"So... what's in the bag Captain?" Sweeper curiously eyed it as she followed behind Savage.
"The contingency plan for if we fail in our negotiation with the Special Forces." She patted the bag with a proud grin. "It's canisters full of poisonous gas, it's so deadly it can melt flesh in a matter of seconds."
Chemical weapons have always been a controversial topic and they have been off and on the ban list multiple times now throughout human history. Currently they're not banned but that's due to the dwindling number of human combatants on the battlefield with most of the military comprising of androids and since they are 'immune' to the weapons most governments don't care about them being used and Australia didn't include it in the banned section of the Sydney's Necessary Accord of Peace. They are still prohibited from hitting any actual settlements and if the number of humans in a certain area exceed a certain threshold than it would actually be considered a warcrime. Which leads to Sweeper's next thought.
"You're going to use this on humans right? Isn't that a problem? Especially with how many humans we've encountered so far."
"Don't be so worried I already got it all figured out!" Savage gave her a thumbs up. "See, if I end up gassing 200 or more humans that's bad! But I didn't count 200 humans here in Former North Dakota."
"Well if we don't end up using them on humans we can probably use it to annoy the UCNA soldiers or something. It still stings like a bitch." Dealer rubbed her left arm.
"Shouldn't we use something less... malicious?"
"The gas might take them out faster than dying to a bullet wound so in the end this is probably more humane." Savage answered.
The use of might and probably did not reassure Sweeper even though it is technically legal to use them it just didn't sit right with her. Is this my master's influence? she thought to herself, he was always against the use of chemical weapons due to a family member dying to one during the fourth war.
"Everything we do is malicious. This is war, we gotta be killing someone." Dealer said.
"We can always kill them with kindness!" Guard joined in on the conversation. "I once saw this peace talk or was it a street protest? Well anyways they talked about how we should all work together to come to an agreement instead of fighting each other to the death. Like we don't have much of Earth left to ourselves and instead of just fighting over the scraps we could form a one world country or something. Then once everyone gets along we could gift our former enemies unhealthy food or play scary video games to take off years of their life and eventually we'll outlive them."
"What the hell are you talking about Corporal Guard?" Savage stared at the rookie.
"What are we talking about again?" Guard looked around him. "Also where are we going Captain?"
"We're searching for whatever the Special Forces are looking for, I thought I already explained this..."
"We could cover more ground if we split up but that would leave us more open to getting attacked..." Reaper examined the forest that surrounded them, it was much different from the other forest that she and Dealer were in, this one was more overgrown with plants and wildlife distorting any signs of order that it could have possibly once had which was a stark difference to the previous straight and narrow forest. A noise caught her attention and she quickly raised her weapon. It was a deer with a fluffy white tail running away from the group.
"What's the matter Reaper? Scared of a little ol' deer?" Dealer had a slight smirk on her face.
"No I just thought it was an enemy. I'm not scared of a deer." She said without being aware that she was being teased.
"Splitting up doesn't seem like a good idea, we could get lost and spend more time looking for each other. Besides we want to be with each other when we find whatever we are looking for like that closed steel door over there." Guard pointed over to the doors imprinted into the ground.
As they approached, Sweeper went up ahead to closely inspect it. "Hey are you sure it isn't made of oak?" She found out that it wasn't the case after she touched it. The combination of dust, dirt and how worn down it was made it look like it was made out of a different kind of material but the distinct noise that it made when knocked on confirmed that it was some sort of metal door.
"How old does this door have to be if it's actually made out of wood? The 2000s you think?" Dealer stood at a distance, she wasn't exactly a clean freak but she felt like she would need to shower for hours just to get the grime off of her if she was near it.
"Private Dealer get your butt over here and help open it!" Savage shouted.
The Captain and Guard were struggling to open up the door. There wasn't exactly a keyhole or any kind of opening mechanism other than the handles so the best approach would be brute force. But the door was shut tightly and it barely budge even with the strength of the two androids pulling on it.
"I don't see how I could provide any help, I'm much weaker than you guys so I think I'll just stand over here." Dealer noticed the dust cloud that was created from the struggle and preferred to stay at a safe distance.
Their efforts were in vain as both Savage and Guard broke the handles and fell backwards into the ground.
"Damn it this thing is stubborn." Savage looked up at Mirabelle who was staring blankly at the sky. "It's your time to shine Corporal Mirabelle, open that door!"
The droid stomped over to the location of the metal door, she stared at it for a few seconds before lifting her arms up. Her hands effortlessly smashed right through the metal doors with a deafening sound that echoed across the woods, the sounds of birds flying away followed. As she begins to pull on the door the hinges instantly snapped and she ripped it from the frame, she then tossed it to the side.
"Well that's one way to open it..." Sweeper stared at the holes that Mirabelle made, she punched through a good 2 inches of steel.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Guard peeked inside the doorway to see what was inside, he saw that there were stairs leading down somewhere but it was too dark to see what was further in.
"Stop what you're doing!" A voice called out to them causing everyone to raise their weapons towards it.
A lone figure stepped out from the trees with their own weapon pointed at them, they were wearing the same type of outfit that Guard had described for the Special Forces. All black, pouches and equipment hanging from the side, and their face was obscured by a mask with some type of face plate goggle thingy.
"Who are you people and what are you doing out here?" The voice definitely came from a female, probably, they weren't experts on identifying gender.
"The same could be said for you." Savage calmly replied.
"They aren't alone..." Reaper whispered as she side eyed another location.
"Why don't you tell you friends to come on out, you are Special Forces right? Let's have a chat." Savage lowered her weapon.
"You still haven't answered my ques-" Before she could even finish that sentence another figure popped out from behind the trees.
"Hey Guard it's me! It's me Cid! I missed you man!" The figure waved at them.
"Cid! What the hell do you think you're doing!" The other one called out to him.
"Oh sorry Miss Emma, I recognize them they're the US soldiers stationed here." He explained to her.
"Please don't call me Miss we're the same age!"
While the two went back and forth the US group decided to put their weapons down. Mirabelle, on the other hand, was still looking directly into the hole without moving an inch, Guard gave her a little nudge to the side to remind her to pay attention.
The two were still bickering over something and they didn't want to rudely interrupt. Suddenly three more figures walked out towards them with one of them clenching their head like they were suffering from severe head pains.
"Would you two stop!" Hallengir's commanding voice caused everyone to freeze up.
"Hey! Long time no see!" Except for Guard who ran up to them. "Oh wait it was yesterday."
"Why'd you go and do the disappearing act on us? Cid was frickin' worried sick that you got kidnapped. Again. Not by us though." Richard went to high five Guard but was stopped by someone that Guard didn't recognize.
"Don't get so chummy with an android." He pushed Richard back. "They're expendable."
"The hell did you say!" Richard was ready to throwdown but was held back by Cid and Emma.
"Stop it do you still think this is kindergarten? Leave the grade school bullshit out of this." Hallengir stood tall over them.
They collected themselves before getting back into order and standing behind their Sergeant.
"You weren't awake when I was there but I'm Emma if you haven't already heard." She did a little wave to Guard. "That guy over there is named Fred, he's kind of an asshole."
Her comment get some snickering from Richard and Cid but Fred didn't find it so amusing.
"How can we trust them Sergeant? The black haired one was the one that attacked us probably so that he could escape." Fred pointed at Reaper.
"I dunno about that... I mean the one that attacked us didn't have twintails..." Richard rubbed his chin as he looked over to Reaper.
Dealer hid behind Reaper and whispered into her ear.
"That wasn't me." Reaper spoke up.
"What are you talking about she looked exactly like you!" Even with the mask and goggle on they could tell that Fred was starting to get pissed off.
"But it wasn't... it was my sister?" She didn't sound so sure of herself but no one caught on.
"Yeah man that's totally believable. I watched this video about how androids are made and a batch of 50 are created at time using the same template. It's crazy man they're like twins but there are 50 of them." There were more tidbits and facts that Cid wanted to share but he felt that he had explained enough for now.
"Though they look the same at first they have different personalities which affects their taste and style." Guard added on. "I still don't know why they chose 50, a hundred would work better."
"That's what I've been saying!" Cid nodded in agreement.
"I don't care about their programmed personalities! How do we know the android didn't just make it up." Fred tried to get everyone back on track.
"I'm Reaper-7 I mean 2 and she's Reaper... 1."
"Okay... where is she?"
Reaper paused. It's not like she couldn't hold a basic conversation, she's been training with the others to talk as properly as she can, but she was a combat android first and foremost. Her main objectives are to obey orders and shoot really good, pretending to be someone else was not one of them. This entire day was wearing her thin even so she still must come up with something that would ease the tension between the two groups or at least that's what Dealer said to her. It was up to her to fix this situation, using her entire mental capacity she calculated the best answer to his question.
"She died."
"Shit sorry for your loss." Richard lamented.
"Reaper-1 was a good soldier but at least we can call you just Reaper now right?" Dealer smiled.
"Yeah I guess. I miss her..."
"Hey Fred are you now going to ask them to bring out their friend's dead body for you to check if it's true?" Emma said.
"Fine whatever I'll leave it for now..." He turned away from the group.
Watching this unfold Hallengir only sighed as he asked Guard who the leader of their group was, it was a good time as any for a diplomatic meeting.
"That would be me I'm the Captain here by the way, since my rank is Captain." Savage smiled. "I'm Captain Savage nice to meet you."
"Hm likewise." He shook her hand. "My apologies for attacking your base earlier, we weren't aware that we have people out here."
"That would probably be because we're the least important group to exist on this planet." Dealer snarked.
"Quiet you! Anyways let me introduce the rest of my unit. You've already met Corporal Guard."
"Good to see you again." He nodded at Guard.
"This is Corporal Reaper."
"It's unfortunate that you loss someone close to you."
"Over there is Corporal Sweeper."
"Mmhmm."
"And over here is Corporal Mirabelle."
"Uh hi..." He looked up at her. "Tall one isn't she..."
"Don't worry about it. And finally we have-"
"Another Corporal?" Hallengir chuckled.
"Nope. I'm Private Dealer. The top private stationed at this outpost."
"Oooooohhh I hate technical truths..." Savage complained to herself.
As she sulked at the fact that Dealer was the top private and contemplated about promoting the jeep into a private, Hallengir looked around.
"Where's the rest of your company?" He asked.
"Oh them? Ha ha you don't need to worry about them they're holding the frontlines right now." She nervously laughed.
"I suppose you could say they'll be there for a long while." Dealer mentioned before getting smacked in shoulder by Sweeper.
"It's great that we could easily work out our past misgivings." Sweeper moved the discussion forward. "So what exactly are you doing here if you don't mind me asking?"
"It's no problem. We were trying to get that door open but we couldn't so we went to get tools." Emma looked over at the doors with giant holes in them. "Apparently we didn't need them after all..."
"So, uh, you want to work together to check out what's in there? Oh shit the boss man is suppose to say that." Richard backed off with his hand up.
"What he said." Hallengir said.
"We would be glad to join forces." Savage was happy at the outcome but deep down she was disappointed that they didn't get to use the poison gas in some capacity.
"I want to be the first one in!" Guard exclaimed before running off. Richard and Cid, not wanting to be last, ran after him with Hallengir shouting at them to put on their mask in case their was some sort of gas leak.
"It looks like the gas wouldn't work." Sweeper was happy that they had some countermeasure against gas.
"Oh no the mask wouldn't help, remember what I said? This stuff melts through flesh." Savage once again patted the bag.
"What are two talking about?" Emma walked pass and looked at them carefully.
"I said this stuff will smelt in a flash! I'm talking about the marshmallows I have! In this bag!"
"Hopefully you'll be kind enough to share it with us later."
"Hopefully not!" Savage shot a smile back which caused Emma to raise an eyebrow.
With the alliance formed the two groups headed underground.