Aleksandra’s eyebrows shot up as Merlin presented the small box and its contents. She was being promoted to lieutenant? But… she hadn’t fully completed all the requirements, or at least the requirements she was aware of. Truth be told, the system still confused her somewhat, but then, anything to do with paperwork and bureaucracy was a minefield of poor phrasing and mountains of bleached dead trees that needed her name written on them. Disarming land mines was less complicated for heaven’s sake - and at least those had the courtesy to immediately ruin her life if she did something wrong instead of coming back a few days or weeks after the fact and making her redo everything.

So apparently she was an officer now - normally that would’ve indeed warranted drinks - it certainly would’ve been a good excuse to open the bottles of Zyr she’d been saving for a special occasion. However, there was the small matter of another op in the immediate future, and it wouldn’t be the best idea to fulfill the Russian stereotype charging into battle flat out drunk and packing heavy weaponry, as fascinating as she was sure it would look to the observer. 

She looked back up at Merlin, internal monologue over. “Thank you, sir.” She looked down at the box again, still shocked. “It seems it has gone far better than I thought.” Giving herself a moment to recover, she looked back up once more. “I will do my best not to get too drunk on power, sir. Just with vodka after the op.” She took the box, still unsure how to process the sudden promotion. 

She gave a somewhat uncertain, “Yes, sir” as Merlin walked out before staring at the box for another minute.

It would probably be another month before she got over this, if a quick guesstimate judging by past experiences was to be relied on.

Aleksandra grinned, walking out of the room after the Captain.
_____

And walked straight over to where her equipment was kept, quickly appraising all of her options before grinning, with ever so slight a manic hint in her eyes. She reached for it, hefting the Pecheneg with a soft grunt - it certainly wasn’t a featherweight, that much was for sure. The weight wasn’t an issue once she had a good grip with both arms, and the bullpup configuration certainly helped too, but all the same it wasn’t a pleasant weapon to heft off the rack. 

Walking with her favorite tool of destruction over to a workbench, she visualized the op, calculating just what parts on the weapon to change out. After a moment of deliberation, she reached for a longer suppressor, unscrewing the short one she usually kept threaded onto the muzzle just to tame the blast of the 7.62 rounds and attaching the heavier duty contraption. She hefted the LMG, feeling the difference in balance the addition of the suppressor gave before nodding in satisfaction. Coupled with subsonic ammunition she had on her hands a suppressed machine gun - she held back the urge to let out a small giggle at the thought. Suppressed machine guns, what would happen next? Would the Americans try to suppress their Dillon miniguns?

…

She paused, smirking to herself, that would certainly be a sight to see alright. She made a mental note to mention the idea to one of the Americans on the team, or alternatively to try and procure a GShG to [s]play with[/s] experiment on in her spare time. There were times where the stereotype of the Russian with the big gun [i]could[/i] be fun after all!

Shaking her head, Aleksandra refocused on the weapon in front of her now - if she messed this up she wouldn’t be coming back to “experiment” with suppressed miniguns. 

There was a decent chance that she might need to engage at some distance, but in theory any long range necessities would be covered by the overwatch, so she ruled out any telescopic sights. Her attention turned to the electronic sights - American red dot sights, holographic sights, and then there were similar sights made right in Russia. She picked one up, powering it on and eyeing the reticle - it was nice, nothing particularly special. Looking through a few others she failed to notice any appreciable difference and chose the first one - for the Motherland, or something.

Securing the sight to the rifle, she quickly went through and added a few more attachments to the rifle - green laser, foregrip instead of a bipod, standard things. This would do nicely.

Fitting some hearing protection over her ears, Aleksandra hefted the now suitably kitted out weapon and marched over to the firing range, loading a belt into the compact harbinger of doom currently resting on the bench. Kneeling down, she took aim at one of the targets, blasting it with controlled semi automatic fire. Despite the shorter length the recoil was perfectly manageable, especially in semi auto, and as she flicked the switch, firing in short bursts on full auto. 

She looked over at the others at the range, testing out their marksman rifles. She might not’ve had the same kind of precision with the pecheneg that they had with their rifles, but at the same time, they didn’t have several hundred rounds of ammunition they could let fly with the flick of a switch. A decent tradeoff, as far as she was concerned.