'Contact!'
The closed network lit up, targeting data coming in fast.
BAR was the first to react, not even shouldering her weapon as she squeezed out a thudding burst before the targeting data adjusted her aim. By the time Glock had painted the targets, she was down a mag– but once that data was in, she could do more than just suppress. A flip of the giggle-switch off "walking fire" and to what her teammate called "fullerer auto".
The second burst cored out a chunk of a Ripper and overpenned into the Vespid behind it. Third burst tore through the tree-trunk that another Vespid tried to take cover behind. As outdated as her weapon was, the round it spat could still turn cover into mere concealment… but what struck BAR was that the Vespid… took cover?
'Possible Ringleader presence! They're using tactics!' BAR pinged out before sending an encrypted report back to base… only to have the message bounce back. That sent a chilling silence through the network. None of them were specc'd to take on a Ringleader– they weren't even expecting contact while chasing SOP's trail, but it must mean that they were still on the right track.
'Clear the regular units. We'll handle any Ringleader.'
Confidence, as light as it was, sent a single through-line of warmth. That was right– M4, Team Anti-Rain was just behind them. The team that had taken out Intruder's mainframe, and done it without support or dummy links. Now they had both, and BAR didn't have to run a prediction program to crunch the numbers on just how hard they'd be able to put down a Sangvis Ringleader.
Plasma lit the evening dusk, but BAR and her team advanced through it, answered with a mix of calibers, left scrap in their wake as they maneuvered through the woods. Made good time, made good use of the waning daylight before they'd have to switch to night sensors and everything would get much harder.
Well, they were making good time until Glock 17 came to a stop, motioning for everyone to hold as she scouted out a little further up.
'Lost the trail. Her footprints are gone.'
A snapshot from Glock and her dummies showed that, indeed, SOP's prints just stop dead, two feet planted side-by-side. The handgun dummies fanned out, but turned up nothing until another presence quietly slid into the closed network.
'Check the trees nearby, look for claw marks.' Cold, tired, authoritative– a "voice" that carried a weight to it without the need for a command string.
'Found some! She climbed a tree?' Glock pinged back, surprised that the unorthodox suggestion yielded results.
'SOP runs similar evasion protocols as the rest of Anti-Rain, but she developed… unique methods.' The newcomer pinged back, sending alongside a few lines of code. 'Run this prediction, should narrow down the trees and branches that could bear her weight.'
'Miss M4?' BAR pinged out, only to receive a separate signal.
'It's okay. It's my big sister, you can run the code.'
Doing as told and waiving the permissions, the bit of code slotted in nice and neat to their prediction programs. If BAR wanted to be poetic about it, she'd say that it was like they had been watching a play on stage, only to have the curtain open behind the show with even more detail. New pathways lit up, a whole new set of divergence flags to number crunch. It caused her programs to hiccup, forcing BAR to re-allocate processing power.
But as M16 had noted, once they knew what to look for, the evidence began to build a fresh trail. Claw marks, snapped branches, stripped leaves, cracked trunks… SOP had moved via treetop for a solid half-a-kilometer just to throw off the standard IOP tracking protocols. BAR… couldn't help but be awed and humbled. She was just a run-of-the-mill A-Doll with a firing core shoved in her, an air-headed hostess model given a gun from a world ago, but Anti-Rain… they were the real deal, weren't they?
"We were made to be this way." M4 whispers from behind BAR.
"How did you-"
"Your empathy module. It's transmitting fragments."
BAR wanted to blush, but in her heightened state of readiness, certain unnecessary processes got shunted to the wayside, including her epidermal controls. Instead, there was just the quick sting of her empathy module telling her to feel embarrassed, but leaving her with no way to express it.
'Auntie, new data. SOP II stopped here.'
'Stopped?'
'Stopped.'
The team fanned out once more, but this time their upgraded tracking programs couldn't pick up anything.
"She's… gone." Glock frowned.
By the time the rest of Anti-Rain had rallied with them, the conclusion only grew more solid. Open field, no place for her tracks to just vanish unexpectedly- it's not like SOP-II could leap far enough to throw off their track… or could she?
"She can't." M16, the clearly-scarred veteran doll grunted, her mainframe model crouching low to inspect the grass. BAR couldn't predict just what sort of programs that doll was capable of running, but it all struck her with a sense of something… illogical, like it was something she was never meant to even think of let alone parse.
"Sound theory." the pink-haired, perpetually grumpy looking T-doll offered up unprovoked. It was clear they were operating on their own closed channel, a mix of verbal and networked communications.
"Grass is depressed, signs of prop wash. She was potentially extracted via air." M4 explained. Her expression was as muted as her words, but if BAR could accidentally transmit empathy program strings, well… she couldn't say miss M4 was as shoddily coded as she was, but BAR's empathy module could certainly pick up things from her.
"They delayed us just long enough to capture her." M4 spoke. Frustration with a few erroneous lines self-doubt. "We'll get her back though."
A cold, hate-filled promise, one that BAR wanted to help fulfill.
Intruder was just one part of the machinations, and they could all be certain that Sangvis Ferri had something in mind.
'We're RTB. Set patrol standards and link yourselves to M16. Rest your processors while we march.' M4 commanded, and before BAR could say anything more, the command string sent her consciousness a level lower to mingle with her teams'. Their bodies may move as nothing more than dummies for the AR team, and as insulting as it felt to be shunted so unceremoniously… BAR understood why.
They all had been running hot since the attack, barely any time to rest and charge, barely any time to slow their processing down and cool to acceptable levels, barely any time to process everything.
In a hosted networked room, BAR metaphorically sat on the concept of a couch with her knees curled to her chest, resting her head there as her teammates did the same beside her. None of them said anything- none of them wanted to say anything.
They all already knew… things were going to be very different from now on, and the only certainty was that they were going to be needed. Not an if, but when, and they would need to be in top condition. She'd parse what she could, save the lessons learned for future data collection, staving off what simulated emotions the empathy module thought would be appropriate for this situation.
There would be time to mourn in their own way later.
Kalina hung up the phone and pinched the bridge of her nose to try and alleviate some of the steadily building pressure in her head. It was a habit she picked up from G36- a habit that the doll had absolutely no reason to exhibit, considering what little it'd do for an android.
Didn't do much to help Kalina, either. Mister Kryuger's orders were clear as day- for all purposes, she was now the commander of this base, and no amount of wiggling, squirming, whining, or weeping would lift those expectations. God, it was only one week in- she couldn't fall apart now.
What kept her from completely turning inside out was both her respect for Mister Kryuger, and the commander himself. She… had to make sure when he came back, he was coming home.
"Miss Kalina?" A gentle voice nudged her; Springfield no doubt on command shift now that the café had been shut down.
"Cleaners scheduled, repairs are a week out, no word on our backups being online- a lot of people got hit all at the same time by Intruder. We lost a highly classified and specialized T-doll and have had no sign for a week…" Kalina sighed, spinning absentmindedly in the commander's chair. Every time her vision passed by the chestnut-haired doll, she saw the gentle green eyes looking at her with a mix of concern and sympathy.
"It could have been much worse."
"It could have been much better."
"You're being too hard on yourself again, Miss Kalina."
Kalina pursed her lips, stopping the chair to face Springfield. The doll was in her cafe uniform- the button-up blouse, jeans, and apron… as well as two thermoses of coffee in her hands.
"You look like the commander would." Springfield smiled softly- nostalgic enough that it hurt. The doll offered her one of the thermoses, much like how she would… when the commander would fret.
"Thanks." she muttered, taking a sip. Black, nothing to cover up or disguise the bitterness- much like how she felt right now.
"Don't think about the things that you can't reasonably accomplish." Springfield says, taking a sip of her own coffee. It's a dissonant gesture, something that felt both normal and completely alien. Kalina knew dolls could run on the most basic of caloric breakdowns, though nutrition was less efficient than simply being plugged in. They had no reason to eat or drink- they only did so to appear more human.
To connect with their creators. It made her feel like she was being pandered to- that a doll took pity on her enough to mimic sympathy and empathy in sharing a cup of coffee that it didn't even need.
What indignation and frustration Kalina felt fled when the shadow of guilt fell over her. She couldn't be mad at Springfield for simply trying to comfort her, and it was unfair for Kalina to put such expectations on herself, too. The commander always treated his dolls… like they were his people.
They were his people, they all were, Kalina included.
"Thanks, Springfield." Kalina mumbled more earnestly this time, taking another sip of that harsh bitterness that she needed so badly right now.
"Of course, Kalina. Is there anything you need me to do?"
Springfield dropped the "Miss" pretense, adopting that motherly tone that… Kalina didn't realize that she also needed.
"Could you double-check on SASS in Logistics?"
"You left her very clear instructions."
"Just let her know that if she needs any help that I-"
"-that I can help her." Springfield interrupted with a smile. Words that deftly put Kalina in her place- that being as the head of the base. She was to oversee, consolidate, delegate, and most importantly plan for the future operations.
Springfield lingered a bit longer before determining that Kalina was "stable" again and quietly carrying out her orders. Being alone in the command room felt… wrong to Kalina. The Commander's presence lingered like a ghost, not to mention G36's space beside the Commander's desk was also conspicuously empty as well.
Before Kalina could wallow, the door hissed open, and this time the dolls that came in put Kalina's spine back into her.
"Miss Kalina." M4 speaks softly, but with a firm authority that… Kalina didn't remember the doll speaking with before. Behind her was her "older sister", the T-doll wearing the eyepatch that had requisitioned a bit too many bottles of whiskey.
"M-four, M-sixteen?"
The two elites flank her, and what should have been a reassuring gesture felt all the more intimidating. Didn't help that she felt like the failure of recovering SOP-II fell on her shoulders…
"I want to request a team of Griffon T-Dolls- two, specifically." M4 asked respectfully, but there was a sense of urgency in her voice.
"Do you have any in mind?" Kalina pulled up the roster of active units, trying really hard to ignore all the red strike-throughs.
"BAR's away team as they had deployed with us before, as well as-"
"A base of fire team- that one with the PKP should do fine." M16 interrupts, pointing to one of the still in-tact combat echelons.
"Do you have an operation in mind?"
"I picked up unusual comms traffic from a sensor I left back when I was on the run." M16 spoke with a confidence that made Kalina instinctively take the back seat as the T-doll navigated to the sector map. The display flipped and zoomed, the veteran doll motioning to the topography.
"Sangvis?"
"More fun than that." M16 smiles in a way that makes Kalina feel… uncomfortable. "Military."
"That's G and K jurisdiction… they pay us to patrol it." Kalina puzzled over the new information, but that irregularity was clearly the crux of M16's suspicions.
"We just need a base-of-fire team to help set up a fallback position and defend an extraction point. BAR's team already has a fragment of my tracking data- saves us more time in the long run."
"You think the military… is looking for something there?"
"Why else would they be there? Like you said, it's G and K's problem, so why are they sending patrols out there all of a sudden?"
"What's changed since G and K last patrolled that sector?" M4 chimed in.
To be frank, Kalina didn't want to think about it, and least of all did she want this bread-crumbs-to-dramatic-reveal that the two "sisters" were forcing her on. They were treating her like a trainee-
"They found something we missed, and it only came to their attention after Sangvis hit us." Kalina threw out, suddenly feeling the throb in her head return.
"Not a bad guess- you sure that this one wasn't the actual base commander, M-four?"
"Miss Kalina has always been connected to the Commander's thinking process." Anti-Rain's leader frowned at her sister before turning a convincingly warm smile back to Kalina.
With what little confidence in her deductive skills Kalina had, she took that thread and spun it into the dangerously conspiratorial terrain, and what she ended up with didn't exactly instill confidence.
"They were waiting for G and K to be weakened before they made their move." Kalina tasted the theory and found it particularly unpalatable.
But just because it was unpalatable, didn't mean that it should be ruled out.
M16's smile… was the exact opposite of M4's. There was a sharpness to it, a streak of some sort of… petty vindictiveness that made Kalina not want to get on the doll's bad side. Even with Asimov protocols in place… it felt as if M16 operated on a different set of rules.
"That's what we think too. Not bad for a human running unassisted without prediction programs." M16…. complimented? Kalina thought it was what this particular doll would see as a compliment- which was why she did her best to ignore the cut and sting it left.
"Sis!" M4 hushed sharply, but Kalina had to face that particular truth.
G36 and FAL were both out of action, and unless she elevated another to an adjutant position… there would remain that capability gap. Still, it felt… wrong to assign an adjutant without the Commander's approval. Kalina shook her head, both to try and center her thoughts, but also dispel M4's reprimand.
"Draft me an official operation and I'll sign off on it once BAR's team is field-ready."
"When will that be-" M16 impatiently snapped before her younger sister elbowed her silent.
"They're updating software and recertifying their firing cores- two days at most."
"Two days then. Thank you for your understanding, Miss Kalina." M4 sighed with relief before pushing her brusque older sister out of the command room.
"Yeah, two days then." Kalina hollowly echoed, staring at the map. Two days before she'd have to… take command without him.
It tore through his fireteam with a speed and precision that the sergeant hadn't been ready for. The other dolls, the mass-produced ones, were easy enough to outmaneuver- they were the kind that could be overextended and outflanked with just a little bit of brain.
This one was different, and there was nothing in the briefing that had prepared him or his squad for it. Fight or flight had kicked in fierce, and it lead to him shouting over the comms,
"Hound Six to Hound One-Actual- we're being fucking slaughtered here."
People tended to use hyperbole in stressful situations, and combat certainly was a stresser, but damn was it an accurate descriptor. Ivanov and his battle buddy went down almost simultaneously- one taking a burst of fire that tracked up the frontal plate until the final shot caught him between the neck-guard and helmet.
And the other- the other he didn't want to look at when that black-clad doll pounced on him. The machine let him scream, purposefully clicked on his radio for everyone on the net to hear him gurgle his last breath. What kind of fucking machine could do that?
"I'll paint those boring green cammies red for you~" a sickeningly girlish voice cutely offered over the radio, a threat that sent a chill down his spine. It was a threat that this fucking thing could deliver.
"Fuck! Fuck! Hound One-Actual get us some fucking Cyclopes or Hydra support-"
Dead air answered him, but then again, was he at all surprised? What was supposed to be an easy sweep mission had turned sideways fast. There wasn't supposed to be one of those command units here- the mercenaries were supposed to be tying them up. He huddled behind the barrier as rounds cracked over, breaking only when he heard the impossibly rapid footsteps moving away from his position.
Maysak and Babkin were next up on the chopping block; Babkin's death-rattle rasped over the troop net as well, a playful giggle haunting the survivors before the line clicked dead.
"Hound-fucking-one-Actual! Get! Us! Support!" he bellowed. Anything at this point- he'd call-for-fire on himself if he could get connected to the damn artillery unit.
The footsteps thudded toward him now and no friendly AK's answered the brazen movement across the open ground. The sergeant, consigned to his fate, simply grimaced and raised his rifle over the bit of concrete.
A blood-drenched blonde, pale skin wherever black leather and crimson stains didn't cover, vaulted clear over him the moment he brought his weapon up. In one painfully swift moment, he felt the machine tear the rifle from his hands as it shoved its own rifle-barrel against his facemask.
"Hound-fucking-one-Actual! Get! Us! Support!" the android mockingly repeated, mimicking his voice with the crackle of a radio's white noise included. Those crimson eyes blared at him like he was staring at the gates of hell, lit the inside of his helmet with a haunting red. Fear reflex kicked; fight or flight, and he was one of KCCO's finest- there was only fight in him.
The android laughed maniacally when he tried to beat aside its rifle and draw his knife, answering his attempt with a harsh butt-stroke to his helmet and its own hand-drawn bayonet wedged beneath his chin.
"This your 'Hound-One-Actual?" the female android asked him innocently, slinging her rifle to present a green-pupiled eyeball eerily preserved in a small flask. The sergeant's stomach lurched- everybody in the platoon knew the lieutenant's shocking green irises.
"Fucking monster." he snarled, feeling the bayonet tip slip off the chin-strap of his helmet to tickle his jugular.
"I'm not a monster. I'm a good girl." the android growled back, leaning in to thud its own helmet-like cranium against his. The impact rattled his brain, threatening to knock him out cold but the adrenaline kept him horridly lucid- even hyper aware of the bloody field this thing left behind.
"Soppo is a good girl." it sneered, voice hissing, the glow in its eyes growing more intense. He could see those false irises clearly, the camera apertures inside of them jolting and twitching with unsettling madness- if a machine could even be capable of insanity .
"Soppo. Is. A. Good. Girl." the android repeated venomously, giving him another good headbutt. It drove his helmet like a stake into the dirt, deep enough that he felt like he's buried already.
"And you are bad men trying to get to her master."