Extinction (11 page)

The artificial intelligence that
controlled the tubes would filter information it received and disseminate it
through the tubes as it felt necessary. Before the purge, this was the job of
the technicians, and information was given at the discretion of the royal
family member in charge of the installation. Without any royal family left, the
artificial intelligence (AI) had to make these decisions on its own. And while
it usually made the right choice, a few choices were arguably the wrong ones.

When the AI started to detect some
warriors were becoming too self-aware, too individualized, it turned them to
mush. The decision was a good one based on the protocols programmed into the AI
and based on the history of decision making by the royals it had witnessed over
several centuries. The bad part of the AI's decision was to give this
information to the warriors' tubes, letting them know that self-awareness would
not be tolerated.
Thanks for the warning, sir.
Knowing that
self-awareness was bad, the self-aware made every attempt to hide that fact
from the monitoring AI. It wasn't easy but it was possible, though not everyone
succeeded in the attempt.

He was one of the ones who had
succeeded, or at least he thought he was. He wasn't so sure now as the universe
was still sucking him down a drain and becoming ever more forceful as the
seconds ticked on. Was this what it was like to be turned to mush? Was he about
to be fed to his brothers?

As the drain continued to pull at him,
he realized a second sensation starting to enter his existence. His toes had a
breeze washing across them. They reflexively twitched. Another sensation,
number three so far. Then suddenly, sensations four through a thousand came and
went in a flash. Light. Pressure. Pulling. Pushing. Stabbing. Poking.
Breathing. Lifting. Dropping. So many. So fast. Some painful. Some ambiguous.
Some, pleasurable?

The tube was waking him, bringing him
into existence. Transforming him from a concept, from a potential, from
content, to a fully-realized physical being. He knew instantly that he would
never be content again. He would never be happy with the existence the tube
told him he was made for.

Suppress. Quickly suppress. Shut down
the feelings. Remove the thoughts. Become apathetic. The AI might still be
attached, still monitoring, still able to turn him to mush. Fear. Loathing.
Anger. The thought of being ended before he truly began. Rage. Shut. Down. Now.

His tube was fully open now and he had
been lifted to a standing position. The tube's arms, fitted with probes, were
examining his body. Looking for defects, looking for reasons to turn him to
mush. It poked, pinched, spread, pulled and many other things to determine his
state of being.

While it went through its diagnostic
routine, the warrior looked at himself in the reflection of the tube's lid. He
had been shown his physical form during his education but he had never seen
himself. He glanced around at the other tubes and saw some of his brothers
being extricated at the same time. He couldn't tell one from the other. They
were all exactly the same. He read the tube number next to his and saw his
brother's number designation. He looked again at his brother and knew that if
all of the warriors being pulled from their tubes were mixed together in a
group, he would not be able to tell them apart but for himself.

He could pick his identical self out of
the crowd without issue, without thought, without hesitation. And to look at
himself, what a sight. Pride. Amazement. Fascination.

He stood tall; he knew his measurements
because he was grown to a specification, not a random genetic happenstance as
the other breeding species of the universe did. He was three point two meters
tall, exactly. His head was proportional to his body with sharp teeth hidden
behind his menacing lips. He didn't have fangs; no need because he would kill
his meals with his bare hands. But his teeth were sharp for tearing the flesh
from his prey. Behind his tearing teeth, he had two rows of molars that were
genetically hardened to handle the crushing of animal bone for easier
digestion.

Every animal was completely eaten and
every part digested and used for either nutrients or oxygen production. The
warriors had a second stomach that the food passed through after its initial
digestion. The second stomach removed as many of the oxygen molecules as it
could from the prey animal. Every meal contained waste carbon dioxide traveling
through its bloodstream, oxygen contained inside sugar molecules, oxygen in
many other compounds. This allowed the warrior to create a portion of his own
oxygen so he wasn't always dependent on his environment to breathe. Before
battle, warriors would gorge themselves to ensure they had oxygen reserves for
the fight just in case they ended up in an oxygen-deprived situation.

His ears were flat to his head so his
enemies wouldn't have anything to grab in a fight. Although he could pop them
out to gather more sound as needed, that wasn't their natural state of being.

He had three eyes, sort of. Two regular
ones, set forward on his head like any other predator but he also had built-in
tracks that allowed his eyes to move independently to either side of his head.
Centuries before the purging, the scientists had tried adding eyes to the
warriors but they could never get the brain to work as well, trying to decipher
multiple views from different angles at the same time. Thousands upon thousands
of known species could, but it seems only the universe and nature can achieve
certain genetic wonders.

His third eye was more of a sensor than
an eye. Though it seemed to be an actual eye, it was milky and dead looking. It
was stationary, with no ocular muscles and a nictating membrane to keep it
moist. It was sensitive to pressure, light, sound, and even some forms of
radiation. It couldn't necessarily see in the dark but between its light and
sound sensing ability, the warriors could get a fairly accurate idea of what
was around them.

Because light is both a wave and a
particle, the third eye could sense the particles hitting it and determine the
surroundings based on negative space. As light was projected towards a warrior,
if someone or something was between the warrior and the light source, the
object would create a negative space in his field of view that he could see.

The same principle applied to sound as
it bent around or was stopped by objects. The eye could also tell the
difference between reflected and direct sound. So if sound was bouncing off an
object in front of him or coming from the object, he would have a direct
picture of the object. If sound was flowing around the object, he would have a
negative space interpretation of the object.

The warrior's neck was fairly
non-existent. With his eyes being able to move to the sides, there was no
reason for him to turn his neck. With no reason to turn his neck, there was no
reason to add the weakness of having a neck that could be broken in battle.

His spine was fairly similar to most
bipedal species until it got below the upper quarter of his back. The spine
then curved inward towards the center of his body and stayed there until it
connected with his hips. The interior spine was more along the lines of ball
and socket joints at each vertebrae. This allowed the interior spine to have a
range of motion in three hundred and sixty degrees around the body. He could
bend over backward and touch his heels just as easily as he could bend forward
and touch his toes. This gave him “abdominal” muscles around the circumference
of his torso.

On the top of his torso, he had large
powerful arms that had almost the same range of motion that his back did. He
could almost use his arms behind his body as well as he could in front of
himself. Each hand had three fingers and an opposable thumb. The fingers were
large and thick with beefed-up bone structure to keep them from breaking when
the warrior struck something or someone. If it weren't for his second set of
arms on the front of his torso, his front and back would almost look the same.

His second set of arms was smaller than
the first but still strong. Their range of motion was much more limited than
the upper arms because they came from the middle of the torso rather than the
sides and therefore had very limited shoulder joints. They were mostly used for
technical adaptations such as working electronics and control boards. They were
also used extensively during feeding. While the upper arms were pushing the
food into their mouths, their lower arms were controlling the still-live meals
and breaking bones to prepare them to fit inside the mouth. During a fight, the
lower arms also tended to wield small bladed instruments for hand-to-hand
combat.

Moving down the torso, the warrior's
hips and legs were fairly unremarkable other than their size and obvious power.
The knees were jointed behind them to make them superb runners. The legs
extended to oval feet with two toe-claws forward and one pointed backwards for
stability. The one in the rear could be retracted upward to get them out of the
way while they were running. They also had a large vestigial dew claw that was
razor sharp but fairly non-functional. The scientist had opted to leave it in
place because it was a fearsome-looking weapon and the placebo effect was just
as useful in battle as it was in medicine.

The warrior was still admiring his form
when he heard an announcement coming from a speaker inside his tube.

All newly awakened warriors, move to
the transit station to receive your orders
.

The warrior turned and saw the transit
station and watched as his brothers began moving towards it. When he arrived,
he got in line behind one of his identical brothers. As they approached the
landing craft, each warrior was given a set of orders. Theoretically, they were
all the same with the same training, so it didn't matter who went where.

He stepped up to the transport and received
his orders from an elder warrior. He was being sent to a ship that was
scheduled to launch as soon as he boarded. Apparently it needed one more crew
member to replace a recently lost brother. The ship was being sent to a long-lost
colony of the empire. The mission was to observe a group of beings who called
themselves humans.

The humans were apparently digging up an
old base that had been abandoned more than a thousand years ago. The warriors
needed to know why the humans were doing this and also wanted to know what the
humans would find. The rest was classified.

A sigh escaped his mouth and he noticed
the elder warrior giving him a sideways glance. He quickly subdued his
expression and moved into the transport. Although he thought it was too late to
be turned to mush, it was never too late to be placed in a torture tube or the
arena. Neither one was an appealing thought and he knew right then and there
that although he could fight and die for the empire, he would never be able to
just throw his life away if his death wouldn't serve some purpose.

The rumble of the transport turned his
attention away from thinking and he settled in for the ride.

Warrior Ship –
Vengeance’s
Pride

The captain looked at his view screen
with disgust. What slugs these soft-fleshed creatures were. To be digging up
the remains of his great ancestor’s colony, what audacity they had.

“Any word from Supreme Command?” the captain
asked his communications officer.

“None, sir. I will notify you
immediately of any change in status.” Although he could understand his captain’s
growing level of anxiety, he wished that the CO would stop asking him the same
question at every shift change. The communications officer was also tired of
observing this outpost and desired to just annihilate it from orbit, as did his
captain. Two months of watching these soft creatures was enough for anyone with
half a brain to go crazy.

“Sir,” the first officer began, “maybe a
small scouting mission would improve morale. We know that their sensors can easily
be fooled; our presence in this space proves that. We have nothing to fear from
these ingrates, even if we were detected.”

The captain was inclined to agree but
disobeying orders meant a slow and agonizing death if he were caught. He
should, by proper regulations, have his first officer put to death slowly for
even suggesting such a thing. But the two warriors had served together for many
decades and they had an unsaid agreement that either had no fear to speak his
mind around the other.

That agreement, of course, was null and
void if anyone else overheard their conversation. The captain would then have
to perform his duty and torture his best friend to death just to save face, not
to mention his own hide.

“You know that is not possible. We have
been given orders to observe and that is all. The prisoners we received from
the other bases have yielded no information that is of use to us. We have
interrogated almost all of them and found nothing that we didn’t already know
about this puny and insignificant Coalition.” He added with what would pass as
a chuckle, “They don’t even taste good.”

The first officer had to agree with his captain.
He had tried these humans served in many different ways, but not even his
favorite dish appealed to him when served with their weak meat. The Shirkas, on
the other hand, were much more appealing: their flesh was strong, as a
warrior’s should be, and tasted fantastic. He couldn’t wait until they had
clearance to perform a scouting mission. Maybe the humans would taste better if
he performed the kill himself. Only time would tell. Supreme Command felt they
needed more time before ordering the full-scale invasion and conquest of this
sector to take back what was rightfully theirs.

Although they didn’t speak aloud, both
the captain and his first officer were wondering the same thing. Who had
destroyed their outposts nearly a thousand years ago? It surely wasn’t these
small humans. The records were clear that a plague forced the evacuation and
quarantine of this sector a thousand years ago. There had never been any
mention of an attack on the bases. And yet they received a fragmented distress
signal that was sent almost a thousand years ago stating that the colonies were
under attack. The distress signal they received didn’t say who was attacking or
where they came from. It was a mystery to everyone back on the home world.