Another One Into the Frying Pan (PA/multicross SI)

[Ramble]

2 months later

I managed to get everything done, finally, and everything seems to be in order. When I went to the Australian Hive Base and revealed myself to the community, I was expecting many things. Mostly what I got was fervent thanks, cheering, and loyalty for protecting the little community that they had set up from the Stank Gum raiders. As a result, I had just short of 500 people ready and willing to do basically whatever I said at the word go.

So I decided to do something I had wanted to do for a while ever since I watched a TV show about it, and that was drive massive road trains around the Australian outback. Also learn to drive stick, but that could come later, much later.

I had the Fab rovers construct three massive road trains. The Prime mover is by the standards of the 20th century nothing short of miraculous, what with actually being a diesel electric similar to an actual train rather than a regular car. For the uninitiated, diesel electric means that the engine is actually running a generator rather than actually connected to the wheels and the generator sends power to electric motors.

This let my prime movers be all wheel drive which as you can tell, is super cool, for me at least. All that power allows for the trucks to be massive, 15 meters long with a cab more akin to the bridge of a ship, with bunk space for the "bridge crew" and a restroom and fridge for cold snacks. There's also coffee. Drink the coffee. Coffee is your friend. And there's enough room for steep stairs that lead to the top of the prime mover so that the crew can get on top of the road train and move around. Under the stairs is a massive gas tank that holds almost 10000 liters of diesel fuel.

Behind the prime mover is a 52 foot Intermodal shipping container to hold various solid cargo. Behind that is a small refrigerated trailer holding whatever. Behind that is an armored caravan that basically holds everything that anybody would need including restroom, running water, bunks, a refrigerator, dining table, and basically anything else necessary for a crew of 10 to live on. The last trailer is a compartmentalized liquids container carrying over 9000 gallons of both water and gasoline because apparently nobody in this place uses diesel, just gasoline.

Also, there ware railings everywhere, you know, because while crewing a road train through deadly territory might not exactly be safe and stuff, I'll be damned if I'm going to be skimping out on safety just for looks or something. I've got more than enough mass to spare so I'm keeping my crew safe.

I recruit about 39 people to crew my road trains.

I check them for loyalty, give them an interview, and then give them a bit of weapons training so that they would be able to handle weapons instead of simply spraying rounds everywhere. Thankfully, I'm able to pick up three former Royal Australian Defense Force soldiers to help my crew out with transitioning from single shot weapons to the semi-automatic M1 garand knockoffs I was providing them while I gave the RADF soldiers themselves Thompson submachineguns which they were grateful for.

It took a bit, but I think now we're finally ready to cast off. With fresh food, canned food, other goods, and everything else loaded up, I have my little fleet out on the tarmac ready and willing to get a move on.

Oh yeah.

As I make my way from the gates of hive base to the prime mover of the lead road train, there are really quite a lot of people out to see off the convoy. They're pretty respectful, good people them.

I climb up the retractable ramp into the cab of the road train and find myself standing on the bridge. The person sitting in the driver's seat stands up and salutes along with the other two of the bridge crew. I walk to the eldest person there, and return the salute.

"Admiral."

"Captain. You are relieved for now, I'll pull this girl out.."

"Thank you Captain. I'll go check on the rest of the crew." He turns to the other two. "Back to work boys." He nods at me and heads off toward the back.

I take my seat at the driver's seat, fiddle around with the driver's console and pick up the radio.

"Road Rage One to the fleet. Check in over."

"Road Rage Two checking in. Over."

"Road Rage Three checking in. We're good to go Admiral."

"Road Rage One, launching in three, two, one."

I throw a switch and immediately, I am rewarded with the roar of a huge turbocharged V16 engine pumping out over 3000 horsepower. It ignites a heat inside my loins as the feeling of sheer power speaks to something primal deep down inside. It feels good man. Super duper good. I don't bask in the feeling though, I have work to do.

"Engineer. Status."

"Engineering looks good sir. Engine running at 80% power. Everything seems to be alright."

"Navigation?"

"Everything seems to be working sir."

I tap the intercom for the rest of the train. "Alright boys, hold onto something. Road rage one, launch."

I ease the throttle forward and immediately I can feel the electric motors as electricity is fed to them. The road train lurches forward, pulling out of what I call Hive Base station to cheering and applause from all observing. The other ones follow me out and everything seems to be going according to plan.

"Alright boys, Ve formation. You know the drill."

Fortunately for me, they do know the drill. We had been practicing maneuvers in smaller cars pulling wagons. The convoy formed up into a V shape with Road Rage Two on the left flank and Road Rage Three on the right flank.

"Right crew. As you know, this is a humanitarian mission. Basic human decency is short in the wasteland, so we're gonna be giving it out by the bushel. Our mission is twofold, distributing supplies to the minor powers in the region and clearing out enemies of basic decency which basically means Warboys, Roadkill, and Buzzards.

We're now the First Australian Humanitarian Expedition. And we'll be heading over to someplace called Jeet's Stronghold and dropping off food and water there. From there, we'll be heading to Gutgash's stronghold.

Stay sharp. We're crossing out of the Hive Base defensive perimeter."
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The United States Postal Inspection Service was on the case in a neighborhood in what used to be Miami Florida where there had been a malicious attempt to mail a letter bomb to the White House. Data gleened from the FBI and the local government had pegged the perpetrators as the Green Army, a group of radical extreme left anarcho communists with an environmental agenda, well, environmental as in "taking revenge for earth" rather than actually focusing on conservation efforts or something, an agenda that they seemed to be attempting to take out on the government.

As per official post office policy, news of the attempted letter bombing had been spilled in a press conference after all of the evidence had been gathered. While the spokesman kept denying comments citing that it could compromise an investigation, Sergeant Mark Geofrey's platoon squad moved up to the door of the apartment that the Green Army was using as their headquarters.

Two other squads were also waiting, one in the building across the street and the other around the corner ready to jump in in case things got too messy.

"Kuribayashi." Mark said to his second.

Corporal Anderson Kuribayashi, a second generation Japanese American who had transferred in from another police department nodded. He moved forward and knocked on the door with the back of his hand while he remained behind the wall.

Immediately there was a sound of panicked scuffling inside.

"Police! Search Warrant!"

Immediately, the door was obliterated by automatic weapons fire. The squad fell back. Even though their standard issue Protect Suits were supposed to be highly resistant to all small arms under .50 caliber, they really didn't want to put that to the test. The squad fell back with their weapons up.

"Officer under fire. Need assistance." Geofrey spoke into the radio.

While the backup squad began moving up, the APC roared up from down the street, dillon minigun whirring as it spooled up.

"Fuck you coppers! Eat lead!" Screamed a voice from a upper floor. The "activist" began spraying bullets from an old M3 grease gun into the streets below. Many bullets hit the armored vehicle, but none did any damage. The officer in charge of the minigun aimed up but did not fire.

"Intel says there aren't any civilians inside the building. You are cleared to fire at will."

That was all the APC needed to saw the gunman in half with bullets.

It was going to be a while before the battle concluded. All of america learned a valuable lesson that day. Fuck with the mail and get fucked by the post office.

 

[Ramble]

Court rulings determined that the remaining 8 of an estimated 23 members of the Green Army were guilty of conspiracy to assassinate the President of the United States, illegal possession of weapons during a felony, and various other charges. The Postal Police on the other hand decided that it would probably be a good idea to put the miniguns in storage for the moment, which is a shame since I liked them, but as technically a law enforcement agency, they would need to use proportionate force rather than going full out in the future which was fine, the administration seems to be operating just fine and the underlying employees don't appear to be having any issue with the decision.

It's not like it matters much to me at the moment since I'm nowhere near the United States. I'm in Australia, heading for Jeet's territory where my convoy can drop off the stuff and we'll head back for Hive Base to restock and fuel back up. In the meantime, I'm manning one of the pintle mounted machine guns on the back of the fuel trailer, scanning the horizon and also multi-tasking a game of angry birds so that I don't get bored.

Unfortunately, none of my crew have been able to cook worth a damn so that job fell to me to make something remotely edible, just fried rice for now, but after eating mostly tasteless fare for much of the time, they were extremely grateful for it. Everyone but the Captain and I are in the barracks car eating. The Captain is at the wheel keeping the road train moving while I don't really need to eat. All I need is a sandwich and that's good enough for me, you know, since I don't really need to eat and all that, but it's nice to eat something for the texture and taste if nothing else. I do find it interesting that the Captain volunteered to stay at the wheel so that the other two of the bridge crew would be able to eat first. Good man that.

I am snapped out of my thoughts by a figure covered in spikes cresting a dune. Now, many vehicles in the wasteland have spikes, it's an effective anti-boarding tactic after all, but this isn't spikes used to deter boarders, this is super duper excessive.

I of course recognize it as a barbacon class vehicle used by the buzzards, and where there is one buzzard, there is definitely sure to be a whole lot more. I tap the headset radio patched into the train's intercom.

"All hands, this is the admiral speaking. Buzzards spotted five o'clock high. Hands to combat stations."

With a flurry of movement, my crew have themselves up on deck and readying themselves for enemy contact.

"Ensign!" I yell at one of the crewmen. "Get on this machinegun!" And he does, just like he's trained to do. I on the other hand start making my way toward the prime mover where I can more easily coordinate the defense of my convoy.

"Contact! Buzzards on the move!"

I make a quick stop at the barracks car and pull out a small drone which I toss in the air. It's a propeller driven electrical thing, but the camera mounted on it should give me a complete view of the tactical situation.

"Admiral to the fleet, be advised. Enemy consists of three Barbacon class vehicles, two Prickles class vehicles, one Mancannon class vehicle."

I make my way to the Prime mover and ready my own personal weapon, an M2 browning modified to be carried by one person, me, fed by a belt extending from a backpack holding ammo. I had hundreds of rounds at my disposal, and by the grace of John Moses Browning I was going to use them.

"Alert!" I announce over the intercom. "New contacts, two O'clock, one Dropkicker class and two Barbacon class vehicles. Weapons free. Weapons free."

I lift the weapon to my shoulder and fire off a short burst. The weapon is loud, primal, and exactly what I like. As a dudely dude even in a girl's body, the weapon's sheer power speaks to me and calls out to me, telling me to shoot more.

As I wax poetic, all the other M2s on the road train also open up on their individual targets. While the trigger dicipline and control of my crew isn't so good as to allow them to hit the enemy vehicles from such a range, I am much more competent due to my inherently machine nature. I dump three long bursts of high explosive incendiary rounds into the aproaching vehicles, striking the explosives on the Dropkicker and causing the whole thing to go up, damaging the other two vehicles around it.

Another long burst sweeps across the vehicles, striking the occupants. The high explosive explodes inside the drivers and crew of the vehicles, vaporizing huge chunks wherever they land, killing instantly.

The vehicles drive on right into the path of my road train fleet. The sound of rending metal screams out as the road train plows the vehicles underneath, the steel wire reinforcement in the wheels hold up well to the spikes of metal that the buzzards like to stick all over everything they own.

My mind turns temporarily to wondering what exactly makes the buzzards do that, sticking shit all over their cars. I can get paint, that looks nice, but it's just too many spikes having the same effect as fewers spikes for increased weight.

Eh, probably just an aesthetic choice. Form over functionality and all that.

Well, that should make the buzzards easier to kill.

Speaking of killing Buzzards.

"Fleet, the enemy is looking to make another run, reform into line formation."

With smooth precision, Road Rage Two begins speeding up and Road Rage Three begins slowing down to begin transitioning to line formation so that the fleet would be able to focus fire on either side while the rear gunners are unrestricted in what they can do.

"Enemy is entering range. Shoot them."

The machineguns on the trains open fire. M2 browning machine guns spew out a rain of armor piercing incendiary rounds. The Mancannon class vehicle suddenly explodes violently into flames as the bullet ignites what seems to be fumes from fuel venting to atmosphere. Evidently the fuel system kinda sucks on buzard vehicles. Fortunately, the barrage also sprays across a Barbacon class vehicle, obliterating the driver and sending the vehicle tumbling. I'm pretty sure that whatever crew was in the vehicle, they're probably dead, especially that one guy who was ejected out the window and promptly skewered a hundred times by the spikes on the tumbling vehicle.

A cheer rose from my crew.

"Don't celebrate yet. We still have a hundred kilometers left to go. Keep firing."

Despite the seriousness of the situation, this is actually kinda fun.

Does that make me a sociopath?

 

[Ramble]

Insert anticlimactic battle here.

Seriously. There was nothing to it. They waited until the machineguns had to reload before trying to get in close and attempting to hijack Road Rage Three, but the crew reloaded the machineguns too quickly and the Buzzards were in range. It was a shooting gallery.

Yeah, this is what happens when the tech disparity between two factions is this high. It's not even a fight, it's a slaughter. It also didn't help the buzzards that my road train crews together amounted to over 30 people even without me.

So here we are, pulling up to Jeet's stronghold after a long hard drive. We can't get it all the way up though, but the hoses reach far enough for my purposes. All I need to do is get out and go talk to them.

As I walk up to the chasm that separates the little island Jeet's stronghold stands on, there are a couple of people standing on the wall with crossbows while I'm just standing around with no weapons. No visible weapons anyway. There's an M1911 in a concealed holster and a .25 handgun concealed between the large lumps of fat hanging from my chest. Nobody ever checks there.

"Hey you!" Jeet yells at me with a microphone. "State your business here or learn to love a bolt in the brain."

"Hello!" I yell back. "I am the admiral of this convoy, and I come with gasoline, water, foodstuffs, and various other items."

"Oh yeah? And where do you hail from?"

"Hive base settlement, the settlement under the wall."

He looks around at his people and I am able to pick up some mutterings with my enhanced hearing, but I tune it out just to be nice. He comes back to the wall.

"Do you know anything of medicine?"

"Yes!"

And that about settles the deal for him. He drops the gate and I'm allowed in. I signal for the crew of my convoy to get ready to drop off the load.

Jeet meets me.

"Alright, you know of medicine. What do you know?"

"I have a few medicines that help with various ailments. Anti-biotics, painkillers for physical pain and also medicine for headaches too." I respond and puff out my chest pridefully. Of course, I already know what he needs, but I have a feeling that coming out and telling him what he needs would be just kinda rude.

"C'mon, walk and talk with me." He told me. And so I did.

He brought me all the way up to where he had put his rickety couch and sat down.

"Now, don't know if you know this, but I suffer from headaches. Pain keeps me off it, keeps me thinking clearly. If you've got something that would help with that. We might be able to deal." He tells me.

I nod and reach into my cleavage.

"Whoa whoa whoa girl. Whatcha doin there?" He asks.

"Grabbing medicine." I respond innocently. "I hide things there because it's one place that nobody bothers searching. Except bad guys, but then I just shoot them."

The incredulous look on his face tells me what I need to know.

Really, it's just to hide me using nano-fabricators to manufacture a small packet of Tylenol pills laced with more biologically oriented nanomachines to help it work faster as well as suppress any negative responses. I withdraw my hand to show him a small cardboard package about the size of half a deck of playing cards.

"This is something called Tylenol. The actual name is too complicated for me to explain, but it's a general purpose painkiller. It treats headache, muscle pains, joint pains, back pains, toothache and it brings down fever. I don't think you can read the label though. You're only supposed to take two tablets every six hours though, and no more."

He looks at me suspiciously.

"And pray tell what happens if I take more?"

"In small doses it's medicine. In large doses it's poison." I state matter of factly.

Surprisingly, he nods and motions for me to give him the medicine. I shake out two tablets onto my hand and tell him to hold onto them for a bit while I retrieve a flask from a pouch on my leg. It's filled with water and I tell him to take the pills with water so that they go down easier.

He does so without another word and we wait patiently for it to take effect. When it does he jumps up wide eyed.

"It's gone." He says into the distance. "It's finally gone!"

"That's wonderful. Now, if you wouldn't mind getting your people to urk!"

Despite his appearance, Jeet is actually quite strong, as evidenced by when he hugs me in his jubulance. Who knew that curing someone of an affliction they have had all their lives would cause them to be so grateful as to abandon all of their previous reservations. I attempt to pry him off and succeed.

"That's lovely. Now, if you wouldn't mind. I want to drop off the stuff. I'm quite busy, and once I unload here, I need to go back to hive base and restock for a trip to Gutgash's stronghold. If you wouldn't mind. My crew aren't so many, so if you could get your own crew to help out with unloading?"

It takes the better part of the day to get everything unloaded, mostly inflatable bladders for oil and water (color coded) and boxes of hardtack biscuits and jerky, though I do add some other stuff too like salted fish and sauerkraut. In the end though, Jeet's stronghold is grateful and I have basically their help whenever I want.

I do give him one more thing though.

"This is called a one way pager. I have the one on the other end. Just push the button. Try it." I hand him a small black plastic box about the size of a deck of cards. It only has one thing on it, a clear plastic button. He takes it gingerly, or as much as he can. He's not all that delicate a person.

"It's not gonna break you know. It'll basically survive anything short of actually trying to destroy it."

He presses the button and there's a tone from my pocket. I pull out a similar black plastic box of the same size only with series of small holes to allow sound to come through, and the clear plastic button replaced by four lights, red, green, yellow, and blue. The red one is lit up.

"See this? The red one is lit up. That one's you. The convoy only comes around once every thirty days, but if you need something, you run out of supplies, or you just need some problem needs solving, give that button a good smack and I'll show up. One way or another."

With that, I leave the stronghold with the tanks almost completely empty. I climb into the prime mover of Road Rage One and am greeted by the Captain.

"Had a good day admiral?" He asks as he tips his cap.

"It was alright. I'm gonna go take a nap. Get the fleet moving alright? I'd like to be at hive base as soon as we can manage."

 

[Ramble]

The drive back to Hive Base is pretty quick seeing as we're not loaded down with all sorts of stuff, my convoy is able to go back to hive base at an impressive clip considering that there isn't a road anywhere in sight leading to the Hive Base settlement. Word of it had essentially spread by word of mouth from roadkill gang to roadkill gang until it reached other people who actually had reasons for making contact with the settlement.

As it is, the settlement is actually the most powerful among the wasteland powers, though not as strong as the power triangle of Gastown, the Bullet Farm, and the Citadel.

Generally, I didn't feel like doing much. I had ridden along with the convoy just to get my fantasy out of the way and I generally don't feel it would be good for me to do all the missions when I generally should do other things. I don't really feel like dealing with Gutgash anymore than I need to. I don't know, something about him just rubs me the wrong way, but in any case, I am able to do some of the bookkeeping for future convoys and set up a system delivering materials to each of the strongholds that max would currently have access to.

Surveillance footage from my spy plane, the dragon lady, shows that max has just gotten his ass kicked by Scrotus and his car jacked. I probably have a bit of time until he gets to Jeet's place and I'll be able to help out on his journey.

Gutgash's delivery is loaded up with sheets of steel, the supplies that Jeet received, and also a small i3 gasoline powered tractor with a wind up crank to start the engine rather than a starting motor because, well, just cause. The tractor should make it easier to move around stuff. Hopefully since Stank Gum is dead, Grace and Hope will be alright, but I don't really much care for them all that much.

Paperwork takes a grand total of eight hours. It's not that I need as my subordinates need paperwork and my paperwork was making the paperwork that they needed to do their jobs and help things run smoothly. People are reading from instruction manuals so hopefully the Hive Base settlement will be fine without me.

I'm able to get on the road. On my own this time.

Without a car, you don't really last so long on the wasteland so I make myself a car.

In the end, I decide to go for the sleek look of 21st century vehicles have and decide on a police interceptor utility with an I6 engine pumping out 350 horses and 600 foot pounds. It's basically got all the bells and whistles on it, extra large fuel tanks, police color scheme, a lightbar on the top, and a mini-fabricator that I can use for basically whatever I want disguised as the storage space on the center console.

The finish is the seal of the United States Postal Police force on both doors and the hood of the vehicle. I'm almost tempted to make it the standard duty vehicle of the US Postal Inspectors really, but no, that's not bueno.

It's also an automatic. Because I'm american and because I'm not going to lower myself to the level of changing my own gears when I have a perfectly good computer to do it for me. Right.

Time to hit the road.
---------------------------------
My first encounter on my pan Australian road trip is a small team of three Roadkill, loaded into two speedsta class vehicles that attempt to do a bit of car battling.

Well, I can't have that. They'll scratch my paint.

It appears that they are going for a flanking maneuver, one on either side of my vehicle, and they're gonna go for the squeeze. I actually have a sufficient power to escape them by sheer speed alone, but I guess I'll clean up the wasteland a bit.

The first thing that my car's new fabricator constructs is an Israeli weapon, an Uzi. The generous ammo capacity as well as the balance and central location of the magazine makes it quite ideal for the purposes I intend to use it for.

I open the windows and loose the entire 30 round magazine out the passenger side window.

9mm jacketed hollow point bullets chew through everything in their way, be it car parts or people. Two people are in the vehicle to the right of me and they pay the price for their foolishness, reduced to little more than meat to be picked apart. The vehicle, now driverless, spins out, rolling into a nearby dune. It would have hit me if not for some timely evasive maneuvers that allow me to avoid wreckage.

My last enemy vehicle is also forced to evade which gives me enough time to ditch the empty Uzi out the driver side window and retrieve yet another one from the fabricator.

He attempts to flee, but I'm not having any of that. While his car is light and fast, mine has an engine that puts out six times more horsepower than his does and that lets me close the distance.

I fire the entire magazine of the Uzi out the driver's side window and dispose of it in the same fashion.

Right. That's taken care of. I should probably go and dispose of their friends too.

The U-2 is currently unavailable since it has already been tasked to another mission, namely flying above the site of the melted down chernobyl reactor. When the soviet union collapsed, the Kremlin lost contact with a lot of sites, many often in the middle of harsh weather and impassable due to irradiated roads. One of the places that had gone to hell had been the Chernobyl reactor.

The Russian premier had told me that if I were to take care of the reactor sites, he would allow me access to the seed bank locked away in the Pavlovsk experimental station. Apparently when the world fell, several scientists and soldiers held the station against bands of marauders, killing anyone who would dare to eat the precious seeds hidden within. They were attrited down to very small numbers before they succumbed to starvation, but by then, they had welded the vault shut.

I'm rambling. The U2 is busy, but I do have a couple of SR-71 blackbirds in the area. Those are still pretty nice, and almost as effective, though they can't deliver nanite payloads. Well, I don't need them to do that.

Let's see where they likely came from.

So the likely place they came from seems to be a Roadkill encampment a couple miles in the direction I'm already heading it. Well that's just lovely. It's just a couple of repurposed intermodal shipping containers so it really shouldn't be that hard to take care of.

Never used the FN FAL before, so I guess I'll try using that to clear out the encampment.

I could use a snack. Maybe after I finish up business.

 

[Ramble]

Wiping out the Roadkill camp isn't difficult.

Essentially what it involved was pulling up my SUV to the encampment and using a rifle grenade to flush them out. I've always been fond of the barrel mounted rifle grenades. I've always been of the opinion that they looked much cooler for older style rifles than on the newer ones.

Sure, nothing beats the look of an M203 on an M4, but for something like the FAL, the rifle grenades just look classier.

Rambling. Moving on.

The explosion blasts one of the shipping containers open, killing one of them and alerting others to my presence. Well, they already knew, hard to hide the sound of a car, but they hadn't exactly been all that concerned before. Now they were pretty sure that I meant business. Two of them emerged from a trench and attempted to charge at me, hell bent on beating and raping me no doubt.

I dissuade them with a hail of gunfire and by dissuade, I mean blow out their entire chest cavity with a hail of fully automatic rifle fire. It's not really all that complicated really, but it gets the job done, no hard feelings, for me anyway, they on the other hand generally don't have any feelings other than the searing pain before the shock takes them out.

Yep.

Killed three guys.

What does SR-71 blackbird and his sensors say about the encampment?

Mister blackbird tells me that there's no more life signs and that it was probably just the three there, which is nice really. It's not like there's anything to salvage from the camp anyway, but I go through it nonetheless. Two dew collectors and a bunch of scrap that I really don't need but whatever.

Max is taking the magnum opus to get a new body. As far as I can tell, you never really visit that area ever again in the game, so that means it's a place still crawling with buzzards, which can't really be all that good.

If you didn't guess, I'm going to go kill them all, well, with the exception of any women and kids, any who don't try to fight back anyway, which is good enough for me anyway.

It'll be a long drive, but by cheating with the protocrafter and with the custom road wheels, I'm pretty sure it won't take all that much time to get to the boneyard. I'll probably need to wipe out the other buzzards camping out in the desert too, which should be fun.

Whatever.

I toss reload the FAL and toss it into the back seat of my car and then head off to the main game area. I just need to clean up the game area, take care of the citadel, make sure that my post office is working as intended, and then I would presumably be free to leave or whenever.

That's at least what I presume. It would be a right shame if I were just limited to the mad max world.
---------------------
The length of the drive I still have to do allows SR-71 blackbird-chan, the one I have permanently stationed in Australia, to head back to Hive Base and refuel. The Dragon Lady is still scouting out all of the old nuclear reactors and identifying which ones should take priority first.

Chernobyl for example, is a bust. Others, with some nurturing and tender care by russia's remaining technicians, should be able to get back up and running or at least safely decommissioned without too much hassle.

Blackbird-chan gives me a detailed enough scan to know that there is an underground tunnel network that are holding a vast majority of the buzzards which is probably going to be a pain in the ass to deal with. The same is true for the old airport, the underdune as the locals call it, that the buzzards are using to house the majority of them.

There's also the problem that they have their very own gunpowder making capability. It's usually restricted to guards who guard the top dog in their society since actual working guns are so rare and they're in short supply of blackfingers who can make guns. They might be able to deploy their gunners against me though which should be interesting.

A protracted firefight would certainly be long if I don't have backup, but I don't really want to call any in cause with the quality of help I have available to me right now, a gunfight would end in a disproportionate number of my guys getting killed. I can't exactly have that happening so I guess I'm doing it myself.

Actually, now that I think of it, small diameter bombs shouldn't cause too much collateral damage.

Luckily, I have Galm squadron at Hive Base overseeing scientific efforts, but they should be fine flying F-15s which should give me about 64 bombs to use.

That's good, and it looks like they're getting ready to launch now. Good boys.
---------------------------------------------
I pull up to the graveyard entrance and the wreckage of the fence that Max was so kind as to blow open. The buzzards don't seem to have been able to fix it up yet which means that I'm going to be able to just stroll however I please which is good.

Of course, I have no intention of getting onto a protracted firefight in which I might be wounded. I learned a while ago that I did not in fact have accelerated healing. Sure, I never got sick, but about six months ago, I had suffered a papercut and that had taken a while to scab up and heal. It healed flawlessly, but it still took time and it still hurt.

That had also been made abundantly clear when I had stubbed my toe while walking around barefoot one day. It was exactly an unpleasant experience as it was when I was human so there was that.

Additionally, I do not know what would happen were I to be killed so there it is.

Slowly and methodically, I don my Protect Gear Mark M. It actually takes quite a while since I can't use nanites to change my own body or anything on my own body so I have to take the time to actually put on everything, hook up every piece of armor and secure it. By the time I have the armored gas mask secured and all my nice new weapons loaded up, I've burned off thirty minutes.

As I turn around to go into the boneyard, the heads up display pops up. Goodie. Also SR-71 blackbird-chan is providing a minimap for the next couple of hours.

Before I forget, I turn back and arm my car's Anti-theft system which consists of flamethrowers, CS gas sprayers, and liquid nitrogen sprayers just to be perfectly horrific.

Initial resistance is relatively light. The number of buzzards that I've encountered can be counted on one hand, though the number of them I have managed to shoot has kept pace with how many I've seen. Looting the bodies nets me approximately jack shit. There's nothing for me to use. Well, there's some scrap, but I don't need it so I just leave it.

Since I'm attacking during the day, I had basically expected to be swarmed by buzzards, but mostly it's just buzzards scouting me out.

I am alerted to a movement and then I'm made aware of a primitive grenade being thrown at me.

There is very little time to evade and so I just don't try. The grenade explodes and does absolutely fuck all, the shrapnel simply bouncing off my armor and the undersuit defends me from the shock and overpressure wave of the explosion. I fake a stagger in order to draw out the enemy, feighning a moment of weakness, and it works.

Several buzzards come out of cover and rush for me, thinking to take advantage of my weakness. Unfortunately for them, I immediately "regain my balance" and take up a firing stance and open up with the FAL on fully automatic, spraying them with bullets. My assailants are cut down like wheat and I show them no mercy. I don't need to.

Oh! SR-71 is going for Infrared this time.

An infrared pass reveals that the enemy attempting to mobilize vehicles in an attempt to kill me. They will come at me with the vehicles and attempt to run me down followed by infantry to finish me off.

Well that's not going to happen.

Friendly air elements have entered the mission space. Begin strike missions on vehicle bunker doors and concentrations of enemy infantry.

 

[Ramble]

You better not go boring when you start designing spacecraft.

Click to shrink...

Don't worry, I don't plan to.
------------------
A mental minimap allows me to pinpoint the targets that I want the small diameter bombs carried by Galm squadron to strike which includes several mustering points, gasoline bunkers, and several concealed bunkers that the buzzards are using as depots for their various vehicles.

I could probably handle a vehicle just fine what with my own peak human musculature and skeletal servomotors, but I don't exactly feel like getting hit by a car for any reason.

Four F-15s flying at high altitude begin dropping their ordnance, hitting bunkers and concentrations of enemy personnel. Another pass by SR-71 Blackbird chan allows me to identify approximately 30+ kills or so. I can't put exact numbers on them because there's a lot of body parts that I can't match to the rest of the body parts, but that's okay. I just tack on a 30 to my kill count.

Well, time to get moving.

As a one man army, it is unfortunately very hard to secure the territory behind me because even though I can clear out an area with gunfire and small diameter bomb drops, as soon as I leave, the enemy would be free to move right back into the territory I just cleared out, so I have to keep going back and killing them again.

I do this again and again for the better part of several hours.

All the time, resistance is rather light with most of the attacks being either ambushes or traps which I am able to avoid all of because of my aerial recon pointing everything out to me before it happens.

After my kill count reaches 50, that's when they start deploying gunners.

I slide behind a wall as a spread of buckshot hits where I previously was. I could have tanked it honestly, but that's a bit less fun. I reload the FAL with a 100 round Beta magazine fabricated on the spot. It has been tested in numerous simulations and uses superior progenitor engineering to make sure that as long as it's not clogged with dust or sand or stuff, it will never jam.

I wait for them to stop firing before I jump out and spray the entire magazine down the hallway.

Three buzzard gunners die while the remainder flee. I'm in the main compound now. Near the bottom appears to be a safe room where the women and young people are located. The compound is basically a large catacomb of maggot farms and living quarters with a throne room. That's where I'm headed.

Unfortunately, I can't use grenades or explosives or it might bring down the whole place but that's not really bothering me. After a couple hours of fighting buzzards, I'm just gonna get out. Jeet can probably take over and clean up after I get through the boneyard.

I turn down several more corridors. A few more buzzard gunners are dealt with via a burst of gunfire and it's starting to get repetitive about now, but after a while, I finally get to the throne room or whatever it is. There's the remainder of the gunners, about fourteen of them taking up positions around the room and ready to pour on fire.

I note a machine gun among them as well. How interesting. They have one.

I take my time to fabricate a breaching shotgun, a Spas 12 for semi-automatic fire and because I like the design. Franchi had managed to bring the design over to america and I managed to get a hold of it by buying the patent from the company holding it since they couldn't really manufacture it. Unlike the video games though, I unfold the shoulder stock, making the Spas much more effective.

A tap on the door identifies where the two hinges are located and two blasts of breaching shot blow the door clean off its hinges. I step back as a hail of gunfire blast out of the door frame and I just take up a position behind effective cover.

Now it's just a waiting game until either they decide to step into the way of my around the corner murder queue or they run out of ammo. Either one. I can wait.
-----------------
I make my way back to the car, ditching armor pieces all the way to make the walk more comfortable. It's alright. I'm wearing a shirt and jeans underneath the suit so it's SFW. The pieces disintegrate when I get far enough away.

Huh. A buzzard actually slipped past and tried to jack my car. Poor guy.

BANG

That's taken care of. Off to my next location.

 

[Ramble]

Most of my time over the next week is simply spent rooting out Buzzard holes and turning them into true safe bunkers filled with food and water and other supplies but no weapons or ammunition other than survival rifles and 22 long rifle ammunition. It's enough for basic self defense and for hunting any small game but not enough to go warlording about with. I'd rather not have a gigantic empire spreading across the Australian continent using my guns, or at least not at this stage. Such an entity would probably not last long on the world stage and I would rather have Australia at least somewhat capable of standing as, if not an equal with the greater powers, then at least a major player.

I'm fairly certain that my little settlement at Hive Base would be able to do the trick, but I want something a bit more nuanced. A federation would be nice but I'll probably just deal with the bigger canon problems and let the experiment run for a while longer. I can take it.

I also pay a visit to Jeet as well to tell him about the liberated boneyard. He's going through it now and the results he's getting out of it are promising. Unfortunately, he doesn't really have the manpower to salvage the whole thing all by himself.

I still need to wait for the oceans to fill up too. Lake victoria is still filling up and it'll probably take a while longer until the river nile starts going again.

I'm hesitant to set up additional manufacturing bases in north america, but I believe it would not be so bad to set up a base in formerly Canada. Quebec is basically all that's left really, the rest joined with the United States for support. The outer reaches of saskatchewan might be a good place to set up. Yes I have a supercomputer in Washington DC but as things are getting bigger, I need to run more simulations, and that means I need more computing power.

To that end, my QU-2 Dragonlady spyplane dropped nanite rockets into Canada and onto what was left of Spain, into what remained of the former Amazon rainforest, and into the the irradiated husk of what was once the seaside city of Vladivostock. Thus, my set of bases on all the continents that actually mattered was finished with my new bases being named Hive Base America, Hive Base Europe, Hive Base Brazil, and Hive Base Asia respectively.

Currently, only Hive Base America has anything of note and it's mainly just a couple of supercomputing nodes in a big concrete building. Need to get to work on that. Still, it's quite nice.

For now though, there are two things that need my attention. The first is that mister Max is just about ready to start tearing down the Jaw, something that I'm enlisting two of my subordinates from hive base in.

The second thing is that my simulations are finished and I'm ready to start on the most important project of my life.
--------------------------------------
It was supposed to be longer >.>

 

[Ramble]

My project can wait. Last minute doubts force me to accelerate construction of Hive Base America's supercomputer to run still further simulations including a simulated full run of my project. I need to get it right first because this will change the entire game for me.

Is this a game?

I don't care. Sure, none of the science made sense. The oceans drying up? That shouldn't be possible without some sort of bullshit intervention. Very little make sense, but it feels real enough to me, and that's enough. My project facility is set up in the Rocky Mountains in the middle of a blasted wasteland that was once the Los Alamos National Lab and the surrounding townsite.

It's irradiated from the dozens of nuclear strikes it took for the Soviets to be completely sure that the facility was destroyed and I highly doubt that it will ever be used for its old purpose ever again.

Still, it's home, and it'll always be home.

But I can get sappy later. Right now I have warboys to kill.

And here it is now, the outer gate to the Jaw. It's somewhat reinforced and none of us have Harpoons.

I have one of my Captains and a volunteer gunner in the backseat holding automatic pistols. I on the other hand have bolted a rack to the dashboard holding about five Uzis since I was reluctant to show anybody actual protocrafting in action. In fact, nobody really knows how I get everything. President Morgan doesn't really want to know since it would just make things supremely complicated, and nobody from anywhere else does either.

"Max!" I yell out the window as we're parked outside.

"You want me to blow it or you?"

"I can do it! With this thunderpoon, we'll blow this gate to smithereens ha ha!" the hunchback says in his weird way while he's loading up his little rocket launcher.

I grab one of the Uzis to get ready for fighting.

I don't know how to describe what the thunderpoon sounds like but it is apparently quite effective at what it is supposed to do, which is blowing the hell out of the gate. Unfortunately it takes two shots which can only mean that the people manning the Jaw defenses have been alerted as to our intentions. The second knocks the gate down.

"Max! Hold up! Snipers!" I yell at him.

He looks over and nods at me, holding still so as to stay out of range.

"Captain! Your machine pistol doesn't have the range to hit the snipers stationed on the Jaw. Take the wheel will you?"

I reach into my shirt and draw out an M2010 sniper rifle, including suppressor, and bundle out of the car, letting the captain jump into the driver's seat.

"Admiral? Where were you keeping that?"

"Somewhere!" I respond and run up behind the wall that the gate was attached to. I cycle a round and poke my head out to see what's over there and then immediately pull my head back as two cars roar past me, almost taking my head off (not really).

"MAX! CAPTAIN! Kill these guys!" I don't really need to tell them to do that, but it's good to yell and it galvanizes my captain into action as he takes the SUV into action, machine pistol blazing away at his attacker.

I make my way through the gateway toward the inner 'arena' area something or other as stealthily as I can and it works.

As it turns out, computerized fire control coupled with super advanced AI systems controlling progenitor servos is far superior to organic brain and muscles. Who knew?

Crack.

Looks like they're bewildered. The shot seemingly came from nowhere and the only indication was the direction that their friend flew back from when the bullet sailed through his brain. They don't have to be bewildered any longer though, because cycling the bolt only takes a split second.

Crack.

Goodnight.

And the remaining four cars have a bead on my direction so they're just charging in an attempt to kill somebody before the sniper manages to kill them too, which is on the whole not very conducive to my survival. Of course, I'm not some kind of damsel in distress, far from it.

I extract an AK from my shirt and a magazine. This requires me to stand up in order to have room for me to maneuver, but it's okay. They're coming at me anyway.

The next few minutes is just me dodging cars and dumping 7.62 milimeter ammunition into the cars attacking me several at a time. I am actually able to kill two warboys by standing in front of a wall and letting them come at me, jumping out of the way just as they are about to crash. Naturally, in a car with no safety features whatsoever, no seat belts, air bag, or window, they get ejected out the front and smash headfirst into the wall at a bit better than 30 miles per hour.

Max and my Captain arrive in time to help out with the last of the cars and once the mobile defenders are taken care of, it's a simple matter to take down the towers one by one by either shooting them or pulling them down with the harpoon.

After that, Max uses the thunderpoon to blow off the hinges and then uses the Harpoon to tear down the Jaw itself.

All in all, quite a productive day.

Max stops next to me as he's about to leave for the dead barren's pass.

"Hey." He grunts out.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks." And then he speeds off on his journey. Hmm. Might have SR-71 blackbird chan track his movements. Should be interesting to see if he actually does all of the sidequests or something.

I return to my captain and hand him the sniper rifle. Quest completion demands a reward. The other guy gets the AK.

 

[Ramble]

Final simulations are taking longer than expected, as well as my own deliberations as to whether my first project should be the Primarch project or the Toy Soldier project. Either way, I'm still going to do both, but I only have one place to do the project in, and only one place where I want to actually do the project, the former site of the Los Alamos National Lab and currently the site of my Los Alamos Project Facility. It's located right next to my house and both are located right in the middle of a the irradiated wasteland in a pocket cleared of radiation and accessable only by the small Los Alamos Airport that I managed to reconstruct. Unlike my normal airport, this one is basically a kilometer and a half strip of concrete with three construction hangers to build and maintain a small fleet of drone aircraft that are designed for ferrying me to and from my home to one of my "Major" airports on the outskirts of Albuquerque where I can catch a 747 to Washington.

I like going home for the weekend, sue me.

In any case, I still have things to do, most of them which involve destabilizing the wasteland.

Not right now though. My vacation time to spend on my project in Australia has ended and I've returned to the United States to take up my old post again. That's not to say that I'm cut off from all of my projects in australia though. On the contrary, I'm monitoring the place more than ever. I'm receiving my own reports sent in from Blackbird chan's flybys and Galm squadron's own reports on their missions in australia as well as sporadic reports from surveillance satellites that pass overhead. Yellow squadron has basically been running supplies between Africa Base and the United States which means that though they were originally programmed to fly F-4 phantoms, they have adapted to the point that they fly Boeing 747s far better than fighter planes.

My AI subordinates are getting a bit smart for their original purpose. Galm 1 actually decided to take on of the 747s stationed at hive base and go waterbomb the Citadel with it, dropping gallons of water at a time on the countless masses of humanity sheltering under the rule of the warlord Immortan Joe. I didn't tell him to do it, he asked and I okayed it.

So that's sort of gotten Immortan Joe in a tizzy, what with the whole airliners being a thing and dropping water on the thirsty masses. He still has almost complete control over the actually useful water supply, but as far as the horde of humanity at the bottom are concerned, they're not perpetually thirsty so they're not completely miserable, just sorta miserable because they have to eat maggot gruel.

Galm 4 drafted up some specs for taking my Concrete Cloth that I had been distributing around Mogadishu and turning them into inflatable concrete cloth shelters, like the ones I'd seen in a video one time. The shelter would be delivered in a bag via either Pave Low or Black Hawk to a location where a chemical reaction would release enough gas to quickly inflate the shelter to its full size. Then a follow up water tanker would saturate it so it can start curing.

Unfortunately I had to turn down the idea for now, but I do keep it in mind for later because that would be a good idea. Might even try it out with Jeet and Pink Eye and Deep Friah.

Ah, my kids. They really are my kids now.

I made them originally as dumb AIs but for some reason they managed to evolve or something so as to almost be sentient, I might even suspect sapience even, but they might be hiding that and I don't want to pry too much. I have determined that they aren't evil killer robot AI though, so that's good.

I compliment them often.

They seem to like it, or at least that's they tell me.

Other world news.

I loaded up a 747 with nanites and sent it to bomb the chernobyl site in order to clean up the majority of the radiation and radioactive substances manually. I can away all the really nasty stuff like cobalt, plutonium, uranium, and radioactive iodine, but I leave most of the low level radiation around for the russians to deal with, just like I leave work for the USA to do as well in order to reclaim those areas. The work put into reclaiming the land will remind the governments and people of the cost of using nuclear weapons again.

Construction update for my fleet project. If it hadn't been obvious, I've become more and more attached to the Boeing 747, so much so that I change up the design for my flagship to accommodate landing, launching, and servicing the Boeing 747. The ship is to be upscaled to a total length of about 13 kilometers long with facilities that will house essentially everything I need. Research, manufacturing, resource generation, storage, and intensive maintenance in addition to potential living quarters for crew, training facilities, hydroponics, cloning facilities for animals and various plants, and additional space to slot in other modules when I get around to developing them.

I could not officially fit several commercial airports onto the carrier, so I think it's just about safe to bring along my entire compliment including the other designs I mooched from the US as well, with President Morgan's permission, including the C-5 Galaxy, C-130, AC-130, P-3 Orion, and the Cessna Tweet as well as the fighter conversion to the Super Tweet. It's not like they were putting the designs to much use so why not put them to use? The Cessna Tweet serves admirably as a light fighter just in case I need anything so I stick them in various hidey holes just in case.

In any case, I've got to get everything I currently need and Jeet hasn't called for a while, so I can take my time with things, at least until max gets through with everything and gets to the citadel. I should probably be around to help him out with the car chase, and maybe get the food and water situation sorted out once they actually manage to kill Immortan Joe and liberate the citadel.

As for now? It's the weekend. Everything is already taken care of so what do I do?

. . .

Blackbird-chan~! Wait! Where are you going?

 

[Ramble]

It occurs to me that I have not really been putting down any resource extraction structures, and my excess resources are not being used due to the relatively low scale of my constructions, many requiring no advanced technologies that would really tax my ability to construct things. In any case, I don't feel like building anything more on earth since I feel like one thing is going to lead to another and I'll just never stop. There is however, a lot of prime real estate real close to earth though, and that place would be the moon.

I stamp out a couple of Jeb capsules and tell them that their mission is to get a payload to the moon and then take one of them to the Vehicle Assembly Building where he begins fabricating what he estimates will be a moon capable rocket. That takes two hours in which I use some construction rovers to make reinforcements to the launch pad strongback as well as fabricate an entirely new strongback in case the old one sustains unacceptable damage.

As the two hour time comes up, the sits on the launch pad, waiting for its pilot to give it the final go ahead.

The rocket launches.

And tilts over after launch, crashing into the earth some distance away. Thankfully, I build transmitters into the capsules so that subsequent Jebs can learn from the failures of the previous ones.

It takes a while, and I eventually end up building three more launch pads so that I can just get things over with before one of the Jebs manage to get a rocket and its payload to the surface of the moon, a small rover barely the size of a small car equipped with a small fabricator arm.

The rocket it went there on promptly explodes, but at least the job is done, and I can start building.

First up is to build up a suitable platform with which to build a moon base. Even though crawler treads or wheels would probably do the job just fine, I can't just use any random old vehicle in my moonbase, that would just not do. It needs to be sufficiently cool. A mech would do the trick since a mech would be cool enough to staff a moonbase.

Yes. That is exactly it, but first things first. I queue the rover to begin construction on a larger fabricator arm to construct more stuff, then a construction hanger, a supercomputer complex, an airport for conversion to a space port, and a fuel production facility, though additionally with liquid oxygen storage and production as well,

I'll get to that after I finish up with the Toy soldier project.

By the way, I decided what project I'm going to work on. While the Primarch project would probably be good for me, I want to put that off till some other earth, and in any case, while Toy Soldier is more difficult, it is also much faster. The artificial construction of a human being, optimized and capable of war yet still capable of individuality. Where I wouldn't be able to use robots, or when I don't feel like using robots for everything, I will be able to use my Toy Soldiers as my go to foot soldiers.

Hmm I wonder. . .

If that worked, then the people reading have skipped to two weeks to right now at the culmination of the Toy Soldier Project.

Now I just need to make final checks to the original Prototype.

------------------------------------------
[Assigning Designation: Adam 0001]
[Load Operating System]
[Initiate system checks]
[...................]
[...................]
[...................]
[...................]
[System Checks: Go]
[Checking Drivers]
[Calibrating]
[...................]
[...................]
[...................]
[Drivers: Go]
[Begin wake up]
[Get up soldier. You've got work to do]
[Wakeup proceeding normally]
[...................]
[...................]
[Welcome to the world]

Adam 0001 shot up from the bed, undressed, and completely disoriented. He had no memories of before, but he had a designation, and before long, a message popped up in his field of vision to the bottom left.

[Get up]

He swung his legs out to the side and almost fell to the ground before some sort of muscle memory allowed him to catch himself and look around. The bed he had been in was actually some sort of machine with two mechanical arms retracted into the head. Otherwise the room was completely barren other than a single locker.

As he looked at it, the door slid open to reveal a shirt, underclothes, pants, and some sort of form fitting light armor.

[put on the clothes]

He complied. Once fully dressed, an actual door in the room slid open.

[Proceed through the door]

He did so and ended up in a large white, featureless room with the exception of the door, which closed, and a light overhead.

[Wait]
[Your team mate aproaches]

A team mate? That was nice. He didn't know why it was nice, but it sounded like a nice thing to have. Another door opened and out walked another person, clad in the same clothes as him with the exception of the body armor being differently shaped for obvious reasons.

"What's your name?" He asked.

"Eve 0001" She answered flatly.

"Adam 0001"

[Well, at least you're not killing each other.]

The door that Eve walked out of closed and a large double door slid open.

[Proceed through the door]

They did so and found themselves in what they assumed to be outside in a desert. There was a table which had two rifles, two pistols, and two knives, and ammo..

"Oi! Over here!"

The looked over and saw a woman standing on a raised platform off to the side under a tower of steel beams with some sort of audio system at the top. She was tall, had long blonde hair, wore a suit, and had chesticles about where eve's were, only bigger, much much bigger. Unconciously, Adam attempted to estimate the size with his hands, but Eve noticed and slapped them down.

[Follow her orders]

"Yeah! You two! My name is Ramble, and I created you, quite literally. Anyway, your systems checks say that you got the mind downloads, so let me fill you in on the details. Nod if you understand me."

The two nodded.

"Great! Now, as you should know, you're the first two specimens of the Toy Soldier project, and I need to run you through your paces so I can start beginning the production batch. You're at the Los Alamos Test Site and Training Range. Your experiences here, going to be recorded by the implants in your brain so as to set the pattern for all other Toy Soldiers after you. You're the first of a batch of two thousand of each, so make it good.

Let's test the man-machine interface. It will be in all examples of the technology that I make, and most of the time it will just download an instruction manual into your head, but it will also allow you to connect to some of the more sophisticated technology. Now enough of my nerd stuff. Equip the weapons on the table. Go on!"

As soon as Adam grabbed one of the rifles, information streamed into his head.

Type-001 Battle Rifle
12.7x42mm
30 round box magazine fed
Direct Impingement Rotating Bolt

He put on the sling loop and let the rifle hang down. There were magazine slots in his armor so he grabbed a couple and then grabbed the pistol.

M1911A1 Semi-Automatic Pistol
.45 ACP
7 round detachable box magazine
Short recoil

The pistol came with a leg holster so that went exactly where it was supposed to go. The holster also had an extra magazine in it, presumably for reloading the pistol (duh). The last thing he reached for was the Knife which had a sheathe that was supposed to go on his forearm for easy access.

Type-021 Combat Knife
5 inch blade
Chrome-Molybdenum Steel

He strapped that on and looked over to see that Eve had her gear on as well.

[Pay attention]

He snapped his attention back to his commander, the one with the big chesticles.

"Good! I got the report from your implants and it looks like the system is working perfectly. Now, see that door over there? When the door opens, I want one of you to run through it and run the obstacle course. I'll be observing and giving instructions from the top of this tower. Without further ado. Good luck."

There was a whirring sound of powerful electric motors and the platform began rising up to the top of the tower, stopping at the top in order to give the commander a wide field of view.

"Alright! Adam first!"

[3]

[2]

[1]

"Go go go!"

Adam sprinted through the gateway and turned into the first area. Four targets popped up, two of which were clearly civilians and two of which were presumably terrorists. The terrorist targets were partially covered by the civilian targets so as to make the the exercise slightly more challenging.

Adam lifted the rifle, aiming down the sights, and let loose a burst of three rounds. The recoil initially surprised him, but he regained his bearings and send down two more bursts, this time hitting the terrorist targest with each one.

"Move up move up!"

He did so and has he did, four more targets popped up with timers.

He shot them as well, though the ammo readout at the bottom right of his field of view told him that he was running low on ammunition.

"Move onto the next area."

Adam complied and proceeded through another door to the next area where five more targets popped up, three terrorists, and two civilians, with two terrorist targets moving on tracks and one terrorist partially covered by the civilian.

He loosed three more salvos and missed one of the terrorist targets. The gun clicked on empty.

"Switch to your pistol! It's faster than reloading!"

Really? So it was. The earstwhile toy soldier shot the remaining terrorist close up with the M1911 then put it back to reload the rifle.

"Last area! Move it!"

The Toy Soldier sprinted across the area to the door which opened on the other side only to be stopped by a terrorist target popping out suddenly.

Reflexively, he shot it, but it wouldn't budge.

"Melee with your knife."

That did the trick.

Last area, two terrorists behind cover and one behind a civilian. Dispatching those was relatively simple.

"Sprint to the finish!"

Adam ran as quickly as he could, making his way through the door just as it opened to reveal a right turn, then a left turrn, then a right turn, and another right turn, and a corridor, and more turns, all while the sound of electric motors bringing the platform down to ground level. But finally, the course came to an end with the commander holding a stopwatch.

"Did alright. I've seen better, but you did pretty well for your first time. Eve, you're up!"