Of MICE and MAYHEM - ch13
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I had Greasie raise his other hand to indicate to the others that we should stop.
"Security patrol is staying on the loading dock instead of only coming out occasionally to check on things and then heading back in," I explained. "Not enough guards for it to be a full alert, so they are probably just being cautious due to the recent raids Blargtech did from here."
"This is going to complicate things," Qwark noted. "Let me see if I have a food delivery person option ready in my hologuise… Nope. Mine still has the nurse disguise I used the last time I had an infiltration mission."
"I still don't know why you didn't just send Cora in for that mission," Brax grumbled.
"Are you kidding!?" Qwark exclaimed, aghast. "Cora's bedside manner is even worse than yours is!"
"I'm right here, you know," Cora muttered.
"Let me see your hologuise," I requested.
"You know how to change the disguise files for these things?" Quark asked in a curious tone even as he handed the device to Greasie.
Oh good, I saw that it had a compatible connection port. I hopped out of my cockpit shaped housing dock and scampered over Greasie's shoulders until I reached his actual hand, and then plugged my tail into it.
"You didn't actually answer my question yet, Mousie," Qwark pointed out.
"Hmm? Oh yeah, easy," I replied. "Well, maybe easy isn't the right word for it, but it's a Gadgetron espionage device that I'm compatible with, so I know how to use the sliders. Let's see… You most closely resemble Larry already - he's the regular delivery guy from the local Cosmic Crust Pizza. Okay, testing pre-image… All green. You'll have to reload the nurse disguise from a backup, but you're all set to be a pizza guy! Now who else has a hologuise?"
I looked around as Qwark took his device back and activated it, becoming a visual copy of Larry the Pizza Guy.
"Really? Nobody?" I asked plaintively. "Even though we knew this was an infiltration and investigation mission?"
"Disguises were always more the captain's thing," Brax explained with a shrug. "Cora and I like to either just stealth it or go full brute force intrusion."
"Got that right," Cora agreed with a firm nod.
"I wouldn't mind having a hologuise," Ratchet admitted, "but I don't actually own one - I've only ever seen them in commercials, and they're out of my price range."
"I'll get you one once we get back to headquarters," Qwark said as he admired the adjustments I had made to the disguise settings.
"Um, hello?" I interjected. "Actual mission going on? With hopefully nonoptional sidequest to rescue Alibi?"
"Don't worry," Cora assured me. "We'll recover your friend."
"Heck, we'll probably end up picking up a lot of E-type mousoids," Brax admitted. "I looked up the ad - your color palette is one of the standard options. Better we grab any that match you than risk missing Alibi."
There are going to be so many confused executive assistants. I could tell.
About six, if the number on site that matched my palette hasn't changed…
"Nah - we should just grab every mousoid we can find," Ratchet suggested. "The more evidence the better, and we can always return the ones that want to go back once we no longer need them for evidence, right?"
Okay, how did a sidequest objective slide all the way from one mousoid (Alibi) to twenty mousoids?
Ratchet, I know you've got heart but give me a break here! Last I checked, only three others beside Alibi and I were even awake! You're having us rescue idiot expert bots!
…
Qwark is totally going to go for the bonus objective, isn't he?
"Alright, it's settled then!" Quark explained boisterously. "Rangers, grab every mousoid you come across!"
I resisted the urge to sigh. Idiot experts or not, they might still have valuable intelligence. And at least three of them were awake, so hey, we'd be giving at least them a chance at a better life, assuming that they didn't decide that they wanted to go back to their Executives.
Which, fair enough, as I was aware from observing them for nearly a month that the Blarg weren't actually arbitrarily evil as a whole.
Getting the whole group past the patrols around the loading dock proved to be an interesting exercise combining stealth and chutzpah. For as big and bombastic as Captain Qwark was, he made a very convincing show of a delivery guy that had been sent to collect on a tab that had been left unpaid too long.
This was, of course, helped by the fact that I was aware of several such overdue tabs that were likely still overdue because the managers involved were prone to try to pass on responsibility for paying for office party catering to anyone other than themselves.
Or Dr. Nefarious for that matter. Oh, he never bothered with a tab - if he decided to host an office party, he always paid for it in full up front because he didn't want the hassle of being pestered to pay off a tab. But he absolutely refused to let anyone else's tab be foisted off onto him.
I'm pretty sure that Myke Shlorp was still a sheep after he tried to pass his office party tab onto Nefarious. Oddly, this actually seemed to improve the efficiency of Myke's department afterwards as those under him could no longer understand his ever-changing list of project priorities. Meaning that they were finally actually getting some of their projects done on time last I checked.
Wait, what was I…
Oh yeah, the infiltration!
Anyway, as Qwark was pulling off a surprisingly convincing impression of an irate Larry, the rest of us took the opportunity to sneak past all the guards who were focused on the angry "pizza delivery guy" and not wanting to be the ones to get Plant Z332 blacklisted by Cosmic Crust.
Both Cora and Ratchet were naturally agile, slipping past the guards almost as soon as they were distracted by Qwark's interpretation of "Larry the angry pizza delivery guy." Clank, being carried on Ratchet's back, didn't have to worry about how he would get past, although I did note that he was at least taking care to keep a lookout behind them. Which I put down to his superior cognitive abilities deducing the probable need rather than him having a specific protocol prompting him to do so.
Then again, I never plugged into Clank to see what he had going on in there and, defect or not, he was still manufactured as a warbot and covering your six was part of Greasie's protocols. Though I could just be reading too much into things, given that I hadn't actually checked.
Clank was my friend and it'd have been rude.
Not to mention potentially dangerous as I seem to remember that Orvus had put in some pretty impressive mental defences.
Anyway, Brax, for all that he was as big and bulky as Qwark, had trained to mitigate as much of this as he could, and proved to be adequately sneaky. He just had to wait a bit longer to be sure that Qwark had the guards sufficiently distracted before he made his way past them.
And Greasie and I?
"Mind if I check your stealth protocols?" I asked. I mean, I was already plugged in as part of being docked to the GEIST arm, but that didn't mean I poked around. Greasie is my partner and I didn't want to start off this relationship on the wrong foot by not asking first unless it was an emergency.
Which this wasn't.
"I do not have stealth protocols, Ma'am."
I blinked.
Wait, I could blink? No! Not important right now! Focus!
"May I assume control for a bit then?" I really did not want to do this without Greasie's permission. "Because I do have stealth protocols that apply to transport modes larger than myself."
"That would be appreciated, Ma'am," Greasie conceded and extended an invitation past his firewalls…
Moments later, Greasie and I were basically sharing headspace in his body and I was now effectively a GR series warbot with a funny arm.
Okay, Greasie found the GEIST arm amusing.
Good to know, I guess, but we can work on the aesthetics later.
For now, it was time to see what I could do as a GR series warbot trying to be sneaky…
