Extinction (46 page)

“How do you suggest we proceed?” Daria
had walked back to Bloom, and Davies automatically took over her position.

“Carefully”, Bloom quipped. “I’m
detecting movement ahead of the sled, multiple targets.”

Daria didn’t like the sound of that. If
there were several of the aliens coming down their way, they would never make
it. “How far out?”

“The sled is about twenty meters ahead
of us and the contacts are closing to about one hundred meters farther out from
the sled.” Bloom adjusted one of the cameras on the sled. “They’re robotic
sentries, not aliens. I’ll deploy a grenade from the sled to test their
defenses.”

“Do it.” Daria then turned to everyone
else. “Snake, Davies, you two are point team. Hood and I will protect Bloom.
Bloom needs to survive if we’re going to crack this egg.”

Snake gestured to Davies, who came up
alongside him. Together, they agreed on the best way to defend the hallway.

Bloom had set mini-grenade launchers on
each crate and two on the sled. One was now destroyed, along with the crate it
had been on. He decided to use the one on the other crate to launch the
grenade.

It landed between the two closest
sentries and detonated. Although they could hear the explosion two hundred
meters away, the hallway didn’t rock nearly as much as when the booby trap trip
mine had gone off. That made Daria wonder just how much explosives those booby
traps had in them. Daria watched the scene unfold as it played out across her
visor.

The grenade launched from the crate and
landed between the two lead sentries. They continued forward without even
seeming to care. When the grenade exploded, fragments bounced off shields that
shimmered just a few centimeters from the exterior plating of the droids. They
stopped, warbled something to one another, and then the lead droid opened fire
on the crate where the grenade had come from. The plasma weapon shredded the
crate and the launcher that was on it.

“I guess they didn’t like that”, Bloom
said as he repositioned the sled for a better view of the sentries.

Daria wondered how much firepower it
would take to destroy the droids. She then realized that they had completely
ignored the air sled. She also remembered that the aliens’ personal shield was
susceptible to low-energy attacks and you could get inside them with a knife or
sword.

“Bloom, how long until they get here?”
Daria looked over at him.

“If they maintain speed, I calculate ten
minutes.”

Daria made her decision. “Get that sled
back here.” She turned to look down the corridor and added, “Snake, bring me
your claymores. Davies, get the thermal blanket out.”

Bloom looked up at Daria. “I know what
you’re thinking, Doc, and I don’t like it. Just because they’ve ignored the
sled so far doesn’t mean that they will continue to ignore it with you on it.
Even if the thermal signal is hidden by the blanket, they may have other ways
to detect you. And lastly, how are you going to plant those mines without
exposing yourself?”

“Quickly,” Daria responded. “Besides,
it’s our best hope. We almost couldn’t take down just one alien with a personal
shield. I don’t think we’ll be able to beat five shields. And there’s no time
to set up some sort of automated deployment method from the sled.”

“Maybe not fully automated in a
high-tech sense,” Snake offered, “but we could go back to the basics and adapt
and overcome.”

It took Snake about three minutes, after
the sled arrived, to jury-rig the mines to it. Using 550 cord, he strung each
mine to the right rail of the sled, where they hung about one foot from the
bottom of the sled. A pull-knot secured each mine to the rail and would allow
Daria to release them from underneath the cover of the thermal blanket. This
would hopefully hide her presence from the droids.

Snake finished and then gave final
instructions to Daria. “When the mine gets a mag-lock on the droid, the
indicator in your visor for that mine will go green, showing that it has
successfully attached itself and is armed. At that point, release the 550 cord
for that mine and move on to the next one. Bloom will control the sled and
guide the placement of the mines so you don’t have to fumble with more than one
thing at a time.”

“As soon as the mines are set, hold on
tight because I’m going to move that sled away from the blast area real fast.”
Bloom had already decided that the safest place for Daria would be around a
corner and in an alcove where the droids had come from.

Davies finished tucking the blanket
around Daria and Bloom sent her off down the corridor. The droids were very
close now. As the sled approached, they took no notice of it.

Bloom positioned the first mine and
slowly moved the sled closer to the target. The light went green in Daria’s
visor, indicating the mine was set and armed. She released the cord and moved
on to the next droid.

As the sled reached the second droid,
the first seemed to realize that maybe it should investigate the object stuck
to its back. The droid knew that the automated delivery sled had passed by and
dropped something, but those sleds were always dropping things. That was the
difference between the sled and the droid: the semi self-aware sentry droids
took pride in their work. The droid tried to ignore the sled as it continued
down the hall and drop more of its cargo. The droid stopped in the hallway and
tried to grab the mine on its back. The droid was not built for its arm to
articulate in that manner and it was akin to watching a person attempt to
scratch that spot between their shoulder blades that no one can quite reach.

When the droid realized that he couldn’t
reach it, he warbled something to the number two droid. Daria had just finished
planting the second mine when he went to help the number one droid.

Number two tried to pull the mine from
number one’s back but the mag-lock was too strong. He warbled something to
number one and then extended a probe to the mine from a compartment in his
chest.

Daria just finished planting mine number
three when number two droid warbled something excitedly to number one.

“I think they’re on to us”, Bloom said
as he positioned Daria for the fourth mine.

The fourth mine was just about to attach
itself when the droid shot forward away from the sled. At the same time, the
fifth droid shot a plasma bolt into the underside of the sled, causing Daria to
pull the knot free and drop the mine to the ground.

The sled flew forward as Bloom tried to
get Daria out of harms’ way. By luck alone, the fifth mine swung and slapped
against the fourth droid, stuck, and armed itself. Daria wasn’t ready for this
so she hadn’t released the mine from the sled’s railing. The sled jerked as the
cord went taut and almost threw Daria off as it bucked. She quickly reached
back and released the cord, allowing the sled to lurch forward in a less than
controlled manner and bounced off one wall before Bloom could regain control.

Daria was lucky for the sudden lack of
control because it caused the plasma bolt from droid number one to miss her as
she deflected off the wall. She yelled into her comlink, “Blow it!! Blow them
now!”

Bloom was navigating Daria’s sled around
the corner and Snake waited until the last possible second to trigger the
charges. Four droids exploded with a brilliant flash and a thunderous clap.
Around the corner, Daria was shielded from the heat and shrapnel expelled by
the explosion but the overpressure bounced off the corridors and found their
way to her and her relative safety.

Daria was thrown from the sled and the
last thing she saw was the wall coming at her. She felt as though she were
flying at a thousand miles an hour but it seemed to take an hour for her to
reach the wall and the blackness that lay beyond.

The fifth sentry droid stood motionless
as the debris from his counterparts bounced off his shields. It took him less
than a nanosecond to decide that something had gone terribly wrong. Before the
shrapnel had even stopped flying through the hallway, he initiated the tunnel
lockdown procedure. Because he and his now destroyed patrol had secured
everything from the core up to this point, he sealed the corridor at the
nearest junction behind him.

It seemed very odd to the droid that a
hover sled from the maintenance bay would’ve attacked his patrol. He tapped
into the security feed for the hangar bay and found that there were multiple
unauthorized life signs from one—no, three—unknown alien races. He did not have
the proper security clearance to deploy the automated gas canisters in the
hanger, so he notified the main security office of the intrusion. No one
answered. Odd. He would have to continue to the hangar by himself and destroy
the aliens. Three more nanoseconds had passed and he began rolling down the
corridor once more as his four companions continued to disintegrate.

Farther down the hall, it took Snake
several thousand times longer than the droid to decide that something had gone
wrong. He couldn’t think as quickly as the droid but fortunately he was fast
enough.

“The blankets—everyone wrap up in a
thermal blanket. They couldn’t detect Doc underneath it and we’ve got one left
coming our way.”

Davies hated not going after Daria right
away but he knew it was the best plan. If the last droid was coming their way,
then Daria was either already dead or safely hidden from it.

It took almost fifteen minutes for the
droid to get a safe distance from the group before they could come out of
hiding. The droid was moving much slower now and taking more detailed scans.

As the next ranking member in the group,
Snake took over. “Davies and, set up a rear guard in case that thing comes
back. Bloom, come with me. We have to recover that unused mine and then find
Doc.”

Bloom continued to try to raise Daria
but without success. “She’s not dead; her comlink is still being powered by her
bioelectricity. Hopefully she just got knocked out from the blast.” Bloom
chuckled to himself.

“What’s so funny?” Snake asked.

Bloom shrugged. “Have you ever stopped
to think about our perception of life as compared to the ‘normal’ Coalition
citizen? I mean, here I am hoping that someone is unconscious. Scan hopes that
he won’t lose anymore appendages. And Snyder hoped that his best friend would
shoot him in the head to end his suffering. No one back home even has an idea
of what’s going on out here.

“Most people are hoping that their kids
do well in school, that they aren’t late for dinner, or that their boss doesn’t
find out they’re fucking his wife on the side.” Bloom stopped and looked at
Snake. “And we’re hoping someone will shoot us in the head if it comes to that.”

“Actually,” Snake smiled, “I’m hoping
that I don’t get shot in the head so I can go home and fuck some guy’s boss’s
wife.”

“Hey, I’m the funny one.” Bloom could
feel his tension slowly easing away again. “Stick to whatever it is you do. By
the way, what do you do?”

“I don’t know. Right now, I’m retrieving
this mine and then I’m finding Doc.” Snake had finished placing the safeties
back in place when Bloom came back from his scout of the hallway.

“This is not good,” Bloom said as he
examined the security door that had been brought down in the corridor.

Snake came up behind him. “Can we blow
it?”

“Not with anything we have. I can try to
override the security code but this is the toughest encryption I’ve encountered
yet.” Bloom had been trying without luck the entire time to raise Daria on the comlink.
“Doc, come in Daria. Let us know you’re all right.” No response.

“Can you open her channel so we can hear
what’s going on?” Snake tried to stay relaxed.

“Yeah, give me a second.” Bloom typed in
some command and Daria’s comlink came to life. Bloom and Snake could hear Daria
breathing.

“I think she’s unconscious.” Bloom
tapped some more commands. “I’m going to activate the feedback loop in her comlink
to try to wake her.”

~

Daria thought she could hear voices but
she wasn’t sure where they were coming from. The way she felt, she wasn’t sure
she could find her head if she needed to, much less the disembodied voices that
were going through it. Then she felt it. A small itching on the right side of
her head just behind her ear. But the itching changed somehow and it began to
build. Soon it was a painful electric shock that made her sit straight up even
against her body’s protest.

She immediately heard Bloom in her head
once the pain had subsided. “Doc, are you there? Can you hear me?”

“What the hell are you doing, Bloom! Do
you really think that I need to be electrocuted so soon after being blown up?”
Daria was now able to open her eyes and get an idea of where she was.

Snake cut in. “Doc, one of the droids
got away but the other four are slag. The problem is, some sort of security
protocol was activated and this blast door was brought down between us. Bloom
says we can’t blow it and he can’t get the protocols to disengage.” He paused. “You’ll
have to make it to the core on your own and override the security protocols for
the hangar and this door.”

“Of course I will”, Daria quipped. “I
never get to do anything the easy way. Bloom, will you be able to walk me
through whatever I need to do once I get there?”

“I’m not sure. The core is locked out
from all remote access, so I don’t know what you’ll find once you get there.”

“We’ll just have to make do.” Daria’s
thoughts were becoming clearer as the seconds passed. “Snake, have you
contacted base camp to let them know what’s going on?”

“I can’t. The droid is destroying our
communications relay as it goes. I didn’t send anyone back on foot to warn them
because there is no way to get back to the hangar without having to engage the
droid. I don’t think that we’d win.” Snake was all out of ideas on that one.