aaaaaaaagh_sky | National Guard Depot

The door that opens is not, strictly speaking, a door. Ellen wasn't able to find a working one near enough the National Guard building to use, so she had to fall back on the mouth of the drainage pipe that led out of Rock Creek Caverns. "Sorry about the smell," Ellen murmurs, "and the wet feet. This was the best access point I could get us."

Crossposts: http://aaaaaaaagh-sky.livejournal.com/58901.html

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From:

ihavemyflaws

Gods, those lasers are serious business. Crouched, she peeks around a row of filing cabinets at where the Robobrain -- what's left of it -- sits, sparking.

That's the kind of thing that'll stick with you. But they're clear for the moment.

"Nothing singed." Stuff around her is a different story, but she figures it wasn't like this place was up for any post-war interior decorating awards anyway. Drawing herself up to to her full height, she readies the rifle again. "We good?"

The questions -- like how it became okay to put human brains in robots -- will definitely keep until after this is all over.

From:

cbucsrule

"Good here," he echoes, maybe a little weakly 'cause his heart, man, it's in his frakking throat. It took about three seconds to learn that with Cylons you can't go on looks alone. The same definitely holds true here.

Kara's okay. It was luck or skill or both. Those things, they pack a mean godsdamn wallop. Lesson learned, he hopes, and as he turns a box on the wall catches him on the shoulder.

First aid kit: he opens it up, grabs the stimpak and the bottle with the screw-top, stuffs them into his pack. One tiny mission accomplished, but he knows enough to understand that every single battle is made up of a whole frakking series of infinitessimally smaller ones. One step at a time, and he could just kiss Kara for being unharmed.

Later. He nods to Ellen. "Your armory, man. Lead the way." He's just along for the ride.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"Good here too," says Ellen, who's just finished loading a fresh microfusion cell into the Gauss rifle. "Ugh. I hate those things. I'll have to give the brain the last rites when we're done with this place and I've searched the rest of the 'bot for usable parts."

She glances over at Sam. "You all right?" she murmurs. He looks like she felt, the first time she saw one of the tongue monsters. "We've got to go through the training wing from here to get downstairs any further. The floor in there's got to be sound, if a robot that weighs that much was able to roll over it. Not to mention that there's probably equipment lockers and ammo caches galore."

From:

ihavemyflaws

Last rites. Gods, she would never give last rites to a toaster.

"Not even skinjobs have brains," she acknowledges, like Sam is her name instead of his. And he can confirm those exist even if it hasn't come down through the fleet's official channels yet.

Don't ask her how robots make themselves look and act human, but it's all programming. Circuitry. Tiny internal computers or something. It's sick, but it's not human brains rolling around and shooting lasers at you and then hoping you can still be friends.

"Sounds good." Ammo caches are magic words, as far as she's concerned. "Let's move."

From:

cbucsrule

His hand, the one not holding the gun, goes up in a gesture of innocence. "I'm good, man, I'm good. Lead on." He is, too. There's a frak of a lot he can put up with, and if it's gonna get to him, it'll get to him later. After they're way the hell out of this place, back at the end of the universe or whatever, unwinding over a cold bottle of Picon Ale and a whole bottle of ambrosia or whatever it's gonna take. There's a big godsdamn difference between hearing about things and being part of them.

And he's nothing if not perfectly professional about separating his own feelings from the heat of the moment, from whatever situation he's in. At least he's competent at it about ninety-eight percent of the time. The other two, well, that's his business. His eyes shift from Ellen to Kara, like he has to prove to himself that she's okay, like he can't take her word for it. And that's strictly 'cause he's heard himself say he was fine when he wasn't too frakking many times and he knows how it goes.

She looks unharmed, and they can discuss the finer points of skinjob anatomy some other time. When he hasn't just blasted the frak out of a human brain sitting in a bowl of some sort of gel on top of a robot's body. Yeah. That can wait for the ambrosia. The sooner they get what they came for and get back out of here, the better.

This place, man, this frakking world of Ellen's? It's too much like home.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

It's not so much the robot as a whole. Just the brain. Ellen's seen too many of these things up close, and between combat in a land with few helmets going spare and the simple fact of growing up a doctor's daughter, she knows what a human brain looks like. And more- she knows there hasn't been anyone able to build new robots, this kind or any other, since the War. That brain was taken out of a human, hopefully a dead one but she can't be sure, and pressed into service in that robot for at least two hundred years. The only thing she can do for the human it used to be is see it properly sent off- and kill any other Robobrains she sees, quickly.

But there's no time to talk about that. Maybe later. Maybe if they ask. For now there's the corridor to traverse (the floor's all torn up and bubbled and crackled in places, like thruster flames got too close) and the training wing door to pry open. The other side is dimly lit at best, light trickling down through chinks in the broken ceiling, but it has the air of a big, open space with a high ceiling. A firing range, perhaps- one with tiny red lights high in two of the corners, the kind that only exist to indicate that something is here and powered on.

Ellen's lips go thin- not that anyone can see it, she's in her helmet- and she murmurs, "I have a built in light on this thing, and my Pip-Boy light. I can get us some visuals, but this place was probably a live-fire range, and there are turrets up there."

And probably robots lurking in the shadows, given what they've seen so far.

From:

ihavemyflaws

This place isn't getting a hell of a lot less destroyed as they go along.

Eyes adjusting to the dimmer lighting, she looks up to find the turrets. She pats the pyramid ball grenade she tucked away earlier. "I can take one."

It wouldn't be a bad spot for an ambush: distract with turrets and then send in robots, but she doesn't know how much credit to give this security system and so far none of the robots have been as smart as Cylons.

From:

cbucsrule

Now that enough of the adrenaline has rushed past to settle to a dull roar in his veins, he's all eyes and ears. Listening for telltale rumbling sounds or faraway tinny voices in different registers, he squints into the near-darkness.

"Those grenades'll light the frak out of this place, be ready." They brought them specifically to deal with the turrets but they've already proved useful in other settings. "You take one, Kara, I've got the other." He can put the thing out of its mechanical misery easy with a grenade as long as throwing the thing in here won't bring walls down around them. But his aim's good, and so's Kara's. He wouldn't trust one of these babies to just anyone.

Of course, forcing open that door might've set whatever security systems this place has on alert already, and they could be sitting ducks. Just like they have been the rest of the time. They've been faster and more capable than the robots, but he only figures that's because they've had the element of surprise on their side and these things really are just robots. Not sentient, despite the brain.

Just robots. Just programmed, that's all.

"Turrets at 2:00 and 10:00. Pick yours, I've got the other." Easy: they can do this. And Ellen's promised plenty of ammo, so they're good to go.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"I'll cover the middle," Ellen murmurs. "There's a half-height wall that they probably used as a steadying bench- I'll be behind that for when the robots come to investigate."

'If'. Ha. Right.

"Fire when ready. I'm good."

From:

ihavemyflaws

While Ellen moves into position, Kara shifts the rifle's weight to her left hand and takes out the pyramid ball with her right. "I've got our ten," she warns Sam.

She waits just long enough to see him get out a ball of his own, and she won't be able to lie about it if he asks later: working with an explosive pyramid ball is pretty frakking cool.

Once the ball's live, her aim's just about perfect.

From:

cbucsrule

They used to do this thing in practice, him and Ten-Point, for when they had an audience 'cause it always wowed people, where they'd sync up their shooting and make their goals simultaneously. Kara's got no way of knowing about that, but frak if all that pyramid training doesn't keep coming in handy in unexpected ways and places. Because he knows what the frak he's doing with it, he times his throw to hit the other turret the same time as Kara's.

Frak him if that's not one of the most impressive godsdamn explosions he's seen, not to mention caused. A whole rainbow of light fills the room and he has to shield his eyes from it, the contrast is so strong, but it looks -- once the smoke's cleared and the dust has settled -- like the only thing left where those turrets used to be are the remnants of the ceiling mounts. He nods to Kara: job well done. Really well done, and now that he's not as frakking shocked by every surprise coming around the corner, he's more determined than ever to get to the big supply payoff Ellen talked about back at the bar. She and her people, man, they need this shit and he's glad to help.

(What a frakking life. And he thought he had it bad on Caprica.)

Grabbing two more grenades, he hands one to Kara. He has no idea what might be heading in here, but Ellen seemed to think robots. Plural. Better safe than sorry.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

And plural it is. One Nuka-Grenade is loud enough in itself to draw attention from a long way away indeed; two at once, and to a degree that puts holes in nearby walls... well, that's going to wake up the place's ancient guardians. This was a live-fire range and it wasn't administered by something as potentially careless as humans.

"Alert! Non combatants are advised to leave the area. Security sweep in progress. Lethal force may be used without warning."

"Security lockdown in effect. Hostile target acquired!"

"Kill 'em all, and let God sort 'em out!"

"... oh great."

Well, that Gauss rifle ain't gonna fire itself.

From:

ihavemyflaws

"A warning that there won't be a warning," she mutters dryly. "Effective."

She thinks she'll skip that part if she ever makes a security system.

On high alert, she readies the rifle again. Sounds like Gutsies and Sentry bots, but she won't be surprised if they have the whole collection rolling in for them right about now. The second a Mr. Gutsy enters her line of sight she aims for the thrusters.

From:

cbucsrule

So that's what he blew away with the grenade a while ago, one of those big-ass things? With the three legs? Frak: he takes a moment, just one, to look for what might be the thing's weak spot but he isn't seeing one. He's not sure he can plant a bullet between any of the openings in the metal faceplate, and it doesn't look like...

"Frak me. Bullets are just gonna ricochet right the frak off that thing, aren't they." And all he needs to do here is hit Kara or Ellen with a stray.

Ellen's got her weapon, and he's got more grenades, and he knows he can take one out with one of those, but quarters are close. Might as well do what he knows works: he fires a couple rounds at the thing's head, on the off chance he can force a bullet into what passes for its eye sockets, then goes for the thruster on the Gutsy. It helped last time.

"Ellen, any hints on the big guy?" There's no point in staying quiet, not any more, not after the big explosion. "Looks pretty frakking impervious."

Yeah, he's liking his chances with explosives better than his chances with bullets on this one.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"Pitch grenades for-" BANG! "-the legs. They can right themselves-" BANG! "-but they can't fire while they're doing it, so-" BANG! "-you can keep whittling away at them until-"

Oh, great, the sentry she's been shooting at has a Gatling laser arm. At least she's wearing armor that can more or less stand up to the barrage of blazing red fire.

"Go for the legs! Legs are a privilege!"

From:

ihavemyflaws

Maybe it's hearing legs are a privilege! coming out of that serious suit of armor or maybe it's just the godsdamn thrill of getting to do something she's good at out here after living above a bar for weeks, but she can't help the grin that comes to her face.

(It wavers momentarily when those beams of red start shooting out from one of the sentries.)

With the Gutsy rendered useless, she drops to a knee -- "Boom!" she calls out in warning -- and lobs the replacement grenade Sam gave her right at the laser-happy sentry's legs.

From:

cbucsrule

Good, good: that knocks the thing over, knocks it right the frak out of commission.

"Kara. Not live, not live." He throws another one of the grenade-stuffed pyramid balls in her direction, grabs another for himself, pulls the pin, and rolls it over to the downed Sentry. If there's some approved military code for get the frak down and protect your sorry asses, he doesn't know it. All he can use is what they use back home.

"Cover!"

Three, two: in this kind of thing it's everyone for himself, but luckily he's out here with professional fighters and as much as he can, he's learning. Learning some good godsdamn lessons about this type of fighting, and he's not seeing any lasers firing. So legs being a privilege, that's the thing's weakness, he'll remember that. He's pretty sure it doesn't work that way with Centurions, they just keep shooting no matter how much you frak with their structure and no matter how much of them you blast away.

One: looks like the second grenade's a charm, or at least pretty godsdamn charming. There's a lot of sputtering, a lot of sparking.

"Everyone okay?" Even if they are, it's no time for complacency. He's got the feeling that if these two were summoned over when they trashed the turrets, they might not be the only ones. Probably, they're only just getting started.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"I'm fine," says Ellen, brushing her armor off. She got winged by a few of the lasers, and ablative coating or no, that always leaves a mark. "Anyone need a stimpak?"

(She'll remember to explain what they do later.)

"Keep an eye out, though," she adds as she trots over towards Kara, and sure enough, from somewhere above and ahead in the shadows:

"Today is a good day for someone else to die!"

... yep. Incoming Gutsy, its plasma gun blazing.

From:

ihavemyflaws

If stimpaks are what they sound like, she'll have to opt out. "I don't--"

There's just enough time to turn toward the noise before she has to duck out of the way.

(Lords of frakking Kobol, that was close.)

"There's nothing I like better than making some other poor--"

Her hand finds her personal gun at her hip, removing it from its holster, and she only wastes about a heartbeat before she fires in the approaching Gutsy's direction. Her aim's a little off, but the round makes the robot go off like a godsdamn sparkler where it hits, forcing it to stagger as much as a hovering ball can.

"--bastard die for his country!"

From:

cbucsrule

Gutsy.

(He knows them by name now, and he's not sure if that's good or bad.)

Go for the thrusters, he remembers that, and his first shot's about as good as it can be. Before he has time to congratulate himself he steadies his rifle and fires again, and again and again but each shot rings true and the Gutsy gives up the frakking ghost in a shower of sparks and electronic noise and a weak little "Unit deactivating. This troop is hitting the rack!"

That was uncomfortably self-aware, but he doesn't give it another thought 'cause he can't afford to give it another thought.

Frakking robots.

There's a moment of just... silence, and he's not sure he oughtta trust it, but this isn't his show and the plays aren't his to run.

"We might be good here. Ellen?"

He holds his hand out to Kara. She probably doesn't need any help, but he's running on gut instinct.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"I think we're good," says Ellen, and switches on her helmet lamp. It's not the brightest light there is, but it's better than nothing down here, and it sweeps the room nicely. The way it plays over the wrecked robots is truly something to see.

The way it plays over the nearby shelves and cubbies, arranged for the benefit of new Guard trainees right up until the last day of civilization, is something else again. This is where citizens were turned into homefront soldiers. They needed a lot of ammo to get to the point of not needing a lot of ammo. And this being a live-fire range and all, there's a fair few bits of armor lying about- granted most of it is painted with derogatory slogans like I FORGOT TO BRING MY OWN GEAR, but still....

"Huh. We should probably start collecting here, even if it's just to heap it near the door so we can port it through to Milliways," Ellen says. "If you see something you like, take it, and if it's broken I can try to fix it for you first."

From:

ihavemyflaws

That's better. It's not like having an overhead light on, but it's good enough that she can actually make out the shelves and what's on them.

For better use of her hands, she puts the rifle on her back again and keeps her own gun in her right hand. With the left she knocks on a helmet that looks more or less intact and then picks it up for a better look.

She can still kind of hear her heart in her ears.

"So, uh" -- she glances back toward Ellen -- "just curious here. What's a commie?"

The first Mr. Gutsy seemed to have ideas about them.

From:

cbucsrule

Ellen's comment makes him smile. They all get busy harvesting things -- lots of boxes on shelves, lots of debris, lots of all sorts of things -- and a door in the corner catches his eye. There's no noise coming from it, nothing that sets off any thoughts of danger. If he had a flashlight he'd go check it out, but as it is, the only real light is what's coming from Ellen's headlamp.

Still, he nods to the door as someplace worth checking out if they have the chance and in the meantime, he picks up a book -- it might be useful to someone somewhere -- and there's ammo scattered where some blast or robot knocked it over. Looks like the right kind for his rifle, so he gathers that up. Keeping busy's good, keeping focused is good.

At Kara's question, he looks up. Commie, that's something one of the bots said. He didn't think much of it at the time, but now that she's brought it up he's curious. A couple more med kits sit attached to the wall; he helps himself to the stimpaks and bottles in there.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

It's going to be useful, all of it. What Ellen or Kara or Sam can't make use of, somebody can. There'll be a buyer- Harith, or the Regulators, or someone in Milliways. A Milliways patron would be ideal- they'd get to pay in water or antibiotics or Streptomyces mold colonies or seeds, and they'd be willing to hand over ridiculous amounts of the stuff because to them they'd be offering something cheap and common for something rare and expensive. But on the Wasteland side, that same package of chems or mold would sell for enough caps to fund an insane amount of work or resources, and fund the factory's renaissance, and when it started production again the Pitt wouldn't know what hit it. It was all a matter of finding the right buyer, that was all.

So it's a little ironic to have to switch her brain around and say, "It means a communist. It's a pre-War socioeconomic policy. The Communists believed that the rich were parasites and that the capitalist system was innately corrupt and decadent, and that all production and economic and political decisions ought to be in the hands of the workers. 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need'. Which sounds nice, I know, but there wasn't ever a single Communist nation on Earth that didn't wind up a totalitarian hellhole controlled by a handful of people who put their needs in front, demand the fruits of everyone else's ability, and murder or torture their own citizens for speaking out against the supposedly glorious will of the people. This country was at war with Communist China for ten years before things went nuclear, which is why the robots were programmed to treat the word like an obscenity."

She's sorting the various weapons she finds into piles by usability and condition. It shouldn't be too hard to repair a lot of these and sell them for the price of nearly-new.

"Does anyone mind if I go through the robots' innards? Those things usually had fission batteries and small energy cells in a shielded area, and I need those for a project and my laser pistol."

From:

ihavemyflaws

That explains that. Too bad commie-loving bastard isn't one she can use easily on anyone at home.

"Ten years seems like a long time for enemies with nukes to stay patient." Putting the helmet under her arm, she casts her eyes toward the ceiling and listens to the room around them, a little surprised that nothing else has come to greet them after all that noise. "Our First Cylon War lasted over twelve."

Looks like Sam's found some ammo, so she steps in his direction as she glances back toward the destroyed robots.

"I say go for it, Ellen."

Robot innards can't be as messy as the human variety, and if they're actually useful they're better off in her hands than in a pile on the floor.