Extinction (9 page)

And above all, she had two new friends who
had already become dear to her. It was a nice departure from the other lab
geeks she worked with. No social abilities and always just interested in work
and more work. Although her peers looked at these two marines as grunts and
mindless soldiers, Emily knew better. They both had a vast amount of
intelligence but enjoyed getting down in the trenches and getting dirty.

They also craved excitement and
adventure, and contrary to who Emily thought she was, she was also getting the
itch for some action. Just let one of those bugs try to sneak up on me again,
she thought wistfully.

Onboard the
Vanguard
– Training Day

Heavy gravity planets were generally a
pain in the ass to perform operations on and training for those operations was
usually an even greater pain.

Seth’s legs felt like lead weights in
the 1.5G training room. He had been running for almost an hour now and his
lungs burned with every breath and his heart seemed to cry out to him for mercy
with every beat. He was heading up a hill when a target appeared to his right; diving
behind a tree, he drew his weapon.

The experimental handgun was designed to
fire a pulse wave of compressed sound that could disrupt almost any molecular
structure. He checked its charge and peered around the tree. His would-be
assailant was nowhere to be seen.

And then from beneath his feet, the
ground moved and two arms came out from the soil to reach up and grab Seth by
the ankles. Using a twisting motion, he freed one foot and fired at the now
empty hand. The hand disintegrated, and with a scream of pain the creature
pulled himself the rest of the way out of the ground. Still holding Seth’s left
ankle, the three-meter tall beast pulled Seth off the ground, leaving him in
the air suspended by one leg.

Seth saw that the creature had four
arms, two powerful upper ones and two that were sort of in the middle of his
torso. It also had some sort of natural body armor that was scattered around
his body in no discernible pattern. The creature was huge, strong, and
determined.

He tried to maneuver his body around to
get a clear shot at the creature but couldn’t. He began receiving blows to his
back as the beast pummeled him. In this gravity and after almost an hour of
constant strain, Seth’s abdominal muscles just wouldn’t obey his brain’s
commands to contract and allow him to face his attacker. He decided that if he
twisted around fast enough, his ankle would break but his body would continue rotating
so he could face the beast and fire his weapon.

He began to torque his body when Surgeon
hit a button on his console in the control room, which ended the scenario.
Seth’s body dropped when the hologram figure disappeared, releasing his hold on
the ankle. With a thud, Seth landed on the deck of the room. Luckily the
artificial gravity had been reduced to normal and he didn’t hit as hard as he
had expected to.

“Good thought”, Surgeon said as he came
down from the booth. “But that action would have left you with a broken ankle
and no ability to continue the mission. Why didn’t you seek out other options
before going to such extremes?”

“As far as I could tell, I was out of
options. I couldn’t get a bead on whatever that was, and his arms were too long,
so I couldn’t even hit him from where I was.” He paused for a long drink of
water. “Besides, what creature could burrow through the dense soil of a 1.5G planet?
That was a little unrealistic, don’t you think?”

“What creature does burrow through
ground on a heavy planet? That’s a good question and one we can’t answer. We
don’t know if these adversaries are six centimeters high but with incredibly
awesome intellect that allowed them to be so formidable. Or possibly, they’re
stupid grunts who stole technology from other races but know how to fight.

“And as far as this guy goes, you can
thank Shar'tuk for that one. He has come up with some of the nastiest
constructs I've seen so far. He must not sleep well at night.”

Surgeon paused, and then without warning
reached out to Seth’s neck for a chokehold. Seth blocked and countered,
bringing Surgeon’s arm back behind his own head and placing his elbow and
shoulder into a joint lock.

“I’m getting real tired of that”, Seth
said through clenched teeth.

“The point is,” Surgeon continued, with
his arm still locked behind his head, “we have to be ready for anything. Not
just what we know exists but anything else that we can think of, no matter how
unbelievable it might be.”

His eyes pointed towards Seth’s neck and
for the first time Seth noticed that Surgeon’s left hand was holding a dagger
just next to his jugular vein.

For the past two months, Seth had been
training relentlessly, as had the rest of the crew. The instructors were
obliged to attack anyone at any time just to check their preparedness at the
unexpected. You learned quickly that if you tried to prepare yourself for an
attack every time an instructor walked by you, he would call another instructor
on a secure frequency to ambush you further along on your journey. They wanted
everyone to be alert but relaxed at the same time. If you kept yourself
constantly on the lookout, the stress would kill you. You had to become used to
being aware but not conscious of it. When the moment arrived, your unconscious
mind took over and saved your butt, at least in theory.

Seth let go of his instructor’s arm and
lay on his back. “What could I have done, oh masterful one?” Sarcasm filled his
tone.

“I didn’t say you were wrong; I just
wanted your reasons for what you did. If you can justify your actions, then you
probably weren’t wrong. Just because you don’t win doesn’t mean that you were
wrong. You can do absolutely everything right in a fight, or even life for that
matter, and just not win. Remember that. The point is, always evaluate your
actions and think about what else could’ve been done. And if you’re alive to
evaluate your actions, you couldn’t have done that much wrong.”

“How come everything is always ‘the
point’ and almost all of the points are ‘the most important thing to remember’?”
Seth queried.

“Because, everything I say is golden and
it’s all the most important thing to remember”, Surgeon said smugly but with an
honest trace of humbleness in his voice.

“Now don’t go saying that ‘Back when I
was your age’ crap, all right, old-timer!” Seth challenged.

“How about a little live one-on-one
action? I’ll skin your hide. Back when I was your age, the corps taught us
soldiers how to fight!” Surgeon said, accepting the challenge.

Seth didn’t mind being called Cadet by
Surgeon because he really was compared to this master. It also didn’t bother
him that Surgeon was an enlisted man and was giving him orders. He clearly knew
what he was doing and had more up top than most officers Seth knew. That’s how
he was positive that this guy had been enlisted before this operation took
place; he was just more down to earth than most officers. In fact, Seth guessed
that most of the soldiers on this mission were enlisted men.

“Why was I chosen?” Seth had wondered
about this from day one. “I am about the only officer in the group, aren’t I?”

“There are a couple of you ‘high and
mighties’ in the group but not many.” Surgeon’s eyes twinkled a little. “It’s
not that we excluded officers purposely; it’s just that most of the field
operators are enlisted. Good instinct, though.” This statement showed some
admiration. “I reviewed the recordings from your final training mission. Very
impressive. We need people who can think on their feet and defeat the
overwhelming odds. Don’t let it go to your head, though. Speaking of which,
it’s about time I knocked that melon of yours around a little, let some of that
ego out!”

Surgeon pulled up a training scenario
that brought the holo-emitters on line and created a tropical setting that was
thankfully on a 1G world. Seth knew that he was a better hand-to-hand fighter
than Surgeon but the fifteen plus years that the veteran had on him made all
the difference in the world. Where some speed and agility had diminished,
knowledge and cunning took over to make Surgeon a better all-around fighter.
Seth respected that greatly and also admired how the man could shoot any weapon
and always have an almost perfect score. He was amazing at his job.

And now this guy was stalking him. At
home in any setting, both hunters tried to get the advantage on their
prospective prey before making a strike. The two had found out early on that
they thought very much alike. Both being unconventional tacticians, they had
several times ended up almost face to face when unknowingly trying to reach the
same vantage point. Seth decided the best way to avoid this was to think in
terms of hunting himself and then trying to get the upper hand. It didn’t work
too often. Surgeon was always one step ahead.

After a brutal hour and a half had
elapsed, Seth emerged from the training room with two out of five victories.
Not bad considering his opponent, and he was getting a lot better. Not wanting
to miss chow, they forwent the showers and headed directly to the mess hall.

The spread of food was always impressive
and that unsettled Seth a little. He felt it was sort of a “last meal” type of
thing. Those in command figured that these soldiers weren’t going to make it so
they deserve proper meals before the end.

Surgeon told him not to worry and
assured him that it was because there was a high-ranking flag officer aboard
who brought his personal chef along. This officer had not shown his face to
anyone yet and even Surgeon didn’t know who he was, though he had a pretty good
idea. It was all very unsettling in the end.

“I still don’t understand why we don’t
know more about our enemy. We do have corpses, right? Why can’t we get any
information from those?” Seth asked between bites.

“We don’t think that the bodies we found
are the enemy. They might have worked for them or been slaves, but not them.
The weapons they had were oversized for their bodies and the firing mechanism
was much too large for their hands. They would’ve made terrible combatants with
those weapons.” With a smile he added, “Of course, they could probably still be
able to take you out.”

“Hey, they’re letting me use a knife and
fork now—you better watch it.” More seriously he added, “I wonder where all the
bodies from the battle went. I guess the attackers could’ve taken them for
trophies or something.”

“We’re still hoping that they were “‘defenders”’
and not attackers. That would increase our chances of having an ally if we find
them. Which better be soon. We’re not sure why the mystery force hasn’t
continued their invasion but I’m sure that they won’t hold off too much longer.”
Surgeon let that one hang for a moment. “We think that they’re studying our
people. We sent out a Force Recon team on a scouting mission to our destroyed
outposts. They couldn’t find hardly any bodies. We don’t know if the colonists
were killed or taken alive.”

If they were still alive, neither man
wanted to think about that possibility. It was better to be dead than studied
by someone who wanted to find out the best way to kill you. That could mean
hours, days, even weeks of torture or experimentation. All the better reason to
get on with their mission.

Actually, he didn’t even know what his
mission was. All he knew was that he was being told that he was fighting the
good fight.

“When do we find out exactly what we are
training for?”

Surgeon looked up from his soup. “No one
is supposed to know this, but our mission commander is going to finally address
us tonight after evening chow. If you tell a soul, I’ll make sure that you’ll
feel worse than you did the night of the extraction.”

“Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask you,
why didn’t you guys just come and talk to me instead of kidnapping me? That
wasn’t really pleasant, you know.”

“We were departing less than thirty
minutes after your graduation and we didn’t have time to sit down and talk about
it. If you had declined, we would have had to kill you so you wouldn’t tell
anyone what you had learned. We figured, once on board and already in deep
space, what else could you do but go along? We actually did that with most of
our operatives. We gave them phony orders to somewhere, and then abducted them.
Their command thought that they were leaving, so they wouldn’t be missed. The
supposed receiving command on the orders didn’t even know they were supposed to
be coming, so they didn’t worry when the soldier didn’t show. Speak of the
devil”, Surgeon said, looking over Seth’s shoulder.

“How you doing, guys? Mind if I join
you?” Seth had seen this marine around; he was an instructor like Surgeon. Seth
stood and offered his hand to the newcomer.

“He never learns, does he?” Joker said
to Surgeon. He turned to Seth. “I was the one who gave you your little sleeping
shot the night of your extraction.”