Siege
Chapter 1: The Krag
May 6, 2096
Paul Binder heard a faint scraping noise on the other side of the concrete wall, but it disappeared just as quickly as it had arrived. He decided to ignore it. He shivered irritably as he oversaw the movement of food and water towards the loading bay. Oddly enough, half of the courtyard’s surface was always cold, even in the day. It was almost like walking on a field of ice. There were other areas within The Krag that were also freezing, seemingly without any reason.
The night’s young moon shone down on the laborers, Clay and Osman, as they moved boxes from point A to point B. They looked to be struggling. Binder thought about helping them but was nowhere near as strong as the two and didn’t want to embarrass himself, so he just saw to the paperwork instead.
Besides, the two weren’t the most ambitious pair, so maybe they deserved their spots at the bottom of the totem pole. And maybe he deserved his spot as a middle manager in Logistics.
But he didn’t deserve to be here… at The Krag. He was a college graduate for fuck’s sake.
Before the war with the Architects broke out, Binder had been a research assistant in cell reconstruction. He’d worked for an institution whose aim was to reconstruct severed or damaged spinal cords in paraplegic patients. Their test subjects usually consisted of rats, beagles, and small monkeys. It was Binder’s job to drill holes into the spines of the animals through their backs or necks to paralyze them before administering the appropriate cell intervention. Binder preferred the neck as the entry point because the animals wouldn’t fight after that.
When they started drafting civilians into the war, he had initially managed to avoid conscription by obtaining a student deferment while attending college. After his third DUI, however, he was given the choice of spending a year in jail or a year at The Krag.
The Krag was a military supply depot located on Earth within the United Regions Alliance (U.R.A.) territory, specifically the California portion of the Mojave Desert, on a former battleground where a famous battle had taken place four years prior. The alien Architects and their artificially intelligent android army had been beaten back in a time when human morale was low, so the victory had been highly publicized and shared throughout the world.
Now The Krag was a lonely monument of something once great that had soured and become old and forgotten. It was the only structure for miles in a lonely desert. The only eyes that fell upon the fortress were those of the twenty remaining souls who made up Unit 27 Romeo, a mix of soldiers and civilians who worked within it. They were recently down from twenty-one when the soldier Laura McCarthy died after a sudden illness while out in the field for an extended period of time with the rest of the army regulars.
Binder grunted irritably when his flashlight died. The small inconveniences were what drove him the craziest. And The Krag was filled with hundreds of small inconveniences. His presence here was a waste. Currently there was no alien activity and supply transfers to other military installations were rare.
Binder would sell his soul to get out of this place.
Although, at the end of the day, did it really even matter? He had no one waiting for him at home.
He noticed Osman moving slower than Clay while transferring boxes. “Osman, hurry up! I’d like to sleep at some point tonight.”
Osman, a short, paunchy man, waved in compliance, but Binder could sense the resentment behind Osman’s dull, listless eyes.
The scraping sound appeared abruptly once again, yet this time, it was closer. He turned around and saw two dark figures moving within the shadows of the south wall of the fortress. Earlier he had seen Jax, one of the six reserve soldiers, patrolling the walls and figured it could be him and another reserve but quickly realized these figures were too tall. His heart jumped when he saw the way they moved. They weren’t human.
“Infiltrators!” Binder shouted as he ran towards Clay and Osman.
Binder moved his long, lanky legs, but his speed was nothing compared to the two AI infiltrators that bore down on him. One of the androids, a delta unit, surged past him towards Clay and Osman with its slingshot outstretched before it. Binder felt a tinge of hope that the infiltrators would target the rest of his team and leave him alone, but he soon felt the cold grip of machinery around his neck.
The android infiltrator quickly came into view: it was tall, thin, humanoid, and made of some kind of alloy. It had arms and legs that emulated artificial sinew while possessing a thick chest with a helmet-shaped head complete with a closed visor. Binder noted a built-in slingshot atop the android’s left forearm, the standard weapon for all infiltrators. Its most distinctive feature was the vertical blue line of paint that ran down its body. The color identified its rank. This was an alpha infiltrator, the best class of infiltrator the Architect army possessed.
Alpha brought its other hand around Binder’s neck. He felt a sudden sharp pain in his throat before every appendage below his neck abruptly went limp, and he found himself choking on fluids. The rod that had pierced his neck quickly retracted back into Alpha’s wrist.
Gunshots rang out from behind Alpha as Binder desperately gasped for air. On the parapet walkway above Clay and Osman, the reserve soldier Jax unleashed a hail of bullets into the delta unit. The delta android did its best to ignore the incursions on its body while raising its sling to retaliate, but eventually fell under the barrage of gunfire and crumpled to the ground.
Binder’s vision began to fade before Jax suddenly noticed him and fired a round into Alpha’s back. In response, Alpha emitted a harmonic screech, then tossed Binder to the ground where the logistics aide remained. The heavy pounding of Alpha’s feet retreating the way it had come would have brought Binder relief if he hadn’t been drowning in his own blood.
Loudspeakers blared throughout The Krag. “The Krag has been breached by two infiltrators. Dozens of androids incoming on all sides. All personnel, we are under attack…” These were the last words Binder ever heard.
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