“Motherfuckers,” Collins said.
The ASH at Ft Preston
Case C. Capehart
By the time Max realized men were in his apartment, it was too late to go for the antique Mossberg 12-gauge under his bed. The WASPs breached the door of his bedroom before the men in suits did. Their automated 30-caliber guns focused on him immediately, but the green LEDs on their bee-like faces were encouraging. At least he did not qualify as a threat. They might have been red had he reached his shotgun in time.
“Lieutenant Maximus Ishikawa?” The man in the suit barely glanced at him, but grimaced at the name he read off the tablet in his hand.
Max slid his legs off the side of the bed, easy not to move suddenly enough to turn the green lights on the front of the WASPs to yellow. “Former Lieutenant. Why?”
“Do you still have a Go Bag, former Lieutenant?”
Max nodded.
“Dust it off and come with us. We’ll explain on the way.”
Max expected the usual pokiness of military bureaucracy once they arrived at Central Command: the intake protocols, waiting for all the leaders to come in, hours of dress-right-dress bullshit.
However, he underestimated the gravity of the disaster that brought him there.
Without even issuing a temporary uniform, Max was rushed directly into the War Room with nothing more thorough than a single retina scan. Ten minutes after arriving, Max found himself at a long table with several men he only recognized from their pictures on the Chain of Command wall in the Mess Hall. General Edgers sat near the front, but he did not lead the meeting as Max had assumed.
Command General Einhart stood at the head of the table looking out over the men. The screen behind him queued up a recorded video for playback. “Gentlemen, less than ninety minutes ago an unidentified threat attacked Fort Preston — a munitions disposal base on Ishtar 4. The attack was unforeseen and unprovoked; civilian casualties have been high. The remaining forces have locked down the lower levels, but it’s simply a matter of time before there is a breach.”
A black and gold-trimmed drone hovering over one of the chairs extended a foldout vid-screen from the front console. A few clicks signaled an interstellar connection, and a man with golden hair swept back in a fashionable haircut appeared on the screen. “General, how in the hell did these attackers overwhelm our defensive drones? My WASPs have taken down Hedge Tanks in seconds. What does this invasion force have that stood up to that kind of power?”
Terry Dawn was the Minister of Defense, the civilian leadership for the Galactic Expansion Force and the CEO for DRAGO, the largest military drone manufacturer in the solar system never travelled anywhere in person.
“The WASPs ignored the enemy, sir.”
Nikki awoke and rolled off her cot and into a crouch. The flames of the industrial smelters glinted menacingly along the Aerolite blade of her combat knife, reflecting her mood.
It was another dream; a byproduct of being disconnected for so long. They served as a reminder of her intended purpose. She hated them.
She glanced at her wrist and the faint, blue-green digits appeared beneath her skin. It was just before three in the morning, well before her upcoming shift. Relaxing from her crouch, she cast about for the source of her sudden wakefulness. The flames of the smelters put everything through a red filter and enveloped the entire room in heat that only she could handle without gear.
Nothing stirred in her current home, far-removed from the soldiers and civilians above her. The fortified combat dummy she kept in the corner, its grey poly-alloy skin — decimated with thousands of nicks and gashes from a bladed weapon — stood alone in resembling anything human in that industrial volcano.
Still, something itched in the back of her mind.
She walked to the intercom on the wall and punched the button. “Beast to Overwatch, come in.”
The speaker squawked back after a moment. “You know how I can tell you woke up in a panic with your knife out in front of you, Nikki? You always forget how much that call-sign bullshit bugs me when you’re still groggy.”
Nikki flexed her jaw, a habit she’d formed in order to hold her tongue. Sergeant Kaminski was not exactly her superior, but he was the Non-commissioned Officer on Post for the night. She could not back-talk him. “Sergeant, is there anything going on up top?”
“Don’t worry about up top, Nikki. You don’t go up there anyway. Get back in your rack. Or here’s an idea, why don’t you go to your actual dorm? You’re off duty for another four hours and you probably need a shower anyway.”
“Sergeant, can you please just check in with someone up top?” Seventeen years of the most intense combat training devised by humans had prepared her for hell, but nothing had prepared her for undisciplined and sarcastic leadership.
She heard him sigh, and he most likely did it loud enough to come through the intercom on purpose. After a few moments, she heard the intercom click on again and his voice came through. “Nikki, can you come up here for a moment?”
Nikki ascended the stairs and entered the security office of the Materials Recycling Bay. Sergeant Kaminski laced up loosened boots as she snapped into parade rest before him. The office WASP hovered near, its green LED staring at her. He was leaving his post and venturing up to the surface. In past days, soldiers would strap a carbine to their web gear before investigating suspicious activity. Now they simply ordered the closest WASP to escort them.
The sergeant looked up at her and then to the WASP. “No one is answering my damn comm checks. I’m heading up top to find the night post and kick their asses. I’m taking the WASP, per procedure… assuming you don’t mind being on your own.”
Nikki glared at the green light on the flying death bot. She wondered if, within its super-advanced robot brain, it understood her loathing for it and why. Did it look at her and laugh inside? Did it know what its birth had taken from her, or was it coldly indifferent? Which answer would be worse?
“I’ll be fine, Sergeant,” she replied, fingering the hilt of the knife resting on her hip.
“Yeah, just don’t start doing pull-ups on the rafter and forget to—”
The elevator doors opened and a dull-grey, metallic spike ripped through Sergeant Kaminski’s chest. The segmented spike writhed like a tentacle, whipping the shocked NCO to the side. He crashed into the bay door and slumped, blinking in stunned confusion.
A metallic, insectoid creature burst into the room. Nikki froze as the thing turned its flat, carapace-like head and looked at her with a set of eight eyes that glowed green like the threat indicators on the WASP. She expected the drone to open fire on the monster any second, but it hovered to Sergeant Kaminski and scanned him for vital signs.
Nikki recovered and got her arms in front of her as the swipe from the creature’s clawed hand sent her crashing through the office window and plummeting thirty feet to the cold concrete floor below. Just before she hit, she saw the WASP zoom out of the window to follow her down, ignoring the demon inside.
“A malfunction? What are we looking at, sir?” General Edgers asked.
The Commander General shook his head. “There is no malfunction with the drones. All remote scans continue to show perfect working order. We think it’s something with the unidentified force; our initial hypothesis is that the WASPs’ AI is having difficulty reconciling the threat posed by them. Basically, the drones do not know what the aliens are and will not engage until they figure it out.”