Assault (Red vs Blue)

9: New Recruits

9: New Recruits

Present Day: Undisclosed Location (The planet Chorus)

Things had been quiet over the last couple weeks — too quiet. It was making Felix uncomfortable. He felt anxious; he'd been on pins and needles ever since they'd had to withdraw from the attack on the radio jammer. They'd severely underestimated the freelancers and the Red and Blue morons. It was something the Chairman hadn't been letting Felix and Locus forget. Especially now that they were in the full swing of training their new soldiers. Something that was proving to create its own entirely new set of issues.

The men they'd picked up from the Tartarus seemed pratically useless. None of them were exactly turning out to be decent soldiers. They liked to try and retaliate and push boundaries; it was something that if Felix wasn't in charge he would've found amusing. But trying to control them was doing nothing but pissing him off. If the former prisoners' trigger fingers worked as fast as their mouths, they'd be an army that could annihilate the galaxy. However, that wasn't even remotely close to being the case. Their combat skills were progressing at snail speed. Even those that had been listed as former military weren't as sharp as they should've been. It was infuriating. If they were going to end things on Chorus once and for all, they needed better soldiers. Not whatever their current group was.

"They almost seem to have gotten worse since yesterday," Locus observed as he watched the men train. "I didn't think that would've been possible."

"Yet here we are," Felix said. He crossed his arms as he watched the training session as well. "I don't know what the fuck Hargrove was thinking when he had us grab these idiots. Or if he was even thinking at all."

"Our employer had the Counselor go through their personnel files. Some of them weren't just former military - they were former Insurrectionists. The freelancers were their biggest rivals," Locus said.

"If some of them are former members of the Insurrection, then why in the hell don't they fight better? Shouldn't they have had better training?" Felix asked.

His partner shrugged. "The time they spent in prison must've made them soft. But we're running out of options to boost our numbers. We need to make due with what we have for men."

The other mercenary sighed. "Yeah, well, what we have fucking sucks. Maybe there will be another prison transport coming through with tougher fighters on it. Or we could go do some actual recruiting somewhere. Has our genius employer ever thought about that?"

"Hargrove doesn't want to draw any unnecessary attention to Chorus. The longer the U.N.S.C. doesn't know about what's going on here, the better. He really just wanted disposable pawns; that's what we gave him. It's not up to us to question anything right now."

"There you go again with that blind faith bullshit. Can you just think for yourself for five minutes? I know Hargrove wanted throw away soldiers. And the U.N.S.C. can go fuck itself as far as I'm concerned. But if we're going to actually accomplish what we want to here on Chorus, we need better fighters. What don't you get about that?"

"We can only do what Hargrove approves of. We signed contracts stating we'd do what we were told. Now is not the time to start pushing limits; not after what happened recently with the new weapons."

"I almost forgot that the Chairman's new toys ended up broken. Those Red and Blue morons had to have done something to cause that. Whether or not they had the help of the freelancers is anyone's guess. But either way you look at it, it was their fault."

Before Locus could say anything else, the screen of the computer next to them came to life. The 'Incoming Video Feed' banner was flashing urgently in the center of the monitor. There was no doubt that it had to be Hargrove calling to check in. He'd been contacting them fairly frequently to keep tabs on their "progress" with the men. He'd been optimistic so far, but Felix didn't think it'd last much longer. The Chairman had to be getting sorely disappointed with the lack of any good news.