Extinction: The Will of the Protectors

by Jay Korza

  “We’re ready to go,” Seth responded.

  “Jump in any time you’d like, Gunny, the water’s fine.” Telfer gave him the go.

  Wilks tapped Davies on the shoulder and they pushed forward. They were instantly met with plasma fire from their left.

  The engagement was working: the warriors were thrown off by the two-sided attack. When Seth’s team pushed from yet another direction, it was too much for the fledgling warriors to handle. No matter how much in-vitro education and virtual simulations were passed on to them, nothing compared to the calculated actions of combat-tested and hardened soldiers.

  What the warriors’ lacked in experience, they made up for in numbers, shields, and a lack of caring about dying. They weren’t going to win, but they might take a heavier toll on the team than Seth had planned or wanted.

  Jenarah and Kuruk lead the charge for Seth’s team. Their symbiotic fighting skills were something the warriors couldn’t have been programmed for and were at a loss to defend against. The twins zagged and wove through their opponents, cutting at them with short swords and knives.

  They had come up with this tactic at the last moment before they attacked. They knew their bladed weapons wouldn’t be stopped by the warriors’ personal shields. They also knew that to kill a warrior with a sword took more time than they were willing to devote to each attack.

  Instead, they ran between targets, slicing quickly but effectively. Personal shields were damaged or their straps cut off entirely, leaving its wearer open and susceptible to small arms fire. The plan worked better than they had hoped.

  Baldylocks stepped out into the fray after the twins. He took a moment to survey the battlefield. He was prideful of both his warrior brothers and his new Coalition family. He was a part of two separate but equally honorable tribes, and both were locked in mortal combat with each other.

  He saw that his training with the commandos had done much to improve their hand-to-hand skills against his brothers. With all of the personal shields he saw being worn, he knew most of the fighting would be up close and personal, so he was glad that he hadn’t held back while he trained with his new team.

  Baldylocks saw the twins make great progress, so he opened the platoon push. “Nitaha, Fang, follow the twins’ lead. They are cutting off or damaging the shield generators. The warriors are open to attack.”

  He knew anyone could follow those orders, but outside of the twins, the two Shirka were the fastest and most nimble fighters with bladed weapons.

  As the fight raged on, Davies found himself back to back with Surgeon.

  “Hey, buddy. I haven’t seen you in a while. Where have you been hiding?” Surgeon said as he shot an unshielded warrior in the head.

  “Around,” Davies tersely replied.

  “Hey, I know we’re in the middle of a fight for our lives, but are you alright?” Surgeon dodged a warrior’s sword and together, he and Davies plunged knives into the enemy’s chest and throat.

  “Just watch my back and I’ll watch yours.” Davies still wasn’t interested in the conversation. In all the years of fighting together, Surgeon had never seen his best friend act like this, even in a bad situation.

  Just then, Daria crossed the hallway with Seth, to provide cover for the science team. A warrior came around from Daria’s blind side and was about to bring a war axe down on her head. Surgeon saw the impending doom and brought his weapon up to engage the unshielded warrior.

  Daria saw her husband and best friend fighting back to back, and for a moment, thought that things just might be okay with them again. Then Davies looked her in the eyes and quickly averted them. She knew then that nothing would ever be the same.

  She then noticed Mike brought his weapon up towards her and she knew there must be mortal danger nearby that he was trying to protect her from. She knew the danger had to be in her blind spot to the rear; otherwise she would have seen it for herself.

  Daria half-twisted to her right and purposely let her legs go limp so she could make a controlled side-fall to hopefully dodge whatever danger was coming for her. As she rolled to her back, she saw the warrior and his axe coming for her head.

  Rounds from her weapon flew into the beast’s chest and opened it up in multiple places. Surgeon’s bullets joined hers but in the warrior’s head, effectively putting him down.

  The warrior fell and his axe came down hard next to Daria’s head, almost finishing its owner’s will after all.

  Daria rolled out from under one of the warrior’s massive arms and stood again. She nodded a thank-you to her husband. But now her weapon was too low to save him from the same fate she had just nearly avoided.

  “Mike!” She tried to bring her weapon up in time while she yelled for her husband. But she knew she wouldn’t make it.

  The enemy’s sword headed for Mike’s neck. Davies knew that even if he shot the warrior in the head, the sword would finish its arc before the bullets had their desired effect.

  Davies was taller than Mike by almost half a head. By lifting his left arm high and moving into the path of the sword, Davies was able to catch it just under his armpit. Davies had hoped his armor would give him some protection from the blade, and it might have, but it wasn’t enough to keep the sword from cutting a third of the way through his thoracic cavity and severing his aortic arch. All of the blood leaving his heart now poured directly into his chest cavity rather than to the rest of his body.

  Daria screamed as Mike turned to his best friend; Davies hit the deck with the sword still in his chest cavity. Mike fired a burst from his weapon, point blank into the warrior’s chest. The magazine went empty and Mike transitioned to his sidearm. He emptied its magazine into the falling murderer. Mike dropped his sidearm and pulled his combat knife, the one Davies had given him back after he returned from the dead. Mike carved the warrior’s head and chest into parade confetti.

  Daria wanted to run to her husband, to say goodbye to Davies, to do so many things that she just couldn’t do right now. She was assigned to protect the science team, their whole reason for being here in the first place. She could leave her post, but if they failed, Davies would have died in vain.

  Mike stopped tearing the warrior apart and turned his attention to Davies.

  Davies looked Mike in the eyes. “I’m sorry, brother. I never wanted to hurt you. I never would have, if I had known. You have to believe me.”

  “Shhhh, just stop. You didn’t do anything wrong. I was never, for one single moment, ever upset with you or Daria. I love you both. You’re my brother, my best friend, the best sniper and warrior I have ever known. You are…”

  Mike stopped talking. Davies was dead. He wasn’t sure how much his friend had heard before he left, but he hoped it was enough. Mike got up and set to task with a renewed sense of purpose: to kill every single warrior in the galaxy. He entered the fray once more, more lethal and determined than he had ever been before.

  Seth led his team another couple hundred feet before they met their next big engagement. A reserve of warriors was outside the doors to their target. The command center was a glass room. Empress Hugany could be seen inside as she worked a terminal at a frantic pace. No doubt she was trying to get the system to bring more warriors online faster than the protocols allowed for.

  Jenny spoke up. “The system is set up to deliver the warriors in a certain way. With the empress speeding the process up, the warriors are not emerging at their fullest capacity. There is supposed to be a stringent quality assurance program, along with certain neurological and physical stimulations to get their bodies and minds working properly.”

  “The fact that she is rushing the process is making the delivered warriors less prepared to deal with us then?” Emily asked.

  “Yes. A newborn horse from Earth can walk almost immediately after birth, yes? However, they are unstable and ungainly, prone to falling and cannot run yet. It is the same with the warriors. Given several hours, they would be at their best, inexperienced but at least not s
till a newborn.

  “The warriors we encountered first were more difficult to deal with. They have been getting easier to dispatch as we have progressed through this mission. The warriors we see now still have remnants from their tubes covering their bodies. They might be only an hour or two old,” Jenny concluded.

  As they spoke, Baldylocks ventured ahead of the team.

  “Brothers!” he boomed. “Lay down your weapons and stand aside. We are here to free you. You will be slaves no more. I have with me a Cherta of royal blood. You can touch her and know the truth. She will set you free.”

  Seth was taken aback at the impromptu speech, and more than a little upset that Baldylocks hadn’t run it by him first. But it looked like it might actually work, so he didn’t say anything yet.

  “We were told of a warrior brother turned traitor. That must be you.” The squad leader stepped forward. “Meet me in honorable combat and die a brother instead of an enemy.”

  “You will not win, brother.” Baldylocks almost pleaded. “You do not have to join us — just step aside.”

  He could tell the newborn wasn’t going to change his mind and was about to order the attack on the squad, so Baldylocks stepped forward.

  “I accept your challenge. Honorable combat. You and me.”

  The two warriors stepped into the impromptu ring and stared at each other for a moment. With the combat begun, the other warriors would not engage the rest of Baldylock’s team as long as they didn’t start anything either. Seth sensed this was the unspoken rule and waved his people to stand down.

  The newborn rushed in with three fists and one sword. Baldylocks easily dodged the attack and landed a few punches of his own into his brother’s back and face. He could’ve killed the junior right then and there—he had left his throat exposed—but Baldylocks wanted his kin to get at least a few hits in before he died.

  Several more passes were made at each other and the newborn was allowed, for the sake of honor, to make a deep cut on one of Baldylocks’ arms. Then the veteran warrior ended it, quickly and cleanly.

  He turned to the rest of the fledgling warriors. “You can die also, or let us pass. I tell you the truth: touch this Cherta slug and you will see that she is of royal descent. You can follow her orders to stand down and lose no honor.”

  There was a long pause, but in the end, the newborns decided they would rather fight and die, and they did, with honor.

  While the short-lived fight took place in the background, Jeeves had rolled to the command center’s door and hacked the system to gain entry. There were twelve cabal soldiers with the empress. She must have come to the surface with a much smaller craft than the Coalition team had.

  Jeeves thought about launching two high-explosive grenades into the room, but he knew he couldn’t damage the equipment inside. And that was the crux of the situation for both parties involved. Neither could risk destroying the terminals but they also couldn’t allow the other team to live.

  Jeeves war-gamed it out in his most powerful processors and went through just over a million scenarios before he found the one he thought would have the best chance of working. This process took one point five seconds to complete and another second to employ.

  The robot opened the door and was met with a hail of gunfire. Several slugs bounced off his personal shield and whizzed by Seth’s head, who was finishing up fighting the newborns.

  “Hey! Is everyone just going rogue today and doing their own thing?!” Seth yelled at Jeeves.

  “Sincerest apologies, Captain,” Jeeves said as he deployed a high-explosive round into the command center. “I do not have time to explain, but I assure you, this is the best course of action at the present time.”

  Emily saw the grenade launch from one of Jeeves’ auxiliary tubes. “No! God damn it! You’ll destroy the terminal we need!”

  Emily watched as the grenade sailed to a far part of the room and detonated, barely close enough to a terminal to scorch it. The nearest cabal soldier was knocked down by the overpressure but was otherwise unhurt.

  The empress yelled at her men. “Get out there and kill them! We can’t let them destroy these terminals! Hurry!”

  At first, Emily had been surprised at Jeeves’ lack of accuracy. But as the cabal soldiers pushed their assault out of the room, she knew exactly what his plan had been and the empress had fallen for it. Fearing for the safety of the terminals, the empress sent her men out of the room to meet the enemy, just what Jeeves wanted her to do.

  This engagement was different than the ones they had been fighting all day. The warriors’ plasma rifles were good for medium to long-range fighting but horrible for CQB fighting. Because of that, the close quarters fighting often ended in hand-to-hand bouts.

  The cabal used standard weapons designed for medium and short-range engagements; CQB rules were back in effect.

  Seth’s team had dropped the twins off at the last engagement point so he was down to himself and three other shooters. He wasn’t counting Emily, Bloom, or Jeeves as shooters because he needed them as safe as possible for the time being.

  “Jeeves, bunker down with the science team. Cover them with your shield as much as you can,” Seth ordered.

  “Yes, sir.” Jeeves had already moved out of the doorway at the beginning of his assault and now he took up a position with the science team.

  Jeeves had an idea so he opened the squad push. “Captains, my grenade deployment breached the rear portion of the command center. I believe I have found a route through three hallways, one repair access hatchway, and one overhead catwalk that will get us to that breached wall. If the science team breaks off now, we can reach it before the expected end of our current engagement.”

  “Go,” Seth ordered.

  Jeeves led the way and the science team departed. Emily didn’t argue; she trusted in Jeeves to come up with a good plan, but she didn’t want to leave her friends to fight and possibly die without her.

  By the time Emily and her team reached the breached wall, she saw that Snake was down but still alive, even if barely. Seth had taken a few rounds but was still in the fight. The warrior was down an arm but it didn’t seem to slow him down any. Daria sported her own injuries but fared well.

  Bloom had scoped the room with a fiber-optic line and saw two cabal soldiers had stayed behind with the empress. One of them paid close attention to the breached wall.

  Jeeves had a personal shield but he was still a large and ungainly machine that wasn’t built for stealth. Bloom decided he should go first to try to sneak in and take out at least one of the guards before they knew what hit them.

  Bloom had made it halfway through the breach when he felt the first round fragment off a nearby terminal and splash his cheek with a small amount of slag. He rolled to the side opposite his injury, removed a flash-bang from his combat harness and lobbed the device towards the center of the room.

  The diversionary device detonated with an intense flash of light and an ear-splitting bang. The rest of the team used the moment of confusion to make their way through the breach.

  The cabal guards had seen the flash-bang in the air and thought it was a grenade. Taking cover to protect themselves from the explosion that never came, they inadvertently protected themselves from the blinding flash that followed.

  “Get them, you incompetent fools!” The empress was enraged and worked frantically at her control board to fix things.

  The empress was birthing warriors faster than was safe and gave them marching orders to come to her aid. She still had three platoons of warriors in reserve that had deployed to guard other key areas of the facility that she now called into action at her location.

  Bloom wiped the blood from his face and saw his hand covered in the bright red fluid. A small artery must have been severed. Bloom kept crawling forward; he knew that even a small facial artery wasn’t life-threatening, regardless of how bad it looked.

  After he crawled a few more feet, Bloom realized that even if it wasn’t a
life-threatening wound, it was a visually distracting wound because the blood kept getting in his eye.

  He stopped crawling, reached into his personal medkit and pulled out a small can of foam sealant. It was meant to be sprayed into a deep wound but it would also work as a lather.

  He sprayed some into his hand and then rubbed it across the side of his face. The stuff stung and the pressure didn’t feel great either. He thought he felt his temporal artery push out blood as he lathered the foam as though he were about to shave.

  With the wound sealed, he put the foam back in his medkit and looked forward just in time to see the enemy guard sneaking around Bloom’s cover.

  They were both equally startled but the guard’s weapon was already in his hand and pointed forward. He pulled the trigger; two rounds entered Bloom’s shoulder and the third one went high, missing him completely.

  Bloom couldn’t help but cry out in pain this time. He reached for his weapon and saw his opponent switch from a single-handed grip to a two-handed posture. Bloom knew he wouldn’t win the duel; he was already too far behind the curve.

  Before the Nortes could fire, two rounds entered his skull and the cabal soldier dropped in a heap to the ground. Emily knelt down beside Bloom and grabbed his shoulder to apply pressure to the wounds.

  “I’ll hold that. Get my kit out.”

  Bloom moved Emily’s hand and replaced it with his own. That freed her up to get the foam back out of Bloom’s kit and spray the rest of its contents into his new bullet wounds.

  “Good as new.” Emily only briefly admired her handiwork.

  “Keep your head down, Captain. I’ll finish the last guy.” Bloom made a valiant effort to stand but he dropped to his knees. “In a minute. I’ll take care of him in just a minute.”

  “Yeah, right,” Emily said. “Jeeves already got the other guy. We just have the empress left. I can handle her. Sit tight. That’s an order.”

  Emily peered over the console and saw the empress at her own terminal. She might have been aware that her guards were no longer alive, but it hadn’t changed her determination any. She still punched in codes and doled out orders to her warriors.