SPLINTER

Androvit Ross pulled hard on the cigar between his teeth, doing his best to enjoy the taste of stale tobacco. He tapped the end, flicking a tiny clump of ashes directly onto the console in front of him. His fingers quaked slightly as he returned for another drag, his throat burning as he held the smoke.

"Damn."

He sat back in his chair, his legs quietly bouncing up and down as his body reeled from the sudden shock of adrenaline. The first bomb had fallen hours ago by now, yet he was still coming down from the mere minutes of raw terror that had followed immediately afterward.

The bunker he and his crew were holed up in had been constructed decades ago. Everything had been concealed underground from the start-- huge mining drills had been repurposed to dig through kilometers of fractured bedrock, and eventually, through the softer compacted ash that composed the vast volcanic fields that marked his country's southern border. Constructed completely in secret, no one on the surface--or looking down through a spy satellite--would have known what had been built into the side of the extinct cindercone.

The base had been quiet for the entirety of Ross's tenure as commander, the only excitement coming when the Waltran military ran nuclear exercises twice a year...but such exercises were little more than simulations. A few lights went off and a phone call or two from the top brass was more or less the extent of it; the twelve hatches that lined the southern slope of the mountain would remain closed, cleverly camouflaged to anyone outside. The mountain had always remained an unassuming peak, and nothing more.

When the first bomb had fallen hours ago, every military base, installation, and bunker had instantly been put on the highest alert--including his own. Ross's installation had been buzzing with activity within a minute of the first detonation, and it only took half a minute for the missiles slumbering within to be fully armed and ready.

He wasn't entirely sure what had all transpired in the hour that followed that first detonation. The leaders of his nation had made some futile attempt to de-escalate their enemy, but when Androvit's radar tech picked up dozens of launch signatures to their south, it became clear that his leaders had failed.

Buried behind each of the twelve concealed hatches in the mountain was a ten meter long SPLINTER missile, measuring a little over a meter at the base but quickly tapering to a sharp point, forming an elongated cone. A mid-yield nuclear warhead lay embedded in the nose of each missile, buried behind nearly two feet of ablative high-temperature phenolic and fiberglass. All twelve hatches had been quickly flung open about an hour and a half ago when the hidden installation's command center had lit up like a Christmas tree as twelve ICBM's began to track within their 70 kilometer operational range. Communications with the Waltran Military Command had been disorganized at best in those first few terrifying moments, leaving Androvit to make the final call to launch his salvo.

As the Southerner's missiles had passed overhead, Androvit's SPLINTER array had fired, sending the cone-shaped interceptors out from the side of the mountain at breakneck speeds. It had taken seconds for the data to return. Twelve launches, twelve kills--a victory.

Hardly.

Ross puffed hard on the cigar, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs as though it were a cigarette. It burned but he didn't cough, rather savoring the sharp feeling. After the missiles had been launched, the installation had locked down, cutting communications as per protocol to avoid any further possibility of their detection. The fifteen operators in the command center had somberly opened a single locker, each of them retrieving a poorly aged cigar from a brilliantly detailed gold box, full of ancient Waltran runes and emblazoned with the country's flag. A gold-plated lighter had followed, and the operators had all shared their first puff together.