Extinction (64 page)

Gathering up her cubs, she led them out
of the forest to her transport. All around her the excited pack was barking.
Mom!
Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!

“If you guys keep this up for the entire
trip home, I swear your father will eat at least one of you.” Among Shirka
parents, this wasn't an idol threat; it was an extremely possible outcome.

~

Many years later...

Beast then looked up and saw his brother
standing before him. “I've missed you, brother.”

“You did well out there today.” The
brothers embraced. “Runt.”

The Warrior Interrogation
Planet

Blaze was trying to open his eyes but
the light in the room was like lightning through his brain. Reaper was coaching
him through the pain. “C'mon, buddy, I know it hurts but we need you up and
running right now. I've given you some steroids to help with the swelling in
your brain and some stuff for the pain. I'm also trying out a new cellular
regeneration drug that acts basically like our dermal regenerators but on your
interior cells.”

“Thanks, Doc.” Blaze was starting to be
able to tolerate the light now. “Is there any reason my mouth is dry and my
eyes are tingling?”

“Um, could be an unwanted side effect of
the new drug”, Reaper said as he reached for his own hydration pack tube and
offered it to his patient.

“Um, could be? You're not exactly
filling me with confidence right now, buddy.” Blaze drank the recycled water
and realized just how thirsty he must be when he thought the recycled sweat and
urine tasted like the freshest mountain spring water he had ever had in his
life.

Reaper turned to Surgeon. “He'll be up
in a few minutes and ready to go a few minutes after that.” He gave a brief
worried look to Blaze and then looked back to Surgeon. “He's already showing
signs of unwanted side effects from the experimental cellular regeneration
medicine. They're minor but they aren't ones even listed on the reference sheet
for the medication.”

Surgeon knew Reaper was worried but they
didn't have any other choice. “You are following my orders, Reaper. If Blaze
has a bad outcome, it's my fault.”

Blaze interjected himself between his
friends both physically and verbally. “It's neither of your guys' fault. This
is a mission. A mission that our enemy made unavoidable. If it's anyone's
fault, it's theirs. Besides, you guys are talking like I was already dead.
Please don't. It hurts my feelings.” Blaze laughed, patted his friends on their
backs and then started to pick up his gear. Surgeon just shook his head and
chuckled while Reaper sighed and began to put his medpack back together.

From the other side of the hallway, Seth
was pretty much finished working out the details of the next part of their
plan. It wasn't the greatest plan of all time, probably wasn't even in the top
thousand plans of some of the time, but it was what they had been able to come
up in the time they had with the resources they had. Surgeon was approaching
them and saw an odd makeshift contraption being built with one of their visors
as the centerpiece.

Seth looked up from his work. “We'll be
ready to go in just a minute. I have to warn you, though, this plan is built
around a lot of 'ifs.'” Surgeon just nodded for Seth to continue. “All right,
like I told you before, this station gets views from eighteen different cameras
but the operator can only see three of them at any one time. This station was
set up so the operator had to manually cycle through the cameras, though I
suspect it could also be set to rotate through them at a set interval.

“We have found a dead spot on the
hallway cameras that is almost the length of the hall starting from the front
of the camera then going forward and about one meter from the ceiling. The
camera is about forty meters down the hall from where this pod connects to that
hallway.”

The pod the team currently occupied
joined the hallway almost directly next to the elevator they needed to access.
In order to get to the camera monitoring the elevator, they would have to walk
down forty meters of open hallway with nowhere to hide. Or...

Seth took a deep breath. “Our plan is to
shoot a climbing piton in to the wall about a half meter in front of the camera
and a half meter below the ceiling. Even if the camera is viewing the hallway
when that happens, the piton and climbing line should be in the blind spot the
entire time.

“Then, Shorty will get on the line,
because he's the smallest, and pull himself up to the camera. He'll hang the
visor on the camera so it's looking into the viewfinder of the visor. We'll set
up another visor on a camera in the other hallway and it will be recording the
hallway from the same height and angle as the camera we're trying to fool. The hallways
are nearly identical, so whoever is viewing the other security camera will just
see the empty hallway on the other side of this station. If they're paying
close attention, they'll realize the elevator isn't in the image and we're
screwed. In theory, we'll have all the time we need to open the elevator and
get into the complex.”

Surgeon had come up with more than one
plan in his life that he wasn't proud of but looking back, they weren't half
bad in comparison. “Let me get this straight, we're using the old 'loop the
video feed' scam from like a hundred movies from a few hundred years ago?”

Beast shrugged. “Loop the video feed?”

Seth smiled. “See, different species—he
doesn't get the reference. I'm sure these guys haven't seen
Speed
either.”

“Okay, Cadet, but it also relies on the
sentry not looking at the hallway video feed while Shorty attaches the visor.
Because no matter how convincing that feed is to the camera once the visor is
set up, it won't be convincing to anyone watching it if you can see Shorty's
hands draping a visor over the camera. And what if we can only see three images
at once because we don't know how to operate the system but someone else who
does has their screens set to monitor multiple feeds at once?” Surgeon still
wasn't convinced.

“Yes, sir, all that's true. But along
with the negative 'IFs' there are also the positive ones as well. What if there
aren't any other sentries? What if their system allows only one guard to be on
at a time in these pods? What if they are monitoring six images per screen,
making each image smaller and our actions less obvious?” Seth knew Surgeon
wasn't buying it. “Look, it's all we've got. It's not a good plan but show me
something better. The only other choice is to waltz into the hallway and get to
work on that elevator. We know we'll be spotted with that plan but we might not
be with this one.”

Surgeon knew Seth was right. The plan
sucked but it's what they had. “All right, Cadet, set up your feed visor and
the tension line.” Turning to the rest of his team, he ordered, “Hey Shorty,
come here. We've got a great plan and you're the centerpiece.”

Shorty heard the plan and shook his
head. If this didn't work, he'd be exposed and by himself when it didn't work. “It
sucks being short.”

All of the camera views were uniform and
their angles were as exact as any engineer could have made them. Seth used that
to his advantage and set the visor to display its image at the proper angle
regardless of how it was placed on the camera.

Once everything was set, Shorty got onto
the tension line and pulled himself towards the security camera. As he prepared
to put the visor over the camera, he heard a soft click coming from the camera.
He paused, waited, and about twenty seconds later, he heard the same sound. He
then subvocalized to Surgeon, “Standby, I need to check out a theory.”

Shorty heard a comm click, meaning
Surgeon copied the transmission. Every twenty seconds, Shorty heard the same
soft click coming from the camera. He wasn't sure but he thought he knew what
the click was and told the rest of his team. “Every twenty seconds, I hear a
soft click coming from inside the camera. I think it's the noise some pieces of
electronics make when power is supplied or cut from them. So every twenty
seconds this camera is cycling on or off.”

Seth shook his head and looked to
Surgeon. “If he's right, then someone is monitoring that feed on a timed loop.
If it were just a default setting sent to all of the stations, manned or
unmanned, we'd be seeing the feed switch at our console every twenty seconds.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Shorty continued,
“I can't tell which click is for on and which is for off. I've a got a
fifty-fifty chance either way so I'm just going to nut up and do it on the next
cycle.”

Another single comm click from Surgeon.
Shorty then heard the camera's soft click and he put the visor in place and secured
it. Shorty dropped from his line and brought his weapon up towards where his
enemy would come from, if the enemy ever came. He wouldn't be able to hear the
next camera click now that he was away from the camera, but he counted to
himself and knew the camera had moved onto the next cycle a second or two after
he came off the line.

With forty meters of hallway between him
and the adjacent pod, it was better to face forward and prepare to fight if
necessary rather than turn his back towards a potential threat and then run to
the nearest cover. He could hear at least two of his teammates running towards
him to help out in case the plan didn't work and an enemy came from around the
corner. By the time they arrived, they all had the same thought: the plan must
have worked because there should have been an alarm or something set off if the
enemy had been alerted to their presence.

They slowly backed away from the corner,
moving towards the rest of the team at the elevator. The three things you
always want in any dangerous situation is time, distance, and shielding. This
concept is true regardless if you're working with radiation, bullets flying at
you, or an ex-girlfriend. The farther they could get from the corner of the
hallway would give them time and distance; shielding wasn't available but you
take what you can get in combat.

By the time Shorty and his cover
operators got back to the elevator, the rest of the team was waiting to descend
into the complex. Seth was speaking to Surgeon. “Like I said, I have no idea
which floor we should start on. I'd say we go to the floor that seems to have
the most elevator traffic. This button has more fingerprints around it than the
others.”

Surgeon looked at the panel of twenty
buttons. Symbols next to each button were probably floor numbers or
descriptions but they had no idea what they were. “That's as good of a plan as
any. Use a mark of some sort to show which floors we've been to. My luck we'll
have to go through every floor before we find our people.”

The alien warriors were so much bigger
than humans, so there was plenty of room in the elevator for everyone. Some
engineering designs seemed fairly common between bipedal species as it was in
this case in that the elevator had an access hatch in the roof of the elevator
car. No matter the builder, every piece of equipment needed repair or
maintenance at some point or another.

Surgeon put four operators through the
hatch and on to the top of the car. This would protect them from an ambush if
any enemies were waiting for the elevator doors to open at a certain floor. The
four extra guys could then join the fight during a moment of opportunity and
add some unexpected guns to the battle and hopefully turn the ambush to their
favor.

The car descended twelve floors before
the doors opened. The warrior who stood at the doors was just as surprised by
the humans standing in the elevator as they were to see him. Action is always
faster than reaction but both sides were starting from almost the same point
and reacting to each other's unexpected presence.

The warrior's reaction was just a bit
faster, though, as he reached into the elevator with his two lower arms and
grabbed Shorty, who was closest to him. With his two hands wrapped around the
human's skull, he began to squeeze while using his two upper arms to push away
from the elevator, giving him some distance from the armed enemies the elevator
contained.

Surgeon reached for Shorty but he wasn't
fast enough and his friend was pulled away from the rest of the team. Surgeon
heard and then saw Shorty's skull cave in under the pressure of the warrior's
grip. At this point, there was no saving his friend and the enemy was using
Shorty as a shield. Several operators had begun shooting the warrior, aiming
for the areas Shorty's body wasn't blocking.

Surgeon fired multiple rounds through
Shorty's crushed skull and consequently began to tear the enemy's hands apart.
Some of the rounds also continued through the warrior's hands and into his
face. The other operators followed Surgeon's lead and began choosing their
points of aim on what they thought were crucial points rather than worrying
about hitting their buddy.

The warrior went down quickly, taking
Shorty's body with him. During the contact, the operators in front had taken
low positions and began advancing on their target while the next few operators
stayed standing and also fired on the enemy. In the two to three seconds it
took for the fight to start and finish, several operators had moved out of the
elevator; those operators now pushed past the fallen enemy and took up firing
positions in case any more came to their location. Other teammates exited the
elevator and took up positions to cover unprotected angles. Those who needed to
reload did so.