Extinction (54 page)

They wanted the warrior, or had it been
warriors, to get far enough out that Seth, Beast, and Joker could enter the
airlock while the rest of the team engaged the enemy. With apparently only one
warrior coming out of the airlock, Seth turned on his remote camera that was
set to view the airlock from the front so his team could view the interior
before they entered. “It looks clear, like he was the only one in there or
coming out.” Seth was prepping his team. “He's got two more steps before he's
at our line. When we make entry, get to that control station and provide me
cover while I look it over.” Seth received two clicks each from Beast and
Joker.

The warrior moved slowly towards the
human, maybe more warily than slowly. Something still wasn't right about this.
As his next footstep ended he realized everything all at once: The uniform was
different from every other uniform the prisoners were wearing. The injuries
were definitely not surgical-like as if they had come from a torture tube. The injuries
were small and in non-critical areas. Most of the blood was smeared to make the
human look more injured than he was. It was a trap and it was too late to do
anything but fight through it.

Surgeon fired the first round, followed
closely by Blaze and then a cacophony of bullets converged on the enemy
soldier. Seth and his team began to slip into the airlock and he noticed from
his peripheral vision that the rounds seemed to bounce off a shield of some
sort on the warrior's chest. The warrior was raising his right lower arm and it
obviously held a weapon of some sort. But Seth's job was to ensure the airlock
didn't close or that he could at least open it again in case it did. So he and
his team continued through the doorway and Seth forced himself to turn his full
attention forward towards what seemed to be a control station at the back of
the airlock.

Surgeon felt a chill go through his body
when he realized that his rounds, along with everyone else's, were completely
ineffective. “Blaze, get the FUCK out of there now!”

Blaze rolled over just as the first of
two massive edged weapons came down in the dirt where he had been just a
fraction of a second ago. The blades luckily missed him but the huge blue fist
did not. Blaze thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head as the
warrior's knuckles left their imprints in the back of his skull. Before Blaze
hit the ground, he knew he was going to be unconscious and just hoped the rest
of his team fared better than he did. Blackness swallowed him before his face
met the ground and proved Sir Isaac Newton correct once again: an object in
motion tends to stay in motion unless or until the ground reaches out and grabs
that object, which just so happens to be your face, and shreds the shit out of
it (paraphrased).

The warrior felt his personal shield
take projectile rounds along with a slight electrical shock that meant the
shield wasn't going to last long. In his overpowering desire to prove himself
worthy again, he had neglected to bring his plasma rifle and opted to arm
himself with only his close-quarters blades. The human was faster than he
expected and was able to dodge the blades but the warrior's training was superb
and his follow-through landed a solid punch to the back of the human's skull.
He could tell he didn't fracture the skull but hoped it caused enough brain
damage to take the human out of the fight. He was obviously outnumbered; with
his personal shield failing and only bladed weapons, this was a battle he knew
he was going to lose.

Smoke, a human operator with a
proclivity for pipes, launched an HE grenade from his rifle and saw it detonate
against the warrior’s chest. The shield shimmered and then seemed to shut off
completely as was then verified when three rounds penetrated the warrior's
chest and blue blood spurted out onto the ground. Smoke tried to fire his
grenade launcher again but it jammed and malfunctioned. He reflexively
performed the immediate action drill for a malfunction to clear the problem, but
it didn't work. He tried the secondary drill and it still didn't work. Smoke
then cursed and used his fist to pound the ejection port for the grenade
launcher and then he heard the breach slip back into battery and the next
grenade cycle into the chamber.

The warrior felt the rounds enter his
chest but kept moving forward. He was about to die with nothing to show for it.
Not one single human was going to die by his hands. He was just about to throw
one of his blades, hoping to hit the human nearest him, when he saw one of the
humans pounding on his weapon with a closed fist. The warrior actually smiled
and gave a short chuckle as he again realized that they weren't really all that
different after all. This realization made him stop in his tracks as the human
brought up his now functioning weapon and fired a grenade right into the
warrior's face, exploding after it penetrated his skull.

Surgeon saw the alien's head explode and
knew the fight outside was over. He directed his team to create a perimeter and
instructed Smoke to look over the alien's body and gather any intel that might
be available. Surgeon then commed Seth. “Cadet, status update.”

Seth was still looking over the control
console. “ “We're clear in here. This console is fairly basic but without an
understanding of their language, I can't figure out how to use most of its
functions. I can open and close the door, though. There's a button with a
picture of the airlock next to it, so all of my college education tells me that
one is for the door.”

“Good job, we're coming in with one
injury. Blaze is unconscious. We'll need a place to put him for treatment and
maybe even stash him until we finish the rescue.” Surgeon walked by Smoke, who
was already standing and finished with his alien autopsy.

Smoke was wiping the alien blood off his
hands. “The alien has a personal shield but it's no longer working. I'm pretty
sure it was on its last legs as it was and we overloaded it with our attack. He
doesn't have any weapons other than his blades so there's nothing for us to
take on that front.” Lifting the alien's left upper arm, Smoke continued, “This
bracelet on his wrist has some sort of electronics but I don't know what it
does. It could be a watch or some other form of personal jewelry, but because it
doesn't have a display it might also be some sort of RFID device for access to
areas within the base. Just to be safe, I'm going to cut off his hand just
above this device in case the bracelet is an RFID that works in conjunction
with a palm print.”

Surgeon was motioning to the rest of the
team to enter the airlock. “Sounds like a good idea. Too bad we don't have
enough time to open him up and look for major organs to figure out the best
placement for kill shots. Finish up and then meet us inside. We still need to
be prepared for a second confrontation in case he was just the first of several
people who respond to alarms.”

The rest of Surgeon's team was already
in the airlock and Seth was tapping commands into the console. Reaper, the team
corpsman, was looking over Blaze and deciding on a course of treatment. Reaper
had killed far more people than he had ever saved and that's one reason he got
his nickname. Reaper constantly defended himself by saying that he wasn't a bad
corpsman; he just couldn't save that many people because his teammates were
great operators and didn't leave much to save.

Surgeon approached Seth. “What's the
base status? Are they on lockdown? Should we prepare to defend this position?”

Seth continued to toy with the controls
as he spoke. “I don't think so. The alarm light on the security console outside
was flashing blue, which I thought was odd until I saw our alien buddy out
there get shot. His blood is the same color blue so I'm guessing that all of
their warning devices flash blue just like all human warnings are red, the
color of our blood. It's fairly universal that species use their blood color to
denote something bad, a warning of some sort. Nothing is flashing blue on this
panel. Everything is green, which I think means everything is fine. Of course
it could also be their version of a yellow alert but there's no way to tell
right now. I'm guessing he turned off the alarm before exiting the air lock.”

“Why would he do that?” Beast asked.

Seth thought for a moment. “Maybe he
thought he would be in trouble if a prisoner escaped and he was trying to fix
the problem before anyone found out. Or judging by his size and personal
shield, he didn't think one human prisoner would be too much for him to handle
on his own. All I really know is that nothing is flashing blue and no one else
seems to be on their way.”

Seth pointed to three video monitors. “I
have figured out how to cycle through the security cameras. They don't view the
entire base. I only get eighteen different cameras when I cycle through them. I
can view the airlocks on either side of this one and the hallways that link
this arm of the complex to what looks like a central elevator. No one is on any
of the cameras. Again, this is just a guess but I don't think anyone is manning
the adjacent airlocks. They're probably manned every third one and that's why
there's overlap in the camera views.”

Smoke stepped up to Surgeon, casually
placing the alien hand on Surgeon's shoulder as though it were his own. “If
you're right, Cadet, then the overlap in camera views will include the portion
of the hall leading to the elevator and the elevator itself. We'll need to
expect and prepare for a response as we try to gain access to that lift.”

Surgeon stepped away from the console. “Cadet,
Smoke, and Beast, use the cameras to look for blind spots in the system and
come up with a plan to access that elevator. Make sure we're prepared to defend
that position if we get spotted.” Turning to Reaper, he asked, “What's Blaze's
status?”

Reaper looked up from his patient
monitor. “Vital signs are good and brain activity shows a simple concussion. I
could wake him but he probably won't be better than sixty-five percent of
normal. Also, by waking him I'm increasing his cerebral vascular pressure
before the vessels in his brain have had a chance to start healing. It puts him
at risk for a spontaneous brain bleed. If we were near a shock-trauma unit, the
bleed most likely wouldn't be life-threatening but in our current situation, it
would definitely kill him.”

“Wake him.” Surgeon didn't like the
decision but it was the best one he had. “We don't have anywhere to stash him
while we finish the mission and we may not even use this airlock as our exit,
so we need to take him and carrying isn't an option. Besides, his sixty-five percent
is still better than the average soldier's one hundred ten percent.”

Reaper sighed but couldn't disagree with
Surgeon's decision under the circumstances. He told Surgeon that in ten minutes
Blaze would be as good to go as was possible given the current situation. He
was also going to keep the remote patient monitor on Blaze to keep an eye on
him the best he could. Reaper went back to work getting his patient prepped.

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yes no no no yes no yes yes.

Initial system diagnostics complete.
All diagnostics show yellow across the board. Implant virtual intelligence
matrix chip into Roving Automated Security Construct 3000675. Begin start-up
sequence now.

Lights came on and servos began to
whine. The start-up sequence was painless, as it should be to a machine without
feelings, but it was an interesting experience. The Roving Automated Security
Construct, RASC for short, looked around the room as it waited for its power
source to be fully integrated with its new form.

The RASC had existed before this moment,
but only as a program, first copied from a source file, and then pasted into a
line of code that was then added to other lines of code. The process was a
little disorienting, if such a concept could apply to a program. As a virtual intelligence
(VI), the RASC had more self-awareness than a hand tablet but less than a
full-fledged AI, so being a little disoriented was a usable description for
what it was processing.

Its initial lines of code were basic
programming concepts that set the stage for the more advanced codes that would
be added until it was complete. The software programmers of the empire had
streamlined the process so just about anyone could drag-and-drop pre-made codes
to create pretty much whatever they wanted. You want a toaster? Start with the
base code that every single piece of electronics had, a security monitoring
protocol, drop that onto a domestic user interface line of code, add some
domestic utilities coding, a dash of this and a smidgen of that, and now you
have a toaster.

Change that recipe and add security
protocols, drop in close-quarters combat routines, advanced logic tree decision-making
skills, a bunch of VI lines of code, along with some other pre-made codes and
now you have a RASC.