SNAFU: Future Warfare

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.”

“Can we fix them?” another general asked.

A pallid man in a technician’s uniform straightened and cleared his throat. “The base is too far away to force a data link without someone on site reciprocating, and no one has done so since the attack. We have no information on the enemy and without knowing what’s blocking them we can’t know how to fix the error.”

General Stinson leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “We still have a few human units, mostly Spec Ops, as Quick-Reaction Forces for this scenario. We have absolutely no info on this enemy’s capabilities. Our boys would be going in blind.”

“What about the soldiers inside? They have a whole base at their disposal for Christ’s sake.”

General Edgers laughed and shook his head, motioning toward the screen. “Engineers and technicians. Hell, we barely combat train them in Basic anymore.”

“General Einhart, do we have a more immediate plan?” The drone carrying the minister’s face hovered in place as the front-mounted cameras panned the room, likely using advanced facial-recognition software to gauge the room. No one in the room flinched, such was their comfort with the perverse mockery of human behavior by the robotic sentinels. “If not, we need to think about… we need to consider the possibility of writing this one off.”

General Einhart shook his head. “Sir, you don’t understand. When we say we have nothing on this enemy, we mean it. We cannot destroy them with no data collection. What if this is not an isolated event?”

“I need to contact the President. We need to call an emergency conference to consider our options.” At the other end of the video feed, Minister Dawn stood, preparing to end transmission. “But the only options I see are sending in men or sending in ordinance.”

“I see one other option.” General Edgers turned his eyes on Max.

Nikki shook off the impact and got to her feet. She had not taken a hit like that since her first day in the Recycling Bay when she got confused and let a crane slam a steel beam into her from behind. The pretense of being a normal human was impossible for her to maintain after that.

The creature scurried down the side of the bay wall and dropped to the floor like a cockroach. It did not hesitate or act confused by her survival. It sensed only prey and did not overanalyze the situation.

Nikki reciprocated.

It moved like a bullet, closing the distance in a heartbeat. Nikki dove out of the way as razor-like claws sliced the air above her. The tail came next, following up the attack with a stab meant to impale her like Sergeant Kaminski. She parried the blow, but the force was enough to stagger her. She dropped to her ass and scrambled back, sliding out of the creature’s reach.

Nikki halted right next to the closed-arch plasma saw, a high-grade steel cutting tool that resembled a flaming chainsaw on a lever arm attached to an 800-pound, mobile surface that she used to cut through old tank barrels.

As the creature charged, she ripped the saw from its hinges and fired it up. She took the enemy’s fingers with the first swipe. As it retreated, the tail came at her again. It did not learn quickly; Nikki did. She dodged the strike, and her left hand shot out, grabbing the tail as it passed. The blade blazed through the steel-like armor of the monster’s tail like a dry twig.

Nikki over-extended and the creature’s reflexes rivaled her own. The swipe caught her from behind, slicing into her back and sending her tumbling across the floor. She still gripped the saw, but the creature bore down on her with the frantic haste of an imminent kill.

Instead of getting to her feet, Nikki pushed herself backward and swung the saw above her head. The tool cut halfway into the sturdy pylon, but it was enough considering the weight atop it. With a loud groan, the metal gave way to drop the front end of the shelf.

The monster paid no heed to the shelf above; its focus fixed on taking her while she was still prone. At the last second it looked up and tried to reverse its momentum, but the rack of saw-cut artillery barrels rained down on it like a volley of quarter-ton arrows.

Nikki climbed atop the pile of steel tubes and looked down at the insectoid head of the creature. It focused on her and tried to move, but the wreckage had mangled its body. Nikki flared the plasma arch on the saw and bent to her task.

“I’m sorry, but… what on earth is an ASH Soldier?” General Stinson glanced around the room, flummoxed.

“Advanced Synthetic Humanoid.” Max pulled out a data card and plugged it into the table, throwing a general outline of the project up on the screen. “Genetically engineered and trained from birth to be more human than a human. Then, before seeing her first battle, we replaced her with the WASP and sent her to an outdated munitions surplus to be a glorified janitor.”

“The WASP has saved countless human lives, including those of your obsolete abominations.” Minister Dawn had taken offense to Max’s statement, as expected.

Max did not back down from the argument. “68 dead, Minister, all by suicide. Seven remain. Is that what you mean when you say you saved them? We nurtured them into warriors from conception. When we took that job away from them we took away their reason for living.”

The minister smirked, the drone camera focusing on Max even as the image on the screen remained facing forward. “Then I guess they weren’t as tough as you say.”

Max clenched his fist. “If any of my girls were on Ishtar 4, you can bet your damn company they would be fighting these attackers, not hovering overhead in indecision.”

“Actually, Mr Ishikawa, your statement is about to be put to the test,” General Einhart said. “There is a single ASH soldier stationed at Fort Preston. She works deep under the surface, away from the public.”

Einhart slid a photo of a pale, athletic woman with short, crimson hair onto the screen and Minister Dawn scoffed. “That Amazonian stripper is supposed to be some sort of super soldier? She belongs on a stage at a porn club that caters to freak fetishists, not in the field.”

“Nikki… the Beast,” Max whispered as he stood and stared at the girl on the screen.

“Was she yours, son?” the Commander General asked.

“Lieutenant Ishikawa piloted Ryoko, the Death Angel; the only ASH to see real combat.” General Edgers slid a dossier cover sheet into the lower corner of the screen. The picture was of a black-haired, East-Asian woman with a scar over her nose. The letters MIA were stamped over her face.

Max flinched at the sight of his ASH soldier. “Sir, I can pilot Nikki… if there’s still an operational Chair and we can form a connection. With a Pilot guiding her, we might turn this from disaster. If she’s there, in that hell-hole, I guarantee she’s already fighting.”

Nikki ripped her bed from the brackets that anchored it to the ground then slammed the forty-pound sledge into the wall behind it. With her adrenaline still spiking from the battle, it only took a few seconds for her to smash through the concrete. She reached into the hole and pulled the sturdy cargo chest free from where it slumbered. What remained of her combat gear was still serviceable. She wished she still had her tech or some of her weapons, but at least they’d allowed her to keep the Aerolite knife she was issued upon maturity.

She stripped out of her maintenance overalls and stretched the snug, polymer combat suit over her legs. The green and slate material reminded her of training and her skin tingled as she zipped the front over her breasts and up to her neck.

Without warning, Nikki's body locked up and an intense pain washed over her with dim familiarity. She could barely remember what it felt like to experience a forced link. The neural connection was no longer strong; a muscle she could not exercise to keep it operational. She fought her brain's reaction to the foreign Pilot and tried to relax.

Nikki? Nikki, are we linked up?

The voice was in her head. For a moment she thought it might be Gavin and elation filled her. But the voice held a different accent, sounded older. It was not her Pilot.

“Connection is green. Nikki, call sign: Beast, awaiting orders.”

Maximus Ishikawa, call sign: Shogun, assuming Pilot Chair. What is your status, Beast?

She recognized her Pilot as soon as he stated his name. Lieutenant Ishikawa had piloted Ryoko throughout the training. “I am five-by-five, sir. I encountered an unidentified Tango seventeen minutes earlier. Tango was threat level red; it killed Sergeant on Post and came at me.”

Where is the Tango now, Beast?

“Tango neutralized, sir. I subdued it with an improvised trap of old artillery barrels and then decapitated it with an industrial plasma saw. As the Tango was unknown, I quartered it and inspected its internal structure to ensure death.”

You cut it into pieces?

“I had to be sure, sir.”

She could feel his laughter in her head.

Beast, I will upload all the intel we have. The higher-ups are still crafting your mission parameters, but here's the situation: as far as we know, the base is overrun. We have little intel on the attackers, and that’s the problem. However, the drones keep all recorded info and reports on a shared data cloud. If you can make it to the hangar bay on the top level, there should be ships with AI on board who have access to this data. That’s your way out, Beast.

Nikki finished gearing up and returned to the recycling bay. No other creatures had entered yet. “Sir, all I can tell you is that the enemy is incredibly dangerous and its internal makeup is biotechnological. Sending you images now.”

Nikki looked through what remained of the creature. Through the Neural link, her Pilot uploaded the feed from her eyes into the computers at Central Command.

Beast, right now we must assume the WASPs will never break free from this glitch that keeps them from recognizing the Tangos. If there are any survivors up top, they are not equipped to defend against something like this. I will upload the mission parameters as soon as I have them. For now, I want you to locate weapons — anything you think will be effective against these things, and button up. You're going into combat.

Sergeant Lancell checked on what remained of his staff as a few of the heartier engineers worked on the barricade at the only entrance to the Human Resources office. His secretary, Private Fialto, lay across a cot, her left leg shredded from the ankle halfway up her thigh. The painkillers helped, but every time Fialto glanced at what was left of her leg, Lancell could see the havoc it wreaked on the private’s mind.

“Why aren’t the WASPs firing?” Lancell looked up into his subordinate’s frenzied eyes. Though numbed to the pain, she gripped the side of her cot until her knuckles whitened. “They just floated there, Sergeant. That thing sliced Renfro right in half then came straight at me and tried to filet me like a damn halibut… the WASPs didn’t do a damn thing. I thought they were supposed to protect us.”

Sergeant Lancell gripped her shoulder but he had no answers.

He stood and looked around at the others. When he spoke, he kept his voice just loud enough to be heard. “I need someone to take inventory — anything and everything we have available. Prioritize tech and communications… we need to find out who else is out there.”

“Sergeant, uh… shouldn’t the Colonel be giving the orders?” Private Holiday had been in his office for sporting a non-regulation Mohawk when the invaders hit.

Lancell straightened and took another look around. A female in an officer’s uniform sat along the wall, staring off into the distance. On her collar was a subdued black bird with spread wings. Amid all the chaos, he had not immediately noticed her.

He walked over to where she sat and stood at attention. “Ma’am, it appears you are in line for command—”

“I’m not, Sergeant.” The woman cut him off and broke out of her stare to look up at him. Her eyes held as much fright as Private Fialto, if not more. “I… can’t. You, Sergeant… you’re doing well. Please, whatever you need to do… you’re in command.”

Sergeant Lancell nodded. He did not bother with a salute and, considering the combat zone they found themselves in, figured he could argue his decision if needed.

He turned from her and made his way back through the cramped office. “I need some kind of communication, soldiers. Get me something I can reach out with.”

As if on command, a voice drifted from near the back of the office, near Private Holiday. “Beast to Home Station, calling anyone up top.”

Sergeant Lancell snapped his gaze to where the voice emanated. “What is that, the intercom? Private, find it and drop the volume, now.”

Any of the survivors who could still walk crowded around as Sergeant Lancell took control of the comm link and answered. “This is Sergeant Lancell; I copy. Who am I speaking to?”

“Call sign: Beast, Sergeant. I am currently in the Recycling Bay. Give me your coordinates and I will make my way to you. Over.”

“Someone’s still alive in the Recycling Bay?” Sergeant Lancell looked over at the green Private. “That’s deep below us; at least a thousand feet.”

Sergeant Lancell depressed the comm button. “Negative, Beast… whoever you are. Topside is overrun. I say again, topside is overrun. For your own safety, stay put and do not rely on the WASPs; they are on the fritz.”

The voice came back, cold enough to match the attitude of the invaders. “Sergeant, if you want to live, you will tell me where you’re at and then keep radio silence until I reach you. Do you copy?”

Sergeant Lancell glanced at the other soldiers gathered around the comm link. They all wore puzzled expressions. If this were a drill, they would laugh their asses off at the jack-ass who had watched too many action movies during R&R. Whomever spoke on the other end of the link seemed to know they were under siege and by something sinister, yet they still insisted on emerging from what had to be the safest place on base.

He depressed the link once more. “Soldier… who are you?”

“It doesn’t make any sense. Why females?” Max could hear Minister Dawn’s drone hovering behind him as he fine-tuned the synaptic calibrations to strengthen his link to Nikki. They had wasted too much time talking already, but the Minister still worried about his corporate interests and would not let his skepticism rest. “You make men for combat; anyone knows that.”

“We tried males first,” Max said. “The genetic treatment kept causing them to process protein incorrectly. They naturally bulked up too much in training, which caused their mobility to plummet.” Max finished his work and launched himself into the Chair. “The females did not have this issue. Since we were, at the time, warring with Fundamentalists, we also speculated the enemy would underestimate female soldiers… as you just did.”

“Well, it doesn’t appear this enemy goes easy on either gender.” Minister Dawn’s drone glided over to the uploaded photos of the alien creature and the man on the screen shuddered. “She’s a hell of a killer, I’ll give you that much, Lieutenant. But if she had a time with just one of those things, what can she be expected to do against a dozen?”

Max fitted the cranial controls into place and stared forward, bracing himself for the link. “Find a good seat, Minister. I’m about to show you what an ASH Soldier is capable of.”

A sword?

Nikki lifted the blade and then slapped it to the electromagnet on the back of her harness; it snapped into place and held. “I needed a hobby. It’s antiquated… like me.”

But you have a gun, too… right?

Nikki buckled the prototype 30mm, cylinder-fed shotgun to her harness and holstered a 50-caliber Harkama Juggernaut to her thigh. “Of course.”

She started the GravLift on the manual cart and pushed it into the elevator.

Is that what I think it is? Where did you even find that?

“In the back,” Nikki replied with a smile. “Let’s hope there’s ammunition left for it in the ordinance bay on level two.”

Why is it still in the protective case?

Two Tangos entered the elevator as the doors opened, searching for the occupants. When they noticed the opening in the ceiling, it was too late. Nikki cooked off her improvised incineration grenade and dropped it into the carriage, kicking the hatch shut after it.

The aliens screeched and thrashed below her and the soles of her boots smoked against the metal roof. After a few minutes, when the thrashing stopped, she opened the hatch and dropped down into hell. One Tango still scratched at the walls of the elevator, its metallic exoskeleton blackened and warped. Her knife penetrated its bulky skull and shut down its brain with ease. The other Tango took the brunt of the initial flare and lay in the corner, resembling the remnants of tunnel rats that had strayed too close to the recycling pit.

The protective case of her big gun, designed to endure the extreme heat of the lower levels, was slightly compromised, but still operable. She grabbed the cart and pushed it out of the flaming carriage, turning her head and blowing out a small flame that had caught on her shoulder.

Sergeant Lancell leveled the carbine at the door alongside five other men. They had found an old cache of emergency weapons and ammunition; a throwback to the days when the drones were new and untested. The log registry on the cache showed a name he did not recognize, and he had worked this area of the base for over five years.

Sergeant Lancell placed Holiday in charge of servicing the weapons and making sure they were in operation. The man still had his mosquito wings and his full combat training amounted to two weeks of voluntary training in Fort Kyle, Texas, on Earth — learning how to fire and clear jams on old bull pups. That made the private the most experienced weapon specialist among the group.

“Sergeant, I can’t do this,” Private Holiday wheezed. His knuckles glowed white as he gripped his weapon to his shoulder. “I shot at fragging holograms on Earth. I wasn’t even a squad leader in Basic.”

Sergeant Lancell grabbed the skinny kid by the lapel and yanked him close. Outside the door, the creatures tore at the metal, clawing their way in through reinforced steel like plywood. “Lock it up, Private. Fate doesn’t give a shit about your readiness; it calls you up regardless. You are the most experienced among us; I don’t need you to be a squad leader; I need you to remember how to clear a jam and to shoot straighter than you’ve ever shot in your short life. That is the extent of your responsibilities at this moment. Now can you do that, Private?”

A metallic claw punched through the steel of the door and tore a diagonal line across it. Alien hands pulled on the weakened steel, widening the breach. Green, drone-like eyes peered in at them, taking in their numbers and resistance force.

Sergeant Lancell lined up the quick-sight apertures on the hole in the door. “On my command! Select your target. Alternate your fire. Ready?”

The sergeant’s finger slipped over the edge of the trigger and he wiped the sweat off against the side of his uniform before replacing it. He might have worried about normal things like recoil or ricochet if it were not for the face of death glaring at him from behind the six-inch gorge in the top half of the door.

A loud boom resounded outside the door, followed by another and then a third. The alien looked to the right and screeched an unearthly scream just before the fourth boom obliterated its skull and half its torso.

A deathly silence settled over the room as all inside froze in confusion. Sergeant Lancell concentrated so hard on the door that he forgot the challenge word the mysterious ‘Beast’ had given him.

“Frisky! Frisky!” His voice cracked under the anxiety, but he kept calling out the challenge, simultaneously hopeful and fearful of hearing the return password.

“Dingo.”

Sergeant Lancell reached out and grabbed Private Holiday before he hit the ground and nearly dropped his weapon. Someone was outside the door; someone who had given them an old military verification technique they knew the aliens could not compromise and who had just cut through four alien creatures that hours ago had seemed invincible. It seemed almost too much for the boy to handle.

“Pull the barricade back, Sergeant, and rally your men. We’re moving out.” The voice came from around the corner, but no one peered through the hole the aliens had cut into the door.

Sergeant Lancell gave the order and every able-bodied soldier in the room scrambled to pull the makeshift barricade from the door. Once the exit was clear, the door opened and Sergeant Lancell stepped out into the hall, weapon raised.

Gore coated the ground and hall. Something had torn into the aliens with such force it splattered them like warm paintballs. The next thing he saw took him completely off guard.

Leaning against the wall, just to the left of the doorway, stood the tallest woman he had ever seen. She wore a skin-tight, grey and green suit with heavy-looking web-gear. Her short hair was blood red and her cold blue eyes reminded him of Neptunian glaciers as they cut into him. In her right hand she gripped a weapon straight out of a history program.

The colonel pushed past him. “Is that a Milkor? Wait, no, it has too many barrels on the cylinder.” She stared right at the bulky, old-world weapon the soldier had slung to her front. “That’s a shotgun… with 30mm slugs. You’ve also got shrapnel and incendiary rounds. It must be a prototype. A weapon that big is too impractical for regular troops.”

“Are you in command here, ma’am?” The soldier ignored the Colonel’s peculiar interest in her firearm and studied the hall as she addressed the officer.

Sergeant Lancell winced at the breach of decorum then grimaced when the colonel deferred to him. “I am in operational command at the moment, soldier.”

She continued scanning the hall as she spoke. “What is the status of your men, Sergeant? How many can move in five minutes?”

Sergeant Lancell glanced back in to the room. “I have twelve who can move now, but three are wounded and need help getting along. One of my privates is shredded below her left knee. Two of my men are badly wounded and need immediate EVAC if they’re to make it.”

The soldier leaned close enough to whisper, which scared him. “We are moving to the hangar bay in five and we will be moving at double time the entire way. Anyone who cannot hobble on a shoulder or be carried stays.”

“Stays?” Sergeant Lancell eked out a nervous laugh. “They cannot stay here; they’ll die. We need to evacuate them to the med bay and stabilize them—”

“We’re not going to the med bay, Sergeant.” Her blue eyes were tiny icicles as they bore into him, freezing him to the bone. “A molecular induction device has been activated on level 3 with a medium fuse. It will sink this base into the planet and anything still inside. My mission is to get as many survivors as possible off world before detonation. If you stay here or if you slow down the group… I will leave you. Four minutes, Sergeant.”

Sergeant Lancell stared at the ground as he carried Private Fialto on his back. He could not believe what he had just done. Not only had he left behind two dying men, but his conscience had also deprived the group of two carbines and a grenade. It was the least he could do for them after the choice he had to make.

Fourteen survivors followed the impossibly-tall female soldier through the halls. Every few minutes they would come to a stop and the soldier would stare to the side, as if listening to something, then she would nod slightly and press on, confident in her direction. He wondered where she’d come from and whether she had arrived after the attack or had always been here. He could not remember ever noting someone like her in the logs.

A scream pulled his head up and Sergeant Lancell noticed a dark, metallic shadow down the hall.

They were discovered.

More shadows appeared and charged. He cursed the soldier for insisting the last two carbines be kept at the back. That was the most foolish thing he had ever heard. He commanded his two armed men to assist the soldier, but they both froze. Private Fialto screamed at him to turn and run, but he passed her off to the man next to him and grabbed a weapon, pushing to the front as the shotgun boomed.

The Beast pushed forward into the charging monsters, her weapon spitting fire and obliterating everything it hit. Grey torsos blasted into chunks, helmet-like heads fragmented and the bio-goo inside the creatures painted the once-sanitized walls. In seconds she’d downed six aliens, but on the seventh shot, her mighty shotgun clicked. A misfire.

She dropped the gun without hesitation and pulled the mammoth pistol from her thigh, slamming two rounds into a creature inches from the end of her barrel. The pistol reports rivalled the shotgun in sound, but the loads did not pack as mighty of a punch.

“Clear the jam on that weapon,” the soldier yelled as she closed with the wounded creature and rammed a combat knife up through its jaw and into the brain.

The Sergeant raised his carbine at the three remaining aliens. “I’ll cover you.”

Beast yanked the carbine from his grip and shoved him behind her. “Clear my weapon, dammit!”

His carbine’s fire sounded meek compared to her other weapons, but by the time he reached her shotgun, she had already unloaded the clip into the first invader. The shotgun had to have weighed fifty pounds and he just stared in confusion at it in his hands.

The colonel was beside him, pointing and yelling. “Pull back the hammer and rotate the cylinder. The hammer… that thing on the back.”

He cocked the lever on the weapon and rotated the cylinder in the middle of the gun until it clicked over to the next barrel. He looked up and yelped, seeing the soldier backpedaling right at him as she unloaded her pistol into the last two attackers.

“Here! Here! Here!” he cried, holding out the gun and wishing she would stop before the creatures reached him.

Beast slammed a round into the second alien’s head and dropped her pistol as the last one lunged for her. She spun on the ball of her foot and kicked backward into the alien’s chest, stopping it mid-lunge and snatching the gun from Sergeant Lancell in one motion. She completed the spin and swung the shotgun barrel right into the enemy’s face, pulling the trigger at the moment of impact. The last round fired and blew bits of the alien everywhere.

The soldier swung the cylinder of the shotgun out, dumped the spent rounds and slipped eight new shells into the barrels. With a flick of her wrist, she spun the cylinder and then slammed it home. Swapping out the magazine on her pistol took her a second and then they were moving.

She dropped the magazine out of the discarded carbine and gave it back to Sergeant Lancell. “Reload and keep this thing at the rear. You fire only at anything coming behind us. Leave the front to me.”

Sergeant Lancell stood there, stunned. He nodded slowly. “Yeah… understood.”

Beast pushed forward and Sergeant Lancell waited where he was for the rear to catch up to him. Most of the men stared at the back of the soldier in similar states of awe.

Private Holiday had a grin on his face as he passed. “I think I’m in love.”

The colonel audibly yelped when she saw what waited for them in the elevator. “That’s an M-2. And you found ammunition! It’s operational?”

Nikki ignored the exuberant officer and waved the survivors inside. She closed the gate and sent the carrier up to the top floor.

“How many of them are up there?” The NCO in charge, Sergeant Lancell, hid his fear poorly in front of the others, but he acted under fire instead of freezing or fleeing, and that was more useful than a brave face.

“Unknown.” Nikki didn’t like conversation and feared any conservative speculation on her part would panic the others. She knew what would be waiting on the other side of the doors when they opened. As the carrier reached the floor, she racked the slide and hugged the butterfly grips to her chest.

“Plug your ears and take cover.”

A flurry of chrome claws and gun-metal teeth lashed out as soon as the doors parted. Nikki opened fire and turned the beasts to pulp. She barely noticed the expanding pressure inside the elevator carrier, but the others likely thought they had been transported to the bottom of the ocean. In seconds she had cleared the first wave of the attackers at the door. She looked around at the others. Those that still stood wobbled on legs of jelly, but most hunkered in the corners. Blood trickled from a few ear canals. Nikki had not been ordered to deliver them in perfect health; simply alive.

She kicked on the hover drive and pushed the cart and 50-caliber machine gun down the ramp and out into the hangar. The two ships to the left appeared in good condition. By divine fortune the aliens seemed uninterested in destroying technology as demonstrated by all the still-active drones circling above the carnage.

The path to the closest ship was clear of enemies, but as Nikki gave the command for the survivors to move, an alien exploded from cover to her right. She tried to swing the barrel of the M-2 around, but the beast cleared the short distance too swiftly.

The cart, the gun, the ammunition and Nikki flew in different directions. Nikki got her right forearm in front of her throat and the metallic talon skewered it instead. The bay spun around her as she tumbled across the concrete with the creature. She heard the survivors screaming and hoped their fright did not indicate more aliens.

The shotgun still clung to the strap on her harness and she found the grip while ignoring the dozen razor appendages digging into her flesh. She swept the barrel up and bisected the alien with a loud blast. The top half of it lashed out in a frantic death throe, catching the weapon with a claw and flinging it. She shoved the thing off in time to see a second tango looming over an injured soldier.

It lifted the impaled man off his feet with its spear-like tail and chomped down on his head and the top half of his torso in one bite. The others sprinted for the ship, but the alien discarded the dead soldier and quickly turned its attention to the fleeing humans.

Nikki noticed the spasm in her stomach more than the pain when she put her feet under her, and the amount of blood already soaking her suit foreshadowed the information Shogun fed her.

Beast, you’re mangled inside. Mobility is at sixty-three percent and dropping. You won’t regenerate quickly enough in combat. Proceed to the second ship immediately!

“The survivors are boarding the first ship already; it’s too late to switch ships.” Nikki gave chase, drawing her pistol, but she could not unleash and sprint without hitting those in her line of fire; not with being fifteen years out of practice.

Leave them, Beast, or you won’t make it and they’ll be dead either way. We need that drone data. We need you alive, soldier!

Nikki had no room to stop and hesitate. Her mind comprehended the order and worked through the logic of it, but her body did not react quickly enough. She slammed into the alien from behind as it slowed to pick off a straggling soldier and the injured man hanging on his shoulder.

There was no backing out now; no Plan B. Nikki rammed the barrel of her 50-caliber pistol into its side and fired off two rounds. She wounded it, but the pistol rounds did not create the same magnitude of damage as the shotgun.

The alien turned on her.

The claw cut across her chest, from the side of her neck to her deltoids and nearly cleaved her right breast clean off. Dark blood sprayed the creature and Shogun screamed obscenities in her head. She cried out inside her mind, commanding him to tell her how long she had before expiration with that wound.

His voice came soft and from a distance, drowned out by the sound of an inferno somewhere deep within her. Her vision blurred and heat flooded her body. She heard a scream, but it may have come from her. She felt armored skin in her grasp and she yanked upward, lifting the monster over her head and then brought it down hard, slamming it into the solid concrete. A swift kick sent the beast spiraling into a stack of crates and her vision returned in a red hue.

The creature rose to its feet, but it moved slower. Everything moved slower.

There’s no room to reach the ship now, Beast. You have to kill it or it will not allow any of you to leave.

“Understood.”

Nikki rushed forward, closing the gap between her and the creature in an instant. Her firearms were gone, but her synthetic muscle tissue generated more than ten times the capabilities of a normal human. Her right cross was like a hydraulic piston firing into the side of the creature’s skull. She followed with her left while reaching for her combat knife with the right.

She never saw the tail darting out from under its right arm. It shot through her chest, just to the right of her left shoulder and stopped her attack. The monster lifted her off the ground to take away her leverage. Shogun’s voice tore through her mind.

You have no reserve, Beast! It’s you or it! Right now!

Nikki had nothing left. Wounded and unarmed, she braced herself for the cold embrace of defeat. The alien lifted its left claw for the swipe, its line of glowing, LED green eyes forming a robotic grin.

Sword!

Nikki’s eyes snapped open and she reached over her right shoulder as the monster swiped. Her hand closed around the hilt and she twisted, breaking the blade away from the magnetic clip that held it in place. Her arm responded automatically and the alien waved a bloody stump past her face as its massive paw thudded against the concrete.

The creature glanced at its amputated limb and Nikki swung again. The forged steel blade stabbed through the alien’s neck with a crunch and its head turned slightly to look her in the eyes.

Nikki roared in its insectoid face, a primal scream uttered only by those few who had stolen victory in mortal combat by a razor’s-edge margin. With a jerk of her shoulder, Nikki wrenched the blade aside and the monster’s head flopped to the floor.

She hit the ground as the alien crumpled and the darkness threatened to take her. Shogun was in her head, begging her to get up and get to the ship. She was bleeding out faster than she could heal and by his estimate she was at less than fifteen percent mobility, but she pushed against the cold ground.

She looked up to see a dozen more aliens pour out of a hall at the other end of the bay.

She could hear the sergeant yelling for her back at the ship. Could she reach the ship in time? Those foolish technicians had not even fired the engines, yet. How long would it take for the ship to boot up?

“Move out, Sergeant! I’ve got you covered.” Nikki got to her knee, gripping the hilt of her sword in one hand and looping her index finger through the ‘last resort’ grenade on her harness.

Fifteen percent mobility.

Sergeant Lancell stood on the loading ramp of the EVAC ship. Inside, several of the techs scrambled to get the ship’s AI booted up. Private Fialto prayed aloud, strapped into the corner seat along the wall.

The colonel leaned on his shoulder to peer out with him. “She’s telling us to go, Sergeant.”

“She means to stay here and hold all of them off by herself?” Sergeant Lancell groaned with frustration. “She can’t even stand.”

“She will give us enough of a window to lift off and head for orbit,” the colonel replied. “I believe she can pull it off, but if we do not go now her sacrifice will be meaningless.”

The ship shook as the plasma engines fired up and raged. Inside a few shouts from the crew signaled success. “We’re up and running, Sergeant!”

He stood and looked onward as the aliens got closer to the soldier that had come out of nowhere and saved them from a grisly death. Not an hour before he had left two men behind with two carbines and a grenade to allow them to go out on their own terms instead of in the razor-lined maw of a monster. He had abandoned them because there was no choice; because he was not powerful enough to stand against the attackers like the Beast. He did not have her bravery. He did not have her weaponry.

Sergeant Lancell jerked away from the railing on the ramp as if burned by it. He hopped down from the ship and looked toward the elevator ramp.

“Sergeant?” the colonel yelled over the engines.

“I’m not leaving anyone else behind!” Sergeant Lancell sprinted across the hangar pad, back the way they’d come.

He scooped up the ammo can on the fly and skidded to a halt over the downed 50-cal. With a grunt, he heaved the weapon turret upright and slapped the first, enormous round of the old-school ammunition belt into the cradle. It took him a moment to align it correctly and he slammed the top down and traversed the barrel to where the enemy advanced on Beast.

Remembering how she had tucked the grips to her chest, he mimicked her and sighted in his first target. “Not today, assholes!”

Click.

The sergeant jerked in anticipation of the recoil from the powerful weapon, but there was nothing; only the hollow, soul-shattering click of a misfire. Sergeant Lancell pushed the thumb trigger harder and when that did not work, he frantically pounded on the top of the gun and pressed the trigger over and over. He had no idea how to clear a jam on something so ancient.

He jumped as quick footsteps clopped behind him. The colonel nearly bowled him over in her rush to reach the weapon. She thrust her hips against the butterfly grips and grabbed the charging handle on the right side. With a terrified groan, she hauled back with all the weight her tiny frame could muster and racked the weapon.

She immediately leapt away, dropping to her ass. “Now, Sergeant!”

Sergeant Lancell dropped behind the weapon, jerked the grips to his chest and depressed the button.

Gouts of grey dust kicked up in a straight line to the alien’s side and a second later its midsection exploded as the armor-piercing rounds cut it in half. Sergeant Lancell’s adrenaline turned the powerful kicks into a gentle vibration against his torso as he walked the concrete eruptions forward, into the next alien. Several of them stopped and turned, confused by the new threat. He took advantage of their hesitancy and turned his death-spitting flesh-pulper on them.

“Get her! Someone get her now!” Sergeant Lancell screamed in between bursts.

Private Holiday, jumped from the ship’s ramp, his short Mohawk bouncing as he hauled ass across the hangar, carbine in hand. He slid to Beast’s side on his knees like some kind of action movie hero and unloaded his rifle at the aliens. Dropping the magazine, he threw her arm over his shoulder and stood.

It took more effort than Holiday had assumed, gauging by the slow squat-thrust he used to lift her. Two more men raced to him, helping share the load as they carried her toward the ship.

Sergeant Lancell noticed the red glow of the barrel just as he watched the aliens take cover for the first time since their attack. A smile crept across his face and he yelled.

“Have a taste, you sons’a bitches!”

There was a flash of brown beside him and he turned his head to see the colonel booking it back across the bay to the ship.

“Shit.” Sergeant Lancell fired off another burst at a brave invader that stuck its bug-like head out from behind a crate and then he bolted after the officer.

“Lift off! Lift off!” he yelled, vaulting over the rail and up the loading ramp.

The ship lifted into the air and the roof opened to allow their exit. The ramp in back closed and after a few minutes the on-board AI appeared on a screen. In a surreal moment, the digitized human bust politely advised them of the safety protocols in the same manner as the AI flight attendants in commercial crafts and announced that they would be breaking orbit in five minutes. The advanced, self-learning operating system that precisely guided them off-world and toward the nearest transit station urged them to remain strapped in and cautioned them on tomfoolery while in the gravity-free environment of space minutes after they escaped from deadly, metallic alien abominations. The safety briefing ended with some forgettable AI-inspired wise-crack as the ship broke free of the planet’s gravity and entered space.

The crew exhaled for what felt like the first time.

“Sergeant Lancell.”

The sergeant looked over to the voice. The red-haired soldier’s face peeked out from inside a Zero-G medical containment suit that kept her blood from floating about the interior of the ship. She nodded at him. “Thank you.”

“Hey, I’m the one who ran out and grabbed you.” Private Holiday was strapped in beside her and looking the soldier over. “Also, please don’t bleed to death inside that giant condom, because I would really love to take you out for a beer for saving all of our asses back there.”

The soldier looked over at the private and gave him an awkward half-smile. “My wounds have already closed up, so the danger of bleeding out is slim at this point. However, I have sustained tremendous injury. If you do not mind, Sergeant, I am going to drop consciousness for a while to let my body recuperate faster. Don’t be alarmed by my deathly appearance, my Pilot is monitoring my vitals. I will be fine.”

Sergeant Lancell stared at her for a moment, trying to comprehend her words. He glanced at the colonel, who shrugged. “Uh… carry on, soldier.”

She gave him another nod and then closed her eyes, quickly drifting to sleep and growing pale.

Private Holiday looked on in horror. “Oh my god, is she a robot?” He scanned her up and down and then turned away with a smile. “Nope, don’t even care if she’s a robot. We’re dating.”

Max scanned the room and the surrounding eighty yards five times before pulling out his bed and activating the wall safe behind his headboard. He shut off all power to his apartment appliances and routed it to the headset that plugged into the wall port. A glass of whiskey and 400 milligrams of Polycodone relaxed him enough to endure the thin, shaky neural link his home-engineered Chair would establish for him.

Max breathed through clenched teeth as the connection linked. “Where are you?”

Outskirts of the Corthax region. I’ve whipped these metal buggers into a frenzy; they’re ready to go on Warpath with humanity. They just need a ride. How did our Beast do?

“She’s still alive, thankfully. With everything we’ve been through; all those men and women that died at Preston… losing Nikki would have made it so much worse.”

The fallen at Fort Preston did not die in vain, Shogun. We showed humanity they cannot rely on AI technology as their sole defense… and we sent a message to Central Command that the ASH soldiers cannot be discarded and thrown in the ashes of the old world. We did this for the sixty-seven that died ingloriously, with no memorial. With this new war, we will finally have a purpose.

Max’s smile was all teeth. “Command is already pulling in all the others from whatever outskirt posting they’ve been stuck at for the last fifteen years. The stored embryos are being thawed; I’ve already been placed in charge of overseeing training of the second generation of ASH Soldiers. Even Minister Dawn was forced into a concession after Nikki’s successful evacuation on Preston… saving so many in that hellhole. By the time your new friends start invading populated locations, we’ll have enough ASH Soldiers to push them back and secure our future in the eyes of the public. Then, when we’re on every civilized planet, we’ll bring you back, to take command of your sisters, my dear Ryoko.”