Extinction

by Korza, Jay

  “All right, you got us. Good job. Now let us up”, Joker said through gritted teeth.

  “OK, and I’ll just ask Beast to be polite for a change. What do you think the chances of that are?” Seth said as he put an encrypted code lock on the controls so he would be the only one who was able to release his prisoners.

  With that, the three students used the secondary access way from the control booth and entered the hallway. Without further molestation, they reached the armory and entered using an instructor code that Beast had stolen with his acute hearing.

  He could detect the tone differences in the keypads when they were pressed. After hearing Joker key in the code several times, he knew what it was.

  Unfortunately, Joker had set a trap inside the door and an electrical stun charge went off, knocking down Beast and Blanch. Beast was only stunned while Blanch’s human frame was knocked completely unconscious. Down to two with no idea of how anyone else was doing. This seemed like deja vu for Seth.

  “Now what?” Seth muttered.

  “We get weapons,” said the groggy Shirka, “then go shoot all the instructors.” He spoke as though Seth had asked a stupid question.

  “Do we have an objective other than just to stay alive?” He wondered whether it was that simple, as ironic as that sounded to even himself. But Seth always thought on a much grander scale. “Let’s take over the ship.”

  “I like your thinking, Cadet.” Beast laid a paw on Seth’s shoulder that just about knocked him down. “Take a close quarters assault rifle and as many stun grenades as you can. We’re headed for the bridge.” He let out a battle howl that nearly shook Seth.

  Once armed, they decided to head directly towards the bridge. Seth figured Surgeon would be counting on his assault, so he briefed Beast on Surgeon’s methods while they headed for their objective.

  Chapter 11

  Dig Site One

  After walking a while, Daria turned to Scan. “Where’s your corpsman? Every Recon team has its own.”

  “Ours was killed on our last scouting mission. Accident.”

  “What happened? Where were you?” Daria’s curiosity always got the best of her.

  “Sorry, Doc, that’s classified. But it was just dumb luck. No way for a soldier to die”, he said with mournful eyes. His spikes pointed inward, which was the Trizite equivalent of crying.

  Daria had found that many other races were less apt to hide their emotions than humans were. Crying was considered by many races to be a form of respect towards those being grieved for. It must be nice to not have to deal with so much machismo, Daria thought.

  “Hold up”, Bloom said as he took another couple of steps forward. “I’m detecting a metal alloy of some sort. It doesn’t register as anything known, but it is definitely different than the rock around us.”

  “Where is it? I can’t see any difference in the face of the wall.” Davies was looking through his enhancement visor.

  The visor could be set to thermal, infrared, motion, or a combination of the three. All snipers and special ops guys had them issued as a standard part of their gear.

  “I’m trying to get an exact bearing. It’s difficult, though. Most of my scans are being bounced off the wall.” Bloom took another couple of steps forward and then shifted slightly to his right. He approached the wall. “Here. This is the door.”

  He pointed to what seemed to be a section of rock just like the rest of the wall.

  “Let me take a look”, Daria said, coming up beside him, and eyed the scanner. “I see it, too, but where is it?” She began to feel the wall with her hands and outlined the edges of what the scanner said was a door.

  “Team two,” Davies began, “we’ve found something, although we’re not real sure what it is.”

  “It looks like a door made of an unknown metal, but we can’t visually distinguish it from the surrounding rock”, Daria continued. “The scanner says it’s here but we can’t confirm.”

  “We are at the back wall and awaiting rendezvous with team three.” Emily’s voice came over the link. “Stand fast and we’ll meet up with you in a few. Find out whatever you can in the meantime. Out.”

  “Wilco”, Daria replied. “Got any ideas?” She addressed the question to her team.

  “We could use a hand welder on the seams to see if it opens it up”, Scan said as he rifled through his pack.

  “Whoa, remember yesterday? We don’t know what happened or what triggered it. They could have thought the same exact thing.” Davies stepped in front of Scan just in case he didn’t heed the warning.

  “Good point”, he said as he placed the welder back in his pack.

  Bloom took a geological scanner out of his pack and handed it to Fang. “Take this and perform a detailed scan of everything fifteen meters to the right of the door. I’ll go fifteen meters to the left. If it is a door, the triggering mechanism wouldn’t be placed too far away from it.”

  Fang took the scanner and began working his way out from the door. Daria faintly heard him grumbling about a warrior’s job was not to scan but to fight. “I have something. Metal of unknown type, approximately…three point five meters up and one meter out from the right edge.”

  Daria walked to where he was scanning. “Bloom, look for an object with the same signature as the door at the same point on the other side. It should be about one-third of a meter square.”

  “I’m not getting anything over here”, Bloom called back.

  “Let’s get someone up there to take a look at it”, Daria said, hoping for a volunteer. Who knew what would happen when someone touched that panel.

  “I got it”, Bloom said, approaching from the other side. “Fang, give me a lift.”

  “Now I’m a fucking ladder”, he said, with what Daria thought was an attempt at a joke. You could never tell with those guys.

  Fang, who could almost reach the object on his own, easily lifted Bloom closer to the panel. “I don’t see any difference in the wall, just like the door”, Bloom called down.

  “Wait. Put your hand back over the object”, Davies said from behind his visor. “There. When you put your hand over it, I get a slight change in the thermal and infrared ranges on my visor. Someone give him a flare, it’s a pretty low heat source compared to a welder.”

  Daria handed Bloom a flare and ignited it. As he placed it closer to the object, a keypad became visible. “Well, I’ll be damned”, Bloom whispered. “I’ve got a keypad of some sort here. It kind of just appeared out of nowhere and disappears when I take the flare away from it. Must be heat sensitive.”

  Emily and Wilks arrived with their teams and Daria gave them an updated report.

  “And judging from the width and height of the door, not to mention the height of the key pad, whoever built this must have been pretty big”, Daria said with a smug look. “Probably right-handed, too, considering the placement of the keypad.”

  “Someone has been doing their homework”, Emily replied. “They must have a much higher body temperature, too, in order to activate that device.”

  “Actually, el-tee,” Daria began, “I understand that we don’t know anything about the biology of this alien species, but I really don’t think that anyone could get their body temperature as hot as a phosphorous flare. I would guess that this is some sort of security measure. After a catastrophe or security lock down, the only way in would be to superheat a secret panel to reveal its location and controls.”

  Emily looked a little embarrassed by being so obviously wrong about her conclusions. She nonetheless continued without skipping a beat, “Has anyone tried the flare on the door?”

  Bloom looked at Daria and they shrugged in unison. “Uh, we were just about to”, Bloom said from his perch.

  He moved the torch towards the door and sure enough, the seams showed through for the first time. “Well, I’ll be”, he muttered again.

  “What did I tell you about that?” Wilks said to Bloom. “For a damned linguist, you sure don’t ever say much
original.” Looking around at the non-recon faces, he felt he should explain. “Bloom always says, ‘Well, I’ll be.’ It gets real annoying after years of hearing it. And being a linguist, I expect a little more variety of speech from him. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Linguist, huh?” Emily said. “Can you decipher or even guess at what the symbols are on the keypad?”

  “I’ve been trying, ma’am. I think that five of the twenty-five keys are real and the others are just diversions. I don’t know why; it’s just a feeling.”

  “I thought I was the only empath here.” Scan laughed. Trizite laughs sound like gurgling mouthwash and usually brought laughter from others, even if the joke wasn’t all that great. This time it didn’t.

  Daria opened her medical kit and pulled out a small spray can and handed it to Bloom. “This is a cellular tissue adhesion spray. It will bind itself to tissue on the cellular level to stop bleeding and bind cuts and tears on injured skin. It will detect tissue, even dead tissue, and bind with it.”

  “Ah.” Bloom understood. “This panel was protected by the rock when the explosion occurred so any cellular tissue left from the last user might still be on the keys. When I spray this on it, it will bind with the leftover cells and show us which keys are used for the door.”

  “Right. Just about every species leaves some cellular residue on an object when they touch it. We’re always shedding cells, every second of every day. I just hope that whoever made this did too.”

  Bloom sprayed the mist onto the keys and moments later the binding action began and a small film built up on ten of the keys. “So I was off by five”, Bloom defended himself. “Question now is, what order are these ten pressed?”

  “That is assuming it was the same code for everyone who used this door.” Wilks spoke up. “If every user had a different code, there would still be cellular residue on all the keys from different people hitting different keys.”

  “Normally I would agree with you”, Emily began, “but this would seem to be an emergency panel of some sort. It wouldn’t be accessed daily so any residue we find should be a limited amount.”

  “I think that maybe we ought to also think about whether or not we want to open that door right now, even if we can figure out the code”, Davies said through a mouthful of a protein bar. “If there were enough supplies inside whatever this is, it’s conceivable that whoever built it is still in there. And they were totally protected from the explosion yesterday by all this rock. In fact, they may have triggered the explosion themselves.”

  “Bloom, try to figure out the code. Wilks, put together an assault plan for entry after we’ve figured this thing out”, Emily ordered. “I’m not discounting your theory, Davies, but we have to know. I’d rather chance it with only fifteen possible casualties than bring more people down who could possibly get it as well.”

  With that, she opened a command channel and began giving a report to the base’s commanding officer. She tried to push the feeling of doubt she had in her orders to the back of her mind. This was the first time other people’s lives depended on her judgment. Two of her closest friends were affected by that decision.

  Chapter 12

  Aboard the Vanguard – The Final Test

  On their way to the bridge, Seth and Beast had found two other students hiding out from their instructors. The two had been in a raiding party of five but got ambushed near the birthing compartments. One instructor was disabled but the other two took three students down shortly after.

  “You two, take three grenades each.” Seth handed them three from his belt and Beast reluctantly gave up three of his own. “I’ll explain the rest on the way to airlock one.”

  ~

  Surgeon sat on the bridge and keyed a secure channel to his other instructors. “Has anyone captured Cadet yet?”

  All three responses were negative. Four instructors had been incapacitated so far while eight students were still left somewhere in the ship. They could have used the internal sensors to find them, but that would have been cheating.

  “Are you sure he’ll come here?” Blaze asked. “I feel kinda bad sitting in here while the others are taking the heat. Blanch and Rachet had to carry Boomer to the infirmary after they accidentally blew out his knee. Thank God for our ortho-regenerator. ”

  “You mean you’re bored and would rather be out there were the excitement is”, Surgeon said to his peer. “I know what it’s like to be young, but don’t worry, if he hasn’t been captured yet, he’ll try for the bridge. This kid is a mirror image of me when I was his age.”

  “I hope you’re right. I’d hate to have sat this whole thing out for nothing. You really think that we need three of us in here, though? It’s one guy.” Blaze was just trying to make conversation at this point.

  “No, I just wanted your handsome face to keep me company while I waited”, Surgeon retorted.

  “No more taking showers with you.” And with that, Blaze went back to monitoring the latest holovid movie from Earth.

  Well, he’d be the first to go once Cadet got here, Surgeon thought. Ah well, might as well let him learn a lesson.

  Just then, the aft and forward lift doors opened, causing two instructors to jump to their feet while Surgeon did the opposite and dove for cover. Instincts being what they were, he never argued with them before and just reacted to what his body told him to do.

  A flash grenade sailed onto the bridge from inside each lift. The two standing instructors were momentarily blinded while the two students dropped down from the service hatches inside the lifts.

  Once on the bridge, they both released their stun grenades. One instructor had shielded his eyes reflexively from the first grenade and was able to see the outline of his oncoming attacker. He feigned to the side and placed an outstretched forearm into the student’s throat, causing him to flip backwards and land on his stomach.

  The student landed on his own grenade, which went off underneath him. The blast lifted him off the ground about half a meter and he slumped on the deck.

  “Get him to medical”, Surgeon ordered. Although it was only a stun grenade, at point blank range it could kill. Luckily, the specially designed uniforms that everyone on this ship wore were made to protect against shrapnel to some degree. However, Shorty had an abdominal wound that needed to be tended to immediately.

  The other grenade stunned the instructor who was nearest the second hatch. Even as Surgeon ordered the medical evacuation of the student, he was over the operations booth railing and taking down the student who was now fumbling with his third grenade.

  With a grip on the student’s throat and his wrist in a painful joint lock, Surgeon queried, “Where is Cadet?”

  A gasping noise was all that the student could manage before passing out. He had hit his head on the deck during Surgeon’s attack and was unable to hold onto consciousness any longer.

  Just then, Surgeon heard a whoosh of air from behind him and rolled to his feet to face the sound. The forward airlock was opening and a grenade was coming from it. He pulled the limp body of the student in front of him and allowed it to take the shock of the grenade.

  Before he could push the body away, Beast was doing it for him while simultaneously lifting Surgeon off the deck with one hand. Surgeon kicked Beast between the legs with all his might. Beast crumpled to the floor with a smile and groan of ecstasy.

  Shirkas had a pleasure center between their legs that when stimulated, brought their sexual organs out of the dormant state that they usually resided in. The sexual organs were where a belly button on a human would be and were always hidden inside the body for safekeeping.

  Even if humans and Shirkas were genetically compatible, sex with a Shirka would kill most humans. It was violent compared to human standards. During their courtship dance, females would repeatedly hit the pleasure center between the male’s legs in order to make the sexual organ come out of dormancy.

  In short, kicking a male Shirka between the legs effectively crippled them as m
uch as it would a human. Of course, Beast was having the equivalent of a human orgasm, but nonetheless he was on the ground and out of the way for a while. And most likely embarrassed as hell, now that he had a huge bulge in his shirt.

  Surgeon dropped next to Beast almost immediately, which was still a split second too late as Seth was already throwing his first kick in that direction. It was stopped by Surgeon’s face, which lurched backward at the impact.

  “What took you so long?” Surgeon asked before he leapt forward in a diving roll aimed at Seth’s ankle. His hand made purchase and he took Seth’s ankle with him as he completed his dive.

  Seth came off his feet and landed on his face with a thud. Another broken nose—he was pissed now.

  “I figured I’d let the old man take a nap before I attacked. I knew you’d need all your strength.” He was face to grinning face with Beast as he pushed himself up off the deck into a standing position.

  He was clumsy in a pressure suit and wished that he could get out of it but that would be impossible right now. He’d be easy game while fumbling with the suit’s pressure seals. Instead, he threw his last grenade at Surgeon.

  Out of reflex, Surgeon hit the deck rolling and was surprised when Seth came rushing without regard to the impending explosion. “Getting sloppy, old man. I didn’t arm it”, Seth exclaimed as he pounced on Surgeon from behind.

  An elbow came up towards Seth’s rib cage and he decided that he no longer wished to be out of his suit. The suit was rigid to repel the continuous attacks made by floating space debris one encountered while in space. Debris the size of a pebble had been clocked at several hundred kilometers per hour. A thin suit wouldn’t last too long in some regions of space.

  Supersonic pebbles weren’t Seth’s main concern right now but the suit was holding up quite well to Surgeon’s repeated blows. In fact, Seth figured that he could sit there and get hit all day and not even be winded by it. He held his current position, hoping that his adversary would soon lose steam.