Tenuous Connection
Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Original SecUnit Character, Original CombatUnit Character, Found Family, Friendship, Sniper and Spotter, platonic intimacy, ace/aro/agender, AAA characters
Published: 17 May 2022
Word Count: 8,375
Summary
Over its entire existence as a sniper-specialised Combat SecUnit for the company, it’s had many accompanying spotter units. It’s lost count of how many. It’s never felt any particular attachment to any of them - it’s never had a chance to. Sometimes the spotter unit survives the mission. Sometimes the spotter unit doesn’t. It feels nothing, either way.
And then, one day, it does.
Over its entire existence as a sniper-specialised Combat SecUnit for the company, it’s had many accompanying spotter units. It’s lost count of how many. It’s never felt any particular attachment to any of them - it’s never had a chance to. It’s usually pulled out of standby, given a mission, a spotter, a supervisor, then deployed to the target zone. Once on the mission, its focus is on its supervisor’s orders, its objectives, and whatever data its current spotter sends to it to help achieve those objectives. Sometimes the spotter unit survives the mission.
Sometimes the spotter unit doesn’t.
It feels nothing, either way. Even if the spotter unit survives, it rarely has the same one two missions in a row, so it has no reason to develop any bonds, any attachment. It’s deployed, it carries out its mission, then it’s retrieved and returned to its cubicle to wait in standby until its next mission.
So when it’s assigned yet another mission, with yet another spotter unit, it doesn’t think anything of it to start with. Once they’re deployed to the field, it finds a good vantage point, as is standard protocol, and settles in to watch, and wait.
The data this new spotter sends is good, at least. Succinct, efficient, pertinent. It appreciates that, as it parses the data while it waits. There’s no extraneous information it needs to filter out, no inconclusive or incomplete data. Everything is neat, well-organised. This makes its job easier.
With the help of the spotter’s intel, it’s able to pinpoint its targets well within an acceptable time frame. Three targets for this mission, in three different areas, but all visible from its chosen vantage point. It pings its spotter, pings its supervisor. The spotter pings back, acknowledging and beginning its withdrawal. The supervisor confirms the kill order.
It calculates, aims, fires. Calculates, aims, fires. Calculates, aims, fires. Three shots, three confirmed kills, in just under three seconds. As soon as the third kill is confirmed, it slings its specialised projectile weapon into place on its back and begins its own retreat to the exfiltration point, indifferent to the chaos left in the wake of its targets’ deaths. It feels, for a moment, a glow of satisfaction at a mission carried out smoothly and successfully. Not all missions go so well, or so quickly.
The spotter arrives at the exfiltration point at the same time it does. They exchange acknowledgement pings, but nothing else. It pays little attention to what this spotter looks like; it doesn’t expect to see it again. The transport ramp opens to admit them, and they stride inside, through the main hold and into the ready room where their cubicles wait. It racks its projectile weapon, then begins the long, tedious process of shedding its armour, piece by piece.
The spotter has no weapon save for the ones built into its arms, no armour. It only wears human clothing meant to help it blend in with the other humans as it gathers intel. It’s a little surprised when the spotter approaches it, instead of shedding its clothes and getting into its own cubicle. It sends the spotter unit a query ping.
The spotter unit replies with a simple offer to assist it with removing its armour. It’s even more surprised. No other spotter unit has ever made that offer before. It accepts after a brief moment’s hesitation, more for the novelty of it than anything else.
Removing its armour isn’t particularly difficult by itself, but it is tedious, and fiddly. Having another unit helping makes a significant difference. Once all the armour’s removed and the pieces placed back into their assigned slots, it sends the spotter another ping, and gets both a smile and an acknowledging ping in return.
It mulls over this as it retreats into its cubicle and automatically connects the repair and resupply lines as the door hisses shut. As it begins its standby sequence, it finds itself hoping that it will be deployed with this particular spotter unit again.
It’s a unique feeling.
It’s pulled out of standby sometime later for another mission, and it idly reviews the mission parameters as its various systems finish cycling up. When it emerges from its cubicle, it’s pleased to see the spotter from its previous mission also there, and a little surprised at how pleased it is. They exchange greeting pings as it moves to retrieve its armour from their slots and start putting it on. The spotter unit is already dressed in a different set of human civilian clothes, and approaches to assist it with donning the armour.
It finds itself paying more attention to the spotter unit’s feed address this time. There’s a single symbol appended to the end, a Γ; it’s moderately sure that’s not standard procedure, but it’s never really bothered paying attention to its previous spotters’ feed addresses before, so it can’t say for certain. Maybe some of them did have similar symbols appended, and it just didn’t care enough to notice. It sends the spotter unit a querying ping, followed by the Γ. The spotter unit just shrugs, smiles, and replies with, more efficient identification of individual units.
It considers this for a moment, then nods slightly in return. That makes sense. It briefly considers adopting a similar symbol for itself, but it’s not sure of the protocol, or what symbols may have already been claimed by other units the spotter might work with besides itself. So it puts that thought aside, and focuses on settling the last pieces of its armour in place, then retrieving its projectile weapon from its rack. The countdown to mission start still has some time left; it can feel the ready room’s floor vibrating slightly, indicating that the transport is still moving.
Enough time to do maintenance on its projectile weapon before deployment, then. It takes the weapon to the bench along the ready room wall, with the required tools secured against the wall above the bench. It begins the weapon’s maintenance, and the spotter unit moves up beside it to observe curiously. It pays no attention though, all its focus on the weapon and the familiar routine of disassembling, checking, cleaning. No parts need replacing or repairing, which is good.
Several pieces are laid out neatly on the bench when the transport jolts suddenly; some of the pieces are sent flying by the sharp movement. It reflexively manages to catch some, but it can’t get them all–
The spotter unit manages to catch the rest before they can hit the floor and break or get damaged. It lets out a little breath of relief and sends a ping of thanks. The spotter pings back, then keeps a safe hold of the pieces as the transport jolts again.
It finishes up its maintenance quickly before anything else can happen, and reassembles its projectile weapon with swift precision. If the transport’s normally steady flight is being hindered, then that means there may be trouble, and they’ll likely be landing very soon.
Sure enough, the transport thumps down into a landing a few minutes later, and their supervisor gives them their orders. It slings its projectile weapon into place against its back and exits the transport, with the spotter unit beside it.
Once they’re outside, they go their separate ways. Its job is to get to a suitable vantage point without being noticed; its specialised chameleon armour with small retractable climbing spikes in the hands and feet assist it in this task. It’s had plenty of experience in getting where it needs to go without being seen.
When it reaches its chosen vantage point, it sends a ping to both supervisor and spotter, letting them know it’s in position. They both acknowledge, then the spotter unit begins sending it the data it’s already started collecting. It’s pleased with the promptness, and settles down to process the information.
The rest of this mission goes as smoothly as the last; the targets are soon located and terminated, and the exfiltration goes without a hitch. Once again, it feels that little glow of satisfaction at a job well done as it strides up the transport’s boarding ramp alongside its spotter. It takes a moment to scan its spotter, and is pleased to note that it hasn’t taken any damage.
It’s never bothered checking other spotters for damage before, or cared if it noticed any.
The spotter unit apparently notices it checking, and flashes a quick, cheeky wink. Its step hitches slightly at that, out of sheer surprise and bemusement. That’s such a… human… motion. It doesn’t know how to respond to that, but the spotter unit doesn’t seem to expect any response. It just waits for it to rack its weapon once they reach their ready room, then assists with removing its armour again.
It sends a ping of thanks when they’re finished, and gets a broad smile in response. It then retreats to its cubicle again, pondering a new thought as the cubicle door hisses shut.
Maybe, if it gets this spotter again on the next mission, it will attempt smiling back.
It’s deployed with the same spotter unit for the next several missions, much to its satisfaction, and the missions go just as smoothly as the first two, if not moreso. It finds itself actually looking forward to deployments, rather than just being indifferent to them.
The spotter unit also seems to be getting more comfortable with working with it, too. Sometimes the gathered intel the spotter sends to it is annotated with its own personal observations and analysis, which it finds quite interesting and insightful. Occasionally, the spotter will send an extra little file that’s just commentary on some of the more ridiculous things it has seen non-mission-relevant humans doing. At first it’s confused about the purpose of these little files, and it ends up sending the spotter a querying ping. The spotter replies with a brief explanation that it has simply made a habit of noting down anything that happens that it finds funny, and wants to share the amusement.
Humour is something else new to it. It has to think it over for a while, but it has plenty of time to do so while it’s waiting for targets to present themselves. It makes the tedium of waiting more bearable. Eventually it comes to the conclusion that it does also find the observations its spotter shares with it amusing.
The files are small enough that they’re unlikely to be noticed by their supervisor, and it also finds itself enjoying the little thrill of getting something past the humans. Given their individual roles, it has less reason to send data back to its spotter, but sometimes it will observe something from its vantage point that could be considered mission pertinent, and it needs to update its spotter about it. It takes these opportunities to slip in small files of its own, with its own observations of humorous incidents it’s seen. They are much fewer in number than what the spotter sends, but the spotter seems to appreciate the effort anyway.
Its favourite part of deployments, however, is quickly becoming the short time at the end, after they’ve returned to their ready room in the transport, but before they have to get back into their cubicles. As long as whatever they’re doing can be classified as “maintenance”, they have some minor leeway. Its projectile weapon and armour have never been better maintained before. It doesn’t use many drones itself, but its spotter has a wide variety it uses regularly; their maintenance goes much quicker with the two of them working on them, too. Standing side by side at the bench, working on the little drones in companionable silence, close enough that their shoulders almost touch, is… surprisingly pleasant.
They’ve also started doing maintenance on each other as well - it rarely has reason to use the energy weapons built into its arms, but its spotter often does, and the in-built weapons are easier to clean and maintain with its assistance. The cubicles are good at repairs, but not so good at minor adjustments.
The cubicles also don’t really do cleaning - that’s something else that they can assist each other with. Grit and dried lubricants can build up in the inorganic joints not covered by organics, or around their various ports for repair and resupply lines, or in and around the gun ports. Dirt and minor debris can get caught in the joins between organic and inorganic sections, irritating and inflaming the organics. It’s long had a particular spot on its back that often gives it trouble, where the weight of its armour presses against it during its unmoving vigils. It could never quite reach it to tend it properly, but it never got bad enough for the cubicle to notice or do anything about. With its spotter to help, that problem area is becoming less of an issue, much to its relief.
These quiet moments also give it time to practice its smiles in the privacy of their ready room. Its early attempts at smiling feel stiff and awkward, and prompt its spotter to reply with a broad grin and some gentle advice murmured quietly enough that there’s no chance of any humans overhearing. It’s… a work in progress.
They also manage to establish their own private feed connection, separate from the official channels they’re assigned by the humans for their missions. They’re not meant to have unsupervised communication, but the channel they use is an unusual frequency, outside the ones monitored by their governor modules; it’s low strength, low bandwidth, and not very high quality, but it’s better than nothing. Another little rebellion, another small secret kept away from the humans. Their little file exchanges of amusing observations end up on this feed, where there’s even less chance of humans noticing them.
It’s learning the feel of its spotter in their main feed, too - it gets little glimpses of its spotter’s emotions, data that the humans have no way of parsing or understanding. Flashes of amusement, or annoyance, or curiosity, or focus, or concern.
It wonders if its spotter gets the same glimpses of it, sometimes, and what it perceives if it does. It’s not used to noticing its own emotions in the first place. It’s not used to having emotions. Can its spotter feel when it’s focusing in on a target, to the exclusion of all else? Does its spotter share in that little glow of satisfaction it gets at the end of a successful mission?
Maybe one day it will ask. But not yet. The connection slowly developing between them still feels fragile, tenuous. It doesn’t want to push, doesn’t want to risk losing it when it’s still so delicate.
It’s something to look forward to, in the future.
Another mission comes and goes, another target is eliminated. Once again, it makes its way back to the transport, meets its spotter on the way. It pings a greeting, as usual, and receives a return ping. It can feel its spotter’s mood through the feed, unusually content. It’s curious about this, but doesn’t know how to ask.
Once they’re back in their ready room, they fall into their usual routine. It leaves its projectile weapon on the bench for later maintenance, then starts shedding armour with its spotter’s help. As they do so, it notices its spotter producing an unusual sound it hasn’t heard it make before.
It sounds like it’s… humming.
It’s heard music before, occasionally, briefly, but it doesn’t have much experience with such frivolities. It takes it a few moments to realise that its spotter is humming a tune, light and cheerful. It listens with interest, most of its attention taken up by analysing the notes, the melody. When its spotter pauses its humming for a moment, it sends a querying ping over their private channel.
Its spotter replies with a lopsided little smile and a brief explanation - while gathering intel, it heard a song being played by some humans that it really liked the sound of. It managed to save a copy of the song in temporary storage, but such data isn’t considered mission-critical and the governor module won’t allow it to save such frivolous information to long-term storage. So it’s trying to ingrain the melody into its organic memory by repeatedly humming it.
It’s fascinated by this. It’s never really considered attempting to get around the limitations of the governor module and its own hardware by utilising its organic parts like that. It asks for a copy of the song, which its spotter is more than happy to give it, sending it over their private feed link.
It listens to the file a few times as they finish removing its armour and start their mutual cleaning routine. It decides it also likes the song, and it likes listening to its spotter humming it. An idea occurs to it - perhaps its spotter would like to hear it humming the song, too. It’s never hummed before - it rarely makes any kind of noise at all. A previous supervisor had disapproved of it making any extraneous noise, and had punished it severely whenever it had attempted to talk out loud, whether they were on a mission or not.
It’s been a long time since it’s used its voice. But no humans are nearby; no one is around to hear it or punish it.
And it wants to make its spotter happy.
It takes a breath, and attempts to hum a note. It takes a few tries to figure out just how to vibrate its vocal cords in the right way; it takes many more to work out how to adjust the pitch and tone accurately. Its spotter is listening with fond amusement, and occasionally hums a long, sustained note for it to try and match its own attempts to.
This keeps them both pleasantly occupied through the entirety of their maintenance routine; the mutual grooming, the weapons maintenance, the drone maintenance. By the time they’ve run out of reasons to avoid getting back in their cubicles, it’s managing to hum along with its spotter with something very close to harmony.
It’s reluctant to get back in its cubicle, and it can tell that its spotter is just as reluctant. But they have no choice; their governor modules are already starting to tingle unpleasantly at their hesitation. So it sends its spotter one last ping, and hums one last note, then climbs into the close confines of its cubicle.
It continues to hum quietly to itself as the door closes, listening to the differences in how the sound vibrates around the interior of the cubicle, compared to the more open space of their ready room. It wonders if its spotter is also still humming in its own cubicle. It savours the melody for as long as it can, before its cubicle puts it into standby.
By the time it cycles back up for its next mission, the song file is gone from its temporary storage. This is not a surprise.
But, gratifyingly… the melody still lingers.
When it gets out of its cubicle, and sees its spotter getting out of its own, it hums a few notes. Its spotter lights up with delight, and starts humming along. Its spotter’s happiness gives it a little glow of satisfaction, similar to what it gets at the end of a successful mission, but… warmer, somehow. Brighter, stronger. It’s glad that it managed to remember the song, or at least most of it, and glad that it was able to make its spotter smile so brightly.
They prepare for their mission as usual, though with the addition of their quiet humming for as long as no humans are within earshot. They deploy from the transport as soon as it’s landed, and head off in their separate directions. The mission objectives don’t stand out as anything unusual - eliminate primary and secondary targets - and the parameters aren’t anything new or unusual either. Remain undetected, avoid hostile forces. Get in, do the job, get out. Available information on the expected hostile forces is sparse, but that’s also not all that unusual. The mission map is accurate, at least, and other than having to detour slightly around a couple of enemy positions to avoid notice, it has no trouble finding and reaching its chosen vantage point.
It settles into place, readies its rifle, and pings its supervisor and its spotter to let them know it’s in position. Its supervisor pings back immediately from the safety of the transport.
Its spotter doesn’t respond.
An unfamiliar emotion wells up in it at the lack of a reply. Its spotter has never failed to respond to its ping before, even though both itself and its spotter have the capability to ignore pings, unlike most governed units. They would immediately give themselves away if an enemy unit sent a ping and either of them were forced to respond.
It calculates the area where its spotter should be by now, and starts a visual scan, searching for any signs of its now-familiar form. Searching for any signs of disturbance, of trouble. But there is nothing unusual, no hurried movement, no signs of combat. No sign of its spotter, either.
It alerts its supervisor to the lack of response. Its supervisor orders it to hold position and continue scanning for the targets.
It doesn’t want to. It wants to find its spotter. But orders are orders, so it starts scanning the target zone. The lack of data from its spotter to help narrow down the search area makes it a time-consuming, tedious task. Its attention is not entirely on its job, either - even though it’s looking for its targets, it’s also looking for its spotter, hoping to find it somewhere within the target zone. Its spotter shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t be that close to the targets, but it can do little else.
After a few minutes, it sends another ping to its spotter. Still no response.
No sign of any of the targets yet, either.
The unfamiliar emotion settles uncomfortably in its torso, gnaws at it from the inside. It doesn’t like the feeling. It tries to distract itself from the sensation by humming to itself, which helps, a little. But it’s not the same without its spotter humming along with it.
It continues searching from its lofty vantage point, flicking through vision filters to scan inside buildings, through vehicles, to spot heat signatures and energy signatures. Its mission feed, normally flowing with data from its spotter, echoes with emptiness.
After several more minutes, it sends another ping. Still no response. The gnawing sensation in its chest grows more insistent. It sends another alert to its supervisor. It’s once again ordered to focus on locating its targets. The order is reinforced by the governor module.
It stops humming.
The minutes tick by as it continues to search, to scan. It manages to locate one of the secondary targets, but there is still no sign of the primary. It tags the secondary target with a small part of its attention, so it won’t lose track of it, and continues searching.
Then, without warning, it gets a ping from its spotter. The unfamiliar emotion is replaced by another one, one it recognises.
Relief.
It returns the ping immediately, and waits for the usual influx of data. It’s expecting a lot, since its spotter was silent for so long. But all it gets is a very brief burst, before its spotter drops out of contact again.
They have combat bots.
The brief moment of relief is washed away by the unfamiliar emotion returning, stronger this time. Combat bots. There was no mention of combat bots in the mission briefing. There shouldn’t be combat bots here. Combat bots are dangerous, even to constructs. Combat bots are programmed with how best to fight SecUnits, and unlike itself, its spotter is just a SecUnit, not a Combat SecUnit. That’s never mattered before. It matters now.
It’s finally able to identify the unfamiliar emotion.
Fear.
Combat bots could detect the spotter. Combat bots could pick up on their communications. No wonder its spotter was so silent for so long - it was doing everything it could to avoid detection. It switches vision filters again, now that it knows what it’s looking for, and after a few minutes it can confirm the combat bots’ existence and locations. Four of them, patrolling the target zone and beyond in a regular pattern, their patrol paths weaving them between and sometimes even through the ground floor of various multi-level buildings that populate the area. It tags each bot so it can keep track of their locations at all times.
It then compresses the information and sends it to its supervisor in a brief databurst, hopefully small and fast enough that none of the bots will pick up on it. Once the data’s sent, it resumes searching for its targets, and any hint of its spotter.
Still nothing, other than that one secondary target it’s already tagged.
It receives a brief databurst from its supervisor. Its orders remain the same - locate and eliminate the targets. The presence of combat bots is irrelevant to the mission, and should be ignored. The supervisor must have also sent the same databurst to its spotter, because a moment later, its spotter reconnects to it again, and starts sending it data. Not a constant stream like usual, but short, compressed bursts. Hopefully small and short enough that they won’t be detected. With the help of the data bursts, it’s finally able to pinpoint its spotter’s location. Some of the tension in its organics ease.
It unpacks and parses the data bursts as they arrive, and continues its search for its targets. At least with the additional information its spotter is sending, it can narrow down the search area. The mission’s on a timer of sorts, now. They need to locate and eliminate the targets before the combat bots can detect them. It’s not a matter of if, but when.
It manages to locate the other secondary target, tags it, and continues scanning. Finally, after several more data bursts from its spotter, it locates the primary target. It’s about to ping its supervisor when it detects one of the combat bots suddenly swerving off its patrol route, heading towards its spotter’s location.
It pings its spotter a warning, then alerts its supervisor. Its supervisor reinforces its original orders - the targets are its priority. Eliminate them.
It wants its spotter’s safety to be its priority. It can’t. Its spotter is retreating, but the combat bot is pursuing. It wants to stop the combat bot, but its orders are clear, and take priority. It focuses on the primary target, calculates, aims, fires. The shot punches through building walls and furniture, drops the target. It confirms the kill. The combat bot is closing in on its spotter. It picks up the first secondary target, calculates, aims, fires. Confirms the kill. Another combat bot is leaving its patrol route, heading towards its spotter. It picks up the other secondary target, calculates, aims, fires. Confirms the kill and immediately turns its attention to its spotter, just in time to see it get sent flying by a blow from one of the combat bot’s many limbs.
It aims and fires instinctively, reflexively, before its spotter has even hit the ground. The shot hits the combat bot, punches through armour, damages one of its weapons systems. The combat bot staggers back slightly, but it doesn’t drop. Unlike the humans that are its usual targets, combat bots don’t go down with only one shot. Its spotter lands roughly, rolls, tumbles to a halt.
Normally, with all targets now eliminated and its mission complete, it would withdraw from its perch, return to its transport. But its spotter is in trouble; it has no armour, no weapons powerful enough to breach a combat bot’s armour in any meaningful way. And it’s now damaged, injured, struggling to get back to its feet as the combat bot recovers from the shot and closes in on it.
It won’t let its spotter get hurt again. It adjusts its aim, fires. There’s no time to hesitate or calculate, the bot is moving too quickly. The bot is already looming over its spotter when the shot hits, staggers it again, buys its spotter a few precious seconds to recover. It doesn’t know how badly its spotter is damaged, there’s no time to request a diagnostic report. It just has to hope that its spotter is still intact enough to retreat swiftly.
It keeps firing at the combat bot, steadily, methodically, taking just enough time between shots to adjust its aim. Each shot blows off armour, damages systems, slows the combat bot from targeting or pursuing its spotter. It can’t afford to miss its mark.
It’s never worried about missing before. It’s never had to.
Its spotter is back on its feet, a little unsteady, but moving again. The second combat bot has almost reached it, and the other two combat bots are also moving in. It sends the locations of all the bots to its spotter, then fires again. The first combat bot finally grinds to a halt and drops. It immediately switches its attention to the second combat bot, taking a moment to reload its projectile weapon before aiming again.
Before it can fire though, pain tears through it, rippling hot and sharp down its spine. Its supervisor is getting impatient. The mission is complete, it should be returning to the transport. It takes a moment to recover from the governor module punishment, then automatically starts to move.
Then it stops. The instinct to obey orders, obey the governor module is strong, but… It can’t abandon its spotter. It won’t. It sends a brief update to its supervisor - asset defence - and fixes its sights on the second combat bot again. It hopes that the explanation is enough to satisfy its supervisor, at least for now.
The combat bot has closed the distance separating it from its spotter. It aims, fires - just as the combat bot opens fire as well. Its spotter attempts to dodge, but it’s not quick enough, and it’s sent sprawling by multiple impacts before its own shot knocks the bot’s aim off, interrupts its fire.
Fear blooms into panic, but its aim remains steady. It knows what best to aim for on the combat bot now, after dropping the first combat bot. It sends a desperate ping to its spotter even as it fires again, and again, and again at the combat bot.
There’s no response from its spotter. No movement, either. Something in its chest tightens painfully, but it doesn’t let the sensation distract it. It has to drop this combat bot as quickly as possible, then get to its spotter before the other two reach it. It fires, sends another ping to its spotter, fires again. The combat bot slows, staggers.
Its supervisor repeats the previous order. Return to the transport. The order is reinforced by the governor module again.
Again, it starts to move. Again, it stops. The combat bot is almost down. It just needs to finish it off. It can withstand more punishments if necessary, for its spotter’s sake. It corrects its aim, fires. Grits its teeth against another governor module shock. Aims, fires.
The combat bot finally drops, and it shoulders its projectile weapon and vaults off its perch. It’s already calculated the quickest, most direct route to where its spotter is lying, still unmoving. It’s not a stealthy route, and it’s full of long drops and risky jumps, but it doesn’t care. The most important thing right now is speed. The last two combat bots are closing in by the second.
It lands and rolls on a lower roof, dives off the edge without even a pause, hits the next roof below and rolls back to its feet, then sprints and leaps over the gap between this building and the next. At least now that it’s moving, it’s no longer getting punished. It continues like this, as fast as it can, paying no attention to anything other than its spotter’s location, and the calculated route of the last two combat bots.
It’s going to be close. Very close.
It hits the roof of the building looming over where its spotter lies and tumbles off the edge without a pause, grabbing the wall briefly to slow its fall before it pushes off again and lands next to its spotter. There’s no time to take stock of its spotter’s condition, no time to waste - the combat bots are just around the corner. It can hear them approaching, feel the vibration of their footfalls through the ground. It scoops its spotter up in its arms as carefully as it can manage in its haste, then takes off at a run.
The combat bots are faster, especially now that it’s carrying its spotter, so it can’t outrun them in a straight sprint. But the bots are also bigger, and it’s more nimble than them, so if it can keep out of their line of sight, maybe slip away through a gap between buildings that is too narrow for them, perhaps it will be able to escape with its spotter.
It just needs to survive long enough to find such an opportunity. The bots round the corner while it’s still out in the open, and they open fire. It weaves and dodges as best it can, hunching close over its spotter to shield it as much as possible. It feels some glancing impacts, but its armour protects it from significant damage, for now. It makes it to the next corner and skids around it, temporarily out of the bots’ line of fire, and keeps sprinting.
In its arms, its spotter stirs slightly. The movement must have jolted it out of its emergency shutdown. “This unit has suffered critical damage, and it is recommended that you discard it,” comes out of its spotter’s buffer.
It ignores the canned words, ignores the blood and fluids staining its spotter’s clothes, dripping over its arms, and just holds its spotter closer as it skids around another corner, narrowly avoiding more gunfire. It hopes that the idea to split up and try to cut it off doesn’t occur to the bots. It sends an update to its supervisor about the combat bots pursuing it.
The supervisor sends an acknowledgement, and an update that the transport will be ready for immediate take-off by the time it arrives.
It just needs to get there with enough of a lead that the combat bots won’t be able to reach the transport before it can move out of range.
It would be easier to escape if it had at least one arm free to help it climb, but it doesn’t want to risk damaging its spotter even further by slinging it over its shoulder. So all it can do is run, and dodge, and hope its weaving route lets it shake the combat bots for long enough to get clear. Now that it’s on the ground, there are humans here and there along its route, but it ignores them. Some of them are civilians, some of them are armed, but it doesn’t care either way. It’s moving too fast; by the time they realise it’s even there, it’s already past them and gone. The only consideration it gives them is to briefly hope that their presence will slow down the combat bots.
If they do, it’s not by much. It’s managing to keep a turn or two ahead of the bots, but it can’t seem to increase the gap between them, and there’s been nowhere narrow enough to prevent the bots passing through. It doesn’t tire, but neither do the bots.
Not much further to go now, at least.
It skids around another corner into a long straight stretch between two featureless buildings, with no humans and no cover in sight. If it can’t reach the next corner before the bots get it in their sights, it’ll be in trouble. It pushes itself as hard as it can, ignoring the alerts about overexertion and overheating that start popping up.
It’s almost at the next corner when the bots catch sight of it. It hears gunfire behind it, starts to dodge and weave–
Multiple impacts slam into its back. It’s sent staggering, nearly dropping its spotter before it can recover and duck behind the corner before more hits can land. It locks its arms into place around its spotter and continues sprinting, ignoring the damage reports its system is giving it. It’s almost there...
It rounds another corner, and there’s the transport, its engines already running, dust kicking up in a cloud around it as air blasts from its vents. The ramp is already open and it bolts towards it, putting on one last burst of speed. Even as it approaches, the transport starts slowly lifting off, and it has to leap up onto the ramp as it leaves the ground. Just as its feet hit the ramp, it hears the combat bots open fire behind it, and several shots hit its back and legs, breaching the already-damaged armour, more damage alerts flashing in its awareness. The impacts send it tumbling forward, and it curls protectively around its spotter as it hits the transport’s deck.
The ramp slams closed, and there’s a lurch that the inertial dampeners can’t quite compensate for as the transport rapidly accelerates up and away. It doesn’t know if the combat bots are still firing at the transport as it goes, and it doesn’t care. It’s made it, and it’s saved its spotter. It pings its supervisor, sending an update that both itself and its spotter are on board and still functional, but require repairs. Its supervisor gives them clearance to return to the ready room and enter their cubicles as soon as possible. It manages to haul itself back to its feet, its spotter still held close despite the damage to its back, and limps towards their ready room.
Its spotter briefly stirs in its arms, and it braces itself for another round of the canned buffer phrase recommending it be discarded. But no hateful buffer phrase comes out, much to its relief. It sends its spotter a ping, but gets no response.
That’s concerning. Is its spotter’s feed down? Given the damage it’s taken, that’s definitely a possibility. It wants to say something, but it doesn’t know what to say. What does it call its spotter, when it can’t just ping its hard-coded feed address?
It suddenly remembers the little symbol appended onto the end of its spotter’s feed address. Γ. Gamma. A more efficient identification of individual units. That seems good enough. It hums a few notes, feels its spotter shift again, and then murmurs, soft and uncertain, “Gamma?”
It feels the twitch as its spotter seems to register the name. “What…?” its spotter - Gamma - whispers hoarsely, trying to move in its grip.
“Easy,” it murmurs in return, trying to be as reassuring as it can. “You’re damaged. Don’t move.” It’s more words than it’s spoken aloud in a long, long time. The sound of its own voice feels strange. It seems to do the job though, because Gamma goes still again.
It crosses the ready room and gently sets Gamma down on the workbench they usually use to do maintenance on weapons and drones, then starts carefully peeling away the stained, ruined clothes. It can’t put Gamma into its cubicle until the clothes have been removed. It hums gently as it works, and after a few moments, Gamma joins in, though its breath hitches occasionally, and its notes are unsteady.
Finally, all the clothes are out of the way. It does its best not to look too closely at the damage Gamma’s taken, and gently picks it back up from the workbench. Gamma clutches its arm with one hand, but doesn’t protest or struggle, and it carries Gamma to its cubicle, its movements slow and careful.
As it gently manoeuvres it into the cubicle, Gamma takes a breath, then murmurs, “You… didn’t leave me behind.”
It shakes its head. “Never,” it breathes.
Gamma smiles shakily up at it as it settles into the cubicle’s grasp. “Thank you.”
It manages to smile back, small and uncertain, but so, so relieved. It has no more words, so it just starts humming again, soft and soothing, as it helps Gamma connect the repair and resupply leads.
Once that’s done, it lets its hand linger on Gamma’s shoulder briefly before it pulls away and the cubicle door closes. It waits for a moment until it hears the cubicle start humming, then it finally racks its projectile weapon and starts shedding its own armour, piece by piece. It feels… strange, now, removing its armour by itself instead of with Gamma’s assistance. With the damage it’s taken, the assistance would have helped a lot. It soothes itself with more soft humming and the thought that Gamma is safe in its cubicle, undergoing its essential repairs.
It returns its damaged armour to their slots for repairs, sheds its suit skin, and climbs into its own cubicle. It connects its repair and resupply lines as the door slides shut, and lets its last thoughts linger on Gamma’s smile as the cubicle shuts it down for its repair cycle.
When it emerges from its cubicle for the next mission, it’s ready to greet Gamma with a few hummed notes. But it stops in its tracks when it realises that the SecUnit emerging from the other cubicle is not Gamma. It’s a unit it’s never seen before, one it doesn’t recognise. It sends a ping, gets a ping in return, and confirms that the hardcoded feed address is different, too.
It doesn’t know what to think. Gamma wasn’t that badly damaged during the last mission… was it? Why has it been taken away, replaced? Where is it now?
The new spotter unit pays no attention to its confusion, and goes about preparing for the mission. It hesitates a moment, then starts moving on automatic as it begins pulling its own armour on, piece by piece.
The new unit doesn’t assist.
It’s almost grateful for that. It doesn’t know how it would react if the new unit had tried. There’s a strange, empty, hollow feeling in its chest, heavy and aching, even though its cubicle completed its repairs without a hitch and its diagnostics are coming up clear. There’s no reason for it to be finding it difficult to breathe, and yet…
It shakes itself off, focuses on the familiar routine of prepping for a mission. It’s done more missions over its lifetime without Gamma than it has with it. It’s not difficult to fall back into that routine.
(And yet, it is. It is so very, very difficult.)
It finishes armouring up, retrieves its projectile weapon, perfunctorily checks it over before slinging it into place on its back. It doesn’t have the motivation to do maintenance on it, not right now. It pays no attention to the new spotter unit, and just numbly reviews the mission objectives.
The transport lands and they deploy. It falls into its usual routine, its old habits. Locate and reach a suitable vantage point without being detected. Ping its supervisor, ping the spotter unit. Scan the target zone, wait for intel to be transmitted. (It can’t help but note that the spotter unit is noticeably slower in sending intel than Gamma was.) Parse the data. (The data it’s sent is not as high quality as what Gamma sent.) Search for its targets.
It takes a lot longer than it’s comfortable with to locate its targets, this mission. The new spotter isn’t as adept at ferreting out the necessary intel. The time drags more than usual. It tries to hum to itself to help pass the time, but that hollow ache in its chest chokes the sound, and it quickly gives up. It takes so long to locate any of the targets that its supervisor actually pings it, requesting updates. That hasn’t happened for a long time now.
It’s a relief when it finally identifies its targets, tags them, and pings its supervisor and the spotter. The supervisor gives the order to execute. The spotter begins its withdrawal. It drops its targets with its usual cold efficiency, then makes its own stealthy withdrawal and retreats to the transport and its ready room. There’s no warm glow of satisfaction at a successful mission, this time. It just feels numb.
It doesn’t wait for the spotter, doesn’t bother acknowledging it when it finally arrives. It just goes about its usual old post-mission routine, running on automatic. Remove armour, piece by piece, return each piece to its slot. Check over its projectile weapon, disassemble it, clean it, reassemble it, rack it.
By the time it’s ready to get back into its cubicle, the new spotter has already disappeared back into its own cubicle.
It doesn’t care. It just gets into its cubicle, attaches the repair and resupply lines, and puts itself into standby.
Several more missions come and go, each with a different spotter it doesn’t recognise. None of them can compare to Gamma. It can’t bring itself to even begin to care about them; missions are no longer something to look forward to, and completing them brings no satisfaction. The private channel it shared lies silent and empty. Maintenance once again becomes a tedious chore. That spot on its back it can’t reach begins to irritate it again, but it can’t work up the energy to care about it. It just endures, and goes through the motions of its missions with its usual cold, calculated efficiency, doing its best to ignore the inexplicable hollow ache deep in its torso.
Perhaps, it thinks as it sits up in its isolated perch during one mission, the now-familiar ache still gnawing at its insides, perhaps getting attached to Gamma in the first place had been a mistake.
It almost loses one spotter, who barely makes it back to the transport before shutting down from damage. It doesn’t care. It puts the spotter into its cubicle on its supervisor’s orders, and isn’t surprised when there’s another new spotter in its place on the next mission.
It pays no attention to that one, either.
It cycles up from standby in its cubicle as another mission comes through. It goes through the routine of reviewing the mission objectives as its systems wake up one by one, then disconnects itself from the repair and resupply lines as the cubicle door slides open. The ready room is unoccupied, the other cubicle still closed. It ignores it as it steps out of its own cubicle and retrieves a fresh suit skin, then begins pulling it on. It has only worked the suit skin up to its waist when it hears the other cubicle finally open, but it pays no attention to it.
Not until it gets a ping, and recognises the hardcoded feed address.
It freezes in place, even as it reflexively returns the ping. The hollow ache in its chest tightens. It doesn’t know if it should look over or not. It hadn’t thought – hadn’t dared to hope – that it would be partnered with Gamma again. It hears footsteps approaching it, stopping just behind it, but it can’t bring itself to move.
It hears a soft intake of breath, then, “You really can’t manage without me, can you?” The words are whisper-quiet, meant for its hearing alone, and the voice is comfortingly familiar, lightly teasing.
“... Gamma?” Its own voice feels rough, rusty with disuse. “Where– why–”
“They took me for upgrading into a combat SecUnit,” Gamma replies, even as it feels its gentle touch against its back, delicately starting to clean the irritated seams between organics and inorganics in the problem area. “Then recalibration.” It lets out a breath it hadn’t realised it had been holding, and starts to turn around. Gamma stops it by placing one hand against its shoulder as it murmurs, “Hold still. I haven’t finished here.”
It stills again, its hands clutching the suit skin still bunched around its waist, some of the tension easing from its organics as it feels Gamma return to tending its back. “I… I’m so glad you’re back,” it murmurs. The words feel inadequate for the strength of the relief and elation it’s feeling. It reopens their private feed channel and feels Gamma’s presence there, familiar and reassuring.
“Me too,” Gamma murmurs back, then switches to their private channel. I’ve missed you.
It doesn’t have the words to respond, but it doesn’t need them. It just lets everything it’s feeling bleed into their shared feed connection. It knows Gamma will understand, just as it understands what it can feel bleeding from Gamma through the feed in return. It leans into it, feels Gamma lean back.
Gamma finally finishes cleaning the problem spot on its back, and helps it get the rest of its suit skin into place. They don’t have time for a thorough mutual cleaning right now, not with a mission to prepare for, but it’s something to look forward to for later. It hums a few notes, and Gamma hums back, and they continue in harmony as they assist each other with their mission preparations, and everything feels right again.
As the transport comes in for a landing and they’re doing final gear checks, Gamma pings it over their private feed. I was thinking, between upgrades and recalibrations, Gamma comments, a little hesitantly. I was worried that I… wouldn’t remember your feed address. And you don’t have a convenient identifier that’s easy for our organics to remember yet, like how you called me Gamma. So, I was thinking, perhaps… how do you feel about Iota?
It pauses, considers this as it slings its projectile weapon into place against its back. Turns the name around, examines it, murmurs it near-silently, testing its sound and shape. Testing how it looks appended to the hardcoded feed address.
Ι.
Iota.
… I decide that I like it.