They're... ON HOLIDAY?

by Nameless Narrator

Day 11 - Bleeding the poison out: 1/?

99111, 99380, and 99526 are hiding at the base of a tree within sight of the light coming from the Black Ops cliffside encampment surrounding the native altar hiding the entrance to the Silversmith facility, now shattered to pieces with the secret door stuck open by some booth-sized device on wheels. They can hear griffons talk but can’t make out the words from this far.

“10013, we’re almost there,” reports 99111 in a whisper, “Everything okay on your end?”

“We’re waiting for you before we get going. Be careful while moving around,” says 10101’s voice from the earpiece of 99111 which the drone automatically relays to 99380 and 99526 via a hive link, “If the griffons on watch are using similar equipment to those inside, they’re using night vision goggles, so just darkness won’t be enough of a cover.”

“Can they see like we do?” asks the drone.

“No,” replies 10101 after a brief pause caused by consulting 10013, “While you see completely clearly at this level of illumination, their field of view will be dark green, grainy, and limited to a short distance without any peripheral vision. I doubt they have infrared vision technology, but it isn’t impossible. That means they might be able to see your body heat so you should stay behind cover whenever possible.”

10013, bearing the communicator of the inside group, adds:

“If you need to move around the camp, just fly a bit further away. We can sacrifice several minutes to make sure you guys are safe.”

“Gotcha!” 99111 nods, “Did you think of any good distraction while we were on the way?”

“We need to draw as many griffons out of the underground as possible. A fake attack might do it but it would be incredibly dangerous. However, I was talking to 387 earlier and he brought up the idea of starting a forest fire,” says 10013.

“The jungle is natively fairly wet, so you will require high amounts of flammable materials. Even your resin might not be enough unless you have a lot,” adds 10101 who doesn’t need an earpiece to communicate, “However, that would definitely cripple the griffons’ use of night vision goggles and certainly any infrared scanners, should they have them.”

99526 grins at 99111 who nods with a smirk.

“If we need a lot of goop, we have just the right drone for the job,” reports 99111.

“Ah, 10013 just explained the multiplicative ability of one of your group,” 10101 replies, “How you do it is up to you. Unlike you, I don’t have a full view of the encampment. My advice is to surround the camp with anything flammable first and then light it.”

“Go for it and call us if anything goes wrong,” says 10013, “Any commotion you can cause will benefit us, so don’t risk too much. Good luck.”

“Will do!” says 99111, “And won’t do. You know what I mean,” it turns to the other two and the communication switches to hive links, “Okay, guys. Let’s do it like this - 99380, you’re the best at linking and no matter what happens we’ll hear you so you stay here and observe what the griffons are doing. I’ll escort 99526 and help spread its goop everywhere.”

“Got it!” 99380 nods and the other two fly off, quickly disappearing into the vegetation with a quiet buzz.

***

Roughly fifteen minutes later, the lower part of trunks of most trees around the camp, excluding the direction where 99380 is, is covered in 99526’s goop and the minty smell is becoming noticeable even through the normal jungle scents, so 99111 decides that they probably shouldn’t be adding much more. The trees closest to the camp are untouched, of course, because avoiding griffon perimeter guards could be too tricky.

Despite the frankly ridiculous amount of goop 99526 produced, the drone doesn’t feel particularly exhausted right now.

Must be the Queen’s potion.

“Okay, so how do we make fire?” asks 99526.

99111 freezes. Goop tends to accidentally catch fire on its own most of the time, so there might have been a slight oversight in the plan.

“Holes…” the drone’s breathing quickens as it realizes it may have single-holedly ruined the entire plan, “I… uhh… maybe we could steal one of the lights at the edge of the camp? Or maybe a stick from the fire pit, no no no that’s way too inside the camp.”

“99111, that’s silly. Slow down and breathe. 10013 said that losing a few minutes won’t mean much,” 99526 pats the distraught tech drone’s head.

“Okay okay okay… okayokayokay,” 99111 looks around, “A few more minutes. Think!”

10101 believes you are smart, that you can not just remember the concepts it shared with you, but to apply them. Bend them. Use the concepts. Structural improvements, material reactions…

It looks upwards.

Huuuh…

“99526, got some more gooping in you?” 99111 suddenly asks with a devious glint in its eyes.

“Abso-tively!” 99526 hucks out a chunk.

99111 raises its foreleg and slowly moves it in an arc from the tall tree they’re hiding under towards the camp, and smiles.

Let’s see if 10101’s belief wasn’t misplaced.

“If we can’t bring their fire to our trees, we’ll bring our trees to them,” 99111 taps on the bark, “99526, I need you to goop this whole tree as much as you can, and especially the big, bushy top. Just smear it all over.”

“On it!” 99526 gets to gooping while 99111 does some measurements and uses its own goop to mark several horizontal lines on the thick trunk.

Experimentally, 99111 digs a small chunk of the trunk off and immediately realizes that with how tall and thick the tree is it will take a lot more, and moves the upper line higher. Slowly, it starts shearing the wood off and examining the result. As it gets roughly a third of the way through the trunk, the tree creaks. Thankfully, other than that and some rustling in the canopy, the drone operation is entirely silent.

Ready to fall.

“99526, how’s it going?”

“I’m done with two layers and I can always add more!”

“I think it’s fine. Fly down and hide behind a tree out of the way,” says 99111, and quickly digs several more chunks out of the designated area.

As the tree starts collapsing directly towards the Black Ops camp with loud cracking of breaking branches, 99111 darts away to hide behind a different one. Thankfully, the collapse is slowed down by smaller trees so that it has enough time to get into cover with only the tip of its head peeking out to see if things work out.

“Okay, so the tree should hit the fire in the camp or some of the lights and with this amount of 99526’s goop it should be enough to catch fire and spread it to-”

The tree misses the fire pit in the center of the camp but at least one of the remaining long branches of the canopy falls near enough, and 99111 suddenly finds its breath stuck in its mouth because there’s no more oxygen.

*WHOOOM!*

A rapidly expanding nova of almost liquid, blue fire fueled by eighty-percent alcohol mixed with changeling goop blasts out of the tree’s butchered canopy, setting fire to everything in a radius far beyond what the hiding and immediately slightly singed drones can see.

The griffons start screaming while their clothes catch fire and their light amplification goggles briefly blind them before burning out. However, that’s only part one of their problem, as the exploding cinders and goop scatter over all their tents including the ammo supply.

The following second explosion scatters everything and everyone around the camp. However, even in the inferno full of screams of pain and panic, some of the Black Ops griffons keep cooler heads, and rush through the weaker parts of the fire to grab the surviving fire extinguishers. Unfortunately for them, the two personal extinguishers they find can serve only to save other burning and flailing griffons, and are woefully insufficient against the inferno spreading through the jungle.

99380, thankfully, is in the only part of the circle around the camp which the other two didn’t goop all over, and after the explosion of the ammo supply and addition of the smoke from the extinguishers, the drone gathers enough courage to get something that caught its eye as it rolled towards it.

A REALLY BIG BOOMSTICK!

First things first, though.

“99526, 99111, are you okay? Do you need help?” the time stop during hive mind communication is sure coming handy right now.

“EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE! WE’RE FLYING BACK TO YOU BUT WE HAVE TO GO A BIT MORE AROUND!” yells 99111.

“Meet me here!” 99380 pings a map location some distance away in the direction of the resort.

Armed with the knowledge that both its buddies are safe, 99380 darts towards the edge of the camp, hoping that all the smoke and fire will be enough to obscure it. With the griffons screaming and trying to help each other instead of investigating what caused the current pandemonium, 99380 reaches a dark green, square tube of roughly twice its length lying on the ground.

Empty hole on one end, grid on the other. Talon trigger. Aim the empty end.

99380 hoists the weapon larger than itself on its back before slowly pulling its front half down with one foreleg.

Ready, aim…

The first part of the plan works perfectly, and currently three-legged 99380 aims the rocket launcher at the bungalow-sized machine on wheels stuck inside the entrance to the underground laboratory and presumably keeping it open as 10101 explained. If that goes, the griffons won’t send anyone else inside.

Now up on the hind legs and pull the trigger before it makes you keel over.

The drone quickly stabilizes the front of the rocket launcher with its other foreleg, rises up on its hind legs, and pulls the trigger.

Nothing a tiny drone like 99380 could have done aside from glueing itself to the ground would have prevented even a small jerk of such a massive weapon firing to affect its aim, and the fact that it started keeling backwards the moment it rose itself up definitely didn’t help. The rocket flies above the digger and explodes against the face of the cliff above…

…which starts crumbling.

“WHAT’S GOING OOOOON?!” someone screams as chunks of the cliffside start dropping from the sky all over.

Uhhhh…

At this point, 99380 decides that the griffons are clearly distracted enough, grabs an assault rifle lying nearby with all four legs, not believing them to be steady enough to carry it, and flies off to the meeting point.

Moments later, 99111’s hive link relays 10101’s message coming through its earpiece.

“Despite all my calculations I did not account for THIS,” says the AI, “It might take me a moment to rouse all your jaw-dropped friends into working condition, but we’ll be moving onto the second part of the plan the second I do so. I advise you to immediately clear the area, both to avoid the jungle fire spreading as well as any pursuers once- if the griffons recover. Good job.”

“10013, can I… can I ask something?” 99380 trańsmits a message which 99111 relays to 10013.

“Sure.”

“I… I saw griffons on fire… and then they stopped moving… and screaming,” as the adrenaline overdose starts to drop, 99380 begins coming to terms with what they just did, “We did that…”

“We will talk about it afterwards, buddy,” 36658 replies instead, in a firm but still warm tone, “There’s a price for everything and if we save everyone else on this island it’ll be worth it. High Score would be proud of you.”

“I’m used to us getting nommed, not causing-”

“36658 is right,” says 10013 this time for real, “99380, 99111, 99526, go home and rest. You’ve earned it. Leave the rest to us.”

***

Back in the mostly empty resort, Chrysalis is relaxing in a chair, or at least looks like she’s relaxing, while sipping a cocktail on the promenade and staring north up the mountainous slope.

No one else notices the plume of blue flames suddenly blasting into the sky and vanishing instantly.

The Queen smirks and takes another sip.

Comments

[D-F]

ruh roh, lets hope 99380 doesnt get ptsd like when 4 (or is it spelt 'four?') accidentally killed for the first time

[Kiue Jin]

I think the drones have just discovered a means of dealing with a lot of their problems, down in the tunnels.

[Booster Spice]

Using Boom goop in the tunnels against th Gribblers etc?

Roll D20.

Is that our chance to dodge?

Nope, its how many of you take a critical hit from the blast.

Theres only ten drones in the group.

Roll D20.

[Scyphi]

A rapidly expanding nova of almost liquid, blue fire fueled by eighty-percent alcohol mixed with changeling goop blasts out of the tree’s butchered canopy

Oh, so that's what Chryssi's alcohol play was for! Either that or it was an unintended side effect, but you know she'll totally take credit for it either way!

A REALLY BIG BOOMSTICK!

It's a bazooka, isn't it?

At this point, 99380 decides that the griffons are clearly distracted enough

And then some! Heck, this alone would almost be enough to halt the griffon operation entirely long enough to initiate the base's self-destruct.

I'm not jinxing it by saying it'll be smooth sailing from here though--I know better than to just assume that.

[Farnham]

Oof, I feel bad for 99380. Although, to be fair, they are doing what changelings were created for in the first place: killing griffons in covert ops. Makes sense that they'd be good at it.

[Screw]

The consequences of their actions. It'd be an interesting topic to go over if at least one of these drones fail to bounce back from such distressing thoughts.

The rocket launcher backblast... that... I don't have much experience with it, but I do have plenty of game knowledge and some interest in weapons history.

Rocket launchers, at least the portable man-sized versions, are meant to have absolutely zero recoil. The rocket propels forward, pushing the launch system backwards immensely. But the rocket's propulsion, the backblast, equalises the immense recoil.

Heck, we have something called the "recoilless rifle". It's not the typical rifle, rather, it is basically a portable artillery piece with almost zero recoil. Hence, rocket launcher.

In this situation, unless 99380 aims high with the back pointing at the ground, he should have felt nothing or a jerk at most. You've certainly implied that 99380 could have went flying.

But, the backblast implies this is suppose to be a recoilless design. Unless, this is a closed back and the griffons somehow could handle having the force of a truck or fired cannonball ramming their talons and/or shoulder (the force is speed times weight; I'm lazy to maths now).

Unless the backblast mean something different here.

[Nameless Narrator]

11614338
It depends. Four (written down like that because Boss' changelings have been brought up more as individuals than just numbered tools) has had freedom of thought and action mostly since hatching so his individuality might have affected the guilt as well while 99380 can get rid of part of its guilt with "those were the orders, they were trying to kill us too, it was in the name of greater good, a trad, and so on...". Only time will tell but I think 99380 will take it much better.
11614354
Collapsing the entire Badlands on themselves? They would need napalm to clear places out without exploding themselves or causing massive cave-ins, and even then how long would that burn with limited air? I guess the strat would then be to choke any monsters to death but that would draw them out first. Besides, that already requires finding a drone with non-explosive but burning goop as well as a method of making fire on demand and quickly in a pinch. None of that is easy.
11614407
Exactly this.
11614698
- All panned! (WHY THE HOLES isn't there a smug Chrysalis emote? Seriously!)
- It's just a Rock-it Lawn Chair.
- True, but that means the other group is now the more dangerous threat to the machines, and Skynet no like that.
11614712
- Yes and no. You'Re absolutely right in the broad changeling sense, but splitting off the drone genetic code (and locking the digging ability into only them) was done by one of the two non-crazy queens after Shroud if I recall my own lore correctly... which is debatable at this point. There's just so much backstory on everything it hurts my head.
11614772
- We do have Four from Boss' group as it was correctly pointed out.
- The rocket launcher thing: You are absolutely correct aaaand I suck. That's why actual writers do research, not just puke out random words. However, after some googling, I did a minor fix to that scene and it should make sense now.

[D-F]

11615133

It depends. Four (written down like that because Boss' changelings have been brought up more as individuals than just numbered tools) has had freedom of thought and action mostly since hatching so his individuality might have affected the guilt as well while 99380 can get rid of part of its guilt with "those were the orders, they were trying to kill us too, it was in the name of greater good, a trad, and so on...". Only time will tell but I think 99380 will take it much better.

his? isnt four a her? also, thanks for the clarification

[Nameless Narrator]

11615296
Damn it, I was thinking about Six since we were talking about drones.
Yes, Four is Gem and she's definitely a she and a pacifist since killing the Royal Guard by accident

Sorry, my brain isn't working right today.

[Doctor_Den]

somehow after these events drones don't seem so cute anymore. :(

[Nameless Narrator]

11615351
This is a good example of a behavior that can really be called toxic, a negative behavior that spreads by spoiling everyone who come into contact with it - the hostility of the griffon guards in the resort leads to everyone believing there would be no talking with an even higher class of "bad guys", the Black Ops, which forces the drones to go with the idea proposed by a high rank who doesn't give a damn, and if it goes wrong then everyone's the bad guy and innocence is ruined by contact with the real, harsh world. If it helps, they really really didn't plan for it to turn into a catastrophe.