The Supply Run

Sergeant Dutch Barracuda stared at the calendar intensely. He couldn’t decide if he was trying to will it to be another date or if he was attempting to set it on fire with yet to be unlocked pyrokinetic abilities. Neither was working so he just sighed as he leant forward on his desk to press the COMM button.

“Attention to those of you not doing anything important. I know we’ve been putting it off but it’s time to do a supply run. I need a group of you to meet my by the transport trucks. Please leave all nerf…. actually leave all weapons behind and please for the love of toys don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

——

Dutch hated running for supplies. Normally he refused but the last few times he didn’t go it had been so difficult that he resigned himself to the fact he was going to have to leave the bunker and deal with a truck load of Toy Soldiers in a large warehouse store.

They’d tried only sending two soldiers one time but then both of them had trouble carrying all the supplies to the truck; which were all wrong anyway considering the pair of them had just loaded up on crates of tea. In hindsight sending the Brigadier and JDUK as a team was a bad idea.

The next time they sent robots with a list but the mechanical mischief makers got lost in the stacks, prompting a rescue team. They still haven’t located one of them.

The last time had the entire team virtually unsupervised and they had ended up spending most of the supply money on booze and pizzas.

This time Dutch had a list, approved of by Commander JET herself, and was insistent that they would not stray from it.

——

Of course it didn’t take long before all of his hopes were a little bit more than dashed. When they finally got to the store (after arguing on a playlist and getting hopelessly lost on the road) the soldiers immediately scattered into the maze of shelves, calling out to each other occasionally about the deals and eventually some of them found the toy section.

The beleaguered Sergeant’s shoulders sagged, his brow creased and he could almost feel his hair turning white.  Deciding to just get on with it he grabbed a cart and started to hunt for what they actually needed on his own.

At one point he had to do a double-take. The missing robot’s photo was on the Employee of the month wall. The robot was waving to the camera and it seemed someone had given it an employee smock.

“Huh…” He considered asking the staff about that when he heard an almighty crash and a stream of shouts. Quickly he determined that it would be best to just round up his team and get out of there before anything caught on fire.

On the way back Dutch was rubbing his temples. This trip had seen two minor injuries, one fracture and at least one incident of damaged stock but it was nearly over and they’d managed to acquire most of what was on the list albeit with many variations. All in all it wasn’t too bad. At least until the truck ran out of gas suddenly. Everyone in the vehicle groaned.

Next time, Dutch decided, they were getting their supplies delivered.