Extinction: The Will of the Protectors

by Jay Korza

  No sooner had Seth finished his sentence when he saw the warrior’s head turn into a canoe as a bullet parted it in half.

  “I think we just rendezvoused with our sniper element.” Seth chuckled.

  “Uncle must have hidden them well,” First Son whispered. “Our scouts have not detected them yet.”

  Seth turned to First Son. “You don’t know Davies. That shot doesn’t mean they are close; they could still be very, very far away. Send two Shirkas over to the warrior’s body, search it, and hide it.”

  “Yes, Father.” First Son took his brother and headed off to perform the task himself.

  Seth shook his head as Surgeon’s voice came through his commlink. “Yup, I think that’s gonna stick even after the mission.”

  “Son of a bitch.” Seth pulled a ration bar from his vest. Over the team push, he said, “If you’re in a good position of concealment, now is the time to grab a ration bar and hydrate. Once First Son comes back from the warrior’s body, we’ll be moving out again.”

  Seth finished off his ration bar just as First Son returned. “Report.”

  “He was alone. We tracked his path and found no others. His body will not be found without an extensive search for it. We scented him and confirmed he smelled as the other warriors did. We still think they have camped near the waterfall by the volcano.”

  “Good job. I need four scouts to head out in front of us.”

  “To where, Father?”

  Seth still wasn’t used to the title, especially coming from the Shirka whose actual father had just the day before died in combat.

  “I want them to scout in a pronged fashion.” Seth drew in the dirt to make his plan clear. “Here is the waterfall where we believe the enemy camp is. I want two scouts to either side of this area and then meet us at our final waypoint position here.” Seth marked everything on his impromptu map.

  “I see.” First Son twitched on his heels.

  “You can tell me if you don’t agree or have a different idea.”

  “Our scouts will do better in this changing terrain here,” First Son indicated an area on the dirt map, “if we send out three scouts instead of four and send them as individuals instead of teams.”

  “What if they get spotted?”

  First Son growled. “They will not be spotted. The warriors are formidable enemies, but do not mistake their superior strength and size for superior hunting skills. They hunt with brute strength, not skill. We have found in the last two engagements with them, they have no idea how to talk to or listen to the forest. They will never know we were there.”

  “Okay.” First Son nodded and turned to go before Seth stopped him. “Not you. I need you with me. I’m sorry to hold you back, but you need to send someone else.”

  First Son’s ears dropped and he nodded. “Yes, Father.”

  A short growl and a few hand gestures later, three other Shirkas, including his sister, headed out on the scout.

  “Alright everyone, we’re on the last leg. Let’s move out.” Seth stood and headed back into the forest.

  The birthing planet was not the world of origin for the Shirkas, but based on the intelligence Seth had read about the Shirka home world, all of their birthing planets were very similar to their original home. Even their home world maintained its forested landscape through their industrial and spacefaring phases.

  The forest canopy swayed high above them and a gentle breeze eventually made it down to the forest floor. The undergrowth of fern-like vegetation was thick but luckily not sturdy and it gave way to the soldiers’ march.

  Seth realized that his sense of smell and hearing had steadily improved since he’d arrived on the planet. Without the machines of man to add noise and chemical pollution to the planet, Seth felt like all of his senses were getting cleansed of years of abuse.

  As Seth pondered the new smells that floated on the breeze, he stopped suddenly in his tracks. “All stop,” he subvocalized over the squad push. “Something is wrong.”

  First Son came to Seth’s side and scented the air. “Father is correct. I have a warrior’s scent and something else I am not familiar with.”

  Seth looked to First Son. “Scout the scent and report back. We have to keep our timeline so the rest of the squad will keep moving. If we contact just a few warriors without shields, we will shoot them from a distance. We are too close now to risk them firing their plasma rifles and alerting our target of our presence.”

  “Understood.” First Son leapt forward and signaled for Fang to accompany him on the scout. Huj’pa’ul, disappointed, stayed behind.

  After traveling another kilometer, Huj’pa’ul came to Seth. “First Son is just behind that large boulder there.” She pointed to a rock outcropping fifty meters away. “The way is safe and they found the warrior. He is dead.”

  As Seth came around the boulder, the scent he had initially detected became even stronger. On the other side of the boulder lay a dead warrior; wrapped around him was the same snake-like creature that had killed Smoke.

  “Shit.” Seth startled a bit when the creature flicked its tail in Seth’s direction.

  “Do not worry.” First Son pointed to the intertwined creatures. “Once they are feeding, they do not come off their prey until they are finished. It is the best time to kill them.”

  “I don’t even know how I smelled this thing from so far away.” Seth was amazed at his own senses.

  Fang smiled at him. “You must have Shirka blood flowing through your veins, Father.”

  Reaper used his field medical sensors to capture data on the snake and the warrior. “The scent you picked up is from the snake’s venom. It’s pretty pungent up close. You probably smelled it after Smoke was attacked but your brain couldn’t catalog it properly. Your subconscious filed that scent away and associated it with something bad. When you got a whiff of it again, you knew on a primal level that something was wrong.”

  “The science of that theory makes sense,” Seth said, “but I’m still not sure how I smelled it from so far away.”

  First Son raised his arms to the forest canopy. “The forest is cleansing Father. Even Shirka senses are heightened when we leave our space vessels and our homes to clear our thoughts and souls in our birthplaces.”

  Seth wasn’t sure if First Son’s theory applied to humans, but he could tell something was different within himself.

  “This is the second attack from these creatures. How do we protect ourselves from them?” Surgeon was still on the outer perimeter but joined the conversation via his commlink.

  Because the Shirkas did not have commlinks, whenever these conversations took place, one of the Coalition soldiers had to relay the statements or questions to the Shirka team.

  Huj’pa’ul shrugged her massive shoulders. “We do not. If they attack you, fight back. One will win and one will lose.”

  Reaper put his hand in the air to interrupt. “I cannot argue with that succinct examination of the facts, but I can offer an alternative. I can synthesize an antidote from the venom samples I’ve taken. Initial scans show it to be a very simple, if not highly effective, compound. But it will take time.”

  “How much time?” Seth liked Reaper’s plan better.

  “Give me ten minutes to set my kit up to start working on it. It will create the antidote on its own while we finish moving to our final position for the assault. I can inject everyone before we rack out tonight. It won’t do us any good between now and then, but at least it’s something.”

  “That will have to do. You’ve got ten minutes. Get to work.” Seth looked around and still felt uneasy.

  “What is it, Captain?” Joker was forty meters away but he could still tell Seth fidgeted over something.

  “This is the second warrior we’ve found out on his own. I know we have very little intel on the warriors, but this doesn’t seem right.”

  Seth wasn’t sure what bothered him, but he knew dwelling on the problem wouldn’t let him solve it. He needed to put
the problem to the back of his thoughts and let his subconscious chew on it while he focused on the mission.

  Eight minutes had passed and Reaper was ready to move out. He packed away his field synthesizing kit as it continued to make the antidote on its own. “Ready when you are, boss.”

  “Alright everyone, let’s get the Shirkas on point and to our rear. Move out.”

  Seth loved watching the Shirkas move effortlessly through the forest, flashes of fur and muscle moving almost without a sound. As Seth became more attuned to the forest, he started to be able to pick out sounds that didn’t belong, such as the Shirkas or his own soldiers moving through the underbrush.

  Hours later, Seth’s team reached the rendezvous point. He pulled up his holographic map and studied it with Surgeon and Joker. After they committed the area to memory, they put the map away and sat down with First Son to go over their assault plans. First Son waved Fang and Huj’pa’ul over to join the conversation.

  “We have already begun to hear from the cubs,” First Son began. “They are gathering in the trees here.” First Son drew a line on the dirt map and showed a three-quarter circle around the enemy camp.

  “How many do we have?” Seth was anxious to get his own cubs back beside him. He felt an immediate bond with them and was already worried about them.

  Fang smiled a toothy Shirka smile. “Over two hundred. And they are not even all here yet.”

  “I don’t think we even need to be here.” Joker laughed.

  “You would leave cubs to fight in your place?” Huj’pa’ul growled.

  “Note to self,” Joker said. “Shirkas have no sense of humor.”

  Huj’pa’ul growled even deeper.

  “That’s enough, you two,” Surgeon cut in. “And for the record, Shirkas have a great sense of humor. They just don’t get human wit until they’ve been around us for a while. But if you ever get embedded with a Shirka company, they do some crazy shit to each other. They are probably some of the biggest pranksters in the galaxy.”

  First Son laughed. “You know us well, human. After we crush our enemies tomorrow, and we sit around the fire and tell stories, I will tell you of when I lost half my fur because of a joke my father and brother played on me.”

  “Sounds good.” Seth waved his hand above the dirt map. “But we need to get back to the important stuff, if that’s alright with everyone.” His pack nodded their affirmations.

  “Good.” Seth put small stones on the map. “We will deploy shooters to these areas. Instead of going in teams, I want all nine shooters to spread out on their own, doing their best to maintain overlapping fields of fire.”

  “I’ll take the southern flank and you can go north.” Surgeon pointed to the map. “If you don’t mind, sir.”

  Seth knew from the topographic map they had viewed earlier, the southern flank was the more perilous area. The ground was higher and more rugged than the area to the north. Seth felt as if Mike was trying to prove something by taking the harder area, but he didn’t think now was the time to address it.

  “I’m good with that.” Seth looked to his other senior operator. “Joker, I want you in the middle of the formation. If Mike or I go down, I want you to take over as the second command element.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The group finished the primary brief and then gathered the entire team to discuss the details with them.

  “I know that most of us are used to having so much intel before a mission that we actually complain we have too much stuff to look through,” Surgeon began. “But in this case, it’s just the opposite. We don’t have satellite overviews, we don’t have heat imaging, we don’t have an engineering analysis of our target structure, and we don’t have a hard or even a soft enemy count. We don’t have anything other than a topographic map and an idea of where the enemy is.”

  First Son stepped forward. “When our scouts return, we will have an idea of some of this information, but still not what we are used to.” To the humans, he said, “I know that our ways seem backwards to you, but understand this is not our normal operational standards either. We do not purposely blind ourselves before we go on a mission; we are used to getting all of the same information from the same technology that you use. This mission is different because of where it is and our beliefs and traditions surrounding our birthing planets.”

  “That being said,” Seth took over, “the Shirkas are much better at impromptu fighting without weapons, especially in this environment. That is something we are going to capitalize on.”

  The dirt map had grown and was now at least four square meters. Seth walked around it while he pointed things out to the team. “We are going to bring our shooters in to these marked positions. Again, because we don’t have aerial imagery, we don’t know what kind of cover you’ll find there, so these positions are suggestive. Find what you can and go where you need to go.

  “If there are a lot of warriors that are visible, we will engage them with guns from cover. If there are only a few out on guard duty, we will create a commotion to get more out into the open.”

  Joker added, “Our joint attack with the cubs went very well and we’re going to use the same strategy here. We shoot as many of the warriors as we can and when our element of surprise runs out and they start taking cover, we unleash the cubs, with the adults leading the attack.”

  Jenson raised his hand until Seth acknowledged him. “Sir, I know the Shirkas are a different species and have a different sense of everything, but I’m honestly not feeling good about sending the kids in on purpose. I know they fought well in our previous engagement and I’m sure they will do well again, but last time they were fighting for self-preservation from a direct attack. They weren’t being ordered into battle.”

  “Thank you for your candor,” Seth began but was waved down by First Son.

  “You are correct that we see many things differently,” First Son said. “But the love we have for our cubs is no less than yours is for your children. It would take many hours, maybe even days or weeks, to help you to fully understand how we feel about our cubs and our beliefs surrounding their hunting and self-preservation abilities.

  “But make no mistake, they are being directly attacked by the warriors. Our enemy’s very presence on this planet is a direct attack on them. Because all of the Shirka birthing planets are similar to this one, we have to believe that they are all in danger of being attacked and used by the warriors for their dietary and supply needs.”

  The three scouts returned and First Son gave them a signal to hold on their report while he continued talking. “In fact, that is why we absolutely must use the cubs in this assault.”

  Jenson thought for a moment before responding. “You want to show them the cubs will attack if the planet is threatened.”

  “Exactly.” Seth finished the thought. “There is no way the Coalition or the Shirka militia can protect each of the sixty-three birthing planets. We want the cubs to descend on the warriors to show them that these planets cannot be taken without the warriors dedicating a huge amount of resources for each planet.”

  “And for that reason,” Mike added, “we have to let them get out a radio message to their people. We, of course, can’t control what they say, but when the base is being overrun with cubs, there really are only two options for a military force to transmit. They will describe the attack to include enemy numbers, type, and effectiveness; from there they will either ask for reinforcements or rescue.

  “Either way, the warriors will know how deadly the cubs are and how easily they amassed such large numbers to take out the first landing party. It should be a deterrent against future attacks on the birthing planets.”

  Jenson shook his head. “Not that you need me to agree, sir, but I understand now and I’m good with it.”

  Seth didn’t exactly smile but his face did soften a bit. “Thank you, Jenson. You’re right, I don’t need you to agree but I much prefer it when my men do. And no matter what, I always need my men to spe
ak their minds, so I appreciate you speaking up.” He then looked to the returned scouts. “You three look eager. What do you have for us?”

  Sister’s jaw was still broken so she nodded to her cousin. “The warriors are where you thought they would be, at the base of the waterfall on the far side of the river.”

  The cousin saw the dirt map and moved forward to make his own additions to it. “They patrol here, here, and here. The main camp is here. They are building solid structures but only one small hut has been completed. We believe it is their communications center.”

  “We were just talking about that.” Seth eyed the map. “Once we are on site, we need to confirm that hut is their communications room. If it is, we cannot destroy it and we have to allow at least one warrior to get to it to send their message and relay the battle information.” The scouts looked at one another with confusion. “I’ll explain later. Please go on.”

  The cousin placed markers on the map. “We estimate they have just over a hundred warriors at this site. They are keeping to their camp and the patrols have a very tight perimeter.”

  First Son grunted. “The forest has taken more of their men than they expected. They are staying closer to the safety of the pack. We will be able to get much closer to them than we had expected.”

  Seth didn’t like the numerical advantage the warriors had. The cubs fought well but they were going to have high losses in this next fight. But without the cubs, Seth doubted his combined Shirka and Coalition team could complete the mission.

  Seth didn’t like this part of being the commanding officer, but he knew that he had to keep the plan as it was.

  The mission briefing finished and Reaper inoculated the team with his anti-snake venom. The watch schedule was given out and everyone put their own personal pre-battle routine into play. Some of the men immediately racked out while others wrote down their thoughts as they ate dinner.

  Seth wrote a quick email to Emily, not a goodbye or a just in case email; he just wanted to say hi and tell her about his mission so far. He knew the email wouldn’t be sent until they were picked up after the mission, dead or alive, but he wanted to write it anyway.