Soundtrack
It's different, Jessica Hughes thinks to herself.
She'd gone down to the amalgam's temporary armory to grab a new capacitor for her plasma rifle, but the towering woman had slowed to a halt in the middle of the vehicle bay. Counter-Assault Team Alpha was on vehicle-maintenance duty this morning, twenty soldiers hunched over cars and trucks alongside an army of techs, and Jessica's heart practically melts at the familiar sight. It felt strange to think that she'd be nostalgic for the days she spent covered head-to-toe in grease and sweat, cussing out the shitty Afghani roads, yet here she was wishing that she could grab a wrench and just "be one of the guys" again.
But it
was different, in a thousand little ways, and Corporal Hughes has to work to keep the neutral,
officer-ish expression (ew) on her face as she walks through the crowd of soldiers. It isn't that she could stare each of them dead in the eyes now, or that she could make any of them dead with a literal snap of her fingers. She isn't one of them anymore; the dubious honors of being a logistics grunt are lost to her now. She's one of Them now, given the privilege of going out beyond the wire and kicking ass for Uncle Technocrat, instead of being a permanent POG. She's got power, prestige, recognition; no one'll ever doubt whether she's got the guts to go out and fight.
She'd trade all of that to just be able to drive a truck in Afghanistan again.
"Cat got your tongue?" a voice calls out behind her.
Jessica turns slowly to glare at her current headache. Jason Brakowski, while a very smart 21-year-old, also appeared to have the attention span of a rabbit. (and the libido to go with it) "Ooh, are you maybe checkin' out the competition? Looking to get some on the side, eh?" he asks with that same insufferable grin.
"Do you ever
shut up?" Hughes snarls, exasperated. She'd normally take a swing at someone being this mouthy, but given that "call me Bro" had been scooped up by the New World Order instead of Iteration X, he might explode in a shower of body parts and official inquiries if she did that. She settles instead for giving him her patented 'piss off, creep' stare, guaranteed-effective against grabby Marines without a good concept of personal space.
Needless to say, Jason doesn't take the hint. "I talk during my sleep, babe."
"Piss off," Jessica growls, hefting her spare capacitor and turning to stomp away.
"Wait!" Brakowski yells behind her, tugging on her arm. "Look, babe, I do actually need your help here." Jessica levels her death-glare at the former frat boy, and he takes a cautionary step back. "I promise I'm not going to hit on you. Well, not too much at least." He sees the Look in her eye and stammers, "OK fine I'll totally hit on you but that's just because I'm nervous please don't kill me."
The cyborg stops, her mind whirling. Brakowski...
nervous? She hadn't even thought he had enough brain cells to rub together to get worried about things. "Spit it out," she snaps.
The Tac-1 team leader tilts his head towards the dozens of soldiers behind him. "That Kessler guy told me to come down here and help train these soldiers. How the hell am I supposed to do that, anyway?"
Jessica looks at the NWO operative like he's grown a new head. "They're people. You tell them to listen the fuck up, then teach 'em things. We're talking pretty simple stuff here,
bro."
Brakowski shuffles his feet. "No, it's...look, these are
soldiers, uniforms and all. I talk a mean game, but at the end of the day I'm a college kid running on what I learned from playing Modern Warfare 1 a bunch."
Hughes tries to think of a response, but her mind seizes on one critical detail. "Modern Warfare 1? The game that's going on a decade old? We had Black Ops 2 out in Afghanistan the day it was released!" She lets out a theatrical sigh. "You poor, deprived child!"
"I'm serious here," Jason snaps with a glare of his own. "What the hell am I supposed to do,
Corporal?"
In a moment, Hughes realizes several important truths. "Do you understand what happens to the guys on these 'counter-assault teams' when you go on a mission?" she asks Jason rhetorically; he shakes his head mutely in response.
"They sit here, trained and ready to fight, and do jack diddly squat," she announces with a wave. "While you and your people are off shadowing Etherites or shooting hemophages, these guys are stuck waiting for something to happen. While you're out there fighting, they're in here playing the latest video games they can buy, just to pass the time." She gives Jason a significant glance at that. "These guys don't see real combat that often. They're all vets from various Sleeper militaries, and they do their training, but that's nothing like the real thing."
"Exactly!" a voice booms from behind them, and both Enlightened interns jump in surprise. (Jessica clears three feet in the air by accident) Kessler is standing behind them, looking surprisingly morose, and his eyes glow red as he looks over the soldiers carefully not glancing their way. "Poor bastards are stuck at the bottom of the heap, no way up 'cept through volunteering for some pretty radical augments or gettin' awful lucky. 'S pretty rough, to watch teams going out when you're stuck fixin' cars instead." He frowns as the twenty men of Counter-Assault Team Beta start trickling into the room with a thunder of boots. "Spent so long fighting the Commies that I never stopped to ask if maybe they had a point 'bout that whole 'equality' thing."
The two interns don't have a reply to the old cyborg's musings, and as the crowds of men settle into a sea of faces and uniforms, Kessler steps forward to take charge. "Afternoon, ladies and gents. At ease," he booms with his foghorn of a voice. "'S been a little hectic here after Moscow, kinda obviously an' all, but I'm here ta give y'all a big welcome and a warning."
"Yer in one helluva Amalgam, and I ain't sayin' that for kicks," Kessler announces. "You've all heard about Moscow, an' I'm here to tell you, the whole story's way crazier than that. This ain't gonna be the kinda Amalgam where you sit on yer asses and get paychecks fer free, like some other places. Here, yer gonna be in the thick of it sooner or later."
He's promising them action, Jessica realizes. For trained soldiers itching to do more than guard a succession of Technocratic bases, it was a potent attraction.
"I ain't gonna lie to ya either," Kessler continues, dropping his voice slightly. "It ain't gonna be easy. You're gonna be facing down the biggest, baddest stuff out there, and a HITMark or two ain't gonna cut it against a building fulla pissed-off hemophages. Some of ya...well, some of ya probably ain't gonna make it. Now if you want outta this kinda crazy, I ain't gonna hold it against you, just say it now."
He pauses. There's nothing but silence in the large room for a few seconds.
"Arright!" Kessler says, clapping his hands. "Now, Corporal Hughes and Mr. Brakowski over here have some tips and tricks fer ya..."
[FYI: Brakowski may or may not have been running a Mind Procedure to realize how best to talk to Jessica without getting punched into his constituent bits and pieces. Remember, it's called "persuasive behavior," not "lie your ass off so that the angry cyborg doesn't want to kill you"]
Kessler (+interns, +equipment): Forces 1, Matter 1, Life 1, Mind 1, (through Brakowski) - educatin' time!
"Aaand that's how ya take out a Marauder: make it quick, and make it violent, no dickin' around near a guy who can turn ya into a chicken by snappin' his fingers."
Have I mentioned that I love having interns to write about?
