Extinction (6 page)

An internal unit within the scientific
community usually handled these kinds of security jobs. These soldiers weren’t
any less dangerous than full-time marines; they just didn’t earn the respect of
the REAL marines all that often. The officers were PhDs and professors who felt
that their jobs lacked a certain sense of adventure, so they became weekend
warriors to battle their boredom. The enlisted ranks were composed of
scientists with lesser degrees or students working towards a higher education.
Their schooling was paid for by their enlistment and they would eventually
become officers in the Scientific Marine Corps.

Their purpose was sound; the researchers
themselves would protect a newly discovered planet that was being studied for
colonization or purely scientific research. This way there were no extraneous
personnel and every soldier had a dual purpose as a scientist. This cut down
costs to the government and basically made the scientists their own colonial
militia.

So why send out two hundred marines in
addition to their normal complement? Well, as long as Daria didn’t have to take
orders from some lab geek, she decided she would be all right with this cushy
assignment.

Daria and Davies listened with their
undivided attention, just like everyone else in the room. Daria wished that
Mike had been there; he would’ve enjoyed this sort of thing.          “You’ll
each be taken to planet 08-2897, where you will receive your specific
assignments. Good luck, and may any God that you believe in be with you”, the colonel
concluded.

With that, Daria and Davies were given
transport assignments via comlink and breathed a sigh of relief as they found
themselves headed for the same ship. They just looked at each other with blank
expressions.

“Is this seat saved?” Davies quipped as
he pointed to the seat next to the one Daria had acquired. “Don’t worry,” he
added, “the buzzers have been disabled. I guess we’re allowed to talk now.”

“If you fall asleep and snore, I swear
I’ll kick you out into space myself,” Daria said as she scooted over for
Davies. Moments later, the transport to the journey ship that would take them
to their final destination took off, and so did the rumor mill and gossip
between the aisles.

Daria didn’t bother with joining in any
of the many conversations. She didn’t think that it was of any use to speculate
about something when you’d get the answer upon arrival at your destination. Or
at least, she conceded, the answer the corps wanted you to have.

The colonel had given them a lot of
information but most of it was vague and there was no real substance to even
the vague information. So she let herself drift off to sleep and hoped that now
she’d have something else to dream about instead of demons and Mike.

Sometimes life was so fantastic that you
just had to sit back and look at it to really see how great it was. That’s
exactly what Seth was trying to do as he sat there with his friends and more
importantly, his girlfriend. Seth wished he could float out of his body and
just watch the evening as an outsider, a detached form hovering above and
taking it all in.

For the first time in years, he was
truly happy. Six years was a long time to be in college, especially if you were
condensing an eight-year program into that time frame. Seth always was an eager
person and he wanted to get on with his life and do something more than
studying and working on graduate projects that would bring credit to his
college first and foremost rather than the students working on them.

Not only did he want to start his career
and feel like a real productive adult, but he hoped that when he was out of
school, he would be able to unwrap the last tentacles his parents had on his
life. No longer would they be able to say that they were paying for his school
so they had a right to be intrusive and overbearing. Sure, they could now say
they had paid for his school so they had a right to do whatever obtrusive and
overbearing parental thing that they thought that gave them the privilege to do,
but at least now he could hang up on them and not wonder whether his tuition
would still be paid for or whether he’d still have a place to live come the
next day.

Or at least it was almost “now” that he
could do that. So very close to the “now” he was waiting for. That was the
other thing Seth could be happy for tonight: he was offered a job today at the
company he had been interning with for the last six months. Between the
internship, his graduate project, thesis, and girlfriend, Seth thought he was
going to slip into a coma any second now just so his mind and body could get
some rest.

The time he spent with his friends was
so very important to Seth that he stayed out much later than he knew he
should’ve. It was a trade-off: stay out late and decompress mentally at the
cost of being a little more tired tomorrow, or go home early and not decompress
and still be tired with the added bonus of also being wound up the next day. As
the old saying goes, “There will be plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead.“

So Seth stayed out as long as he could,
making deals with himself along the way: If I stay out another thirty minutes,
I’ll wake up a little later and just not shower. Another thirty minutes and
I’ll just eat on the way to school. Another thirty minutes and I’ll just eat at
lunch. And so on until he only got about three hours of sleep before he arrived
at his lab the next day.

Usually Seth had a lot of patience for
the undergrads who helped him with his project but today he couldn’t tolerate
most of them. It almost seemed as though all of them were purposely trying to
destroy their teleportation device. First, some coffee spilled near a very
non-liquid-friendly component. Then someone tried to start the machine without
first adding coolant to the tank.

And last, someone allowed a fly to enter
the transport chamber before the initiation sequence. Not that the fly would
cause a monster to be created, as had happened in the old Earth movie about a
similar project, but the fly would be destroyed when the teleporter started and
the chamber would have to be completely decontaminated before it could be used
again. Decontaminating the chamber took almost a full day of work, something
Seth was not in the mood for today.

Creating a functional energy/matter
transporter had been a dream of scientists and engineers since the twentieth
century. Early in the twenty-first century, scientists had been able to
transport a single photon across large distances but that’s as far as anyone
had been able to go with the technology. Seth’s working group was on the verge
of changing that.

Seth always said that all of the
technobabble that explained how they were solving the problem didn’t matter.
The fact was, they were close to being able to transport as many photons as
they wanted, to a relatively distant location of at least a few hundred
kilometers.

Moving biological data any distance was
still decades away from happening, if ever. Moving actual life-forms may never
be possible based on current theories and information they had gathered during
their experiments. But photons and inert matter were going to happen and soon.

The atmosphere in the lab got so
emotional and heated that Seth finally called it a day and sent everyone home.
Not long after the lab was empty, he put together a rambling apology to
everyone and emailed it before taking a nap at his desk.

The three-hour nap was exactly what Seth
needed. He woke up feeling refreshed and calm. When he reread his apology email,
he hoped everyone had been able to decipher what he meant through the jumble of
words he had tried to make thoughts out of.

Seth showered and shaved in preparation
for going into the office tonight. His internship would end and his career
would begin in just over a week. He really wanted to get the transporter
working before he graduated and left the team. Neither his job or future
depended on it but it still meant something to him.

A light bulb went off in his head,
illuminating the entire latticework of the project. Seth stood still in the
shower, with his fingers frozen in his hair as he had been working in the
shampoo. His job and future weren’t dependent on each other, just as the
primary focus beam and the reconstituting stream weren’t either.

But that was the problem: they had been
working from the premise that they were in fact dependent on each other and the
energy ratios were intertwined. Separate the equations and make the two parts
completely independent and they would be able to function as intended.

Seth stood there for at least another
five minutes while he went through the equations in his head and reworked some
of the mechanical engineering aspects of the project. A few more stops and
starts later, Seth had finally finished his shower and started dressing.

He sent a quick message to his team. “Sorry
again about today, but I’ve got it. Tomorrow is the day!”

Seth finally made it to AeroTech and
with only five minutes to spare. He was usually fifteen to twenty minutes early
so although he felt late, he was the only one who noticed the time. Several hours
later, he was already on his fifth coffee run of the day. He didn’t know why
everyone was so wired and working so hard but it was obvious that something was
up.

Seth was getting caught up in all the
excitement and couldn’t wait until he was a part of the inner workings and not
just the errand boy. Some of the guys in the office knew that Seth was way
ahead of the game and they tended to share things with him that they shouldn’t.
Sometimes they even showed him things to get his opinion and his help on solving
problems.

Today things were a little bit
different. Even the guys who trusted Seth and used his help before were pretty
tight-lipped about whatever was going on. He still got a few glimpses at some
of the work floating around; it seemed like it was referencing one of the
company’s fighters being involved in an accident that killed two marines, the
pilot and gunner. Hopefully, once he was a full member of the team, Seth would
be able to help prevent accidents like this.

As Seth was setting down one of the
coffees, he caught a glimpse of some technical readouts from the flight
recorder. When the engineer saw Seth looking at the data, he quickly covered
the pad and thanked Seth for the coffee, obviously dismissing him.

Even in that slight glimpse, something
struck Seth as wrong. His interest piqued now, he started looking at every
piece of information he could put an eye on. As each new piece of data was
absorbed, the puzzle was coming together and becoming clearer.

At one point, Seth was alone in the room
with Jack, the lead project manager for the aircraft that had crashed. Jack was
mulling over some of the information and seemed to be unaware that Seth was
watching, waiting for the right moment to approach him and say something.

Finally, Seth made his move. “Um, Jack.”

“What?” Jack looked up and seemed mildly
annoyed at being disturbed.

“I’m not trying to butt in here, but I
was thinking that maybe I could help. I’ve caught a few glimpses of the data
and I know that I could be useful.” Seth stepped back a half step when Jack
glared at him.

“Just what data HAVE you been looking at,
Seth?”

“Just bits and pieces as I’m bringing
the guys coffee and stuff. I haven’t picked up or read through anything
thoroughly. No one has given me anything, if that’s what you’re asking.” Seth
didn’t want anyone to get in trouble because of his curiosity.

Jack’s features seemed to soften just a
little bit. “Look, Seth, I know that you’ll be an actual employee in just a
couple of weeks—I’m the guy who recommended you—but you’re not one now. And
even when you are employed and you have signed all of the non-disclosure
agreements, you still won’t have the secret clearance needed to deal with this
situation.”

“I wouldn’t tell anyone that you let me
help out. I just thought maybe you’d like to know how the fighter went down.”
Seth was pushing now and he knew it.

Jack sighed, and then touched a button
on the conference room table. The button sent a command to the room’s control
center and caused the doors to lock and the windows to become opaque so no one
could see in. The room also initiated the counter-electronics measures that
would keep anyone from spying on the room’s occupants with any of the known
intrusion methods that were out there.

“If you speak even a word of this to
anyone, your career will end before it begins. And no one else in the Coalition
will ever hire you again.” Jack waved his hand to indicate the seat in front of
Seth.

“Understood, sir.”

“We already know how the fighter went
down. We knew within the first hour of receiving the flight data. What we’re
doing now is trying to figure out how to make sure no one else knows how it
went down.” Jack rubbed the bridge of his nose, obviously exhausted.