Extinction (68 page)

“The first team will move into their
final hall first while the second team holds back. If there are defenders in
this hallway, then we can assume they will also be at the secondary breach
point. If they are present, we don't want the second team setting off their
defense and warning the main interior defenders of our plan.”

Surgeon finished the plan with Cadet and
Joker and then the rest of the team. “If there are defenders at these points,
hopefully our main assault will draw the defenders from the secondary hallway
into the main structure here.” He pointed at the map again.

Seth jumped in. “Reaper found some of
our weapons in a nearby room. It looks as though they took some from the ship
to study them. The fantastic thing is they took some heavy weapons, including
explosives and launchers. If team one meets resistance in their hallway, then
team two will begin their assault with a heavy barrage of those explosives.
With luck, we won't have to fire a single shot at the secondary breach point.”

Ammunition from the recovered weapons
was being passed out along with explosives and a few launchers. From the time
the map was found and the teams were on the move again, it had been less than
ten minutes. Seth was leading the secondary team with Surgeon and Joker on the
primary. They were so close to their objective but none was prepared for what
they were about to step into.

~

The warrior in charge walked through his
brothers' positions and made minor adjustments to them as he passed by. Fields
of fire that seemed to overlap from a fighter's position always looked
different from another perspective and their leader adjusted them accordingly.

The prisoners were still all in their
torture tubes but the torturing had been stopped when the first alarm was
tripped inside the base. The leader had been notified immediately when the
humans set off the alarm on the first control panel outside the base. He
immediately silenced the interior alarms and allowed them to move somewhat
freely through the base. He wanted his men to be able to fight for their own
practice and also for his own need to learn about his enemy's abilities.

So far the leader was impressed. He had
been involved in the very first raid of the humans' colonies but his
involvement had been limited to the supervision of the transport torture tubes
on the primary prison barge. He had witnessed some of the assault via the video
link that went through every ship but that was never the same as the real
thing.

The humans, and a couple of other mutt
races, currently assaulting his base were obviously of much higher training
than anyone who had been at any of the outposts. Even the prisoners he
currently had from the scout ship they had taken were not of the same caliber
as the forces now pushing towards him and his brothers.

The main chamber of the torture well was
the last structure of the complex that sat at ground level. There were
elevators, ladders, and a single spiral staircase that went twenty levels
lower. Each level of the circular structure housed a variety of torture tubes,
surgical suites, dissection tables, and other assorted atrocities.

Each station of every level could be
observed from the main floor, which contained the heart and brains of the
operation. The bulk of the leader's forces were on the main level, waiting for
the inevitable assault. He could've fought on any of the levels below that were
filled with the crew from the enemy vessel but he didn't want to risk their
lives. Not because he cared about them at all, but he had found many unique
subjects among the crew and he wasn't quite finished with them yet.

One warrior had suggested fighting from
the lower levels and using the subjects as shields to slow down the assaulting
forces. That warrior was summarily killed with a single sweep of the leader's
blade that removed head from neck. If the warrior was too scared to fight with
honor, then he was too scared to live at all. The leader had planned to use his
prisoners during the fight but not in that way. The leader knew he could win
this fight but he hoped to gain some more knowledge from his enemy before they
died.

The monitors clearly showed the hallways
leading to the torture well. The team was advancing much as he thought they
would. The leader switched the monitors to show as many individual torture
tubes as he had screens. Each monitor was focused on the face of the tube's
occupant. Each also had a picture-in-picture of a wound that the tube was
working on before its efforts had been halted. The faces for now were calm as
the prisoners were given this brief respite from their pain. The leader was
ready for the assault and he couldn't wait for his enemies to see the faces of
their shipmates as the torture tubes resumed their tasks, all at the same time.

The monitors switched from the view of
the hallway to the faces of the victims in the torture tubes...

~

A few more steps and Surgeon gave the
signal for the team to split in to two assaulting forces. Seth took his team to
the left and held at the designated point in the hallway. One of his men passed
up a fiber line that would allow them to see around the corner without exposing
themselves. Seth waved it off, though he appreciated the forward thinking of
his men. Although the fiber camera wasn't much larger than a few strands of
hair, Seth didn't want to risk being spotted even if the chance was a near
infinitesimal one. The operator nodded once and put the gear back in his pack.

~

Surgeon was on point until Joker pulled
up next to him and touched his arm as though he wanted to speak with him.
Surgeon paused and looked at his friend and then noticed three of his operators
moving past them both and taking up leading positions on the assault team.

“You're a prick”, Surgeon subvocalized.

“Maybe, but you're the dumbass that let
this prick outwit you. Again.” Joker knew his friend would probably outlive
them all, even if he were on point for every mission over the course of his
whole life, but he wasn't taking any chances. This mission needed Surgeon more
than any of the others. Seth would take the mantle if Surgeon went down, not
because he was the only officer on the team but because he was the next obvious
choice, even with his lesser experience.

The team moved forward to their last
point of concealment and cover. The plan was to use a fiber camera to view the
hallway before making their move. If the camera was spotted, then they would
make an explosive assault. If they could pick out individual targets, then they
would attempt coordinated, discrete fire to neutralize their targets.

The camera rounded the corner and a
makeshift barricade was on either side of the door. No warriors were in sight.
Given the small size of the barriers and the large size of the warriors,
Surgeon was fairly sure that plans had changed after the barriers were erected
and the defenders were pulled inside the doorway.

New plan. Surgeon motioned his
demolitions guys forward and pointed to the door. With a curt nod, they moved
forward, knowing what he wanted. Well-placed explosives on the doorway would
provide a large breach point and hopefully hurt or kill any enemies just inside
the doorway.

As the three operators got about
two-thirds of the way down the hall, two auto turrets rose from the small
barricades and began firing. The demo guy was cut in half instantly and the
other two took a lot of rounds as well. The rearmost demo operator had a remote
charge already in his hand, ready to set it on the door. As he fell, he armed
and threw it at one of the turrets.

In Surgeon's visor, he saw a demo charge
status light go green and he quickly took control of the charge and detonated
it. The charge immediately destroyed the turret it was next to and sent
shrapnel at the other one. The charge also put a dent in one of the doors it
was originally meant for. The damaged turret now had a restricted angle of
movement and could only cover about three-quarters of the hallway.

Reaper saw the turret's limitation and
jumped into the hallway and into the turret's dead zone. The turret tried to
track him and fired as it did so but it came up short. Whatever AI was running
the gun realized that Reaper was an unavailable target and went back to looking
for more available targets.

Joker saw the turret start to track
Reaper and he went to reach for the leg of the demo guy nearest him. Surgeon
pulled him back immediately and held him in place. “The turret is tracking
back. We'll have to wait for Reaper to disable it.”

A pair of CQB grenades detonated and the
turret fire stopped. “Clear,” was all Reaper said as he held his position and
waited for the rest of the team to move forward. Once the doors were covered,
he moved to his fallen teammates and checked their status. Dead.

By the time Reaper had gotten back into
the stick, the remaining demo charges had been packed up by other teammates.
The doors were obviously open and the charges wouldn't be as effective now as anyone
on the other side of the door would have most likely moved away when the
assault began. Surprise was no longer on their side so violence of action and
speed of attack were the only things in their favor.

The three operators on point pushed
through the doors and were immediately engaged by the enemy. Unlike the
projectile-throwing sentry guns, the warriors in the room used the familiar
plasma rifles that the team had been encountering up to this point. But this
time the team had a slight advantage.

In the room where they found their crew's
weapons stashed, there was also a small firing range. Four of their personal
engineering shields were at the end of the range with plasma burns in several
places but no penetration to the shields. The shields weren't designed for
tactical defense; they were designed for the engineering crew so they could
approach radiation leaks and other engineering hazards in order to repair them.

The shields held up perfectly against
the enemy plasma fire and allowed operators to take direct hits that would
otherwise have killed them instantly. Their unexpected immunity to the oncoming
fire was obviously distressing to the enemy because they could hear one voice
above all others giving frantic orders. They couldn't understand the orders but
any infantryman worth his salt knew they had to be flanking orders to get
around the shields.

Taking a page from human history, the
shield operators put together as much of a Spartan phalanx formation as they
could. The next row of operators moved up and instead of pushing their spears
through the phalanx, they pushed their rifle muzzles forward and began picking
off targets.

Surgeon was pleased that this portion of
the plan was going better than expected. The sentry guns were a horrible
demoralizer but he knew he had to put that out of his mind for now and focus on
the battle in front of him.

As Surgeon pulled his awareness back to
the here and now, he became aware of the monitors above his enemies. They were
filled with the faces of crew members from their ship. Surgeon didn't know
every single crew member so a lot of the faces weren't familiar but there were
enough he did know to make him realize what he was seeing. Immediately, he
began putting a single round through each monitor so his team wouldn't get
distracted, if they weren't already. A quick jab to Joker and he knew what
Surgeon was doing and joined in.

~

The warrior leader was completely taken
by surprise by the use of the shields. He must not have seen the humans pick
the shields up; it was a costly mistake. He also didn't expect the humans to
waste time and resources on the video screens but it did work in his favor.

Not only did it prove that his enemy had
a mental weakness in this area but it took two of their forward shooters out of
the fight to deal with it. It was time to implement the second part of his plan
before too many of the video screens were gone. The leader pushed a button on
the console in front of him.

~

As Surgeon sighted on the next video
screen, the image suddenly and drastically changed. The image of an unconscious
and haggard man turned into one of a man suddenly dropped through the gates of
hell.

His face contorted in pain unlike
anything Surgeon had ever seen on the battlefield. The picture-in-picture
motion also caught his attention and he noticed the surgical pincers moving in
and out of a wound in the groin area of the soldier.

If the other operators hadn't noticed
the screens before, Surgeon knew they did now. As all of the screens changed
near simultaneously, the joint howl of pain cut through the gunfire and reached
every one of the operators. The gunfire ceased as everyone watched the screens.

~

The warrior leader was more than pleased
with his experiment. The added torment of the prisoners was enough to stop even
their most elite fighters. A race that weak could never win against the
warriors' superior might and mental fortitude.

~

Reaper was the first to reset his
internal frame of mind. Through the command link, he calmly voiced, “Kill every
single one of those motherfuckers.”

The barrage of weapons fire was
simultaneous and near deafening even through their advanced hearing protection.
Surgeon stopped shooting the screen and allowed the images to fuel their fire.
It was a controlled burn that would incinerate all who stood before it. Surgeon
signaled Seth's team to advance.

~

Seth and his team heard the gunfire from
the turrets erupt followed closely with explosions from some CQB grenades. His
feet adjusted and he was peripherally aware that others in his team also
adjusted. Although it was only a few moments later before he heard the gunfire
cease, followed by Reaper’s declaration of death, it seemed like a lifetime had
passed. And then he received the “go” signal from Surgeon.