4

“All systems are online. The prototype is ready.”

The old man seated at the ship’s command station looked up slowly, and then cleared his throat.

“Initiate the test,” he growled.

The technician turned back to his console and entered a command into the computer. On the ship’s viewscreen, a live-streamed image of a factory appeared, two silent smokestacks rising from a jumble of run-down buildings squatting in the midst of a grassy plain.

“Precision kinetic darts launched,” the technician reported. “Impact in thirty seconds.”

The old man focused his gaze on the factory. His eyes caught movement – a truck had appeared on the viewscreen, approaching the factory’s gate in the distance. The technician saw it, too, and glanced at the old man questioningly. The man wavered for a minute, and then shrugged.

“Proceed with the test,” he said.

 

* * *

 

The truck slowed to a stop at the closed gate. Beyond the fence, the abandoned factory’s twin smokestacks loomed high in the cloudy sky. The passenger hopped down, jogging around the cab of the truck and pulling at the gate.

“It’s locked,” the man reported, letting the heavy chains drop back into place.

The driver of the truck grunted. “I got a key right here. Hop back in.”

The driver waited until his passenger had clambered back into the cab, then slowly drove forward, pushing against the gate with the grill of the truck. The padlocked chains held, but the chain-link fence itself quickly bent under the pressure, and the truck rolled over the collapsed fence a moment later. The driver accelerated on toward the factory.

“Radiation readings still pretty low,” the passenger commented. “Surprised no one’s tried scavenging this place yet.”

“It used to be a chemical plant,” the driver explained. “That probably scared ‘em off.”

With an ear-splitting shriek, a tight cluster of objects rained down onto the buildings ahead of them, throwing off sprays of sparks as they tore through the metal roof of the factory. One of the objects punched a neat hole through a brick chimney and then slammed into the cracked pavement ahead of the truck, throwing up a cloud of dust. The driver pumped the brakes instinctively.

“What the fuck!”

The dust settled, and the two men saw a deformed metal dart at the center of the impact crater. As they watched, the metal began to glow: red at first, then white-hot.

And then everything went black.

 

* * *

 

On the viewscreen, the factory appeared to shudder, and then the buildings erupted in a massive explosion. A split second later, the explosion’s shockwave reached the camera’s location, and promptly knocked the recording device over, sending it tumbling through the grasses of the plain. When it came to rest, it showed a massive plume of dust and smoke. There was no sign of the factory.

“Well?” the old man asked.

“We’ll need to analyze the readings, sir,” the technician reported. “But it looks like several kilotons in yield for each dart. The device is as powerful as advertised.”

The old man rubbed his chin. “That’s the final piece, then,” he said. “Recover the surveillance drones, and then prepare for our next FTL jump.”

“Yes, sir.”

The old man stood slowly, wincing as he straightened. “And wake the other council members,” he said.

“Which ones, sir?”

“All of them.”

 

* * *

 

Through the binoculars, the woman watched as the sheriff gathered up the yellow tape marked POLICE that had cordoned off the burned hulk of the truck, and then stuffed it into a plastic trash bag. The sheriff threw the bag into the bed of his truck, then climbed in and started up. He was out of sight less than a minute later.

The woman tucked a stray strand of curly black hair behind her ear, and refocused the binoculars. She scanned the ruined factory again, slowly working over the crumbled buildings, searching for any signs of movement. Satisfied, she stood, brushing dried grass from her utility coveralls and slipping the binoculars around her neck. She pulled the camouflage netting off of her hoverbike, folding it and tucking it into one of the bike’s saddle bags. Then she righted the vehicle, levering it off of the grassy plain, and swung her leg over and throttled up. As she approached the ruins, she checked the pistol in her hip holster, reflexively.

She parked next to the truck and pulled out her holophone, starting up the phone’s camera.

“Video evidence log: September eighth, 2415. Detective Atalia il-Singh reporting. Southern hemisphere of New Liberia, grid coordinates M 782 003. Former chemical factory.” She panned the phone over the ruined buildings. “Will submit photo and chemical analysis in addition to this log. Factory has recently sustained massive damage from an explosion of unknown origins, on the order of a nuclear weapon, but no radiological after-effects are present. Local law enforcement believes a chemical reaction from materials remaining inside the factory may have caused the blast, but I don’t agree with their assessment. Aerial imagery suggests external explosions.” She walked around the truck, stopping at a large crater in the road in front of it. “And this crater was clearly caused by a high angle impact, something dense traveling at high velocity.”

She swung the phone around to capture the destroyed truck. “Two men were killed during the explosion; they appear to be scavengers, likely searching for scrap metal.”

She zoomed in on the crater. “In short, I’m filing this report in accordance with recent instructions to investigate any and all large explosions in our assigned areas. If you can give me a bit more context around that order, like why I’m doing this, I can do follow-up work as needed. Until then, I’m returning to my regular assignment.”

She stopped the recording, encrypted the file, and then sent it via email to her supervisor.

Now maybe I can get back to doing actual work.