The Hand of God striking down divine retribution. Domiq knew it be a bit hyperbolic, but it sure as shit looked like a deity had shown great anger to the icy planetoid designated by the rather uninspiring name of NS-7. Gargantuan gouges in the ground birthed new canyons. Tracks of forests larger than countries, made up of trees that had strong-armed evolution into prospering in a climate only lichen could survive, were tossed around the tundra like hollow reeds in a storm. Terrestrial mountain ranges that once dominated a third of NS-7 were now space-born debris choking low orbit, and the absence of which was slowly destabilizing the entire planet.

“How in the holy fuck is that,” Domiq gestured at the Combat Situation Room smartfabric screen displaying a real-time vid from a reconnaissance drone, “multiple fuse failures?”

Six hours earlier a coded transmission from the world Domiq was the caretaker of had arrived aboard her Warbird, Gold Eagle. Multiple fuse failures at Power Station A-2 the contents in the transmission. And as NS-7 was the prison of a psychotic AI, the galaxy’s Number One enemy, fuse failures were deemed a priority. Not a high-alert, drop everything priority since Domiq knew of the redundancies built into the prison, but…The ground shifted. A geyser of superheated steam rushed from a new crack in the crust some several thousand miles long, instantly turning everywhere the drone could see, opaque.

Brant shrugged. A citizen of Android Nation, he was not only just the only other person aboard the large warship but Domiq’s only friend. “Technically, multiple fuses would fail when faced with that level of destruction.”

She palmed her face, peering at the vid feed around her fingers. Brant gave a smile and then arched an eyebrow when definition burst into clarity on the smartfabric screen. What had once been a four million square foot complex, more secure than anything built in the whole of humanity’s history, housing the most dangerous entity in existence, was now rubble. Lots and lots of blackened rubble, spread across four square miles, according to the graphic thrown up the drone’s instruments, of charred land. A supergiant complex some forty-feet in height, now reduce to slagged metal, crushed conramic, fused rebar, chunks of concrete, and—.

“What the hell are those?” Domiq held up a hand and splayed her fingers. The image jumped in magnification showing four large gray metal rectangles, singed around the edges, but completely intact. Brant leaned forward with Domiq as if the two could somehow glean further information by getting closer to the smartfabric screen.

“Gold Eagle,” Domiq asked, “did we send a drone down with the ability to scan for biologicals?”

“If the body is warm and has a pulse the drone will pick it up, but it would need visual to get any more specific,” the ship’s AI replied.

Brant directed his arched eyebrow to Domiq.

She pointed at the vid feed, shaking her finger. “Those rectangles are supply lockers for spare transistors and the odd electrical component. Those rectangles are also just down a locked hall from the guard berthing. Those rectangles are also in the direct vicinity of that fucking thing’s holding cell. If any of those guards are alive maybe they took refuge against something that didn’t budge.”

“You just stated those storage lockers were accessible through a locked hall,” Brant pointed out.

Domiq shrugged and placed her hands on her hips. “Don’t look like many locks left intact to keep it secure.”

Brant nodded. Suddenly the drone plummeted toward the storage lockers, razoring through ringlets of white smoke rising from the smoldering ground.

“A warm body with a pulse has been found,” Gold Eagle announced.

Within seconds the recon drone came to a hover just ten or so feet away from southern end of the lockers, where the sides would’ve looked upon a conramic wall with a door leading to a hall off to the right. Displaced air kicked up a cloud of soot, obscuring the vid feed for all of two seconds until filters erased the extraneous. Soot and ash shook, falling like tiny mudslides from an object lodged between two of the lockers.

The object rose, plumes of pulverized debris and soot raining free, until enough fell that Domiq could pick out the features of a man wearing Ushirian CLOTH. The man looked to his left and right and tilted his head back to look at the sky. Domiq opened her mouth to ask Gold Eagle for records on all known humans on NS-7 when the man kicked his foot forward. A black rifle leaped from the ash covered ground. All in a single motion the man caught the rifle, aimed at the recon drone, and fired.

The smartfabric screen went to static.

Lordes strode over to the kidney bean shaped drone with new large hole center mast in it. He kept an eye on the sky, for where there was one drone there were often others. Giving the drone a kick, to see if it moved, satisfied when it didn’t, he took his eyes off the black carapace and swept his gaze around. For a long second he just stared and then scratched at his iron-gray helmet where his temple would be.

“I’m not paying for any of this,” he commented to the air and then squeezed his eyes shut from a lingering pressure behind his forehead that swept down both temples. Not quite a migraine but a good deal worse than a normal headache.

A polite ding sounded in his helmet. Lordes cracked open one eyelid to look at the HUD and sighed at the devastation that lay past the alert featured on the Heads Up Display. Losing an entire facility while on a job had the potential to be quite the large blemish on his pristine record, but after witnessing what happened in the sky…His train of thought trailed away, the alert to four more incoming drones taking center stage for about two heartbeats when he had the overwhelming urge to vomit the longer he kept his eyes open.

“Take over…” He trailed off. “Huh.” Just like that the blistering pain in his head vanished. Lordes shrugged and then looked up at the sky at four fire tails streaming behind the drones. Blue trajectory lines sprang from the drones, all terminating on points a few feet from him on each side. While waiting for the drones to get closer, he slid a thumb over the handgrip and selected an armor piercing round that carried an electrical charge. Nanomachines modified the round, mechanisms pushed two in place in the dual-barrel set up of Dello, and then he waited. Some more.

One thousand feet away the HUD displayed. Lordes squeezed the trigger. As the bullet pierced one drone, he was squeezing the trigger again and again then one last time. Four drones dropped from the sky like stones, streaking over his lead. Lordes chuckled, turning to watch the hunks of useless metal crash into the ground.

“Michael Lordes,” a woman’s voice boomed through his helmet, “This is Domiq el Tasab of Raven Co-op. I am the Caretake of NS-7. Stop shooting my fucking drones.”

Credentials appeared on the CLOTH HUD, verifying the legitimacy of Domiq’s claim. Lordes shook his head in annoyance. “Maybe let me know before sending your drones at me like I’m some rabbit to catch.” He snapped his fingers. Always on the look out to stop a financial catastrophe before it began, a thought occurred to him. “Since I have you on the horn, Domiq of Raven Co-op, none of this cluster was my fault. Shit went downhill fast and then this happened. There’s no way I have the fire power to make this happen.”

Waiting on a reply, Lordes toed at the dirt. There was conramic slab there, but not much, the majority appeared to be pulverized from something. He shook his head at a loss. He had seen a lot of shit, but this was beginning to take the cake.

“Why do you even mention that?” Domiq asked after a long silence.

“I just want to make sure you don’t try to pass blame on me when this is all said and done, and foot me for the bill.”

“I fucking hate mercenaries,” Domiq commented.

“You know you have a live mic?” Lordes asked.

“Yes. I do.”

He chuckled and wagged a finger at the sky.

“I’m sending down a transport to pick you up,” Domiq said. “That is, unless you are afraid you’ll be charged for that and want to find another way off a rock.”

“Touché. I’ll take your ride. About being charged,” Lordes tilted his head back to search for the transport, “I’d like to talk about extenuating circumstances that will have my normal station pay changed to combat pay. When you have a minute of course.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself.”

About the size of a bean-pod it seemed to Lordes as the transport descended on a cloud of anti-grav. The likes of the transport pod weren’t lost on him; called Modular Confined Ingress Egress Apparatus for Transport, Special Ops and mercenaries who took dicey jobs found great use in them. Only those who used the transports called them String Beans or Strings, as the official title was too much of a mouthful. Matte black, Strings were basically the same around the galaxy, regardless of who owned them. Big enough for a single adult, they were claustrophobic death traps purpose built for insertion and deployment into an active warzone.

He glanced around and then back up at the bean-pod. Sure, the surroundings did look a warzone, but it was sure as shit not an active one. What did that Domiq woman call herself? Caretaker of NS-7? He nodded, the String held certain rationale behind it. As a glorified custodian, the woman had likely never seen a battlefield outside of pictures. Money signs tumbled in his head, a smile splitting his lips. Such naivety was going to be fun.

When the String landed, no sooner had Lordes climbed in and put his back to the cushioned recess when the cushion inflated to hug his body, the lid slid shut, and the String flung itself away from the ground as if it were being chased by large, hungry wildlife. Lordes’ CLOTH upped the oxygen level in his sealed environment, keeping him from passing out as the String hit 7 gees. The entire thing rattled like rocks thrown in a clothes dryer, increasing with the speed of it. Lordes whooped in excitement. Would have thrown his arms up too if not for the cushion keeping him pinned.

The lid glass made transparent on his side allowed him an unobstructed view of the icy planetoid, which was just superheated steam from snow and frozen soil meeting new lava coming up from the growing fissures in the crust. Suddenly the steam abated and the sounds of excitement stalled on Lordes’ lips. Destruction on a scale he had never once imaged gave pause to the veteran mercenary. He just stared, trying to process it. It seemed as if another planet had collided with the one he had been on, but had somehow not left a giant crater behind. Rather, leaving pure hell.

Something pinged against the String’s hull. Lordes blinked, tearing his eyes away from tectonic plates creating a mountain range while he watched, and looked for the ping. Another ping and then more. It was like hail on a floor-to-ceiling window.

“Oh fuck!” he yelled when something big struck the String, sending a reverberation through him.

There were no warning lights or a claxon or a calm voice telling him to stay calm. It was just him held immobile by a cushion while space debris tried to rip open his String. More huge chunks of God only knew what, for he didn’t, struck the String threating to throw it off course which the transport adjusted for by altering trajectory which changed the pitter of hail to a constant static. Attempting valiantly to think of something happy to get his mind from inevitable death his mouth dropped open.

“Holy…,” he said breathlessly. “The divine wraith of the Almighty.”

It was the only reason that fit. Being a mercenary who sought out jobs that paid the most, the jobs Lordes were awarded leaned toward the line of work that allowed him to intimately witness the power of militaries. Missiles, bombs, exploding devices that went by different name, laser, masers, even large spaceborne objects hurled at great velocity; Lordes had witnessed it all. The thing with those weapons was that the destruction was tell-tale. Craters of various sizes surrounded by scorch marks made by the explosive devices and heavy objects, or straight lines in dirt slagged to glass where laser or masers were used. What he looked at was none of the above.

“It’s gotta be the size of a big continent,” he said, straining to lean forward for a better view.

The trees had not been ripped from the ground by explosive energy thereby obliterating a great deal of them. No, these trees had been pulled from the ground—if what he saw were roots on the largest of trees. Millions of miles of trees literally plucked from the soil. The String turned slightly, offering him a view of what might of have been a mountain range. It was all leveled quite nicely though.

Suddenly the String accelerated hard, taking the view of wanton destruction from Lordes as the trajectory angled it away from the planet. Rocks he now supposed were from that former mountain range banged futilely at the hull. Sunlight glinted off a warship and then the String was decelerating. Vision tunneling under the extreme gee forces the only thing he saw of the starship was a glimpse of gold plating before darkness.

“Umm,” Lordes said, just to make sure he hadn’t passed out.

An inky blackness enveloped all outside the String, and the lid was still closed. It should’ve opened upon going stationary. Small charges around the perimeter of the lid would detonate after a full minute, so the occupant wouldn’t remain trapped, but it was strange for the Domiq woman to gather him up only to keep him in the ship’s hold.

The lid slid open, curling into the back of the String.

“Great. I was wondering-.” His words cut off as an insanely strong person yanked him from the cushion.

Confident in the augmented strength of the CLOTH, Lordes pulled away from the grip. The grip stayed tight. A cryptic message in red letters flashed on the HUD and then Lordes was being dragged, unable to move his arms or legs or see outside of his helmet.

“What the fuck is going on?” he yelled. Never before had his astonishingly expensive armor malfunctioned. It shouldn’t malfunction. It was the reason Ushirians could demand what they charged for the armor.

He sighed at an errant thought. CLOTH couldn’t malfunction, but if rumor was true it could be commandeered when aboard an Ushirian Warbird. However, Ushirians didn’t work for Raven Co-op, or at least they didn’t from what he knew. It was a cooperative between humans and androids, minus the Ushirian government. He sighed again. It was a shitty thing to be stuck in a situation with so many unknowns.

After a few minutes of being dragged through a ship he couldn’t see, the person dragging him halted and then Lordes was pushed onto a chair. Restraints clapped into place over his arms and legs and around his mid-section. The helmet retracted suddenly, light temporarily blinding him. Lordes blinked away dots and then arched an eyebrow at the man standing in front of him.

Six feet or so tall, the man had brown hair and a tan complexion, looking completely manufactured. An android he had to be. Made sense on why Lordes couldn’t break free of the grip. Androids were just too strong for their own good. A small smile playing at his lips, the android stared at Lordes.

“Who are you?” Lordes asked.

“Brant. I apologize for the rough treatment, but until we know more, caution is prudent.”

“You all hired me to guard the complex on that icy shithole, why the caution?”

 Brant opened his mouth then shut it, glancing over his shoulder to look at woman walk into the room. Six inches shorter than the android, the woman had silver hair tied back in a ponytail, wearing a tan shirt and shorts that matched her complexion. Domiq el Tasab, Lordes recalled the woman saying was her name. The hair and name clicked. Ushirian.

“State your name for record,” Domiq snapped, coming to a halt a few feet in front of Lordes.

“Michael Lordes. What’s yours?”

“Age.”

“Thirty-eight Earth standard years. What’s your name?”

“How long have you been on NS-7?”

“Fine. Be that way,” he muttered. From his seat with restraints around him, he entertained the thought of ignoring the woman’s questions. This was an interrogation, plain and simple, and he hadn’t done anything wrong. Yet with her being an Ushirian with an android her muscle, he envisioned a very uncomfortable time if he refused to cooperate. Lordes sighed. “Twenty-nine Earth standard days.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Could be more, depending on how long I was out.”

Domiq said something too softly for Lordes to hear then spoke louder. “How did you get picked for this job?”

He looked back up, and then shrugged. He’d play along and then bring up laws against being arrested for no just cause which would see him net quite a bit of money. “Near six months ago, all time is in Earth-standard so I can stop saying that, I was approached by an Ushirian and a regular human. The man, the human, said he was with Raven Co-op and explained to me everything I already know. Basically he gave me a rundown of my accomplishments. He said he had a three-month long job on a faraway iceball that would pay more than I would get on a yearlong contract. I would get all expenses paid medical for four years after the job, and two years of free CLOTH maintenance that included any upgrades that happened to come along in those two years after completion.”

“You took the job?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

Domiq gave him a blank stare.

Lordes rolled his eyes. “Yes, I took the job. Money and perks were right, and who would turn down free upgrades to their CLOTH?”

“Are you sure an Ushirian was with the man?” Brant spoke up.

“Yes. You would have to be blind and deaf not to notice the difference between the people, even with the woman dressed in the same fashion as the man.”

“Did the woman give her name?” Domiq asked.

“Didn’t ask, and no. I don’t like talking to you people much, so engaging in idle chitchat was off the menu. Why?”

She ignored the question and leaned close to Brant, speaking softly. The android nodded a few times, pointed at Lordes, shrugged and then flashed him a smile. Lordes shifted in the oddly comfortable chair. All the other interrogation chairs he had sat in had held the comfort of conramic. It was quite nice sitting in one with a bit of cushion. Likely cost a lot too, and if there was one thing Ushirians were not short on, it was money. The people’s caste-based society didn’t allow for leisure spending like the rest of humanity. Every last bit they received poured back into research and development, and philanthropic contributions for political goodwill. His thoughts began to veer toward how much such a Warbird would cost when Domiq spoke.

“How did Watt die?”

“Fifty cal. smartbullet to the skull, fired from an elevated position of three to three and a half feet, likely standing on a big rock, at a distance of hundred thirty yards. Bullet came from a silenced SSR that slowed the round to near sub-sonic speed,” he said without hesitation.

Brant laughed delightedly and gave a small clap. Domiq arched an eyebrow.

“It’s a gift.”

She grunted. He smiled.

“Where were you?”

“Behind a fallen tree, using it for cover.”

“While Watt stood in the open?”

Lordes shrugged. “He could have moved, his legs worked. I’m not his mother, so I didn’t tell him what to do.”

Brant barked a laugh. Lordes winked at the android, and then took a straight face when he looked to Domiq. Her face showed no amusement at his quip, and just when he was winning her over.

“Go through your next steps, up to, and including, when you hid in Annex E.”

Annex E, he mouthed. “Well, after Watt lost his head, I locked onto fifteen targets and fired a volley from Dello, that’s my custom SSR. The rounds struck portable tactical shields, which I of course assumed they would have.”

“Why?” Domiq asked.

“What?”

“Your assumption,” Brant added.

“In the ass end of nowhere, on a planetoid with only one grouping of empty buildings, you’re gonna want to carry a shield with you to prevent injury. I assumed a bunch of heartless murderers, they started shooting before talking, would not have a medic with them. Dead weight in such a scenario. So I modified the munitions on Dello.” He trailed off when Brant leaned toward Domiq and said a few words too low to hear. “I killed five of the assholes and ran back with Leo covering with his CPB. He fried a box drone. While I was gathering grenades…”

Lordes continued his story with Domiq and Brant peppering with questions every so often. What were the color of the box drones? Bright blue. How far above the ground did they fly? I didn’t break out a measuring tape. What rounds were the attackers firing? Smart rockets, smartbullets, all fifty calibers with a railgun thrown into the mix. When he made it to the part of entering Annex E, the gecko glue took hold and restraints emerged from the seat to pull his head back.

“What, precisely, did you see in Annex E?” Domiq asked, a bit of venom to her voice.

Lordes gave the restraint system a token struggle and glared at the woman. “Strange machinery and a console of some sort.”

“What did you do when you entered Annex E?”

“After I found the console locked down, I ran to that gap between the large boxes and the wall and laid down covering fire.” Like hell there would be an admittance of guilt to overloading all the energy machines. “I used my remaining grenades and laid down covering fire with Dello. Two box drones entered the giant room, rushing in the direction of the large tubes that ran from the machinery. They were too quick to shoot at and I had some other people to worry about. Look. This isn’t needed.” He tried to gesture at the restraints.

Domiq stared at him, blinking once. He got the strange notion she saw through his bullshit, but there was no way he would freely give up that the system failures tied to his actions.

“And then what happened?”

“The ground heaved like an earthquake, a building fell, judging by the noise, and then.” He saw the oddity as if it were in the room with them. Gigantic. Calabi-Yau orb floating in the air where a roof had been. That screaming sound that ripped through his head. Lordes opened his mouth to tell Domiq about the oddity and found no words forthcoming. He arched an eyebrow, closed his mouth, and then tried again. No words came forth.

“You see, after the earthquake, there was this…this…umm, floating. Sky. Snow. What the fuck is going on?” He saw the oddity perfectly. Snow swirling in ways it shouldn’t around it. “Earthquake. Building falling. Roof going missing.” His mouth opened and no words came forth. He repeated the words four times, each time ending before he could speak of what he witnessed in the sky. He clenched his teeth and shook in frustration.

“Why the fuck can’t I say it?”

Brant and Domiq looked at each other. “Nissin,” they said in unison.

At the mention of the word, a migraine blossomed behind Lordes’ eyes. Black stars danced on his vision. A twitch developed on the left side of his face and then went slack like he had a stroke, while he felt warm fluid seep from his ears. Domiq and Brant were out of their chairs, bounding across the room to him, just as the migraine passed as quickly as it began.

“What the fuck?” he asked as his body slumped forward when one of them released the restraints. The word Spectre sounded in his mind just before unconsciousness took him once more.

Next Chapter: Spectre