It was always unnerving to see Taowu take your exact appearance before a deployment and Lt.Stubbs was particularly adverse to the sight.

Ah, no, she reminded herself, she was named Lt.Cuddles for today’s mission. What a stupid gimmick.

“What is that sour face, Lt.Cuddles?” asked Lt.Taowù-Cuddles, with a smirk, “seasick?”

The hovercraft was moving remarkably smoothly over the night sea, quickly nearing the West Coastline zone of operations.

“In case of sea-sickness, please use the dispenser in my second compartment” emoted the robotic voice of the Peacemaker bot in the cargo bay, nicknamed by Brutus, very usefully, Lt.Cuddles “We all have to be 100% to bring 100% peace!1!” it added with a short upbeat jingle (under three seconds not to break copyright laws, of course).

Lt. Cuddles-Stubbs exhaled sharply “That’s enough, both of you, everybody go to silence mode, we are approaching the target area”

She dutifully made a note on her comms-pad, for command - Peacemaker unit still glitches through the exclamation and pronounces “one”.

-fucking discount mercs- she thought

She had just finished writing the note when she received a notification on the comm-pad: the sat-scan revealed a Varuna contingent near the AC2 they were about to attack. Their main Fusilier-Kamau team was already deployed, together with some certainly-not-daylamis, a sierra, a fugazi, a pathfinder, a knight of montesa and, to nobody’s surprise, a Peacemaker bot.

Valerya Gromoz chuckled, looking over Lt.Cuddles-Stubbs shoulder “ten credits it’s also named Lt. Cuddles”

“You’re on” answered Lt.Cuddles-Stubbs, pushing the hacker away from her personal space “in particular, you’re on ARO duty on the left flank, near Mr.DeathDildos VIII, which, I have to tell you again, is NOT a good name for a Clipper Bot”

Valerya hid another small laugh within a military salute “if it survives THIS battle, I’m gonna change it to something more appropriate, swearsies, otherwise it’s gonna be Mr.DeathDildos IX”

Lt.Cuddles-Stubbs sighed and deployed the rest of the team. Pvt.Brian, the Druze grenadier, on the left flank, and Pvt. Brian, the Druze Grenadier, next to the AC2. She loathed holomaskers.

-fucking discount mercs- she thought

Her loathing could not last long though: her comm bead chirped with an incoming transmission by Saito Togan, who was scouting ahead: “I was attacked. Montesa killed. Engaging the Squalo”

It took a moment to process. The fucking Panoceanians bought a TAG to the party. Fucking fantastic. She lost no time and issued an all-comms order: “Pvt. Brian, howabout E/M countermeasures? Let me rephrase, do E/M the squalo.”

“Yes ma’am!” answered Pvt. Brian Sharply “deploying E/M mine!”