After the incident at Outpost Four, the rest of the group was understandably shaken up. They all understood just how close they had come to death, and just how lucky they were that the Workers of O-Four were paranoid, but not oil-thirsty. So when half of them said it was time to call it a day and head home, for once Uzi couldn't label them cowards.
Even N was over it at that point, volunteering to escort them home and go to O-Five by himself. Of course Uzi wasn't having that, insisting that even a murder machine should have backup. That started an argument that somehow ended with everyone agreeing to stay and see the mission through.
Khan nearly had a core meltdown and had to be muted during the conversion just so they could hear each other. He stayed muted until he was convinced to trust the team's judgment.
However, when most of them were still feeling the aftereffects of the EMP, they decided to make camp in what used to be a dog park some four kilometers north of Outpost Four.
"Ugh, can Engineering start working on EMP shielding when we get back?" a blue-eyed drone, Marcus, groaned as he wobbled a little on the fallen log he was seated on.
"We are shielded," Konstantin replied. "If we weren't, an EMP that powerful, that close, would have killed us on the spot. Every circuit in our bodies fried beyond repair, CPUs melted, cores overloaded."
"Okay, but those O-Four guys must have been EXTRA shielded. They were just as close and they were fine," Nick pointed out.
"True," the Russian drone conceded. "If I had to guess, I would say their vests were equipped with TVS diodes to absorb the overvoltage."
"I'm more interested in how they got their hands on a Murder Drone EMP generator," Erik said. "Means they had to have taken one down, right?"
"Maybe," N replied with a shrug. He then suddenly looked off to his left and called out, "Care to comment?"
There was a pause, then a low chuckle as ten pairs of eyelights suddenly appeared in the shadows of the treeline.
"Told you we shouldn't have bothered with the sneaky shit," one of the drones said as they stepped into the moonlight. "When did you pick us up?"
"'Bout an hour ago," Uzi answered, not at all surprised by the group of armed drones. "Was Arthur not up for round two?"
All ten drones immediately took their hands off their weapons as they slowly stepped forward.
"At ease, that's not what we're here for," the apparent leader said quickly, watching N with hollowed eyelights.
"Then what are you here for?" Erik asked/demanded.
"To help."
"What changed?" Uzi asked after regarding the O-Four team for a moment.
"Our perspective, for one," a female drone with a rifle slung across her back answered as she calmly broke from her group to walk right up to the campsite to take a seat on a tree stump.
Uzi immediately disliked and admired her. Admired her because of quiet confidence she exuded in the way she carried herself, and disliked her because she was taking her goth aesthetic and doing it better. The studded black leather jacket, the fingerless gloves, the spiked boots, the blue-streaked black hair with the long fringe that covered one eye; she was so goddamn cool!
"Meaning?" Konstantin eyed the group with open suspicion.
"Meaning, we thought we were hot shit because we fought off an MD once," the lead drone said as he, too, walked up and took a seat. "That's how we got the EMP generator. A few of us were coming home after a week of scouting. Most of us had never been out that long, so of course we were homesick. We saw the bunker lights and got stupid, broke cover and tried to sprint across open ground. Next thing we know, this thing is literally screaming down at us from the clouds. We fired at it and managed to hit it square in the face just before it got to us. It crash landed and knocked us all on our asses. When it got up, its hand turned into something we had never seen before and it raised its arm...which is when Cali took it off with one of the big guns!"
