Extinction (31 page)

“You’re lucky I was in control and not
one of my students. You may not have survived that otherwise.” The alien stood
and left the room.

Lucky my ass, the general thought. At
least he knew of one possible way to end it if he had to.

Dig Site One – Got Room for
One More?

The escaped prisoner made his way
towards the area the humans had designated “site one.” His anger and disgust
for these aliens grew with each step he took.

While in the process of escaping his
ship, the captain had encountered two crewman who were running late to the
mid-day meal cycle. They did their best to stop him but were quickly dispatched
by the more experienced soldier. He would make the humans pay for their deaths.

Once he reached the excavation site, the
captain removed a small transmitter from one of the pockets on his combat vest.
The transmitter put out a signal that would open the emergency escape hatch
that was in every installation built by Supreme Command for almost two thousand
years.

The indicator light on the transmitter blinked
blue for a moment until its signal reached the proper receiver within the
bunker. The light switched to a steady blue while the transmitter and receiver
shared information and pass codes until the latter was sufficiently assured
that the proper access sequence had been given.

The light changed once more to a steady
yellow when the captain heard a hatch cycling open in the near distance. He ran
to the opening hatch and stepped back when he smelled the stale air of a
thousand years blow by his face. When the hatch was completely open, he entered
with blaster weapons in two hands, a knife in a third, and his datapad in the
fourth.

He swore an oath of vengeance as he
entered the empty corridor. The humans would pay; he would see to that.

Dig Site One – Unexpected
Company

Scan stopped in mid-step and held up his
arm to signal his team to stop. He would have made the “closed fist” gesture
but his hand was still growing back and his other was occupied with the weapon
it carried.

Emily came up alongside him. “What’s
wrong? Do you sense someone?”

“I don’t know.” Letting his rifle hang
from the sling, he used his remaining hand and clicked a knob on his VR goggles
and began to echo the display from everyone else’s visors into his. After he
went through all of the inputs, he looked at the lieutenant. “I don’t know what
it is. I sense hate. Just raw hate. I think we have company.”

Fang keyed in his comlink. “I don’t
smell or hear anything up here. But Scan and I don’t always agree or sense
things at the same time, either.”

“Understood.” Emily turned to Bloom. “Have
you had any luck finding internal scanners in this complex?”

“No, but I do know where some external
sensors are. Problem is there are some relays out and they can’t be accessed
from my unit. The main communications room is almost two hundred meters down
the corridor. If we can get there, we can see what’s going on outside.”

“All right, Fang, head towards the
communications room”, Wilks ordered from the first team. “El-tee, second team
should stay here until we’ve secured the area. No need for us both to get
whacked. We’ll let you know when it’s all clear.”

Emily looked at Scan. “Move up to team
one. I want them to have all the warning possible if something happens.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am.” Scan handed Davies’
weapon to one of the other members of team two and took up the rear slot on
team one.

“I want a two-man team thirty meters in
front and thirty meters to the rear while we wait.” Emily had no sooner
finished her orders when four men broke off and took up their positions as
ordered. “Bloom, Davies, and Doc, come with me. There was a room back about ten
meters that I want to check out now that we have the time.”

Bloom looked at Emily. “It’s just an
infirmary. There probably won’t even be any access terminals in there.”

“Humor me”, Emily said flatly.

“Besides,” Daria jumped in, “there might
be some supplies I can get from there. I’m running pretty low. If their
infirmary stacks up to the rest of this place, then I’m sure that something
useful survived in there after all of these years.”

The room automatically became lit as
they entered the doorway. Lucky for Bloom, it seemed that every internal door
they encountered had a simple push button activator to open and close them.
Daria began going through the cabinets and pulling out alien medical equipment.

In the corner of the room was a large
cylindrical object with an oval opening in the front. To either side of the
unit, there were micro cutting saws and surgical gear attached to probing arms.

Davies knelt closer to inspect the unit.
“Hey, Bloom, there’s writing over here that my visor won’t translate.”

Bloom walked over with a disappointed
look on his face. He couldn’t believe that his program had failed. After a
couple of minutes of tapping in commands to his datapad, he turned to face
Emily, who was staring over his shoulder. “It can’t read these symbols because
they’re individual letters. The AI in my program doesn’t know what to make of
it. So far, every one of the hundreds of thousands of words it’s translated has
been made up of two or more characters. There hasn’t been any occurrence of a
single character word yet. It might be able to translate it but not anytime
soon.”

Emily turned towards the console next to
the apparatus. “Well, let’s not waste time with that. Let’s work with what we
do know. Try to access that terminal and find out what this thing is. I don’t
know why but I think it might be useful.”

Bloom went to work on the console and
Emily joined Daria at a smaller console in the back of the room. “Find anything
we can use?”

“Not really. There aren’t any first aid
supplies in here. A lot of surgical equipment, though. I think that this might
have been a surgical suite if anything, but probably not your usual sickbay.

“I’ve been trying to locate medical
documents that show the physical make-up of our alien friends. Nothing yet, but
if I can find something to add to my own scans of their tissue, we might find
out more about their vulnerabilities.”

“Good idea. Keep it up and let me know
about your progress.” A little louder, she spoke to the other two members of
her research team. “I’m gonna go check out our perimeter guard, see what’s
shakin’. Be back in a few.”

Davies continued to examine the tube
while Bloom accessed the computer. Daria just looked at her screen as
information scrolled on her scanner pad and was stored in its memory for future
recall.

The Interrogation Planet

In the week since the general’s capture,
Surgeon and his team had followed the ships to a planet in the system that seemed
to be a small colony or military base for the enemy.

Surgeon sat in his pilot’s chair with
his helmet off while he and Seth ate their dinner. With their helmets off, the
interior of the ship could be set to a visual display that mimicked the inside
of their helmets. Each curve of the smooth ship had fiber-optic relays built
into them so the interior surface became one large, omnidirectional view
screen.

Seth looked out towards a distant nebula.
“You know, it is a very beautiful region of space. There are several nebulas
nearby and a lot of comet activity.”

“Pretty or not, I just want to find a
way to rescue the general and get out of here.” Surgeon finished his meal and
put the scraps into the recycler to be used as part of his next meal.

“Why haven’t they come for us yet? Do
you think that our cloaks have concealed us that well from them?” Seth was just
finishing the last of his meal.

Surgeon thought for a moment before he
tapped a key to open a comlink to the other craft in hiding with him. “Cadet
wants to know why we haven’t been dealt with yet. I have a few thoughts of my
own but I thought that I’d open the floor to any ideas that you guys might
have.”

Joker was the first to respond. “I
figure either they haven’t spotted us yet or they just don’t care enough to do
anything about our presence. If they have spotted us, then they know that we’re
no real threat to them so why not just save us ’til later when they get bored?”

“They must have detected the placement
of the mines so they have to know that we’re here”, Beast started. “Knowing
that we’re here and knowing where we are, those are two entirely different
things.”

“Good point,” Surgeon said. “So if they
know we’re here but not where, how are they trying to find us? We haven’t seen
any ships in the area and we haven’t detected any sensor scans.”

Seth was next. “They could be waiting
for us to make the first move. And that could work either way. They know we’re
here and where we are, but want to see how we’ll react to this situation. Maybe
try to figure out our tactics. Or they don’t know where we are but are still
just waiting for us to make the move. Either way, I think that this is just a
training exercise to them.”

Blaze, the heavy weapons officer, spoke
up from Surgeon’s wing. “If they’re just waiting to see what we’ll do, there’s
a good chance that we can take them by surprise. Lead them to think that we’re
doing one thing while planning a second. It’s almost like a game of cat and
mouse to them. The trick is to keep them guessing long enough so that they stay
interested and continue to give us more and more rope. Then we hang them with
it.”

Surgeon thought for a few minutes while
the rest of the commandos clogged the comlink with chatter about Blaze’s idea.
Finally, he came to a decision. “I have two thoughts. First is that we really
have nothing to lose by trying out our theories. Even if we are undetected, we
couldn’t make it home under our own power. Second, if we’re right, I think that
Blaze’s idea has a chance.

“I want the other three team leaders to
come up with flight plans that will keep our friends wondering what the hell is
going on. Plan sensor sweeps of the area. I want to get as close to those ships
and the planet below as we can to get some good intelligence. They may stay
curious just long enough for us to sneak a couple of ships in.

“I’ll take any ideas, no matter how
crazy, on how to rescue our captured crew and obtain a ship to get us home.
We’ll let the rest of the fleet worry about fighting the war. Keep the comlink
clear for the next hour and then we’ll compare notes.”

The small spaces inside each ship
suddenly came alive with activity. Unfinished meals were put in the recycler
and datapads were pulled out. Surgeon smiled for a moment as he thought about
home. Everyone he cared about already thought that he was dead, and that was all
right, because he didn’t think that he was going home this time.

Dig Site One – Here We Go Again

“Hold up,” Scan and Fang said nearly at
the same time. Fang continued, “One of those aliens is nearby. I can smell him.”

Wilks looked at Scan. “I can sense his
hate, Sarge. He’s pissed off, but I think that there’s only one of them.”

Wilks took another look at his
surroundings. Not much of a defensive position in a hallway without rooms to
fight from. There was a corner up ahead and the hallway shortened by about half
a meter where the turn was. A man could hide above the corner in the small
space and ambush whoever came from around the other side.

“Snake, get out your pitons and put two
in each wall on either side of the hallway just above the corner. Make sure
that Fang will be able to hold onto one with each hand and use the other two as
foot rests.” Wilks turned to the others in the group.

“The rest of us will sit down at the end
of this hallway and act as bait. Either his scanner will detect us or he’ll see
us as he comes down the hall. Either way, he should be more interested in us
sitting ducks than to paying too much attention to the area above him. I’m sure“—
or
rather hope
, he thought—“that he thinks the element of surprise is on his
side.”

Snake finished the rigging with the help
of Fang, who immediately got into position above the hallway. Wilks turned with
an afterthought. “Let’s try to take him alive. Maybe he’ll be more willing to
talk than our last friend was. Go for leg and arm shots to disable. I don’t
care if the fucker needs a wheelchair for the rest of his life; I just want him
alive.”

Fang lay suspended above the hallway
with his muscles tense with the strain of his weight and the anticipation of
battle. He could now hear as well as smell his enemy approaching and he knew
that the time was near. Ten meters. Eight. Six. Four. He repositioned slightly
for a better angle—or was it just nerves? Two meters. The prey was slowing
before the curve of the hallway. Did he sense the ambush or was he just being
cautious at a blind intersection? One meter. Almost in the kill zone. The alien
rounded the corner, bringing his weapon to bear on the decoys at the end of the
hall.

A bright flash of plasma shot from his
weapon at the same time Fang dropped from his perch and landed square on the
alien’s back. The blow made his shot go high and Fang’s momentum dropped them
both to the ground. The would-be attacker lay motionless.

Wilks and the rest of the team came
running down the corridor. Scan was the first to speak up. “Uh, pretty
anticlimactic, don’t you think? I mean one shot goes high and we win.”

Wilks looked at him with a sour
expression. “If you’d like, I could start shooting at you if that would make
you feel better. Take your blessings as they come.”

No sooner had Wilks finished speaking
when the alien came suddenly to life again. A foot attached to a monstrous-sized
leg hit Snake square in the face and threw him several meters back. A small
hand weapon was produced from the alien’s left lower arm and with a precision
shot, took out Martinez’ left eye and most of his brain.