Apple of the Alpha's Eye
Flash Fiction
Submission for Iron Age Media’s Prompt: The Infestation
Building the Alpha? Never again.
Resounding clattering of tools blew apart ear-drum after ear-drum.
The level of pain-killer doses had to be increased, for the stress of machinery was only going to get louder, but as drenched in the mire of monotonous labor as this third team was, their goal — survival — was nevertheless close to becoming a reality.
The final gear was locked in, the engine’s physical faculties, life support systems, auxiliary and primary weapon systems, as well as its drivers which interfaced with Headquarters’ software had all been fully optimized. The reverb of the tools was dying down.
“Team 4, rest now. Team 2, flood every member of Team 4’s tympanic cavity with Grade ASAFF regenerative serum.” sounded the operator, dishing out commands flatly from his post in the center of the large cavernous underwater factory. The orders were just about complete, but then…
“THEY’RE COMING IN! LOCK IT ALL DOWN OR WE’LL IMPLODE, NOT THAT ANYONE WOULD WANT TO SEE THE FIREWORKS!” blithely sounded a panicked engineer.
The Operator was quick to adapt.
“Team 1, Team 2, and Team 3, merge into one unit, and join the Alpha as defense.”
This stellar machine that was known as the Alpha took repeat prototyping to get right, and yet the first clue that would lead to its completion emerged years ago, when the enemy’s weakness was first revealed: Their vulnerability to loud noises.
The Alpha was still imperfect. As the giant amplifier it was, many of its own weaknesses would bear fruit for the enemy when the time came. As rival to this underwater cohort, it knew only how to absorb and destroy for their purposes.
First it was the bottom level, then it was the asylum level, followed by the ornaments and jewelry level, succeeded by hazards, and finally the Alpha cut them off at the communications level.
Caught off guard by the subversive nature of what stood before him, the “enemy” opened fire with a tubular metal frame that spat flaming shards at the Alpha. All the Alpha had to do was attune its weapon systems, point its cuffs at the target, and fire.
Nothing happened.
The intended head exploding 195 decibel point-blank blast did not arrive. Instead, the very same flaming shards that had been thrown at the Alpha had lodged themselves into its cuffs, and expanded to such an extent, as to trap him in a series of bubbles that soon expanded beyond the limits of what the Alpha could handle, disintegrating him, and filling the space with a bright blue patch of water, not unlike outside the vessel.
The enemy had nothing but bellicose words for the Alpha, and the teams of engineers that stood far behind.
“How many times do I have to tell you alien bastards? My bottled water is NOT for nanobot pranks.”
Peeling back from the remote control console where he controlled his own nanobot, the parched man soon began drinking his beverage shortly after the nanobots belonging to both him and the “aliens” were dissolved by the carbonation. “Peace at last.”