With that being the case, the officer said "Since you can't go to him, you can choose which one of your squad will be going." I immediately said "I think Gamma and Delta should stay here." I needed to keep my allies close by. If they left, I would be more vulnerable to attack. Beta just shrugged and said "Yeah. I guess they can stay here too. There still is Epsilon and Zeta. Personally, I think Zeta would be the best one to go. She's always been the runt of the litter." That was pretty harsh, but I did not have any frame of reference for their performances compared to mine. It could certainly be the truth. The officer stroked his chin and said "That might be good. We can't give away the best of the tech to a civilian. No matter how rich and influential. I'll inform Zeta so that she will be ready for her maiden flight. She will not be making the return flight." I had not spoken to her at all, so I did not care. I wanted to push the envelope to see if could solve my other problem as well. "Maybe P02-Epsilon can go there as well." he said. Zooming in, I could see him frown. "That's not your decision, 01-Alpha."
Looks like I could not get away from him so easily. Relaxing, I just nodded. "Sir, yes sir!" I snapped with a salute. We were soon dismissed and left to our own devices. It was there that Beta and I went our separate ways. That was fine with me. I decided to hang around P01-Gamma and Delta. We just talked about the flights and going around playing catch with a massive ball. It was half a ton, but it was the size of a basketball for us. There was a brief scream, and we looked where it came from. There were some humans that were attacking the base. The sirens soon rang out to alert us of that scary fact. "Let's go stop them." I said. "Base control to all A.L.I.C.E. units. I repeat: Base control to all A.L.I.C.E. units. We're under attack. Shelter in place. Shelter in place and wait for further instructions." Gamma and Delta nodded, and we charged them. The rifles that they had were not strong enough for us. It stung, but they mostly bounced off of us. We did not actually have guns, but we could still attack them. We were fucking giants compared to them. I stomped and kicked them to death.
Both Gamma and Delta did the same thing I was doing. The human combatants were able to pick off the rest of the others. It was pretty much because we destroyed all their vehicles and tracked them down from the air. There was a massive process for securing the area. A base did not just simply get attacked. Eventually, we were told by one of the lower ranked officers that there was a terrorist cell in the country that tried to have a go at us. Whether or not they knew that the purpose of this base was to house us was unknown. As far as we could tell, we were able to kill them all. I had 6 confirmed kills. Gamma had 5 and Delta had 7 of them. For planes that were not really supposed to be in combat, that was pretty good. To fix the damage and fish out the bullets we had still lodged in out hulls and armors, the human mechanics and engineers needed to work on us. They also wanted to double check us with our systems. Gamma was supposed to go on his maiden flight, but that obviously needed to be delayed for now. P01-Epsilon went in his place. Luckily, we were all totally unhurt.
Now that we were in a legitimate combat scenario, that meant we were totally blooded. Human airmen came over to us and would talk to us. We spoke to them about all sorts of random things as well. The commanding officer of the base called us to the main hangar. The 3 of us were stood next to the humans that deployed to fight the terrorists. We were given a party and were celebrated for our bravery. "Since you guys are so good, we'll be sure to make sure all of you get what's rightfully yours." she said. P01-Epsilon returned, and P02-Gamma left. What she meant was made apparent a week later. All of were awarded medals for our bravery and service. Everyone that got injured, including us 3, got the Purple Heart. We also got the Combat Action Medal for defense of the base. In order to display those medals, we were given a wooden ribbon rack and the medals were put on the jockstrap. It was a bit funny, but I was not going to say anything about it. Delta was given a skimpy thong version to hold the ribbons. P02-Epsilon looked very jealous, but there was nothing he could do.
