“Deghoeelleh foock'lin esthuuli.” Someone says quietly within the group, still in the middle of their formation I turn to the closest one to begin building good relations, I put on my best smile and give a good old backslap to the man next to me.

He jumps away from me, the entire group puts a few metre distance away from me, this is not how I envisioned this going, the smile falls from my face onto the dirt road much like the SERE kit.

What went wrong? Their lives were in immediate danger and I saved them, I actually took an arrow for one of them. Doesn’t that build trust? Perhaps a massive cultural change in the last five thousand years, killing is bad? Imagine a world where killing is universally bad, holy shit they actually might be more advanced socially than I give them credit for.

“Baosd?” I ask if what I had done was bad, I may as well be direct and see if I can get an explanation. There's no point if I don’t learn anything, I point towards the underbush where the Enemy archers were and mime them shooting arrows with a massive shrug, roughly translated, “why the fuck are you mad at me for killing someone trying to kill you?”

“Bhyavyuk.” Aubsg points at me and then down the road we just came from, “bhyavyuk.” he says again quietly. Wow not even twelve hours and already exiled from the group. He gestures to the rest of his little caravan at states; “Jinene gut,” and points down the road we were travelling together. “Yakho gut.” He points at me again and the opposite way.

“Honoth.” I state, it means ‘good’, the situation isn’t good but it’s the only positive affirmation I know that I was taught under their very brief tutorage. So the first thing I do is walk down the road they want to go ignoring them, SOPs dictate that I must search Enemy dead to look for intelligence.

Everyone has to remember it’s not called looting if the government tells you it’s okay, stalking is called spying, and murdering is being a hero. At the start of the war a lot of non-clone soldiers were disgusted with the idea of searching the dead. The Normals usually expressed it in a way of disgusting, uncanny valley, swearing the dead's eyes followed you, heebie-jeebies, staring at the face of your own mortality, disconcerting. A whole thesaurus amount of words that basically meant; they’re green.

The Human mind has an amazing ability to adapt to its environment, enough mental conditioning, training, and just the right amount of trauma, no matter if physical or mental, can make anything bearable. Also this by far is not the worst I’ve done or even seen for that matter, sifting through blood and gore may as well be as mundane as checking over my exo-skeleton.

I also require a method to blend into the native population, securing currency and clothes will make this a lot easier. Since I no longer care for the hearts and minds campaign for Aubsg’s group there is no point caring about their opinion in general.

So I lift the dead guy's leg and compare foot size, a match. I strip down the dead guy in the middle of the road and put on his clothes. Aubsg’s group watch in horror for a minute before giving me a wide berth and leaving me behind. These peasant rags may be ugly, dirty, bloody, mangy, threadbare, smelly clothes. But they hide my skinsuit and allow me to hide the pistol underneath, I might as well take a bow and arrow and a club. To blend in you know, if I actually used them I think I’d break them both.

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As for the ambush, despite it clearly not being a professional military operation everyone has to come from somewhere. If that’s a base camp, a forward post, or a lay up point, none of their travel supplies are here aside from around a day's worth of rations. Unfortunately I don’t have the tracking knowledge and capability of the Ranger corps or Special forces. I am just Heavy Armoured Infantry and without my Suit I’m barely Infantry.

So here comes the reason they made clones instead of drones and robots, in my time Humans never mastered smart A.I. Sure there were attempts, all of them failed from what I heard. The Battlefield Analysis A.I I have is ‘dumb’. Not because it’s stupid, but because it’s not creative, it cannot generate it’s own ideas. It can see something, analyse it, and use it in another strategy. It cannot invent something, that is the hard cap on dumb A.I.

I suppose if a dumb A.I compiled enough information it might look like a smart A.I but that’s only within the A.I’s speciality, it wouldn’t know anything about economics, languages, cooking, the hard cap.

What I’m saying is; drones, robots, and artificial intelligence don’t have the capacity to think outside the box to create an unorthodox plan. Now that Aubsg’s group wants nothing to do with me and forcefully integrating myself with them would only do more damage than good, I need a new plan to gather intelligence. The Enemy always has intelligence you can use, I just need to find where the fuck these guys came from and interrogate them for intelligence, refine the intelligence to turn it into information.

Ah here he comes, it’s been a while since Aubsg’s group ditched me and I’ve just been waiting for someone from their group to come and check on their ambush site. He looks to be Baseline Human, much like the other five people in his group that are dead. This is going to make it immensely easier to sneak up on their group. He takes one look at the road and takes off sprinting back to the forest. I try to follow at the maximum distance I can to remain undetected but if he hears or spots me then I don’t care, I wasn’t made for this.

It doesn’t take long for him to stop and catch his breath, maybe around two minutes of his fastest speed. I can’t help but feel disappointment looking at the figure hunched over trying to regain his breath, I quickly quash the feeling. He is the Enemy.

He runs his hardest once he catches his breath, intermittent jogging and walking to try and be as quick as possible. I follow in a loose trail behind him, probably around two hundred metres away. The forest is pretty dense, sunlight barely filters through the thick branches of trees leaving almost no light for the small plants to survive on. It took roughly two hours for the Enemy to move back to his camp, as soon as he sees his comrades he picks up and sprints again shouting to get their attention. He alerts the entire camp that something has happened, there’s no defences, no walls and only a small stream to collect water.

I make the decision to get as close as possible to them spotting me, I’m going to go straight for the attack, I don’t know if they have Altered that can smell me like Aubsg’s group can and I would rather not lose the opportunity of surprise.

Stepping out from one of the closest trees to their little clearing they are visibly surprised by my appearance. I draw my pistol from underneath the rags I looted from their dead comrade. Their expressions go from surprised to hardened, one tries approaching me from just outside my view to attack. Turning my head to the left I look at him and the club he has in his hand, I do not require all of them.

I raise the pistol and shoot him twice in the head, the exit wounds taking a huge amount of his head out with the rounds. I focus back onto the majority of the group and begin to count them. Their faces show pure unfiltered fear, they’re pale and sweat profusely. Thirteen pairs of eyes are looking at me, all thinking the same thing; ‘am I next?’ It is odd being on the other side of this.