Oh, How the Times Have Changed

[upscalerat]

With a curt nod, Abana looked up, finally, from the map. With a curt nod, Abana looked up, finally, from the map. "My people have night glasses, and the androids and I have dark vision." The night glasses were the updated version of the night goggles from times past; however, they were recent. Abana had mentioned to see the design and, after acquiring her tribe, build and export them from salvaged materials. They were more compact and clearer than the old night vision goggles, and had more peripheral vision.

"The agile requirement is only for those passing on the mountain, rather than through the two of them. I see no reason not to bring everyone we've assembled here." After looking at the crowd to do a head count, the android started with calculations. 1650, with three wide through the mountain pass and two wide on it, meant 330 rows. 660 on the mountain and 990 between them. 1650, with three wide through the mountain pass and two wide on it, meant 330 rows. 660 on the mountain and 990 between them. Presumably, either Larka or Abana would take the mountain pass, and the other would also walk atop it.

Taking another look at the map, Abana could see that Larka was right. Even with the added efficiency of the other route, it would still take most of the day to make it to the crater, and the night to surround the target. There would be some hours of rest, but the troops' endurance was about to be tested. There would be some hours of rest, but the troops' endurance was about to be tested. Clearly, though, both Abana and Larka had brought their best; there was no reason to be concerned once the fighting began. No, the primary worry would be getting there.

 

[karmaylore]

"I know that. That's what I meant," Larka snapped. She sighed. Abana was so difficult to deal with; it quite honestly got fucking annoying after a while, and Larka would be more than happy to go ahead without her. And why did math even matter in this case? It hardly made a difference as long as you knew where and when to move your troops. "You would go with the main forces, I would go on the mountain." Besides that, Larka just wanted the talking done with. She was itching to get started. Because the sooner they got started, the sooner she could exact retribution.

Larka remounted her horse, turning it back in the direction of her troops. "We leave in 30 minutes," she said, not looking at Abana and riding off with her officer not far behind. She released a breath, which came out more as a hiss, and called together the scouting force and the messengers she had brought. Larka informed them of the plan and sent the messengers out to go tell the rest. Taking a moment for herself to collect her thoughts, she was surprised to find she wasn't nervous. Larka supposed that maybe she had been preparing for this for so long. Or maybe she was confident in her abilities and those of her people. In the history of her leadership, they had only ever lost two battles out of the fifteen or so she had fought. She looked around at her people, feeling a fierce sense of pride that she was the one to lead them. It was also intoxicating and satisfying in a way that she had only ever felt during a battle.

Seeing it was time to move out, she called together her scouts and led them to where Abana was still standing. The android had barely moved, and it was unsettling, to say the least. Larka stood next to her, looking towards the mountain they had to cross. She was silent for a moment, reflective. "You ready?" she asked, knowing the answer. "Right, then." She nodded, signalling for her people to follow her, and heard Abana call for those who were going to come with her to get into position. It wasn't difficult to find the entrance to the path if you knew where it was, and she set off, leaving Abana behind but trusting her to complete their plan.

 

[upscalerat]

"Understood," was all Abana said. Despite what Larka might have thought, the android did leave her spot shortly to instruct her people to get ready to embark; however, after that, she returned to where she was, rightly assuming that it would be where Larka would look for her when it was time to set out. The numbers worked that Abana would be able to go with nearly all of hers; her ten most agile would be sent with Larka and company, though. When Larka returned, the robot gave a brief "yes", and then gave a shout to her people. The group started migrating towards the pass, and the blob even started to narrow out to fit in the path.

With a look at the cliffs, and a spare thought to how long her line of people would be, Abana's next action could have been considered strange. Rather than even attempt a semblance of humanity, the machine started to climb the wall, and then climb sideways Her head and limbs splayed themselves at odd angles, and she moved almost spiderlike along the rough edges of the cliff wall. Abana would scurry back and forth between the front and end of the line, keeping an eye for trouble. The one time that there was an issue, Abana jumped down from the wall, and landed with a clunk off to the side of it. A soldier of hers had a pack with a faulty straps, and his supplies were splayed all along the path. Without hesitation or reprimanding, the robot simply picked everything up with a speed still shocking to her people and put the supplies back in the pack. She ripped a strip of fabric from the dirty jacket that she still wore and quickly fashioned a new strap. "This is temporary," she warned the soldier, and gave the pack back to him before jumping back up and resuming her strange crawl along the wall.

It took some hours, but they did manage to get through the pass with no further worries. True to both Larka and the map, there was a crater with empty buildings awaiting them at the end. The robot called down instructions that hers were to await further instructions, and jumped back down to the ground when most of her people were through. As they made their way into the crater and to inspect the barn, Abana looked up to the shorter mountain. Larka's group were close to the end; they would be regrouping within the hour.

 

[karmaylore]

Larka knew how long it would take them, and so she didn't push her group at the pace she normally would have. It woould be best, she thought, to have her group well-rested, especially considering that only 10 of them were Abana's. Not that now was the time for sabotage. In fact, as long as Abana continued to know her place, there likely would be no need to betray her, enticing as the thought sounded. Because of this, she took more than one break with them, checking multiple times on the status of weapons and ensuring everyone was crystal clear on the strategy, especially who and who not to kill. There was no way in goddamn hell Larka was about to let the leaders of this usurpation slip through her fingers. Besides, it was customary for her to be given the best kills.

Towards late afternoon, Abana and her group were finally in sight. She grinned. She could practically taste victory. Since it wasn't late, though, they would have to wait at least one or two hours before making their move. A bummer for sure, but a necessary evil in this game. Larka sent one person to go tell Abana that they wouldn't be meeting up with the group until the fight was over; she needed ample time for preparations. There was a small cliff of rock which she knew to have a navigable rock scramble for when the time came. Now, though, she called out four of her own scouts and two of Abana's, telling them to find who out would be where and, if possible, the guard schedule. She was fairly confident the people here had no need for guards. They assumed it was perfectly acceptable to inhabit this area; and besides, it wasn't like they were trying to hide. Had that been the case, they would have run into scouts by now. And there was no conceivable way that scouts from the plains could surpass scouts from the mountains, in the mountains.

She furrowed her brow and bit her tongue between her teeth, running it side to side. Larka was known to engage in odd behavior when thinking. Turning to a young male android who had been selected (in fact, almost all the ones Abana chose were androids except for the two humans she had sent to scout), she said, "Does the metal bitch keep you at f-set? And by you, I mean all you piss engines. No offense." A few of the men she had brought along snickered when they heard her. Androids couldn't feel offense, even when their programs were set to process it.

The boy stared at her, expression remaining neutral, as did his tone when he spoke. "Affirmative. Factory settings ensure highest productivity and success." "Uh-huh," she said slowly, eyes narrowing. Not that androids had any real sense of free will that she had ever been able to tell, but even so, there were humans in Abana's tribe. Humans who, despite their affinity with the metal "people", should have the right to chose their fates. That was why you lived in the waste, after all. She shuddered to think about the conditioning Abana probably doled out if she could so easily force all of the androids at her command to remain emotionless freaks.

 

[upscalerat]

The scout sent towards Abana was greeted with an affirmation at the message received, and otherwise, indifference. The robot did, however, confirm which plan of attack Larka was going for; focus everyone, or surround. It hadn't been clear upon departure. True to predictions, the scout knew, and informed Abana of such. With that, she was given leave to either return to Larka, or to stay with Abana. One person wouldn't make a difference.

The following hours, for Abana's people, were uneventful. It was the calm before the storm, the android had heard some of her troops call it; the hours before a battle. It was the calm before the storm, the android had heard some of her troops call it; the hours before a battle. None the less, Abana utilized the time as best she could. The trouble was that there wasn't much of anything left to do; she reexamined the plans, but all was fine. And she dared not give herself another cleaning this close to a conflict. Not with Larka and her troops just over the ridge. It wasn't safe, no matter how beneficial it may not be for her partner to attack her now. It simply wasn't a risk worth taking.

Since it had been late afternoon when the scouts were sent out, it wasn't until well after nightfall that they could return. The android's two people did make sure to stop by Abana and inform her of what they had gathered; there was, in fact, a single guard. He was rotated every six hours, and was more for show than anything else. "Takin' sweets f'oma li'l 'un's 'arder than takin' th' fool out," one of her two assured her, confidently. It had taken Abana a moment to process what the man was alluding to. Their defenses were, overall, weak; there was a log wall that surrounded the territory, but it wasn't secure. There were plenty of ways in, and plenty more could be made with the same ease as "takin' th' fool out". The most complications they were probably going to run into, the other scout informed Abana, would be getting headaches from the screams of the people. Waking up to find an ax embedded in your stomach was startling. That many civilians, the scout concluded, and the sound would be the worst of it. And yes, they were mostly civilians- farmers and ranchers, and some merchants. A handful of guards on for show. There wasn't any real power established there. Not yet.

With the late hour, the two scouts decided it best to stay put. Larka's four would inform her of the same, and the attack would be soon. The scouts opted for rest rather than climbing, and slunk off to go seek just that. Abana remained doing nothing; but then, before long- at least, it must have been; Abana's own sense of time was rather skewed- it was time. Not to charge, not yet; but it was time to form up. It was time to start sneaking over to the enemy, to get in position. Larka would start the raid, and Abana would reinforce; now, they just needed to wait for her signal, and the carnage would begin.

 

[karmaylore]

Just as the sun was setting, the small party Larka had sent out returned. They informed her that almost all of the buildings had people, but only the center-most tower had anyone important. That was good. She had a hunch about who was running this whole thing, and she smiled. She never had really liked Finch, military leader (if you could even say they had a military) for the grasslands people. It would truly be her pleasure to kill him.

Larka put on her face mask, and watched with satisfaction as her scouts followed suit. For her tribe, pulling up a face mask was a universal symbol that it was time to fight. Any conflict whatsoever was done wearing one. She considered herself simple compared to what some other tribes wore. The only other thing she required of her people was that they wear copious amounts of black, since if one thing could be said about her tribe, it was that they didn't require any kind of light to operate. So it was symbolic, in a way, she supposed. Not that that much thought had likely gone into it originally. But it fit. They didn't exactly live in darkness, but it had always been the way that the cave people were trained to. Regardless, this was much better than the garish armor or uniforms some tribes wore.

Once the sun had set, and the first stars peeked out in the sky, she decided the time to act was now. Larka had one of her scouts give off the signal, an infrared red flare, and called her group to start climbing. Pulling on her night vision goggles (none of them were intimately familiar with this area as they were at home), she ran ahead of them, stopping at the top of the hill. She looked to her left, noticing the rest of the people scrambling out of the boulders they had been hiding behind. Giving off a war cry, she took out her pistol and knife and jumped over the wall, rolling as she hit the ground. Due to the sheer amount of people, there was quite a bit of noise.

Villagers hastily ran out of the buildings, carrying their own guns and attempting to sound alarms. She shot one or two people as they attempted to shoot at her, but mainly she was focused on getting to the command tower. As she ran and at times shot, the craze of fighting overtook her as it usually did, and everything except the motion of the people around her was dim and unintelligible to her. One man was foolish enough to charge at her; Larka took her knife and stabbed him through the hand with which he held his own knife. Twisting it and taking his knife, she grinned and pushed it slowly into his throat, watching with satisfaction as the life drained out of him, literally. She continued on, thinking that it would be even more rewarding to kill one of the men responsible for this.

 

[upscalerat]

Once the war cry started, Abana and hers started jumping the wall. Since they had surrounded the territory, almost all of hers had been able to jump down on the first round. There were a couple of scores of androids that followed; they brought the humans up the steeper parts of the walls, and waited. Then their tribe members had jumped down, and the screams started. Abana's people- who all work dark clothing for this night mission, of their own volition- were, truly, just a large group of reinforcements. But, oh, did they reinforce the main strength.

Larka's soldiers, Abana noted, may had have the fierceness of a monster, and certainly the appearance of something not human with those masks. A saved file of a deleted program told her about how terrified their victims would be. But, in truth, Abana's own people held much more advantage in the chaos. The masks marked the enemy with ease, but Abana's looked like the same people being attacked. They had surprise- who would risk ripping apart their own comrade? That being said, in truth, it didn't matter. Any resistance was smothered almost immediately. Abana's and Larka's alike were quite skilled. Even when the people did know who to attack, it made no difference. They were simply obliterated. The smart ones hid inside, or retreated after they say the carnage start.

Though Abana had lead her troops from the opposite side of town, her next goal was to meet Larka at the command tower. Much as Larka didn't appreciate androids, they were still useful. Given that there was no doubt on where the tower was, the robot had no trouble getting there. She was fast enough that most even left her alone- they had their own targets, and targets of their own speed, to catch up with. A trio of people ahead of her, at one point, saw her rushing towards them and decided to meet her in full. It was a mistake. One had a gun, and shot. At the distance, it came to a surprise to the shooter that the bullet missed- Abana's neck, however, was now at an odd angle; there was the reason. And next, the shooter saw the android close, and heard something dislodge itself from flesh. There was some sort of blade coming from her hand, and blood dripping on it. Then he was dead.

Without wasting so much as a second, Abana turned. Her hand, meanwhile, freed the gun from its previous owner; and the next bullet found its mark, in the head of one of the other two. The last one, who also had a gun, seemed to catch on that she wasn't human, and tried to run. She'd started while Abana was killing her compatriots, but to no avail. Abana shot again. The bullet wedged itself right through her spine, and she fell face down. Abana looked down at her hand; indeed, there was a blade, which had ripped through her synthetic skin. She was going to need to fix that. It had been a recent addition, and this was the first time using that particular feature. Effective enough, the android deemed, and wiped the blood off on her black trousers. Then the blade retracted, and Abana started running again. To the command tower she went.