Extinction (59 page)

Almost three hours later, the entire
team was assembled together again on the bridge of their newly acquired ship.
Bloom had rerouted and programmed the central computer and returned to the ship
and was now fiddling with the droid. Daria had come in from checking on Emily
and reported that she was well out of the woods and would make a full recovery.
Wilks was preparing a burst report for his superiors and was finding it
difficult to condense all that had happened in to a readily understandable
story. The rest of the team was relaxing or reviewing ship's systems and data
that was pertinent to their personal expertise and positions.

A beeping began on a control panel near
Patz. Jockey came to look at it. “Sergeant, we have company.”

Wilks had just put the finishing
sentence in his report and inwardly sighed at the prospect of another
engagement so soon after the last one. His team was just starting to recover
from the last few days and although they were the best team he had ever worked
with, every sentient being needs to physically and emotionally recoup after
these sorts of engagements.

“What have you got, fly boy?” Wilks
managed to sound much more cheery than he felt, something his men needed right
now.

“I'm not sure. I'm reading one friendly
craft incoming. It's slightly smaller than our own. The computer designates our
ship to be a class nine craft and the other to be a class six. The analogs to
Coalition craft would be us as a large cruiser and the incoming ship as a
smaller scout vessel.”

Bloom was now at the controls helping
Jockey. “The scout ship has deployed three smaller ships, probably individual
flyers of some sort.”

Patz had moved away from the controls to
make room for Bloom but something struck him as he looked at the craft designations
on the screen. “Hey guys,” he started, “if the ship we are in is designating
those other vessels as friendlies, doesn't that mean they're actually not
friendly?”

Wilks knew at that moment, as did the
rest of the team, Patz was absolutely right. Bloom hadn't updated their new
ship with Coalition codes for the IFF (identify friend-or-foe), so the ship was
using its original codes to designate new contacts. And if the new contact was
a friendly to their ship, it most certainly was not friendly to its new
occupants.

Jockey jumped into the pilot's seat,
Bloom took the co-pilot's seat, Fang went to weapons, and Wilks took center
seat in the command chair. Other team members filled vacant seats and the
leftovers stood in place, waiting to take up a console if its current occupant
became unable to man it during the inevitable upcoming battle.

Bloom reported from his console, “Jockey,
we're not ready to launch. Close the hangar bay doors.”

“I'd love to”, he replied. “But I'm not
the one who did it. The incoming vessel did it remotely. They must have
activated a docking protocol or something.”

“Damn it!” Bloom turned to look at Wilks.
“It's too late to override the command. The hangar is opening whether we want
it to or not.”

Wilks turned to look at each one of his
men individually. “Men, we are marines. We adapt, we improvise, and we
overcome. I'd rather fight these bastards on the ground than in the air in a
ship we just stole. But we are recon marines, which means we have never got to
choose who we fight and most of the time we've never even got to decide where
we're going to fight. Make no mistake about it: we will kill these
motherfuckers before the day is over.”

Wilks swiveled his chair back to the
front. No one cheered, no one clapped, no one acknowledged the impromptu
speech; everyone went to work doing what they could to try to help turn the
tables at least a little bit in their favor. But if you could look into their
hearts, you'd see that Wilks had sparked a fire that would burn and fuel them
through the upcoming battle.

“Get us out of here, Jockey.” Wilks
could feel the ship responding to his order so he knew Jockey had already
started moving towards the hangar exit. “We don't know the defensive or
offensive capabilities of either ship so we are going on the offensive and
hard. We can't rely on this ship to hold up to whatever they can throw at us,
so let's just knock them out of the sky first. This is a heavyweight bout,
gentlemen: blow for blow until someone drops.”

As they were about to clear the doors of
the hangar, the first salvo of weapons fire struck their hull. The three
individual fighters had sped ahead of their mother ship and started the fight.
The blasts were barely felt inside the much larger ship. Wilks looked to Bloom.
“That didn't seem too bad. Do those ships have enough power to even damage us?”

“I'm still trying to figure things out
but it seems like they had little effect on our shields.” Bloom tapped a few
more commands. “They are, however, able to cause momentary weak points in our
shielding. A unified attack on a strategic point will cause a significant weak
point that I'm sure the scout ship will take advantage of.”

“Copy that, Bloom. Jockey, do your best
to keep us between the attack craft and the scout ship. If they aren't ever
lined up together then they can't use each other to their advantage.” Wilks
turned to Fang. “Any time you want to start shooting, please feel free.”

Wilks' obvious sarcasm hung in the air a
moment while Fang just growled at him, “I would love to start shooting but
there are safeties that prevent us from arming or using our weapons inside the
hangar. I have firing solutions ready to go as soon as we clear the hangar.”

Almost on cue, the slight “chug” of
weapons fire could be felt as the ship loosed some of its thousand-year-old
ordinance on their attackers. On the view screen, Wilks could see the edge of
the hangar falling below the ship and several rockets shooting out from weapons
bays somewhere on the belly of the ship. Energy weapons were firing from
multiple points on the ship's hull and Wilks smiled in satisfaction as one of
the smaller attack craft quickly came apart under the barrage. A smile appeared
on everyone's face almost simultaneously as the ship flew through the debris of
their fallen enemy.

Wilks gripped his command chair as he
saw what awaited the ship on the other side of the explosion. An almost
imperceptible mutter slipped out. “You've got to be fucking kidding me.”

One of the smaller craft was trying to
fly across their path, maybe in an attempt to herd them somewhere, maybe to
make a suicide run, or maybe just plain old pilot error. Whatever the cause,
the outcome seemed inevitable. Jockey kept his calm as he flew the ship right
through the smaller craft. “Fuck it”, was all he said as his new ship destroyed
the much smaller attack craft.

At first, the collision seemed pretty
horrible to everyone as the bridge became a shower of flying bodies. A second
after the initial hit, the ship seemed to smooth out and Wilks thought maybe it
wasn't going to be that bad after all. Then the spinning started and Wilks knew
it was probably worse than he cared to think about.

The ship's inertial dampers tried to
compensate but they couldn't fix the complete abortion of physics Jockey was
performing on the ship and its occupants. As the ship tumbled through the
atmosphere, Jockey repeatedly whispered a mantra to himself. Luckily they had
been in an upward trajectory when the collision happened so all of their
momentum was taking them away from the planet instead of towards it.

As they tumbled through the air, Wilks
could feel the ship starting to get hit with more weapons fire. The enemy was
using this obvious lack of control to their advantage. Wilks was still stuck to
the floor because of the ship's rotation, but he could still talk. “Does anyone
want to trade places with Jockey? Anyone? Maybe a one-armed blind kid?”

“I appreciate your confidence, buddy.”
Jockey was still smiling. This was how his team interacted in a crisis and it
was always fun, even if they were about to die. “I got this. I got this. I got
this.”

The ship started to stabilize and the
crew could start peeling themselves from the floor. Wilks crawled his way back
to the command chair and he could see on the screen that not only was the ship
coming under control but Jockey had managed to bring them into position of
slight advantage with the attack ship in front of and blocking the weapons of
the scout ship.

“So maybe in the future we can just
shoot things down instead of crashing into them?” Wilks could feel the ship was
completely under control now.

“I didn't have time to fully evade that
bastard so I figured a head-on collision would keep him from sliding along our
bottom side weapons bays and destroying those. Without weapons we'll definitely
lose this fight so...” Jockey trailed off as he dodged some weapons fire.

“Good choice, buddy.” Had there been
time to discuss the options, Wilks never would have gone with Jockey's plan and
he would've risked losing the belly weapons. But there wasn't time, and he
needed his men to feel confident in their decisions so now wasn't the proper
moment to pose the obvious question of, ”Seriously? Head-on collision seemed
the better choice?!“

As Jockey flew around the other ships,
two additional images overlaid the main forward image on the screen. Fang was
firing on his opponents. “I'm not sure what I pressed but those additional
images are the views from the targeting computer. That little guy is about to
go...”

On the screen, Wilks saw the contrail of
the missile as it sped towards the small attack craft. The missile struck home
almost dead center on the top of the craft, and then bounced off without
exploding. Everyone turned to look at Fang, who just shrugged and then started
looking at his weapons board to see if he could figure out what had happened.

“Pardon me, sir, if I may, I have a
suggestion.” The voice came from the side of the bridge. As the eyes turned
away from Fang and towards the droid everyone had forgotten until now, it
continued, “Mr. Fang has accidentally fired a disarmed missile. During our
unfortunate physical encounter with the other craft, the missiles have been
remotely disarmed. It is a safety feature in the event of a crash landing that
prevents the ordinance from detonating. The impact from the collision was
enough to bring the safety feature on line.”

Wilks turned to Bloom. “I didn't realize
we were taking new recruits on our squad. And why the hell does he sound like
an English butler?”

“Uh, yeah, I was working on that when we
came under attack.” Bloom opened his mouth to speak and then obviously decided
to change his oncoming rant before it even began. “The short story is he, it,
is on our side now and will help us. And I have always wanted an English butler
so...”

Wilks turned to the droid. “Okay,
Jeeves, can you fix the problem?”

“New designation, 'Jeeves' accepted.”
Jeeves rolled by Patz and pointed at him. “If you would be so kind as to join
me in the weapons bay, I will need your assistance to reset the warheads.”

Patz nodded and followed Jeeves off the
bridge. Wilks could hear Jeeves starting to tell Patz what they would have to
do once they reached the bay. Wilks turned to Fang. “We still have energy
weapons so use those until we get missiles back on line.”

“Aye, sir.” Fang adjusted his control
board to remove the missile controls from his screen so he wouldn't use them
anymore. The ship continued to fire but the chug couldn't be felt anymore
without any missiles being launched.

The pilot of the last small attack
fighter was definitely much better than his companions were and wasn't allowing
Jockey to keep the small craft between the two larger ships. As a result, they
were starting to take a lot of hits from the recon vessel that had much better
armament than the smaller attack fighter.

Patz' voice came over the comlink. “There's
a fair amount of damage down here. It's probably a good thing the safety
protocols enacted or we might have blown up. Jeeves is trying to figure out the
best way to arm the missiles as we can't access the software controls to do it
electronically. We may have to arm each one by hand before it's fired. I could
use everyone who isn't actively doing something to come down here and help out.”

Without Wilks saying anything, the
remaining team members who weren't doing anything left the bridge. “You've got
more hands on their way down. Our energy weapons are working their shields
pretty well but the missiles will really help us out.”

“Copy that, Sarge.” Patz was already
mentally setting up teams to man the missiles' manual arming controls. When the
extra hands arrived, he directed them to their stations and showed them what
Jeeves had shown him about arming the missiles.

A few minutes later, he reported back
in. “Wilks, we're ready to start arming the missiles. It will take about thirty
seconds to arm each one. We can arm up to two simultaneously. We have to wait
for those to fire before the next set load into place and then those can be
armed. From the time you fire one missile to the time you can fire the next,
figure on a minimum of forty-five seconds.”

“Great job, guys.” Wilks turned to Fang.
“Missiles are a go, buddy. Let slip lose the dogs of war.”

Fang smiled and brought his weapons
panel back to showing the missiles again. The control panel was obviously
designed by a weapons officer and not an engineer sitting at a desk somewhere.
There were virtually no words on the panel; everything was a simple pictogram
and most were readily apparent as to what they were for. It seemed that
missiles, energy weapons and countermeasures might be a universal constant to
advanced species. Fang thought he understood probably more than ninety percent
of what he was looking at.

As the evasive maneuvers started to
outnumber the offensive maneuvers, Wilks began to worry that they were slowly
losing the fight. Then Bloom turned and shouted, “New enemy contact! Coming in
hard and fast, just clearing the upper atmosphere now.”