the investigation. Privately, he knew full well the odds of finding anything in any of the objectives was low, but if the enemy were maintaining surveillance on the base, something that he assumed they would do, Ian wanted to keep them in the dark about his knowledge as much as possible.
"Contact, multiple corpses. Running identification now." The report shattered his thoughts, pulling attention to FAL's camera feed. True to her word, half a dozen dead Sangvis bodies dotted a clearing, either missing entire limbs or otherwise riddled with bullet holes.
"Hold position for verification." He watched the computer think, the icon spinning, before spitting out the ID 'Vespid'. "Artemis 3, visual confirmation of elimination?"
"All units unresponsive." Ballista reported her monotone lending an uncomfortable nonchalance to the words. "Physical damage significant, multiple limbs damaged on all units. Torso damage moderate. Functionality appears entirely crippled." He pulled her scope feed to full size, scanning the bodies to catalog the wounds himself. An old maxim about making sure floated across his mind. He let the camera feed drop back to a smaller window again.
"Single shot to the head of all targets, confirm destruction of visual sensors before progressing." Both occupants of the room gave him incredulous looks, and the sharp jerks from FNC and FN-49's camera feeds agreed with the surprise. Ian didn't elaborate, and after a few seconds to process the command, the Belgian squad completed the task in short order. Metal and coolant sprayed from the bullet impacts. When he offered no further comment, they started moving again.
The tension with his companions in the command room remained, the two of them trading looks they thought he couldn't see some kind of nonverbal argument about who would ask. Lena lost. "Sir, was that needed?"
Ian rolled his shoulders, wincing as his right one came around. "Yes. I know the risk of them retaining power this long is low, but in this situation risks are unacceptable. If they did have visual sensors, I'm going to guess the enemy will assume they lost power, and even if they figure they were destroyed the easy reasoning is that whoever took them out finished the job, not that we just dropped in two squads of combat troops."
Aleksander took this one. "And if they don't do what you expected?"
Ian shrugged. "Then we've lost nothing, and still denied the enemy intel beyond that we are present and shooting." He tapped his fingers against the table. "Everything about this is a risk, but this is the action that minimizes risk."
"Sir." Aleksander said, and the tension remained.
-Faded Glory-
"Visual on objective." SV-98 muttered. The sniper trailed behind them a short distance, being the last person to move up in the group, and often spending the time between her movements scouring the area ahead, keeping the Echelons local map populated with a great deal more information than the ones from the database. "No visible activity."
"Clear shot?" A pause, as the sniper calculated, before a confirmation appeared, SV-98's position lighting green in the corner of Groza's vision. "Everyone else, move up. Spread out, stay quiet for now." Affirmatives trailed back. "Commander, anything headed this way?"
It took a few seconds for his reply to come. "Negative. All sectors reported clear as of sixty-three minutes ago."
"Understood. Visual contact, no apparent activity." Another pause. Groza hated pauses like that, just long enough to notice but not long enough to mean something.
"Confirmed." He said nothing else, and Groza darted forwards, pressing back against a tree and watching the dots of her squad move up before moving again. The pattern repeated itself for a few minutes, until they found the edge of the open area.
Three buildings, one larger house, something akin to a barn, and a shed, arrayed roughly on the points of a triangle. Obviously disused, nature in the process of reclaiming them, shingles ripped from rooftops, walls cracked, windows shattered. Still, the Commander claimed it would make a good shelter for a fleeing person, so they would investigate.
"No visual activity." OTs-12 confirmed SV-98's earlier comment. "Split and search?"
Groza thought for a moment. No enemy movement, and orders were to move quickly, so she couldn't play this entirely safe. "Yes. 39, Shed. 12, Barn. I'll search the house. Advance one at a time."
From the far side of the treeline, she could see OTs-12 dart forwards, pressing her back against the wall of the barn, before inching along it. A peak around the corner, then she pulled back, her dot shifting color to indicate she was in position. OTs-39 followed suit a moment later, and Groza followed a few seconds after that, pressing up against the concrete building. The back entrance to the house was partially open, and Groza nudged it with the butt of her rifle, wood scraping slightly as it moved, but provided enough of an opening for her to slip inside. The inside of the building was in equally bad shape, furniture rotting or rotted away, and a thick dust settled over all of it.
Groza stilled her breath, continuing through the room, making a conscious effort to avoid kicking anything buried in the grime underneath. Something in a corner squeaked, and she spun, rifle zeroing in on a rat, which vanished into a hole in the wall. Her eyes narrowed before she relaxed again.
The remainder of the building was the same, and Groza knelt at the front door, which had almost rotted away completely, letting her see into the central yard area more clearly. The grass and dirt showed no sign of trampling or passage in recent days, and no trash or detritus could be seen either. "Anything?"
The replies matched her experience. "Dust, rats, no signs of anything else."
"Understood." She hummed. "Commander, Lightning One." She kicked a large dust pile while waiting for his confirmation. "Objective cleared. Dust and wildlife only."
This time, his reply was instant. "Understood, Lightning. Move SV-98 up and continue to the next objective." Something clattered over the radio, interrupting him. "Update to standing orders. Destroy visual sensors of all damaged enemy units from long distance prior to approach."
"Sir?" OTs-39 didn't catch herself in time.
"We do not need to risk seemingly destroyed enemy units retaining visual sensors." Nothing could soften that order, but the frigid undertone certainly worsened it.
Groza winced. She could understand the logic, from a purely pragmatic perspective. "Understood. Destroy the heads of all Sangvis units encountered, live or dead." She waited a second for further orders, before switching back to her squad when none followed. "Regroup at marked point."
-Faded Glory-
"Captain." FNC was kneeling beside her, the two assault rifle users eyeing the road below. The dirt was well churned, something or someone had moved along the path recently, and potentially in multiple directions if the scattered footprints were anything to go by. "Look there." FAL followed the indicated line of sight, squinting. While dull green paint made it hard to spot what FNC had, the white stripe around the middle stood out amongst the churned earth. "That's a smoke grenade isn't it?"
"It is." FAL opened the channel. "49, move up to support FNC. Ballista, confirm nothing on the road. Five-seveN, as soon as Ballista confirms the road is clear, cross and verify." She received calls of understanding, and Five-seveN darted across the road just ahead of her moments later. With that done, FAL dropped down a small bank, moving out towards the road, taking a more careful examination of the area at her feet. "FNC, do you spot any other remains?"
Her junior took most of a minute to answer. "Just the grenade."
"Keep an eye out." FAL instructed, moving into the road, eyes down as she watched. Near the grenade FNC spotted, FAL could see a few shell casings, and her boot clanked against metal, and with some effort she kicked another smoke grenade free. "Commander, Artemis 1. We have found evidence of a firefight on my location."
The radio crackled. "Repeat, evidence of firefight on your location." He rattled off the coordinates.
"Coordinates are accurate. Multiple expended smoke grenades, evidence of large-scale movement…" FAL knelt. "Shell casings, pistol calibers. No bodies."
This reply took less time. "Search the area, verify any further evidence of combat." FAL relayed the order, working to follow the scattered casings as she did.
Now that she was looking, it didn't take long to spot two discarded magazines. She didn't recognize either one, but kneeling and picking one up, she could say with confidence that they matched the shells on the ground approaching their resting places. Turning it over, she frowned, looking around. Two discarded magazines, not extended, or high capacity. And yet, the shell casings laying about the area were more than she'd have expected based on these two alone. Many more.
"Captain, you'll want to see this." Five-seveN's voice cut across her thoughts.
Checking Five-seveN's, position FAL took a moment to think about how to proceed. "Everyone across the road. 49, watch the road for now, everyone else, scout me a perimeter." Weaving between the trees towards her second, FAL took a brief second to check on Groza's progress. The other squad had already cleared their first objective, and seemed to be regrouping her team before moving on. From what she could tell they had not yet encountered anything of note, and would be on the move again soon.
Her second, meanwhile, found something FAL did not expect, bringing the assault rifle user up short when she stepped into the slightly more open area Five-seveN knelt in.
"She's dead." Five-seveN declared without preamble. "Shot destroyed her core completely." Plastered at the feet of a tree, her long blonde hair obscuring most of her back and arms, FAL would have believed the Doll to be sleeping or powered down at a glance, but a second glance revealed the lie in that assumption. FAL moved to kneel beside the body, pushing the Dolls hair aside to get a better look.
One arm completely missing, torn free at the shoulder, bullet wounds to the legs, fluid pooling beneath that, the ground physically spongy from the extra moisture. Pushing the Doll's hair aside, FAL sucked in a breath. Her second had not lied. Something had blasted a good six-inch hole through the Dolls torso. The wound struck FAL as unusual, a cleanly bored shot, tearing apart artificial flesh and sinew alike, likely killing instantly, along with the destruction of the poor girl's Core.
Footsteps from the left, Ballista joining them in the clearing. She picked up a weapon from the other side, placing it beside the doll. "STG-44." The rifle huffed. "Sick bastards."
"This wasn't a regular SF unit. They don't have the firepower to do this." Five-seveN muttered, and FAL agreed. "They shot her from behind, and only one shot." Anything strong enough to do that would have left a mark on the landscape, and no such marks existed. Just the body, scattered bullet casings, and a weapon.
The Commander would need to know this, and his lack of comment suggested he was either talking to Groza or preoccupied with something else. "Artemis 1. We found something." Looking around FAL couldn't see much sign of a struggle, or even bootprints. Five-seveN started checking the STG's pockets.
"Understood. Continue."
FAL shifted her visual focus back to the body. "We have found one deceased Doll, designation STG-44. Killed via single shot to the back, Core destroyed." She glanced at Ballista who shook her head. "Limited signs of struggle, she appears to have been fleeing her attacker. Artemis 3 reports no sign of other friendly casualties."
"Confirm, cause of death, single shot to the back. Recently." The Commander repeated. He didn't sound incredulous, but FAL recognized the sound of an officer who felt what she said to be unlikely.
FAL looked down, suppressing the chill down her spine with hard practice. "Check my visual feed."
"Shit." He sounded slightly unnerved, but it vanished with the following order. "Artemis 3, please confirm no sign of other bodies."
"No others in the area." Ballista reported, just a hint of anger making in through her usual monotone. "Not many signs of combat either."
"She's completely out of ammunition." Five-seveN continued, after patting down the body. "Actually, she's not carrying anything…?"
"Odd." While the tone was clipped the Commander seemed to be absorbing that information. "For now, continue the mission. Keep an eye out for any other dead."
"He sounds grouchy." FNC half asked half stated the moment the connection closed.
"There weren't supposed to be other Dolls here, were there?" FN-49 picked up the thread, and FAL stood, knocking the dirt off her knees. "The briefing said…" the rifle user trailed off.
"Hostile resistance and targets only." Ballista picked up the thread. "She has a point, Captain. Why are we finding bodies?"
FAL shrugged. "It wouldn't be the first time that someone has been lied to." That brought the others up short, as FAL checked her weapon, leaving them to ponder the meaning of that. "Spread out. Five-seveN, marked point. FNC, with me again. Ballista, 49, alternate as you move up." Affirmatives followed. "FNC, if you spot anything else unusual, call it out immediately."
"Can do, Captain!" She received a virtual salute, as they started moving again.
-Faded Glory-
Ian mentally snarled as the connection with FAL's squad closed, resisting the urge to punch the table in frustration. Additional friendly units moving about would change things in how he expected the enemy to act, and while it didn't seem likely that it would endanger his Echelons new complications mid-mission, especially ones that could be avoided. "Aleksander, message to HQ. Why was I not informed there were additional squads in the field?"
"Sending now, sir." The communications officer's reply was immediate, pausing, then continuing to type. "I will let you know when the reply arrives."
He nodded, rubbing his eyes again, trying to soothe the mounting pressure. He'd expected things to go not according to plan. He planned for the obvious things: finding evidence of activity where his, and Fleur's, guesses said there would not be, he planned for finding enemy units roaming the area, hell, he even had a half baked plan for finding the target. Finding a recently killed Doll, with a hole blown through her chest with some kind of energy weapon, however, flew in the face of everything he planned for or expected.
A thought struck, unbidden. "Compare that wound on STG-44 to the projections of damage from the unknown drone from the attack."
"Sir?" Lena looked up from her console, fingers frozen over keys. Brown eyes met his, the question 'surely you don't think' plainly visible.
"Run the comparison." He repeated. "There aren't a lot of weapons capable of simply deleting a chunk of material like that, Doll, Human, or otherwise." That drone probably had the firepower to pull it off, on top of being the only known weapon of the type in the area.
"Sir." She spun and set to work, leaving him to stew again.
FAL's team would arrive at their objective shortly, and Groza had started moving out again, so all he could do was wait. And think. He switched the channel to Kalina. "How are things on your end?"
"PP-2000 is ready to go whenever you want." Serious, but somehow, she still came across as perky. "We've loaded up some extra supplies into the helicopter, grenades, ammo, field repair kits…Anything missing?"
He felt the ghost of a smile on his face. As seemed too often to be the case, Kalina picked up on the little things that slipped through the cracks. He made a note to properly thank her later. "Good thinking. Given our supply issues as it is, that is about the best we can do."
"Thanks, Commander!" He could hear the excitement through the radio, her strained professional tone falling apart for a moment. "Anything from them yet?"
He started to say 'One body found' and stopped himself. "Nothing yet." Better not to test how Kalina would react to that news they'd found one Doll dead. "Should have more news soon." He glanced at the map, doing a quick bit of mental math, and referencing his list of potential locations for the VIP. "If she's there, ask PP-2000 to draw me up a flight plan to scan sectors 33 and 43, with an option for dropping off squads in 42."
"No problem, Commander. Anything else?"
A snort passed his lips, and he went with the blithe first reply instead of the more professional one. "I don't suppose you know how to make cheap-ass coffee relieve a headache?" Doubtful, but it felt worth asking.
A beat, and Ian remembered that he had assigned a sarcastic teenager to the logistics department. "Fleur says try not drinking it?"
While they couldn't see he nodded sagely. "Update me when PP-2000 is done with that, I need to monitor the feeds again. Oh, tell Fleur her advice is shit."
"Sure thing!" The connection crackled for a few seconds before going dead, and he pointedly ignored the amused looks from the others in the room.
-Faded Glory-
"Nothing in the basement." OTs-12 pulled herself up the ladder, shaking dust from her hair and fatigues. "Just spiders."
The other AR's story mirrored the findings of the entire team. Their second destination has been a school at once point in time, arrayed in a long wide arc overlooking a paved lot that had all but entirely succumbed to nature, but contained absolutely nothing useful. Massive holes in several walls suggested the war found this place, but Groza didn't care to ponder the implications of the fighting on the civilians. Instead, she kicked a rotting pile of textbooks out of spite.
"I found something that looks like a moose, does that count?" SV-98.
Groza sighed. "No." Obviously the lack of success was wearing on everyone else as much as her, and Groza started to suspect they were intended to find something. "39, nothing in that wing, correct?"
"No." Equally short, clipped reply. "Can we purge this memory when we return?" Groza didn't ask what she found to make the SMG ask that question.
Groza checked FAL's progress. The other squad had longer to travel, so she wasn't surprised they weren't as far along on their tasks, but it gave Groza some time to sit and think.
She opened a private channel. "SV-98."
"Captain." An edge entered the sniper's tone.
Groza had put more thought into this working of this question than she perhaps wanted to admit. "What did PP-2000 want to talk about?"
A full minute passed, during which time a flock of birds landed in the destroyed car park and took flight again. "Just asking about why you jump at the drone instead of letting her do it." The sniper hesitated, the radio connection opening and closing several times. "Why?"
"While I knew she was a pilot, I did not expect her to be our pilot." Groza waited for a beat, to see if SV-98 said anything. With nothing coming she continued. "She had never talked about herself that much, and often comes off as distant, but I found myself quite blindsided by the Commander telling me he asked for her to pilot, and that she agreed."
"If you're asking if I knew about it, I didn't."
Groza sighed. "I know you didn't know." She stood, and started to say something else, before gunfire crackled in the distance. "Movement outside, bearing 155. Everyone stay down for now, switch to network comms."
Tension hung in the air, as a Doll stumbled out of the treeline to the north, hobbling rather severely, one of her arms blown clean off, the other tightly clutching a weapon. Behind her, flashes of gunfire and puffs of dust betrayed her pursuit, before in a spray of coolant, the Doll toppled forwards, her knee giving way.
Groza pulled her weapon up, drawing a bead on the forest, already formulating the order to intervene.
The Commander's voice shattered her thoughts. "Lightning, do not engage."
"Commander?!" The entire squad beat her to the objection.
"Do not engage." He repeated the order, a bit of an edge creeping into his words, and even though Groza desperately wished to give contrary orders, they died in her throat. The gunfire died down, the Doll starting to crawl forwards. "Confirm Visual ID 'Ingram'." An image of the Doll pushed to her Neural Cloud.
"That's her." SV-98's voice shook, Groza could see the warning for 'elevated mental state' flash up on her HUD, not that she needed it. Groza ignored the notice, focusing on the girl's scared face as she pulled herself forwards, and then a small collection of Sangvis units emerged from the treeline. "Eight pursuers, Ripper type." Groza took aim, hoping against hope the Commander would reverse his order, as the enemies closed in on Ingram's collapsed form. In the center of the group of enemies, however, she recognized something else.
"Another one of those drones is with them." Even as Groza reported it, the units surrounded Ingram, who fumbled with her weapon, the distinctive click of the trigger working without a shot firing uncomfortably loud. "Commander-"
He said nothing. Her finger shook over the trigger of her weapon, physically and psychologically compelled to hold her fire.
OTs-12 couldn't hold her tongue. "We should-"
Whatever she would have said vanished in the muted thump of Ingram's life being snuffed out by the energy blast. The Rippers turned, seeming to visually sweep the area, before reforming around the Drone, and vanishing into the forest.
"Should we…check her body?" OTs-39 sounded unsure of herself, and Groza felt unsure how the Commander would reply.
"Hold where you are." The Commander instructed, "Give them time to disperse before recovering her Core." That order at least, left some room for her to interpret.
The minutes stretched, Groza's fingers flexing about her weapons grip, doing her level best to ignore the low questions and discussion of her squad mates, OTs-39 filled with horror, SV-98 with rage, OTs-12 just confused. She felt no reason to join in the conversation, her opinion already made up. When it started to circle worthlessly, she cut in. "When we get back to base, don't return to the dorms."
"Captain?"
She stood. Long enough has passed now. "I intend to have a word with him."
The radio channel went silent, as Groza stomped out to check the body. The shot bored clean through the torso, scorching the ground beneath, and exposed wiring and internals sparking and hissing as residual charge touched coolant. She knelt, rolling the Doll over, if nothing else, they could take her Core back, and maybe she knew something.
From the other side, the wound looked far worse, and as Groza pried free the clothing and body from around the Core. As she did, the full extent of Ingram's damage became apparent, bullets lodged in the Doll's torso, clean puncture wounds passing dangerously close to her Core, and when Groza pulled the small cube free, she spit out a curse.
"Ingram's Core retrieved. It has sustained some damage." She held it up, holding her gaze there long enough to be sure the Commander could see it through her eyes.
He took a while to reply, words methodically chosen. "Understood. PP-2000 is on her way to pick you up, head for the extraction point now."
"Sir." She took a few seconds to gather herself before addressing her team. "Let's go, pickup is on the way."
AN: I suggest not getting used to a bi-weekly update schedule, but I should be able to keep it up for a while, with the rest of the M4 hunt and catch operation being drafted so all that's needed is edit, polish and publish on those. Weird feeling being ahead on my writing for a change.
Questions, comments, concerns are always appreciated. Nothing to roast Branded about this week, no PP-2000 suffering for him to enjoy I guess.
If you haven't, go read Toy Soldiers (But I'm pretty sure if you are reading this you've read that one, Clearly is better than me up the update game).
