Extinction (29 page)

“Aye, sir. Sensor team one out.” Surgeon
turned to Seth. “How you doin’?”

“I’m actually getting through this stuff
but it’s gonna take about five minutes.” Seth never stopped watching his
console. He guided the drill bit millimeter by millimeter until finally it
punched through the surface of whatever was below them.

Surgeon had the camera ready for insertion
but Seth had to cool the edges of the hole with liquid nitrogen before they
could proceed. Even with the almost non-existent atmosphere of the asteroid,
the laser drill created enough heat that it would take almost a minute to cool
off and that was sixty seconds more than Surgeon cared to wait.

Surgeon put the optic camera in the hole
and almost pulled it out instantly from what he saw. When he realized that his
initial fear was unfounded, he settled the probe back into place. “Sir, if
you’re getting this as clear as I am, I don’t have to tell you what I think it
is”, Surgeon said. Seth became nervous when he saw that his mentor’s hands were
trembling slightly. Surgeon saw what Seth’s eyes were focused on. “Fear keeps
you alive, kid. Don’t ever let anyone tell you different. The difference
between a coward and a brave man is that a brave man does what he knows has to
be done in spite of his fear.”

Seth looked at the vision of computer
arrays coming up from the box and into the optical camera. “Well, at least they
haven’t detected us yet”, Seth offered.

“What makes you think that they haven’t?
This could be part of their early warning system. Either their highly advanced
technology isn’t working today or they’re just waiting for the right moment.
And now that we’ve found this, they’ve got nothing to lose.”

“Surgeon’s right.” The general spoke to
the entire landing party. “I want everyone back on board now. Battle stations,
everyone.”

Beyond the general’s voice, the ship’s captain
could be faintly heard, “Red alert. All hands to battle stations. This is not a
drill.”

Seth jumped into the co-pilot’s seat as
Surgeon took his place at the command stick. The communications of their small
skiff was patched into the bridge of the main ship. “Three vessels approaching
from zero-nine-three mark two-one-one”, the conn officer said with an
adrenaline-rushed voice. “We are being targeted. Lead ship is firing a pulse
weapon.”

The communications went silent.

“All skiffs are under my command.”
Surgeon switched to a secure frequency that the landing party was designated
to. “Hopefully our stealth technology will defeat their sensors. All craft
converge on the main attacking vessel and deploy limpet mines on its hull at
these points.”

Seth was already one step ahead of his partner
and had projected a holographic display of the oncoming enemy vessels. He was
touching points on the hull with his finger to mark the spots for the mines to
be placed.

“Welcome to the first battle of the war”,
Surgeon said before executing his final ascent towards the main ship.

The ships had either decided that the
skiffs were of no immediate danger or they were unable to detect them. The
oncoming craft prayed for the latter.

Fire team two was in position first and
held steady until the rest of the team was in position. The alien technology
may not sense the oncoming crafts but it would surely detect the placement of
limpet mines on its hull.

When all teams signaled their readiness,
Surgeon slaved their fire controls to his own and deployed all the mines
simultaneously. He then cut the slave circuit so that the ships would be able
to fight on their own. After the main ship was destroyed, the other two would
surely attempt to locate the attacking vessels.

Below them, their general’s ship was
taking a beating. Small explosions were erupting all over the hull. Seth looked
at the damage and turned towards his pilot. “I don’t think that they’re trying
to destroy it, just cripple it. The damage is focused at key areas, engine room
and thrusters.”

“Yeah, well, our mines are targeted for
their hull.” Surgeon was about to key the mines’ trigger.

“Wait.” Seth stopped Surgeon’s hand. “Look,
they haven’t even reacted to the mines. Maybe they don’t even know that they’re
there. If we destroy the ship now, the other two might destroy ours out of fear
or just plain anger.” Both men’s hands eased back from the firing control. “They
don’t seem to know that we’re here, either. Let’s use that to our advantage.
Let’s see where they take their prisoners. The mines might be good for an
escape diversion later. That was a secondary option for this mission anyway.”

Joker, along with everyone else on the
secure frequency, could hear their conversation. “I agree with Cadet. Let’s
wait and see what’s happening. Get our bearings and then fight. Even if we do
take out one of those things, the other two will get us. It’s not a winning
proposition to sit here and fight.”

“Agreed”, Surgeon said somberly. “Everyone
keep a two hundred meter separation to reduce the possibility of detection.
Stay on my lead. If anything goes in the wrong direction, those mines are being
blown and we split into two groups to attack the remaining vessels.”

Surgeon tilted his head down to view the
general’s ship through his holographic visor. “We won’t leave your side, sir”, he
whispered to his commander, whose ship was already being boarded.

Dig Site One – Further
Down the Rabbit Hole

During the descent into the lift shaft,
Bloom was explaining to Emily what his translation program had figured out from
its earlier scans. “The computer says that the alien language is a composite of
about seven known species. I was right when I said that it sounded like Detrill
and Nortes. Those two comprise the bulk of the language. The other five are
languages from species that we know very little about. All are very private and
tend not to deal with the Coalition. All in all, there is a seventeen percent
portion of the language that the AI doesn’t recognize.”

“Does that mean that the translations
aren’t going to be exact? Are we going to push the wrong button down here
because it tells us to?” Emily asked through her comlink.

“No, nothin’ like that. The AI was able
to decipher the language based on its characters and the eighty-three percent
of the language it did recognize. There is always room for error, but it’s so
marginal that I wouldn’t worry about it.” Bloom was in the second descent team
and was waiting on the fourth anchor for the rest of the team to finish with
the third leg of the journey.

Bloom finished typing in the last of the
command lines into his computer before he spoke to Davies. “Hey sniper, I just
finished altering your visor’s display optics. It’s linked to my translation
program. It will automatically translate any alien writing that you view with
it.

“I can do the same for our virtual
visors, too. If the translation program sees any writing that can be
cross-referenced with information from the data bank, it will automatically
throw that info to the top right corner of your visor for viewing.” Bloom hit
the Enter key to finish the process.

Davies’ visor blanked momentarily and
then returned to normal viewing. The markings on the lift shaft that he, and
everyone else, had been passing for the last couple hundred of meters suddenly
became readable to the sniper. “Hey guys, I can read these markings. It says
that we’re at level forty. We got thirty-nine to go.”

Two hours later, the whole team had
arrived on the roof of the lift car that was at the bottom of the shaft. Snake
had already cut a hole in the corner of the roof for the team members to get
through.

Daria unslung her rifle and took out her
environmental scanner. She jumped through the hole, with Snake close behind her
for cover. Snake took up a crouching position while Daria walked twenty meters
ahead of the lift car, sweeping her arm back and forth to cover the entire
area. “Scans show no anomalies in the air down here. No unusual bacteria,
viruses, radiation, spores, nothing. I don’t think that we’ll need our
breathers on. The air is stale but we’ll live.”

“Thank you, Doc”, Emily said over the comlink
while adjusting her VR goggles. “Fang, you’re on point with Davies in second.
Between Fang’s senses and Davies’ thermal imaging, we should get a fair enough
warning if anyone’s down here.”

Every member of the team checked their
magazines and a few reloaded for a full one. Magazines slapped home and
receiver bolts were actioned. “Team two has Scan on point. Fall in and move out”,
Wilks ordered. The rest of the team followed Daria’s example and jumped through
the hole. Once everyone was through, the two teams formed up on their
respective point men.

The first room was as large as three
football fields and at least fifteen stories high. “This is where the cargo was
initially brought to before it got sorted through and then distributed through
the complex.” Bloom was reading off information that his AI was fed from the
computer terminal back in the first bunker. He walked next to Emily so he could
keep her updated on any information that he might get.

“Those doors over there,” Bloom pointed
to three double doors to the right of the team, “they go to the workers’ living
quarters and galley areas. The ones to the left go towards the livestock pens
for the guys in charge. If I’m interpreting the data right, I think that all of
their workers are slaves. It doesn’t say it outright in the data banks but
everything points to it.”

“Like what? Give me an example”, Emily
said.

“Well, I had enough time during our
descent to go through some personal logs as well as cargo logs. First off, some
of the workers arrived on the cargo ships and were listed as cargo, not
passengers.

“Second, in one of the officer’s logs it
mentioned how he had to continually put some of his workers from the motor pool
into something called a “‘torture tube.”’ That doesn’t sound good in any
language.”

“Davies,” Emily’s comlink automatically
keyed an open channel to the sniper at the mention of his name, “I think you
were right before when we were talking about the artifacts. Bloom thinks that the
aliens used slaves as their primary workforce. That could explain why the
different artifacts were made by the same creators but designed for different
races to use. Do you follow where I’m going with this?”

“Yeah, I think so”, Davies replied. “If
each species only knew how to use a small portion of the technology, then no
single species could overthrow their masters. They would have to get other
races to help out, using their portion of knowledge in order to make things
work. If all of the shipbuilders wanted to revolt, it would be difficult to
take over a ship if another species had designed the computer components and
they were all in a foreign language.”

“I might be able to verify that theory.”
Bloom tapped his VR goggles and brought up a control display, which he worked
in the air with the fingers of his right hand. To the unknowing onlooker, it
seemed as though Bloom was on drugs and swatting at invisible bugs swarming
around him. “I was able to call up the living quarters and guess what, they are
all clumped together by species.

“Now that could just be for ease of
feeding or to reduce racial tensions. Let me try to cross reference something
here…” Bloom’s last word hung on his lips until he finished his search through
the database. “And we have a winner! Mr. Davies, you seem to be correct. Each
species was assigned to specialized tasks and they didn’t do anything else. One
species called the Panzts were half a meter tall and were used to clean out the
plasma drive intake systems on the alien ships. Their size made them the
perfect cleaners. They were all housed in Blue Sector.”

“What about the Detrill and Nortes, what
did they do here?” Daria asked from her position in the rear squad.

“I already tried to find that out. They
apparently weren’t on this outpost. At least they weren’t stationed or living
here. I do see some data corruption gaps that look purposeful, like someone was
trying to get rid of information. Maybe the data containing information about
the Detrill and Nortes was in the parts that were removed.” Bloom stumbled
slightly as he was paying more attention to his VR readout than where he was
stepping.

“That’s odd.” Emily actually paused in
her stride to think about it. She was nudged from behind by Scan before she
began to walk again. “The alien language is more than eighty percent Detrill
and Nortes yet there is no mention of them in the records.

“They would’ve both had to have had some
contact with the alien species in order for their languages to match so
closely. More than likely a lot of contact among the three races. What do we
know about the Detrill and Nortes?”

Snake, the intelligence officer, joined
the conversation. “Both races are very private about internal matters. They do
trade freely with the Coalition and allow travel to their worlds without
restriction.

“The two races don’t interact at all. As
far as our intelligence knows, the two have never gone to war with each other
and there is no present conflict between the two. They just don’t seem to want
to have anything to do with each other.”

“The Detrill are master craftsman when
it comes to weaponry and ships”, Fang offered. “I have two of their weapons on
me right now. There are many mercenary training centers on their home world,
along with five of the galaxy’s most highly acclaimed military officer schools.”

“The Nortes are noted for their commerce
and government.” Emily was searching her memory. Although she specialized in
ancient history of other civilizations, she did keep up to date on some things.
“They have ambassadors throughout the Coalition and are usually involved in
peace treaties and other humanitarian events. So why wouldn’t they tell the
Coalition of their history of enslavement?”