Oh, just erase me already.
Alice’s temper had flared again after being they had been blindsided by a group of Coalition soldiers, but in its aftermath, her aggression inhibitors saw a return to functioning order. Then she heard a gunshot, and saw that it wasn’t another enemy soldier, but instead Maki, firing a round into the head of one. And then she saw the anger on her face, anger directed towards her, and she realized her own brutality. This wasn't her recklessly endangering herself in MAS combat, not that that was acceptable either, but this was just gruesome. Maki started a justified chewing out, but managed to cut herself short. She obviously knew how to control her temper better than Alice, but whatever she would have said next, she likely would have had a point. What Alice did was shameful. Crude, barbaric, inefficient. And when Maki pushed her away in frustration, Alice didn’t stop her.
She was wrong about one thing though. Alice wasn’t a soldier like her or Trapp. They made the choice to enlist; they had a choice to enlist in the first place. They learned concepts like honor, mercy, the supposed value of a life. Alice wasn’t afforded these opportunities. She was a military asset from the start, prepared and conditioned for combat from the moment she came into existence. Her creators didn’t care if she understood cultural values in the process. Those were for people, not property, and she was property.
But if it meant that Maki wouldn’t hate her, then maybe it was time for her to learn.
“Whoa…”
Information raced back and forth while Alice initiated the data migration. If she had any sense of taste, all the new classified data she was processing would practically be ambrosia. Things were going swimmingly enough, but before she could finish taking even a tenth of the data stored in the servers, soldiers began to rush the center. Even during a UEE attack, the Coalition had measures to protect their valuable R&D information, and just by infiltrating their servers, Alice had alerted them to their cyber espionage. Accordingly, soldiers were being reassigned from fighting to UEE incursion to stopping them.
While Maki and Trapp fought to defend the center from the oncoming waves of Coalition troops, Alice tried to accelerate the migration. Over the next few minutes, more and more soldiers just kept coming, making her efforts even more urgent
“Fifty percent….sixty percent…”
As she continued stealing data, she paid attention to Maki and Trapp fighting. In her head, she had calculated the total number of rounds both of them had between them. Their already limited ammunition was quickly depleting, making it less and less likely that they would be able to make it out of this.
“Ninety percent...I’m almost finished!”, Alice shouted back at Trapp.
Thankfully, an explosion hit the facility, and in an instant, the advancing Coalition soldiers were eliminated. Alice let out a sigh of relief as she managed to finish the download. The moment she was done, she yanked the cord out of the server, and then out of her own head. She was now a walking mother lode of incredibly valuable Coalition secrets, or at least the ones they had on Jehan, and the Coalition servers had been purged, their records gone. Unless they had data backed up on another system, their research on Jehan would suffer a significant setback.
She quickly made her way back to Maki and Trapp, the latter of which was explaining his plan. Maki would take Alice to the hangar, and Trapp would try commandeer a Coalition craft. Simple enough. Alice avoided eye contact and didn’t offer anything in response except a small nod. The last thing she needed to do at this point was open her mouth again.
As the two hurried back to their machines in the hangar, Alice made sure every that every time she pulled the trigger, the bullet hit its target: the head of a Coalition soldier. They died instantly: no pain, no excessive harm. That was the ideal method for eliminating Coalition soldiers in direct combat, especially now that they had very little time to waste. At the same time, she wanted to show Maki that what she saw earlier wasn’t normal behavior, and that she could act properly on the battlefield, something Maki had even tried to demonstrate for her.
When they finally got to the hangar, a group of technicians were setting up charges, but Maki’s gun had no ammo left. At her instruction, she scurried to her MAS. Her tendency for silent movement proved useful as she managed to reach her Eagle without any of the technicians spotting her. Instead of immediately getting inside, she took a vantage at the top of her machine. Even with the scarce amount of bullets left in her own rifle, she was ready to provide suppressive fire for Maki while she took down the Coalition mechanics. When Maki alerted the guards, she shot a few rounds at their feet to keep them off Maki’s back until she made it to the safety of her Hellcat before tossing the rifle away.
She hopped into her cockpit and starting up her machine, connecting it to her interface. There was a new seat since the original had shot up into the sky before landing somewhere in the mountains. This one was smaller and minimal, obviously not meant for extended use beyond escaping enemy territory and getting the Eagle back to the Lincoln for repairs. Still, after today’s events, it was oddly comfortable to be in the familiar environment of her cockpit.
After Maki yanked the hangar door away, Alice stopped to look back before she left the hangar. She was ordered to join the fray outside, but she hesitated to leave her wingman twice in the same day. Nevertheless, she obeyed and walked out of the hangar, finally witnessing the battle around her. With her comms online, her first thought was to reach out to Ariana and the rest of the 7th, but she stopped before she said anything. After a few moments, she finally spoke
“This is...this is ALI-009. Odyssey Protocol successful. Captured friendlies have been released, and this unit has seized sensitive R&D files from Coalition servers.”
Now that she had joined the battle, she took a cautious approach to protect her MAS from further damage and preserve her limited ammunition. Soon Gerard met up with her and Maki, but Trapp was still absent.
“Trapp told us to split up; we went to the hangar to retrieve our machines, and he went the opposite direction to find a Coalition MAS to use.”
Going with Gerard to find Trapp, Alice raised her remaining functioning wrist shotgun at a group of ‘civilians’ that Gerard indicated. They may not have been active combatants, but they were still Coalition personnel. That meant she should kill them. She should have. But instead of firing on them, she lowered her weapon. As they left with their lives, she continued to follow Gerard in his search for Trapp.