Extinction (8 page)

“You’re probably right, Joe.” The general
made a few entries on his console and Seth’s file disappeared from both his
screen and the captain’s. “I’m having lunch next week near your office. My
assistant will give you the details. It would be great to see you in person.
Keep up the good work, son.” The general ended the call without waiting for a
response.

With the file vanishing from the keyword
database, the captain had his answer: do nothing. The captain took a quick look
at his schedule for the following week. It looked pretty clear; that would make
things easier.

Another flash traffic message came
through to his desk. Not related to the first one, this one had a cancellation
notice that didn’t require secondary confirmations. Who was next on the list?
Ralph was up in the rotation; time to put him to work.

The audio-only line went green,
showing a connection. “Hey Ralph! Thanks for the theatre tickets. My wife and
daughter loved the show. I hope you don’t have plans for the weekend. I have a
job for you. Ready for the info?”

Coalition Vessel
Vanguard
– Good Morning Sunshine

A hint of light began
to invade the edges of Seth’s consciousness. He gradually began to open his
eyes, which he found to be an amazingly difficult task. When Seth was finally
able to focus his vision, he realized he was in a stark white room, with only a
bed and no visible doors or entryways.    

He began to call for someone, anyone,
but that was even harder than opening his eyes. He noticed a small stainless-steel
pitcher next to the bed and a plastic cup. He poured some of the clear liquid
into the cup and after a few moments of sniffing and small tastes, decided that
it was probably just water. Besides, he thought, if whoever had brought him
here wanted him dead, they could have done it by now. Why take the time to
poison him?

A quiet and soothing voice entered the room.
“Lieutenant Seth Fields, we will not hurt you in any way.”

“Tell that to my broken nose,” he
retorted. Strangely though, Seth realized his nose wasn’t hurting or seemingly
broken at all. Odd, he had broken his nose before and knew without a doubt that
during the attack it had been broken again. There’s no mistaking that feeling.

“That was an unfortunate accident. We
had expected you to be less confrontational and were surprised.” As an
afterthought, the voice added, “We apologize.”

“Great, why don’t we just shake hands,
have a beer and call it a day then? Let me the fuck out of here right now!”
Seth yelled at his captor.

“Lieutenant Fields, we are going to send
a representative in to talk with you face to face. We assure you that there is
no possible escape, so please do not force us to stun you again. A door will
open now to let in our representative.”

With that, the seamless wall opposite of
Seth’s bed opened to allow a very tall and broad figure into the room. “My name
is Surgeon,” he began.

“Oh, my parents wanted me to be a doctor,
too,” Seth quipped. “But at least they didn’t name me Surgeon. How did I get
here, anyway?”

This seemed to almost make the figure
smile. He continued, “The night of your graduation, you shook hands with one of
our operatives. He had a small needle in his palm, laced with a tranquilizer.
You were shaking so many hands I doubt you will even remember his face when you
see him again during your training. As far as names go, you will find that our
true names don’t matter much anymore and you will, in fact, be given a new
operating name. I think ‘Cadet’ suits you just fine.”

“Now wait a minute,” Seth shot back. “I
worked damn hard for my lieutenant’s bars and there’s no way I’m being called
‘Cadet’ again!”

“You’ll also find, Cadet, that your
previous rank, no matter how short-lived or deserving, is also not of much
consequence anymore. Maybe after our mission, I’ll give you your name back.”

Surgeon seemed to nod towards no
direction in particular and shortly after, another door, this one next to
Seth’s bed, opened into a corridor. “We will now eat and then you will be given
a briefing as to why you are here. Offer no resistance and no one will harm
you. Agreed?”

With a small nod, Seth stood and faced
the new door. Surgeon took the lead and together they walked down the hall
about a hundred meters before coming to a mess hall filled with other soldiers,
all wearing identical black outfits.

He knew that they were all soldiers just
by looking at them and how they acted. He also realized that these weren’t
ordinary soldiers but the best of wherever they came from. They had the look of
trained and highly skilled operators.

Surgeon, whoever he was, must be one of
the best to get the looks of respect the others gave him. However, no one seemed
to look at the new guy and this was odd considering that Seth was the only one
dressed in white.

Surgeon stepped into the mess hall and
just as casually began to address the assembled crowd. “Attention on deck!” His
voice was smooth and even slightly subdued. “This is ‘Cadet’ and he just awoke
today. He is the last of our cadre to come out of cryosleep so we are now in
the full swing of things. We’re on schedule but we still have a lot to
accomplish. Carry on”, he concluded. With that, everyone began eating once
more.

A sudden and almost frightening thought
hit Seth. “How long have I been out?” he asked Surgeon.

“Two weeks of sedation while your nose
and kidneys healed from the extraction”—”

“Kidnapping,” Seth interjected.

“And three months of cryosleep,” Surgeon
concluded.

“Why have I been out so long?”

“You’ll be briefed after your meal.”
Seth began to speak again but was cut off.

“No discussion. Eat and then we’ll talk.”

That being final, Seth looked at the
buffet laid out before him. The spread was even better than his graduation’s.
Seth could identify food from at least twelve different species and several
others from only God knew where.

He grabbed a tray and utensils, of which
the knife and fork were removed from his hand by Surgeon, who added, “Not yet.
When I trust you, you’ll get more than a spoon.”

Seth had to smile at that. It seemed
that they—whoever “they” were—wanted skilled operators. Didn’t they realize
that a spoon was just as useful as a fork or knife in the hands of a skilled
soldier? Without a fuss, he resigned himself to eating dinner, or lunch, or
maybe it was even breakfast. Who knew what time it was? He decided that the
food pointed towards lunch but no matter; he was hungry, so who cared what time
it was?

After he had finished, Surgeon led Seth
to an issuing room where Seth was measured and given a black uniform that of
course matched everyone else’s. Together, the two soldiers, now identically
clad in black, walked down the corridor to what seemed to be a conference room.
Seth entered first at the ushering of Surgeon and was amazed by what he saw.

The room was filled with holo-emitters
for information displays and tactical readouts. A large wooden conference table
filled the center of the room and reflected light from the displays on its
shiny smooth surface. Surgeon motioned Seth to a seat and took one himself next
to Seth.

“You have been ‘kidnapped,’ as you put
it, by your own government for a very important reason. We are facing one of
our most deadly adversaries in our entire history and we don’t even know who it
is.”

“What are you talking about? We haven’t
made contact with any new species in more than thirty years.”

Surgeon gave him a look that seemed to
say, “If you’ll just shut the hell up, I’ll tell you.” This made Seth sink a little
in his seat as he allowed the briefing to continue.

“Five years ago, we found an artifact on
07-0198 that turned out to be a star chart. This chart held maps to the
outermost regions of our galaxy, parts that even now we would be decades from
exploring if we hadn’t found the maps. The technology of this artifact seems to
be more advanced than our current technology and it is estimated to be close to
a thousand years old.

“After excavating the entire site,
several more advanced artifacts were found, most of which we still don’t have a
clue as to what they do. We have determined that whoever these items belonged
to, they weren’t the nicest neighbors on the block. After almost a year of
cataloging and research of the artifacts, the archeologists discovered that
they had similar properties to many other items found on dozens of known
worlds. The artifacts are similar in nature but different enough not to be
noticed right away as coming from the same makers.          “The society seemed
to be a warring species bent on conquering everyone they encountered. The
evidence we’ve found points to the fact that they were good at it”, he added.

“How come it’s been kept so quiet?
Usually the Earth Interstellar Expansion Department brags about everything they
find.” Seth was getting impatient.

“As I said, they were an advanced species
and the dig sites indicated that they hadn’t died out but rather lost interest
in this sector of space. No gravesites, homes, or anything to indicate that
they died out at those colonies. It seems as though they just up and decided to
leave and took almost everything with them. We don’t know who they were or
where they went.

“Then some of the scientists decided to
power up a machine that they thought was just an information terminal. It
turned out to be something else, something they shouldn’t have touched. Before
they realized what they had done, it was too late. It sent out a signal of
unknown content to an unknown destination.

“After more evidence was discovered
eight months ago, we’re now pretty sure that it was a distress beacon. It looks
as though this species had an adversary who didn’t like them very much. Their weaponry
is much more advanced than ours and operates differently, so it was difficult to
tell at first that a battle had been fought at that outpost. A few remains were
found in an underground vault that seemed to be a stronghold or shelter of some
kind. Many of the corpses had major trauma to their bodies before they died and
the others must have pulled them into the shelter.

“All of them were in uniforms and had
weapons with them. The bunker they were in did a good job of mummifying the
remains, so it’s not difficult to tell that the wounds they suffered were from
a battle. One of the corpses had a small communications device with him. When
it was hooked up to a power source, it sent out the same signal as the terminal
found almost five years ago. That’s why we think that it was a distress signal
of some sort.

“We also believe that the outpost on
07-0198 had been an expeditionary force, one of hundreds in that region of
space. And for whatever reason, when they were destroyed, no one came looking
for or even cared that they were never heard from again. Until now.”

“So now,” Seth interjected, “we awakened
their distress call and alerted their descendants to their destruction that took
place close to a thousand years ago. And let me guess, they are mad as hell.
Right?”

“Exactly.” Surgeon continued, “Whatever
caused them to forget about this sector a thousand years ago is no longer an
issue to them. They’ve decided that they want to move back into this space and
they didn’t even call ahead for reservations. Twenty of our outermost
expeditionary colonies have been lost. They weren’t just destroyed—they were
completely obliterated. Scans of those outposts reveal no debris from enemy
craft, so we’re assuming our people either didn’t have enough time to respond
to an attack or their response didn’t even damage the attacking force.”

“So why haven’t we alerted all our
forces and built up our military? And for that matter, where do I, we, fit into
this?” Seth just couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“To answer your first question, we
didn’t want to send a widespread panic through the Coalition. We haven’t yet
met an enemy we can’t beat and that’s why planets join our little group. We
can’t have them lose faith in us and pull their fleets out of any upcoming
battles just to try to save their own hides. And as for us,” Surgeon let the
words linger for a moment before continuing, “we just might be the Coalition’s
last hope.”

Dig Site One - On the
Outer Rim

Daria had awakened from her cryosleep
journey to this planet two months ago. “This planet” is all it could be called
because it hadn’t even received a number designation yet. And worst of all,
Daria and Davies were in a platoon that had a lab geek for a CO. Even though
she was a nice geek, Daria still didn’t like it.

Her name was Emily. It almost hurt her
to say it. No officers were called by their first name but this one wouldn’t
have it any other way. Officially, she was First Lieutenant Riley and Daria
really didn’t like anything less formal. But orders were orders and after
finding out that Emily’s brother had been a marine and killed during training,
she had a bit more respect for Emily’s desire to not be called by her rank.

Emily was a xenobiologist and
specialized in creating profiles of races by their artifacts. Daria had noticed
something about their little group of scientists and marines: everyone was not
only good at their job but REALLY good. Some, like Emily, were even acclaimed
to be the best in their field.

There really wasn’t much to do so Daria
had read some of Emily’s articles. Daria found that Emily’s work was actually
very fascinating.

Just by examining some artifacts at a
site near the core worlds, Emily had deduced that the species had only two
fingers on each of its three arms, stood about two point five meters tall, and
each member of the species was the same sex and used a type of internal cloning
to create offspring. She could probably even tell you how much change the alien
had in its pocket when it made the artifact you were looking at.

After burial sites had been discovered,
it was found that Emily had made mistakes on only a few very minor points
concerning their anatomy.

Daria had become very interested in
Emily’s work and so they spent many hours together each day. Emily was always
teaching Daria about her work and much to Daria’s surprise, she caught on quite
quickly to the research.

“Now take a look at this,” Emily began. “This
artifact has almost a completely different readout display and input terminal
than the others we have encountered so far. Why do you think that is?”

The answer seemed so obvious that Daria
almost felt stupid saying it. “Because it came from a different species.
Possibly an off-world trader or someone along for the ride.”

“Good, but how can you explain the fact
that it is made of the exact same material as everything else we’ve found? A
different species would indicate a different alloy or even a different
processing of a similar alloy. So why the difference in appearance and
biological compatibility if it were made by the same people?”

Daria thought for a moment. “Maybe,” she
hesitated, “whoever made these artifacts stole the technology from a different species
and were too lazy to reconfigure it to their own specifications. The original
creators and the ones who stole it were close enough in biological
compatibility that no changes were necessary in order to use it.”

“Very good answer, but as a scientist we
need more than one hypothesis to work with. Give me another one,” Emily
challenged.

After several moments of thinking, Daria
placed the artifact down and replied, “My hypothesis is that my training for
the day is over and yours is about to begin.”

A week ago, while excavating at a nearby
site, a local bug had decided that Emily was a suitable host for its larva.
These bugs were the size of a small cat and had a spine-tipped tail that
injected its larva into a host organism. After a few weeks, the larva hatched
and ate their host from the inside out. The problem was the bug laid thousands
of eggs so it was found to be nearly impossible to get them all out before they
hatched. Unfortunately, two marines had already died from these bugs and one
scientist was nearly lost. The base forces set out with flamethrowers and
small-arms to terminate the creatures. The sweep had done a pretty good job of
clearing out the immediate area but there were still a few that lingered here
and there.

Daria had seen the bug making its
stealthy approach and yelled a warning towards Emily. All Emily could do was
stare at the thing now running towards her. When she finally snapped out of it,
she tried for her sidearm but was too clumsy to get it out in time. Daria quickly
pulled out her throwing knife and deftly pinned the bug, from ten meters away,
to the packing crate it was crawling across.

From that moment on, Daria had made it
her personal goal to teach the lieutenant how to fend for herself. For a lab
geek, Emily was learning more quickly than Daria had expected. She was almost
able to beat Davies in a simulated knife fight, though Daria teased this was no
great accomplishment.

Emily eagerly put down the artifact she
was holding and stood. She really enjoyed these workouts and that was probably
why she advanced so quickly.

“Where’s Davies at? I’m in the mood to
win today.”

Daria laughed aloud. “Sorry, lady, but
he’s on duty so you’ll have to face me in the ring. And today, we work with
staffs.”

“I’ve never used one before.” All of a sudden
she didn’t seem too eager. Simulated knife fighting wasn’t bad. The fake knives
left a mark on your training suit and the computer determined the damage
created by the strike. If your arm was injured too badly, the computer would disable
the appropriate joint in your suit and you could no longer use that body part.
If you were killed, well then, the computer just said so and you started over.

But staffs, those were a different
story. Emily knew that there weren't any training programs for staff fighting,
so they must be using REAL weapons. The idea of getting beat about the head by
Daria was not a fun one.

“Don’t worry, we’ll start with padded
staffs first. They only bruise a little bit,” she added as they started towards
the gym.

“Oh great! Only a little bruising. Why
didn’t you say so?!” Sarcasm was not Emily’s strong point but she got her
message across.

Once in the gym and changed into their
combat suits, Emily was handed a staff about one and a half meters long. She
held it as though it was a broom and she was about to sweep the floor. Daria
tried not to look too concerned.

“Now,” Daria began, “if you do not know
how to use a staff and it’s the only weapon you have, the best thing to do is
to fake it. People are always scared of someone who looks like they know what they’re
doing with a weapon. Posturing can win a fight or even prevent one from
starting if done correctly.”

With that, Daria began to spin the staff
in a smooth motion that carried it around her back and behind her arms and even
through her legs and out in front of her again. She continued to dazzle Emily
with spins and arcing slashes of the staff in the air and pretend strikes
towards her opponent, which unsettled Emily because it was her.

Finally, after an extremely impressive
display of movement, Daria stopped the weapon and held it horizontally at waist
level and stood staring at Emily. She had used the display to close the
distance between her and her opponent and was now a mere two meters away. Just
out of striking distance of the weapon.

“Now what you want to do is…” Daria
started, and with that, she tossed the weapon at Emily. Emily started to flinch
but realized that the weapon was coming at her in a soft arc. It hadn’t been
thrown; it hadn’t been meant to strike. It was as though Daria was tossing her
a ball in a game of catch. As the weapon closed to within grabbing distance,
Emily’s reflexes took over and she dropped her staff and reached for the one
presently being offered to her through the air. As it touched down in her hands,
she felt a padded fist sink deep into her forehead and was all of a sudden flat
on her back against the soft mat.

Her scientific mind quickly kicked in
and analyzed the attack. While her attention was focused on the approaching
weapon, Daria had closed the two meters between them and attacked while Emily’s
reflexes were busy trying to stop the incoming object. Very smart, she thought;
also very painful.

“Now, you can do that little trick with
an empty pistol, a knife, or your tank keys. Just about anything will work.”
She helped Emily back on her feet. “Almost every species we know of has an
instinctive defensive reflex to grab anything that comes at them. Even if you
threw something as harmless as a pillow, their reflexes usually take over.
Don’t try it on the Shirkas, though; they’ll just ignore it and then rip you to
shreds.” And then as an afterthought, she added, “I won’t fall for it, either.”

For the next two hours, the two soldiers
trained and Daria showed Emily fighting stances and moves with the staff that
appeared impressive. Emily would be beat to a pulp in a fight if she tried to
use the staff, but it didn’t look that way to anyone passing by. Yes, Daria
thought, she is a very quick study. Happy with the day’s results, Daria ended
the session and the two women headed for the showers and then off to dinner
where Davies was waiting for them.

“Good evening, ladies. Nice bruise,
Lieutenant.” Davies was the only one allowed to call Emily by her rank. At one
point before joining the Corps, Davies had been engaged to a woman named Emily
who had run off with his best friend the day of the wedding. Consequently, he
refused to call her by that name.

Emily agreed to Davies calling her
el-tee. She, too, was in love with someone who abruptly left without a trace
and so she understood his feelings. She still couldn’t find out where that
young lieutenant had gotten himself shipped off to after that night at
graduation.

“Tomorrow you need to come and train
with us”, Emily began. “Daria’s been teaching me how to use a staff.”

“Oh no, you don’t! I’ve had my share of
forehead bruises, too. You’re not going to get me with that ‘toss your weapon’
trick.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Daria chimed in. “He
still falls for it once in a while.”

Blushing, Davies changed the subject. “I
haven’t been out to the site in a few days. Anything new out there?”

“Well, we’ve found some new and
interesting artifacts. But now I’ve got more questions to answer. Speaking of
which, Daria, you still owe me an answer to my question. And I think I deserve
it after that forehead thing today.” She rolled her eyes up, pointing to the
bruise.

“I’ve been thinking about that and I
have another possibility in mind. Humans have always basically been in charge
of the Coalition and we’re so self-centered, so this thought hadn’t come to me
immediately. I mean, when we bring new species into the Coalition, we make them
adapt to our ways. Oh sure, we may take and use their technology but we
configure it to our specifications, our hand sizes, our heights, our display
configurations and then expect all of the other species to use it as is. What
if a similar Coalition existed but instead of converting technology into their
specifications, they manufactured alien technology but kept it in its original configuration?
This would allow the original species to be integrated with the Coalition but
not have to adapt too much and make them more productive members of the society.”

Emily just stared at Daria for a moment.
That was not even close to what she was trying to lead Daria towards, but it
was a good theory regardless. “But why would they want to go through all that
trouble? They would have so many different configurations in their systems that
it would almost be impossible to be productive as a whole. I mean, say a
datapad was configured for a species that had four fingers on each of his three
hands. Then you have another species with two fingers on two hands. How could
the second guy use the datapad from the first guy?”

“What if not everyone used the same
stuff? What if one species was good at engineering so that’s all they did and
so no one else had to know how to use that equipment?” This was from Davies.

“You may not be quick on your feet but
you’re sure not slow where it counts.” Emily continued, “So each time they
brought a new species into their Coalition, they assigned it a task and that’s
all they did. And the artifacts were made by one species who’s good with
manufacturing and that’s why they all share the same elements and processing
features.”

“It sounds good, but now there’s more
questions.” Daria took her turn in the round. “Not all species can live in the
same atmosphere. What happens when you’re on a planet that doesn’t support your
engineers? Or what if you find a species that is also good at engineering? That
position is already filled, so what happens to them? And lastly, isn’t that bad
management to have such specialized departments? I mean, I know how to operate
a tank, communications tower, plus a lot of other things in addition to my specialty
as a corpsman. If I didn’t, there’d be many times that I’d have been dead
because that particular operator got put out of commission and I had to take
over.”

“Every good answer leads to more
questions in this field.” Emily knew that Daria was being nice by saying “out
of commission” rather than killed in light of her brother’s death. “But I think
that we have something here. Davies, I’m putting you on rotation at the site
instead of compound duty. It’s good to have non-scientific thinkers out there.
Wildly different perspectives often lend themselves to the making of a good
brainstorming pool.”

The conversation slipped into lighter
subject matter but each of them was still thinking about the previous
conversation and trying to draw conclusions. Emily was excited about the
possibility that their theory was correct. If so, that meant that there were
possibly dozens of species for her to catalog at one site alone! That presented
problems in and of itself by trying to determine what artifact belonged to whom
and so forth, but it sure would be fun.