Extinction (12 page)

The captain surmised that Supreme
Command was hoping that these humans would discover the fate of their lost
colony for them. Why waste their precious time on research when someone else
could do it for them? That’s how they always worked—let someone else do it.
They stuck to conquest and war, and allowed everyone else to do the rest.
Everyone was good at something, even if it wasn’t an important something, so
why not let them do it? It was easier than trying to learn how to do it
yourself. It had been that way for countless millennia. He suddenly remembered
a phrase that had been written in one of the human’s textbooks that they had
retrieved: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” For a species that he felt was
subpar to his, the captain thought that they at least agreed on one thing.

The energy sensor indicator light on the
lower left of the captain’s command screen suddenly lit up. For a brief moment,
he thought that an insubordinate had gotten twitchy during a firing drill and
accidentally launched a torpedo to the surface. However, the captain knew
better. No one on his ship would make that kind of error; if it had happened,
it was purposeful and that meant death to the accused.

“What the hell was that energy
signature!” the captain barked to his operations officer.

“We’re trying to figure that out now,
sir. I can’t confirm it but I believe they found a weapons cache and the self-destruct
module went into effect.”

“Ah, that’s why the energy signature is
our own.” But nonetheless, the captain was still pulling up the ship’s weapons
log to see whether any of his armament was missing. He found that he had a full
inventory and was satisfied with his operations officer’s assessment. “Communications,
send a message to Supreme Command notifying of this latest,”—what did the
humans call it? Ah yes—”cluster fuck. And request further orders.”

At this rate, the captain thought
disgustedly, there wouldn’t be anyone left for his crew to do battle with. Not
that a fight with these humans would take very long, but it would improve
morale. What slugs these creatures were.

Dig Site One – Ooops

The explosion knocked Daria on her ass,
which wouldn’t have been too bad if her ass hadn’t been pointed towards a two-meter
deep excavation hole at the time. Although she constantly complained that her
reflexes had become sluggish from this planetside duty, she was still out of
the hole in a flash with her assault rifle in one hand and medical pack in the
other.   “What in the hell was that!” she yelled to Davies, who was already at
her side with his weapon also at the ready.

“I don’t know. Where are we going,
anyway? I don’t see a fire; I don’t even know where the explosion was. I just
got knocked on my butt and then I heard it.”

They both stopped and Daria realized
that he was right. They didn’t even know where they were going. Then, as though
answering their question, Emily came up from behind in an air car.

“Get in! There was an explosion three
kilometers away at the secondary excavation site!” As Daria got in, she tried
to take control of the transport—it was just in her nature—but to her surprise,
Emily gave her a dismissing wave to the co-pilot’s seat.

Daria was gaining more respect for this
woman all the time. Emily was eight years her junior at the young age of
twenty-four, but she never seemed to care. In fact, Emily never asked Daria how
old she was.

“Three kilometers! What nuclear device
went off and who launched it?!” Daria was pulling up the air car’s sensors to
detect any radiation that might be harmful and was surprised when she found
none. Not one single trace of abnormal radiation. What could have knocked her
on her can at three kilometers and not be nuclear in nature?

At a hundred and fifty kilometers per
hour, Emily was handling the car as though she were out on a Sunday drive. This
girl could drive, Daria thought. At this speed, they would reach the site in
less than two minutes. Thankfully, there was no nuclear signature, Daria
thought, because if there had been they would have already been radiated to the
teeth with how fast they had reached their destination.

Well, it couldn’t really be called a
site anymore. It was gone. A five hundred meter-radius area had been completely
wiped clean of all vegetation. A ring of boulders and smaller rocks encompassed
the site at about two hundred meters. The rocks had been pushed back by the
blast until the force wasn’t strong enough to push them any farther. The area
immediately surrounding the newly formed crater was smooth rock that had been
under the five meters or so of soil that was covering it just moments ago.

Daria put her medical pack and weapon
down on the deck. She wouldn’t need either now. No one could have survived that
blast and whoever initiated it wouldn’t be stupid enough to be close by when
their weapon went off. Emily landed the air car near the mouth of the crater
and checked a seismic sensor reading to be sure they were on stable ground
before exiting the car.

“C’mon. Let’s see what happened.” Emily
seemed to be the only one who could talk. Davies exited the car from the rear
and took a handheld sensor array from the bed of the car. He took it to the
edge of the crater and keyed his comlink to the operations center.

“Command center, this is Sergeant Davies
from site one. I’m at site two with el-tee Riley and Petty Officer O’Connor.
Did you register that explosion?” Of course they had and he knew it. But he had
to be sure; maybe the REMF back at base was sleeping or jerking off to a
magazine in the bathroom when he should’ve been at his sensor post. Of course,
even then, he would’ve fallen into the toilet when that shockwave hit.

“Affirmative, Sergeant. We are sending
out reinforcement troops to your position. Can you give an estimate of enemy
origin and size of attacking force?” He seemed so cold and formal. Davies knew
that whoever this guy was, he had never been in any battle other than on a
video game. Anyone with field time would’ve at least seemed a little concerned for
their comrades’ well-being.

“Negative, command. We don’t think that
it was an attack. There is no sign of hostile forces present. Just a big, no,
make that a huge hole where site two used to be. We need a full scan team out
here ASAP to search for survivors and a clue as to what happened.” Davies
looked at Daria and shrugged. “Hey, I know that no one could’ve survived this
but I’d want them to look just in case if I had been here. Besides, Flusner was
posted here.”

Daria’s shoulders slumped a little. Flusner
had been a good friend for many years. She had patched him up more than once in
a battle but she knew that even she couldn’t do anything for him this time.

Emily’s head cocked to the side as she
received a message on her comlink. “Yes, I concur with Corporal Davies’
transmission. Get those teams out here now. And by the way, don’t ever question
my people again! If you’d get off your ass once in a while and stopped staring
at your console, you might learn something from these marines!” She hoped that
the way she had said “marines” would let that operations puke know that she
didn’t consider him a real marine.

Probably some lab geek, she thought.
Going by the book with no room for improvisation. When there was a senior
ranking officer on site, they were supposed to get confirmation orders before
following those of an enlisted man. What bull, she thought.

“Yes, ma’am! Right away!”

She gave Davies a little smile. “Those
REMF’s—why can’t they just listen to us field operatives?”

“I don’t know, Lieutenant, but I don’t
think he’ll make that mistake twice. You are becoming one hellava salty dog.”
Davies had finished setting up his short-range scanner when he saw Daria
getting repelling gear from the car. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“The sensors indicate no residual heat
or radiation. The bottom is two kilometers down with updrafts that won’t allow
any air vehicle to get down there. Besides, it’s a walk in the park.” Too easy,
she thought. It worried her a little. The walls of the hole were rock, but
smooth rock. It was almost as though it was prefabricated and the explosion
just blew everything out of the man, or whatever, made hole.

She knew it wasn’t natural and her
curiosity was getting the best of her. Her friend died in that hole and she
wanted to know why.

“Wait a minute”, Emily warned. “I have a
life sign, faint but there. Almost two kilometers in that direction.” She
pointed towards the opposite side of the hole that they had come in on.

Well, curious or not, the hole would
have to wait. Daria jumped back into the air car and the three soldiers began
towards their fallen comrade. As they departed, the sensor team was arriving
and Emily was giving them orders as to where and what she wanted scanned for
first. Again with skill Daria had not seen the rival of, Emily got to the
wounded soldier in less than a minute.

He was a mess, what was left of him.
Daria knew she couldn’t save him but that never stopped her before. One of his
legs was missing and the other, although not missing, was not attached, either.
It was sitting next to him, held on by a small piece of trouser that hadn’t
ripped off yet. He had his surveying pole stuck deep within his chest and part
of his lung was on the ground behind him. Most of his facial tissue had been
worn off from what Daria guessed was a couple hundred meters of scraping the
ground from the blast of the explosion. But he was breathing and that meant
that she would at least try to save him.

Not much had changed in field medicine
in probably the last five hundred or so years. First things first. “Get me an
oxygen tank while I work on finding any major life threats.” This was said to
no one in particular because she just knew that it would get done by one of her
two colleagues. The oxygen arrived as Daria finished putting a tube through the
victim’s throat. His mouth was almost non-existent but she had to get him
oxygen somehow and that meant through his trachea. He was so far gone that she
didn’t even need sedatives for what was normally an excruciatingly painful
procedure.

Daria glanced at Emily and was surprised
at how well her friend was handling herself. You never know how someone will
react in their first trauma situation. “What can I do?” Emily almost pleaded.

“Put a tourniquet on both legs and
tighten them until the bleeding stops. Davies, put together two IV sets for me.
I need to get this guy some fluid; he’s already in major hypovolemic shock.”
And Daria added to Emily with just a look, you can also pray.

Daria had set her comlink to the command
frequency. In medical emergencies, the command center would route all
transmissions to a field medical officer, who would listen in and give advice as
well as coordinate the medical evacuation. That was one thing that was nice
about an assignment like this: you had a doctor to back you up. Not that Daria
needed it, but it was nice not to have coordinate extraction and medical
treatment at the same time. The doctor usually kept his mouth shut anyway
because he knew what a corpsman could do. He would only add things if he felt
it was really important.

Right now Daria was receiving a
transmission from medical control. “Transport is twenty seconds out. Keep up
the good work until then. We have a full trauma and surgery suite on board with
a full staff. Nice to be funded for once, isn’t it, Doc?”            

Daria liked someone who could stay light
even in a bad situation; she’d have to talk with whoever this guy was later.
And yes, it was nice to be funded. Her patient just might actually make it with
a full team on its way. You usually didn’t get that in a combat zone. But then
again, this wasn’t a battlezone, or at least wasn’t supposed to be.

The evacuation team arrived as Daria was
placing the second IV in the external jugular vein. The placement was set and
the fluids bolused in as fast as possible. An air stretcher was placed under
the victim and he was hauled into the awaiting ship. Daria followed while Emily
and Davies stayed outside to put their gear back together.

Inside the suite, Daria was calmly
giving orders to other corpsman and doctors alike. “We need hemo-synth
immediately infused at forty degrees Celsius and don’t stop until we actually
have a blood pressure back.”

Hemo-synth was another wonder of modern
medicine that Daria usually didn’t have the privilege of using in the field. Specially
designed for each species within the Coalition, it allowed the synthetic
cellular tissue to absorb and disburse whatever gas element the patient needed
to sustain life. It also acted as a volume expander to increase the amount of
fluid within the patient’s body after a major blood loss. It was the difference
between life and death for this poor soul.

Daria put on a sterile surgical gown and
gloves and began to open the chest wound to extract the impaled object. Using
an x-ray visor, she was able to see the bony structures and tissue masses near
the survey pole. The doctors assisted her efforts, knowing that she was
obviously as competent as they could’ve hoped to be in her place. “Someone get
me that leg from outside and get it ready for reattachment.”