Asteroid Blues

A large man wearing a spotless dress uniform sits behind a spotless desk in a storm of bodies and voices. A smaller man, better described as a mess, shuffles into the bustling room with all the decorum of a drug addict you could find in any brothel of Novvy Bangkok. As the later approaches, the former gestures to the seat across the desk with one hand and taps a swift sequence of commands with the other.

“This is after action debrief AB091819 dash 1 concerning the first of two engagements by Patrol Group Dagger 6 in the Gallery Maze two nights ago. Commander Sol, if you’d please begin?”

Commander Claudius Sol leans back in the low-backed metal chair, lifting the front two magnets from the steel deck, and props his feet up on the desk.

“Ah, well it’s a fun story. You see, I had my troops patrolling the duct work out there in the Chimney when the strangest thing happened.

The guys ran into an errant detachment of ALEPH! The bots were just skulking in the shadows if the spinning fans and infrastructure. Now here’s the kicker, it was an area not under their jurisdiction. Now, you know as well as I how much of a temper the troops under me have, so our very own Lieutenant Owens levels that massive Feuerbach of his using that titan of armor we afford our Gamma units with and looses a warning shot at an aggressive Kiranbot that had tripped off one of our MadTraps. Of course, the ‘bot gets stuck in place. Hearing the shot ring out, Captain Lusquinos, the Alpha on station, issues out a cessation of action request on all the known local frequencies and broadcasts it on the external speakers, too.

Everything seems quiet for a moment until one of our forward Razors, Hernandez is his name, spots that snake Andromeda creeping up. He decides to make true on the cessation threat and volleys a shot into the hooded machine. The damn thing takes the slug straight to the left thigh and just keeps going. I know it’s stereotypical of us Toth “Connors”, but I don’t trust ALEPH having soldiers. Anyway, Andromeda makes a grim march toward Razor Hernandez when Gamma Owens spots her through the mess of pipes and cables and lands a solid shell straight into her torso, shredding the body to ribbons. We brought it and its “pet” to evidence locker D, by the way.

So, ALEPH decides to finally heed the cessation of action request and returns our broadcast with a notice of retreat. It gave some lame excuse of inaccurate maps and errors in the jurisdiction barrier paperwork.”

“Commander Sol, I’m not a man of infinite time. There are other reports we clerical types need to address, so if you don’t mind, we’ll proceed straight into the succeeding incident…”

[ To Be Continued… ]