Flashback - Dodge Dagger: Resistance

September 29, 2040

"Dodge, you need to take a break."

I looked up from my holo-PC. I couldn't believe some lucky bastard found a bunch of these damn things on a single run. I didn't have an exact count, but it was enough to make the holo-PCs standard issue. My father, Mike Dagger, was standing over me. He was about as tall as me, six feet, and had an older version of my green eyes. He was the first to give me a gun and show me how to use it.

"And stand idly by while shit goes down?" I replied.

"Doesn't matter what you do. If you die after you put a big-ass dent in Prometheus's forces, but the whore's still alive, kill counts don't count for shit."

"And if that big-ass dent's still there because I never took a fucking swing at it?"

"Then leave it to somebody else. You shouldn't have to be the lone gunslinger."

" I just want to get it over with as fast as possible. And if that means the U.S. get nuked by the Resistance, I'll do it."

"Now you're thinking like Prometheus. You don't care about civilian casualties, Dodge, and everything you worked for will be burning in hell."

I sighed heavily through my nose and looked down, defeated. Sure, my dad could be a pain in the ass sometimes, what with offering me advice that will probably never apply to me, but now he has a point. When you get careless, you become a dictator. And if I become a dictator, I'll be just like Prometheus: a bitch. I took a careless glance out of my skylight. Funny, how I had a skylight underground. Whatever. I can never tell how deep under we are at a given time. I was about to look away, but something snagged my attention, and I looked back up. My dad looked up with me. I was no astronomer, but my dad used to have a telescope.

"Dad, tell me, is that a shooting star?"

There was a slight delay before my dad said, "I don't think so. It's moving too slow."

I tore my eyes away from the anomaly and dug through a drawer. There! I found my binoculars. I grabbed them and turned toward the sky once more, peering through the lenses. It, whatever it was, was too far away to distinguish.

"So, what is it?" I heard my dad ask. I zoomed in. It looked like...a spaceship. I zoomed in again. Oh, shit, I thought. It was a spaceship. A plume of black smoke was coming from the wing closest to me, and the ship was spiraling out of control.

"It's...a ship," I said.

My dad grabbed the binoculars from me and looked for himself, his nose wrinkled to make sure he was seeing clearly. He put a finger up in the air, and tracked the ship with it. He stood there, with his finger moving slowly. Then he tore the binoculars away from his eyes, put them on my desk, and said-

"That was heading for part of the underground Resistance camp. We need to get there ASAP." He sounded the alarm, then signaled me to follow him. I obliged, grabbing my energy rifle; Prometheus's forces liked to patrol at night. We ran through the Resistance underground, a couple of our soldiers following us as we went. My dad found a ladder leading to the city; luckily, this particular ladder was on the outskirts of the city, close to where the ship was going to land. I think he had planned to use this ladder. I followed him up, rifle slung over my back. My dad looked at the large trail of smoke in the air and traced it with his finger.

"Yeah, it hit the medical, all right," he said. "Hope they got out in time."

"Whatever that thing was, it looked like it was in shit condition, probably an auto pilot," I said. "At that speed, it had a huge-ass crater waiting for it at ground zero. We need to get there fast. Do we have anything faster than our feet?"

"We have the cars."

"All right. Let's go get them, then find out whatever that was." Luckily, the cars weren't far away; they were just a few minutes worth of light jogging. Of course, we needed time, so we ran. A minute later, we were at the fenced-in stock of armored cars and vehicles. My dad unlocked it with the keys and we all grabbed a car. We sped out towards the wreck of the spaceship and reached it in a couple of minutes - a night long journey on foot. A few bumps shook my ass while I was driving, but other than that, it seemed fine. I climbed out of my car and took a look at the damage.

It was hit hard. There was a trail of debris from where the ship had first touched the ground, and it kept going for a good 40 feet. A blue/light purple wing was split in two and strewn on the ground. The ship itself was almost like an X-wing fighter, structure-wise. It had a forked front nose,and its cannons took up a large percentage of each wing. It had three thrusters, one larger than the others. It seemed like one of a kind. I looked at one of the Resistance members.

"Mason, check the cockpit," I said. He ran to the cockpit, and I saw a bluish glass lift up. I heard Mason give a low whistle. "You might want to see this yourself, boss," he said. I walked to where he was standing and checked it out.

There was nothing to see, no signs of life. The passenger's seat housed a tiny robot, not higher than a little kid. It seemed fine, but it was offline. Its ocular receptors were closed. The pilot's seat didn't look good either. No doubt these were aliens.

The pilot's seat had light blue blood spattered all over it, as did the steering mechanism. It wasn't a wheel, but it looked like a short little blue goalpost. But the pilot wasn't there, and the robot couldn't have been piloting; it hadn't sprung any leaks anywhere. I checked the ground. There we go. A trail of blue blood that came from the ship.

"Alright guys, we're on an alien hunt. Pack up, get your stuff out of the car, and follow the blood," I said. The rest of the guys with me, including my dad, followed my order. Wherever ad whatever that blood led to, we'd find our alien...and make them pay.