Boots crunched in the gravel and frozen puddles spiderwebbed underfoot. Five camouflage figures moved in the pre-dawn gloom. They said nothing as they climbed the rugged, vine covered slopes. They found their footing on the slick, half frozen plants, using them as ropes to pull themselves. Their breaths came out in thin white clouds of steam. One of them slipped, struggled with his pack and tried again. He was out of breath, his movements clumsy. As he worked to use the vines to pull himself up, the big man behind him put hand on his backpack and pushed him up without any effort.

Jin looked back and gave a nod of thanks to Griz before stepping out of the way. Lieutenant Daon Grizer pulled himself up with one hand, shouldering the massive DU-50 heavy machine gun with the other. A broad grin pulled at the scar across his cheek as he glared down at his newest squade mate. With a hesitant smile, Jin continued with the group of soldiers. Technically, he was a soldier now as well, but he didn't think he would ever think of himself as one.

Hearing the crunch of brush and gravel behind him, Jin took a glance back at the L.T. He found Griz, as he insisted on being called, intimidating. Despite the man’s friendly and outgoing personality, his warm smile, and booming laugh. It wasn't that he was 6’4 and 250 pounds of pure muscle. It wasn't even the heavy machine gun that he called ‘Duck Sauce’. It was that the L.T. would switch between being your best friend one minute, deadly serious the next. He had the eyes of a killer. One who smiled and laughed when he killed.

From the top of the rise the squad stopped to take cover behind a fallen tree. Here they would wait for the scout to give them the all clear. And here Jin watched his squadmates for clues on what he was supposed to be doing. Besides clenching his teeth to keep them from chattering. They were all highly experienced soldiers, their armor dinged and dented. The fabric of their fatigues faded and stained. He settled into the overgrowth, the cold seeping through the fabric and freezing his muscles. How long would it take for him to be as comfortable as they are? He wondered.

Winter was ending, but nighttimes were still cold as Hell. The cold made worse by the damp. The rain never stopped here. Most of the time it came down in a light drizzle. Little more than mist or scattered showers. Year round you could count on rain and gray skies more often than not. Today looked to be mostly clear. No gray skies. No clouds. 

Jin scanned the predawn gloom, straining to pick out details among the verdant hills and distant mountains. An ocean of stars still dotted the brightening sky, their fading light almost bright enough to see by. To the east, the first hints of blue and the approaching sunrise. No more than an hour away. The clear skies, and growing visibility didnt help him though. He still had no idea what he was looking for.

Earlier, bleary eyes and still waking up he asked what they were doing and Griz only grinned, “Were going on Patrol. Well see what there is to see when we find it.” And then laughed like he told the greatest joke. That was all Jin got before being shown how to put on his gear and handed a rifle. He had seen guns before, but never held one. He held this one as if it were a live snake.

Griz laughed, “Don't worry kid, it doesn't have any bullets. Just get used to carrying it. And keep it out of the mud. We'll worry about the shooting part later.”

Now, stuffed into the crook of this dead tree, he had no idea what he was doing out here. The wet, earthy smell of vegetation and faint rotting aroma of the wood and fungus. He tried to listen, hearing nothing but the distant chirping of birds and the squelching of boots sinking into the soft earth. The squad’s engineer, Calais, looked bored. He glanced around with a disinterested stare. He caugh Jin looking at him and gave a quick nod. So far he hasn't said more than a few words, but seemed friendly enough. Jin wanted a few minutes to talk to him about engineering. He wanted to know why he was out here rather than working in the robotics division. But for now they had to keep quiet.

Once the sky had lightened, more colors and details came into view, and he marveled at the land before them. He had been outside the Undercity before. But never this far. The irregular piles of stone as far as the eye could see. Strange lumpy mounds with the occasional vine covered wall jutting upwards. These broken walls were the only indication this place had once been a city called Seattle.

Now called Cascadia, or the Emerald Ruins, Jin knew millions of people lived here before thge dark age. A number he could scarcely contemplate. Living underground the the tunnels, it was rare to see more than a few hundred people at a time. Last count had the Undercity population around nine thousand or so.

“Movement” Ketrin hissed down the line. Never taking her eye from the lens of the long rifle she used. Jin watched the sniper, as she tracked whatever it was she saw somewhere off in the shadows of the distant treeline.

The long sniper rifle she held was another machine made weapon. Such perfectly manufactured metal. Well beyond the capabilities of the Undercity. All of the weapons they used were not made by human hands, but stolen from the robots they destroyed.  And they all had impossibly long serial codes, or manufacturing names, like: ‘SIGMA-AR-HVAP-62.’ But these were the names assigned by the machines that created them. The people using them gave the weapons more colorful names. Like Griz’s ‘Duck Sauce’, and Ketrin’s rifle she called ‘Capper’. The pistol most people carry is the Ape 45, derived from APSG-45. And the rifle Jin carried, the aforementioned AR-HVAP-62. Shortened down to the ‘AR62 or ‘Vap.’

“We're all good,” Ketrin added after another moment of tracking the movement. “Vex just stepped from the trees. He shows a patrol of Sigs…” She trailed her mouth moving silently as she registered some information the scout was signing to her.  “Four Brutes escorting a Scavenger unit to the east.” 

“To hell with that.” Griz scoffed. “Do we want to get our new guy killed? Tell him to keep looking and we will move to the west to avoid that group.”

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Ketrin held up her fist, fingers turned out to face Vex. Then pointed in his direction and made a sweeping motion to her right. She then proceeded to flash a set of fingers and hand gestures Jin didn't understand. He knew she was filling the scout in on what Griz had told her, but still he couldn't follow all of it.

A minute later everyone was climbing to their feet and moving away from the rising sun. Except Jin. His legs were stiff. Muscles aching, he struggled to his feet, and once there his legs only half worked. The lack of movement and cold from the last hour of sitting here leaving them wooden and numb.  Jin sighed and tried to keep up. Tried to keep quiet. And still didn't understand how he had failed that test badly enough to end up here. 

As they walked, Jin's mind drifted back to the engineering caste test. The questions had seemed so simple, the answers clear in his mind. He'd scored well. He just knew it. But with posting of the results, came the crushing news – he'd failed. No explanations, no second chances. Walking from the testing room he had clenched his fists so hard his nails dug into his palms. He had pressed his back to the tunnel wall and slid down until he hit the floor. Staring blankly. Desperate to not cry. Thankful for the cool stone fighting off the heat burning through him. Fighting off the nausia.

“Heads up,” Ketrin’s urgent whisper cut through Jin's dark thoughts. "Vax says we have SIGMA units, to the west of this hill.”

They moved up the slow to an overgrown wall that stood some thirty or forty feet high. Half a dozen square cutouts showed the jagged edge of broken glass that once sat within these open spaces. They crouched behind the wall, using the crumbling edges and windowed cutouts to see what Vex had spotted. Jin heard the crunch of something breaking underfoot. His eyes went wide when he saw the hollow sockets of a human skull staring back at him. A reminder that this hill was likely all that remained of one of the massive buildings from the old world. And that there were likely hundreds of skulls buried here. Maybe thousands based on the number of low hills adn jutting rubble in this area.

Jin shook his head and pulled his attention to the scene taking place below them. A wagon pulled by an ox rested on a dirt road. The men leading it had fallen back about thirty feet, their clothes were rough, dirty, and made for heavy labor. By the look of the overflowing buckets of fruits and vegetables in the wagon, Jin guessed these men to be farmers.

A short distance away, was an object so strange, he struggled to comprehend it. Jin's first glimpse of a functioning robot. Unmoving. Arms up and out, but no hands. The limbs were gunmetal black. Not arms, but rifles. Like the Vap he carried. Jin’s breath caught and he feared it would jump back up at any moment. He couldn't pull his eyes from it.

The bright red frame of the thing stood out against the muted brown and green landscape. Gleaming and clean. Unlike anything Jin had ever seen. The closest thing he could compare it too was the one year they got candied apples at the Undercity Fair. The hard reflective shell. So glossy, as if he were looking at an apple made of solid red glass. He thought these robots looked a little like that. As if they were coated in red candied shells. Their movements, quick and unnatural. Moments of stillness punctuated by sudden changes in direction and bursts of speed.

Jin's mouth went dry and his hand started to shake at the sight. He had seen robots before. The busted and broken ones scavenged from the patrols. Their armor cracked and blackened. The lifeless shells being nothing more than a curious object. But here. Now. Even unmoving, this terrifying thing had a sense of life that was utterly alien. 

Movement at the front of the wagon caught his eye.

A large red, dog-like robot, scratched and dug at a low mound to the side of the dirt road. The bulk of its body blocked the path, likely preventing the wagon from progressing. Two incredibly thin man-shaped robots were digging beside the metal dog. A third bulky machine in heavier armor swiveled at alarming speeds, both its arms raised up and out to the sides. Each arm ending in the bulky shape of a Vap Assault Rifle. Sudden movement pulled Jin’s gaze to the back of the wagon. There, a third thin robot was pulling out items, looking at them before dropping them to the ground. 

From Jin’s right, the normally quiet Calsis whispered, “Can't wait to get my hands on that Scav unit. Looks like it's one of the rare types that has a metal scanner.”

When he looked Ketrin gave Jin a wink, “Ready to pop your cherry?” But before he could question what she meant, the LT started talking.

"Alright boys and girls, we got three SIGMA Stick Men, a Brute, and a Sniffer unit." Griz hefted the big gun off his shoulder and grabbed the modified second handle that had been added. The weapon was far too large to be usable by a human being without this modification. Metal and welds held the handle in place, ugly and mismatched against the smooth machine-made parts. Jin read the manufacturing stamp on the side: "HMG-DUSC-50". But painted it in white over that was, "Duck Sauce".

He slid the long barrel of the heavy machine gun out the window, careful to not break glass or make noise. “Ketrin, have Vex get those guys out of the line of fire.” Griz told her, “Going to be laying down suppressing fire from up here and would feel really bad if any of them got hit by accident.

He thought the words sounded genuine, but the look in the Lieutenant's eyes made him think otherwise. Noticing Jin’s eyes on him he grinned, “It would break my heart.” And now Jin could read the thinly veiled sarcasm in his words.

“While we wait for Vex to get those men out of the way, heres what I want you to do.” Griz rested his huge hand on Jin’s shoulder. “That Vap your holding doesn't have any ammo in it. All I want from you is to practice aiming and pulling the trigger. Aiming and pulling the trigger. Just keep doing that till all the cans are knocked down.”

Jin swallowed hard and nodded. Lifting the weapon up to his shoulder and stared down the length of the rifle. Focusing in on the heavily armored one standing still. The one they called a Brute. Its head was a small target, buried in the oversized chest armor, but he wasn't going to be shooting bullets anyway, so it should matter.

“Just wait for my signal!” The Lieutenant said as he watched Jin place his finger on the trigger. “And for fucks sake, remember to breath.” he added after noticing him beginning to hyper-ventalate.

They watched for a few tense minutes of Vex trying to get the farmers attention. He finally threw a rock that landed close enough that one of them turned to see the scout waving at them to come take cover. 

Once they did Griz didn't waste any time. "Engage!" The command drowned out by the booming roar of Duck Sauce.