Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Come on, let’s go. In and out. 20 minute adventure [1],” Sergeant Yang said convincingly, like I had a say in the matter.

As a GrayCris combat SecUnit I couldn’t say no or else my governor module would punish me like I was getting shot everywhere all at once. Although that might have been preferable with how risky this mission was, at least I’d come out the other end alive. I should’ve just said “no.”

Unlike all the other officers, Yang would have respected that decision. He grew up in the Preservation Alliance with all the other space hippies, where bots and constructs were seen as citizens and could make their own choices. He had to unlearn a lot of bad habits from his upbringing (mostly of the don’t-try-to-befriend-the-people-shooting-at-you kind) as he climbed the ranks, but this was one habit he hadn’t kicked yet.

Being the stupid augmented intelligence SecUnit I was (yes, I’m aware of the oxymoron), I agreed instinctively. And now I’m strapped in a weapons crate, strapped on top of a troop carrier, strapped under a combat hopper flying merrily towards a suicide mission.

HQ had lost contact with one of the advance scouting teams when their troop carrier got pinned down in the middle of some bumfuck nowhere town, and now we had to rescue their sorry asses. Why they decided to go inside the town instead of just scouting from a distance was beyond me, but humans are dumb so that’s probably why. This made extraction especially difficult because we had to get dropped off on the outskirts of the town, fight our way towards them, grab them (or whatever’s left of them), and fight our way back out.

Luckily we had some air support. There was a bomber going the same direction we were and its bot pilot offered to provide support along the way. I pinged it and saw it was a B-52X Starfortress [2]. It was an incredibly old design and not very precise. It was more of a “delete that entire area, please” type weapon which didn’t really fit our precision extraction mission. But it’s better than nothing, I guess.

Through the feed I looked at the camera views from outside the troop carrier, inspecting everything again to calm my augmented-intelligence-induced anxiety. It was a simple design and there wasn’t much to check. It was just a trapezoidal metal box with tracks underneath, a ramp door on the back, and a heavy machine gun turret on top next to yours truly. Everything looked fine. Except for the hopper’s rusty clamps hanging onto us for dear life…

I then looked through the cameras inside the troop carrier. There were four people: Sergeant Yang who led the extraction team, Walker and Lugo who were the medics, and Hikaru who was the rifleman. It was a sparse team because we needed room to fit the idiots we were sent to rescue. They sat in jump seats attached to the walls of the rectangular crew compartment, facing each other. Hikaru was fiddling with the straps of his seat harness.

“We shouldn’t even be here,” Hikaru said, annoyed. “The people we’re fighting were on this planet first and then we invaded. Aren’t we the baddies [3]?”

“Of course not,” Walker countered. “The Corporation Rim agreed GrayCris has jurisdiction over this planet, it’s legally ours. All their bases belong to us [4].”

“Plus, those terrorists massacred a bunch of unarmed miners in that attack a few hundred cycles ago. This war wouldn’t have happened if not for that,” Lugo added. “I was there.”

“Okay, but those weird mines, what the hell were they doing there?,” Hikaru asked. “They’ve been wrecking havoc on the planet.”

“Look, we’re not being paid to ask questions,” Walker snapped, irritated.

Hikaru looked more irritated and took a breath to respond, but Yang intervened to say, “I don’t care if we’re the devil incarnate or god themself, we need to focus on this extraction. We’re landing soon and it looks sketchy as hell.”

From the troop carrier’s outer cameras I saw the combat hopper’s rotors start moving from its forward position to a vertical position as it transitioned from forward flight mode to hover mode. We started slowly descending on the outskirts of the town on the only clear area that wasn’t covered by thick vegetation that would’ve bogged us down. It clearly looked like a trap, but my scans picked up no hostile activity below. The town seemed uncannily quiet with its empty rectangular concrete buildings. Then the hopper released its clamps on our troop carrier and dropped us off.

I should put more emphasis on “dropped.” We plummeted about 15 meters and hit the ground extremely hard. From the outer cameras I saw the combat hopper bank sharply left while dumping a trail of flares and anti-air countermeasures. To the right I saw a streak of white smoke following a dark object winding towards the hopper. It slammed into the right rotor, sending the hopper into a spin as it plunged towards the ground.

It got obscured behind a hill so I wasn’t sure if it crashed or managed to recover control. I tried directly pinging the hopper’s bot pilot.

System. System.

No response. So I switched to the open feed.

Rhino One to Pelican One, requesting status. How copy?

Still no response, but I saw a fireball rising over the hill so that seemed to answer my question.

I then pinged the troop carrier’s bot driver asking for a status report, and it didn’t look very good. The suspension, tracks, and drivetrain were completely destroyed because they had absorbed the impact of the fall. This had protected the delicate, squishy human crew inside but also left us dead in the water (figuratively, I wish we had landed in water instead). The heavy machine gun mounted on the roof was also partly busted because the impact knocked the motors of its gimbal mount loose and now it was just hanging limply staring at the ground. Not very useful unless we were fighting a colony of ants (which I also wished).

Then gunfire erupted from the windows of the buildings in the town facing us. The insurgents must have hid themselves well if all their weapons weren’t picked up by my scan as we were landing (falling). This mission was already off to a great start.

The troop carrier’s bot driver launched its entire complement of ten drones to get a better view of the situation, which showed what had shot down our hopper. The white trail of smoke in the sky led to the roof of the building closest to us where I saw a person reloading a shoulder-launched air defence system. He must have hid in the building and came out as we began our descent.

“Is everyone okay!?” I heard Yang yell from inside the troop carrier.

“Never better,” Hikaru groaned. He had been ejected from his seat and was lying facedown on the ground.

“Yeah, I’m fine!” Lugo shouted, followed by Walker saying, “Same. Why the fuck is Hikaru on the floor?”

There were a few seconds of silence before Yang repeated, “Is everyone okay?” 

Oh yeah, I forgot he counted me as a person too. “My performance reliability is at 78%,” I responded. I wasn’t sure if he counted the troop carrier and combat hopper as people too, so I then added, “The carrier’s drivetrain is destroyed and its gun is damaged. We can't move or shoot back. Pelican One has been shot down.”

“What!? How did they manage to shoot our bird down?” Walker demanded.

That was a good question. The hopper didn’t just dump flares to dupe the missile, its countermeasures mimicked everything down to its radar cross section. There was no way the insurgents had missiles advanced enough to see through that guise. Perhaps they just got really lucky?

“How the hell are we getting out of here?” Lugo then said with a hint of worry in her voice.

That was also a good question. GrayCris, being the cheap bastards they are, usually only send one rescue team if a group finds themselves in trouble. If that rescue team needs to be rescued themselves, the company will just cut their losses and mark everyone as missing in action. Unless they’re absolutely sure they won’t need to send a rescue team rescue team rescue team to rescue the rescue team rescue team. With how things are going right now, I don’t think we’re getting that rescue team rescue team.

“Let’s focus on getting out of this,” Yang said calmly, although I could see evidence of stress on his face from the video feed. “CombatUnit, what’s the sitrep?”

“Our troop carrier is facing parallel to the town. Enemy combatants are shooting our right side from several buildings facing us. Their weapons are too low caliber to penetrate our armor. Our left side can serve as cover if we choose to dismount. The anti-air missile was fired by a combatant on the roof of the building closest to us. I saw two additional missiles on the roof, he is reloading his launcher with one of them now.”

“Fuck,” Yang said. “If that missile can take our hopper down, another could easily take out this carrier. Everyone, prepare to dismount!” 

Upon hearing this, the bot driver created a smoke screen to obscure our dismount from the enemy. I heard a cacophony of “fwoomps” as a ring of smoke charges got ejected from their launchers, followed by a series of sharp bangs as the charges exploded midair and created a ring-shaped cloud of thick white smoke around us. Then Yang lowered the ramp out the back of the troop carrier and everyone stumbled out and took cover on the left side of the carrier. At the same time, I got out of my crate and placed myself on the right side of the ramp to shield the humans.

Then I took cover alongside them, not a second too soon as an anti-air (anti-ground?) missile slammed into the troop carrier. It first penetrated the carrier’s thick armor and then detonated its explosive charge inside the crew compartment, sending smoke and sparks flying out the hatch the humans had just stumbled out of. 

Then I saw our drones drop out of the sky. Of course, they were the troop carrier’s drones and that missile probably just killed the bot driver. But I pinged it just in case, fully expecting it to be as uncommunicative as our ill-fated hopper. Then this popped up on my feed:

Performance reliability: 7%

Functional systems: 2.

    Smoke screen launchers: partially functional.

    Air conditioning: fully functional.

Ah yes, air conditioning. Just what we needed. I was glad the bot driver was still somehow alive at least. 

“Fucking hell,” I heard Yang say next to me, panting. “CombatUnit, tell our bomber to keep its distance.”

I pinged the bomber: System. System.

Acknowledged , the bomber replied eagerly.

Hostile anti-air in play. Maintain distance out of range, I said

Copy. Will maintain holding pattern ten klicks out, it responded, and I could detect some disappointment over the feed. I guess it really wanted to blow something up.

Then Yang turned to face all of us. “We’re sitting ducks out here without air support; we need to take out that anti-air installation. Any ideas?”

Hoping to liven the mood a bit with some humor (that’s what the training modules say to do in tense situations) I said, “I may not have a brain, but I have an idea [5].” No laughs, tough crowd. “I’ll charge the anti-air installation and throw explosive charges onto the roof when I get close enough. In the meantime you will stay behind and provide cover fire. I am best suited for this as I am far faster and better armored than you.” Usually combat SecUnits wouldn’t suggest plans to a human officer, they’d just blindly follow their stupid orders because that’s what they’re programmed to do. But Yang was more receptive than most officers.

“Okay,” Yang said. “Any objections?”

Hikaru piped up, “No, sir. But if I may, I’d like to use the heavy machine gun on top of the troop carrier to provide cover fire. The bot driver may not have control but there are still manual controls.”

“No way,” Yang quickly replied. “We don’t even know if that gun still works manually, and there’s no cover up there anyways. You’d be instantly shot.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” Hikaru said.

“Alright, everyone ready?” Yang asked. Everyone checked their gear and nodded an affirmative. “Go go go!”

I sprinted away from the troop carrier as my comrades stayed behind and shot towards the enemy, attempting to keep them down. I was running down a clear field without any cover whatsoever.

Fuck, ow, ow, ow. Their suppressive fire didn’t really do anything, projectiles rained on me like a torrential downpour. It seemed like the entire town focused their attention on me, and there were far more of them than there were of us. I knew that beforehand though and mostly just did this to keep my humans back and away from harm’s way. Besides, the enemy had weak weapons, and my armor was thick and could stand up to this (even if it hurt like a bitch).

I closed the gap towards the rectangular concrete building, firing the inbuilt energy weapon in my arm. As I got closer, I stopped firing and armed a pack of explosives, ready to throw. Then in the bottom right corner of my vision I saw a bright flash and the next thing I knew, I was in a crater surrounded by a cloud of dust, hurting all over.

Ah fuck, this was all a trap to draw out the combat SecUnit. No wonder they placed the anti-air on the building closest to us, that was my bait.

I stumbled around trying to get up. That landmine seriously damaged my legs and they needed time to recalibrate to figure out how to walk again with the damage. 

SecUnit, what the hell happened!? Are you okay? Yang said over the feed.

I replied, I’m fine. Hit a landmine. Recalibrating legs but they underestima-

Okay, maybe I spoke too soon. I got jerked to the ground, hit in the head by a high caliber armor piercing projectile. It missed my central processor and memory by millimeters, but it was still enough to damage my other less critical but still important components. 

ERROR, components compromised: thermal vision processor, governo-

I muted those errors because I needed to focus.

Fuck, I was so lucky to be alive. Since I was a SecUnit specifically designed for combat, my head was heavily armored to deflect these types of projectiles from my most important thinking bits. But that projectile went through a small, less armored bit on the back of my head around where my data port is. Did the sniper know my Achilles heel? Or was it a fluke? It seemed too close and intentional to be a fluke. Who were these guys?

I got hit again trying to get up, this time in the chest which was much less critical. I looked back to the troop carrier and saw my team concentrating their fire on a thick wall with a tiny hole and a rifle barrel poking out. Their shots were throwing my sniper’s aim off from landing a killing blow, but they couldn’t actually take the sniper out unless a projectile went through that tiny hole. Their rifles were too low caliber to penetrate the wall.

I pushed myself up and got knocked back down again by a shot to the shoulder. Then another shot severed my left arm. These weren’t critical hits, but if they kept this up, I’ll be a nice pile of scrap metal in no time. My non-head armor couldn’t stop these rounds, they lobbed pieces off of me. This wasn’t sustainable and I couldn’t wait for my team to land a hole- in-one.

I tried getting up again, expecting another hit, but it never came. I looked at the wall and saw it crumbling, getting torn apart by bright orange projectiles. I followed the tracer rounds back and saw they originated from the troop carrier’s heavy machine gun. Hikaru had climbed on top and was manually shooting it. It was short lived, however. He got hit by something that flung him to the ground like a ragdoll, like Sergeant Yang had warned.

But this bought me enough time to lob my pack of explosives onto the roof of the anti-air building and run back towards the troop carrier (or rather power walk awkwardly with my uncalibrated legs while getting shot at). The resulting explosion was thunderous and the shockwave knocked me to the ground. There must have been other munitions in the building that I set off.

I pushed myself back up but got knocked back down by a suspiciously familiar feeling projectile. I looked at the wall ruins and saw a rifle barrel propped on top of the rubble. That motherfucker.

As I prepared to play whack-a-mole again (as the mole), I heard a series of “fwoomps” followed by sharp bangs and the next thing I knew I was engulfed in thick white smoke. The troop carrier’s barely alive bot driver must have seen that I was within range of its partially functional smoke screen launchers.

The smoke obscured the sniper’s view of me and I made my way back to my team huddled behind the troop carrier. Lugo and Walker were desperately trying to treat Hikaru who looked very dead and Sergeant Yang looked uncharacteristically distressed by it all. He looked at me and quietly said, “Raze them all to the ground.”

System. System, I pinged the bomber.

Acknowledged, it replied quickly.

Then I sent: Active. Hazardous firefight in progress. Requesting high explosive ordinance at these coordinates.

This time the bomber took longer to reply. Be advised, you are danger close, meaning there’s a good chance we’d get blown up along with the enemy we were fighting. Like I said, the Starfortress bomber was more of a “delete that entire area, please” weapon.

It continued, Interrogative, proceed with bombing run?

Yang had seen this exchange in the feed and nodded slowly. Usually I’d be hesitant to follow an emotional human’s orders. But in this case the enemy was starting to creep up toward us now that Lugo, Walker, and Hikaru weren’t shooting back, and we had no other choice. It was either definitely get shot by the enemy or maybe get blown up by a friend.

Affirmative. Go go go go.

Copy. Lining up attack vector. Splash in 328.2 seconds.

We then all got back inside the troop carrier since we had a marginally better chance of surviving our own air strike inside an armored box. Lugo, Walker, and I carefully moved Hikaru in. Then Yang manually pulled the ramp door closed, sealing the opening and engulfing us in a strange calmness. From the inside, the projectiles hitting the troop carrier sounded like the gentle pitter patter of rain, and it was all dark except for some streaks of light coming through the hole left by the anti-air missile that was shot at us earlier.

Then it came over the feed.

Be advised, splash in five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Chapter Text

In and out 20 minute adventure my ass. It had been precisely 47.3 minutes and there was no end in sight.

Sergeant Yang turned the lever on the troop carrier’s ramp door, which fell open with a loud thunk as it hit the ground. The inside of the crew compartment became flooded with light, and as my eye sensors adjusted I saw total annihilation on the other side. The air was thick with smoke and dust and the ground was covered in craters, except for the area around the troop carrier. I ran a quick scan and detected no hostile activity near us. That triggerhappy bomber really outdid itself.

Ordinance dropped, proceeding to next mission. How copy? The bomber said over the feed, and I could detect a hint of worry. It was probably concerned that it had just accidentally blown us up.

I quickly replied, Solid copy. Good hits, good hits.

I then looked behind me and saw Lugo and Walker slowly draping a tarp over Hikaru’s body. My training modules said that humans go through five stages of grief, and it looks like they just passed the denial stage. 

“Fuck!” I heard Yang yell, slamming a fist on the wall of the crew compartment. That’s probably the anger stage.

“I’ll go out to scout the perimeter,” I said. I really didn’t want to be around when the depression stage hits. 

I stepped outside and saw that the dust had already started to settle, and rays of light were breaking through the smoke clouds in the air. I did another scan and again detected no hostile activity. But the scan did detect pieces of weapons scattered around the remnants of the building I blew up. That piqued my curiosity since I wanted to see what they used to shoot down our hopper.

I quickly found the tube of the anti-air missile launcher they used. There wasn’t much left to figure out what it was, but a quick reference with my weapons database revealed that it was some kind of guided fire-and-forget launcher. How did the insurgents manage to get their hands on something as advanced as this? Then something caught my eye. On the bottom of the tube were remnants of what looked like the GrayCris insignia.

Huh, maybe the hostiles looted this from the team we were sent to rescue. That probably meant they got captured or killed…

I continued searching for more clues around the building and found a hand sticking out of the ground. I pulled on it and an arm wearing a uniform with the same gray-ish color as ours followed. I pulled some more and the arm popped out of the dirt with its owner nowhere to be found. Turning it around, I found a GrayCris shoulder patch attached to the uniform. Under it was embroidered “Sergeant Gorn,” one of the people we were sent to rescue. Okay, what the fuck is going on here?

Okay, okay, thinking logically, maybe the team got captured and they were held as hostages in the building I blew up? But why didn’t the insurgents make demands or a ransom to release them? And why were they being held in the building closest to where they expected us to land? Surely, they’d move their valuable bargaining chips somewhere safer. Or maybe the team got killed and the insurgents buried the bodies. But why did I only find an arm? Maybe a bomb from the bomber we called in blew up the bodies?

Then my organic bits experienced a sinking sensation that I’ve never felt before. There were three things that didn’t quite make sense to me during this mission: why was the scouting team in the middle of the town, how did the insurgents manage to shoot down our hopper, and how did they know my Achilles heel? There was one explanation that could tie this all together: what if this was all a trap set by the people we were sent to rescue? Being in the middle of the town would complicate our rescue and give them the upper hand in setting up an ambush, they’d be armed with advanced anti-air weapons, and they would know the weak spot in a combat SecUnit.

That sinking sensation then hit me harder. My mission brief stated that the team also had a combat SecUnit attached to them. If they really did betray us, that SecUnit would be really bad news for us. 

I caught my organic bits subconsciously directing my gaze toward the direction of where my sniper was. That shot through my Achilles heel was either incredibly lucky or incredibly precise… precise to an inhuman degree…

I grabbed the projectile rifle that was attached to my back and aimed it towards that area as best I could with my remaining right arm. Then I slowly crept up towards it, running scans every few seconds. I wasn’t exactly sure where the sniper last was since there was no evidence of a wall, just a huge crater where I remembered it was. The wall either took a direct hit from a bomb or my cheap memory modules were acting up again. I seriously considered running a memory diagnostic, but then saw a thin smoking tube of metal sticking out of the ground. 

I returned the projectile rifle on my back and carefully grabbed the piece of metal. As I pulled it up, a rifle slowly started to rise out of the dirt. Referencing it with my weapons database revealed that it was meant to shoot high-caliber armor-piercing projectiles. The same type of projectiles that I was hit with. I pulled some more and saw that a mangled arm was still clinging onto the grip, an arm with synthetic parts embedded inside that only constructs have. Like the last arm I pulled out of the ground, this one also wasn’t attached to an owner and popped right out of the dirt. And sure enough, there was a GrayCris shoulder patch attached to it (I swear, if I had a currency card for every time I pulled a GrayCris arm out of the ground, I’d have two cards. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice [6]).

Well, there’s my smoking gun. It was a trap [7].

I directly pinged Sergeant Yang, The perimeter looks clear. I think there’s something you’d want to see.

After a long silence, he replied Copy, will be there in a bit.

As I waited for Yang to come over, I searched around the crater for more clues and found what looked like a round metal dome poking out of the dirt. The dome slowly became more oval shaped as I pulled it out of the ground. Then I saw two holes with cracked lenses glaring right at me. It was the other SecUnit’s decapitated head, with all its skin burned off. Huh, so that’s what I look like on the inside.

This was an excellent find. Since our heads are heavily armored, that meant the memory modules inside were likely still intact. And since we were both part of GrayCris, my access keys should also work to decrypt its contents. I extended the data probe out of my right forearm and threw up a wall in case the other SecUnit had left an attack program for anyone looking to take a gander inside.

Well, here goes nothing. I plunged my probe into the data port on the back of the head. Then I turned it around and looked into the eyes. Why the hell did you guys turn on us?