Extinction (69 page)

A quick hand signal to two of his
operators and they adjusted themselves in the corridor. One of them put his
hand in the air and held out five fingers. Then he counted down to three to set
the rhythm and put his hand back on the grenade launcher. When the internal
count reached one, they both leaned into the hallway and put a total of six
explosive rounds on the target.

Unbeknownst to them, there were two
automatic turrets waiting for them at the end of the hallway. Surgeon had known
the plan called for an explosive opening salvo so he knew Seth's team wasn't in
any danger from the turrets but he had still meant to give them a heads-up just
in case; he would later apologize for that mistake.

Seth took point down the hallway after
the explosions ended and the shrapnel had stopped bouncing around the hallway.
They moved forward in a loose diamond formation. As they approached the
breached doors, a chorus of screams could be heard coming from inside. Seth's
team didn't know the screams were coming from the video monitors so they were
all a little confused as to who was screaming: they couldn't hear it over their
company push and the other team was obviously still in the fight, as was
evident from the continued gunfire.

As they passed through the doorway, they
saw the horrors the rest of their team had been dealing with for the last half
minute or so. It caused a small hiccup in their step but not much more and they
kept moving. Seth guessed that the screens had turned on after Surgeon started
his assault and the abrupt psychological effect had caused the quick lull in
the gunfight they had heard a moment ago.

~

The warrior leader was praising himself
heavily for the misperceived mental blow he had dealt to the enemy. When the
impromptu cease fire ended less than a few seconds later and the enemy pushed
forward with even more determination, he realized that he again failed his
people. When the rear doors exploded inward, killing three of his brothers, he
no longer had any choice. He began inputting the self-destruct code into his
console.

~

The engineering shields were doing their
job well but the rearmost shooters in the element couldn't handle not being in
the fight, not after what they had witnessed on the monitors. They pushed
forward and to the sides of the protective barriers and were picking off
warriors as if they were paper targets on a static range.

Reaper put down a target and moved to
the next. He spotted a warrior who was more interested in the console in front
of him than the firefight going on around him. That couldn't be good. A three-round
burst sped towards the warrior and impacted with the personal shield
surrounding his head. The shield shimmered and the warrior for the briefest of
moments looked up and then back to his console and continued his work.

“Shift fire on my target. Highest
priority.” The order from Reaper was immediately identified by his visor as a
team push command and it sent a marker to everyone else's visor highlighting
his current target.

~

The fire shifted and the warrior leader
was hit with a barrage that nearly took him off his feet but his shield held.
The distraction from the explosive entry caused him to pause the self-destruct
input and then the overwhelming barrage from the primary team caused him to
press a wrong button as he stumbled backwards.

His shield could hold out longer from
the projectile weapons than his own plasma rifles but that didn't mean it would
hold out forever and the incoming CQB grenades he saw in the air would also
hasten the shield's diminishing effectiveness. After the grenades detonated and
he was able to reach his terminal again, he saw that he had accidentally set
the self-destruct to sixty minutes rather than the minimum of six minutes he
wanted.

A projectile entered his right shoulder,
meaning his shield wasn't going to be up for much longer. He didn't have time
to start the self-destruct sequence all over; sixty minutes would have to
suffice. Even with that length of time, he doubted the attackers would be able
to figure out the system, release the prisoners and still evacuate the
building. A small victory to be sure but at least not a complete loss on his
end.

~

Seth saw the CQB grenades come from
Surgeon's team and watched them detonate near the warrior. The shield flared
but he saw one section that seemed to be devoid of the shimmering so he
adjusted his fire towards the warrior's shoulder. At least one round entered
his enemy and he was rewarded with a small spray of blue blood.

From there, he knew the fight was won
but he was still concerned with what the warrior was doing. Anything that kept
his attention on a console rather than being shot at had to be important to the
warriors and probably bad for the assault team. A final stab at the console and
the warrior backed away from it and entered the fight for the first time since
the entry had been made.

Seth could see the console flashing blue,
which he knew was bad. The warriors used blue like humans used red: it was a
warning, an alert of some sort. The first thing Seth thought of was a
self-destruct command. What else was so important that the warrior would neglect
impending doom to complete his task? Maybe a full data wipe? Possible but not
as likely.

“I know we aren't exactly dawdling here,”
Seth began, “but the console that shield guy was working at is now flashing
blue. I need to get to it immediately to see what he was doing.”

Surgeon eyed the battlefield briefly. “Cadet,
shift your team to your right and lay down a strong base of fire. Everyone on
my team, push now.”

Surgeon's fire team pushed forward,
coming out of cover and exposing themselves. It was always better to fight from
cover if possible but a forwardly aggressive move could also be beneficial. The
constant fire from the advancing team caused the enemy to either keep their
head down or try to return fire from a horrible fighting position. Also, the assaulting
units weren't hampered by trying to fire from a protected position and they
tended to be a much more effective mobile shooting platform.

The downside in this particular battle
was the warriors' plasma rifles. In a conventional setting, the armor worn by
the operators would absorb a fair amount of metal slugs but the plasma tore
right through. One of Surgeon's men took a round in the chest and fell dead as
another operator stepped over him. Another took a round to the knee and he went
prone when his missing leg could no longer support his body. To his credit, the
soldier stayed in the fight and continued to fire, effectively, from the
ground.

~

The warriors were dropping faster than
the assaulting team and they recognized the problem. One warrior took a round
to his biologically-armored head and the round skipped away to impact the
computers near him. Fighting from cover was safer but every time they peeked
their heads out to take an aimed shot, the humans were ready and picked off the
warrior.

With the battle obviously not on their
side and a loss seemingly inevitable, the best plan was to go on the offensive
and fight in the open and up close with the much smaller opponents. The warrior
stood and jumped over his covered firing position and made it three steps
before his chest was turned into a free-for-all target.

As his wounds expanded, he pulled an
edged weapon from its sheath on his back. He was still moving forward at a very
impressive speed. He made it far enough to take a swing at one of his enemies
but the fact that he was about to die made his swing slow and ineffective. He
realized at the last moment that his target wasn't one of the humans but a
traitor to the empire. A Nortes was attacking the installation!

The other warriors saw their brother
engage the enemy and the effect it had on the enemy’s assaulting line. At least
four of the enemy soldiers turned their fire to the oncoming attacker and that
left holes in their assaulting line. Enough warriors were left to make a hand-to-hand
fight devastating to their enemy. They knew that their commander had wanted
them to hold out as long as possible behind cover so it would give the
self-destruct sequence more time, but that just didn't seem like the best plan
right now.

~

As Seth's team held their base of fire,
he kept looking for any opportunity that would let him get to the control panel
more quickly. He saw one of the warriors leave cover and try to go hand-to-hand
with Surgeon's team; it didn't last long. Then the rest of the warriors surged,
almost as one, and entered the fight wholeheartedly with the obvious knowledge
that this was their last stand. Warriors who knew they were going to die were
always a formidable enemy; with nothing to lose, you had nothing to hold back.

For a moment, Seth's thoughts got
sidetracked; he saw no commands or signals given that ordered the new tactic.
Did their enemies also have some sort of telepathy? Definitely something to
investigate later if at all possible.

“Use your smaller sizes to your
advantage.” Surgeon was putting out orders on the company push. “Don't let
these fuckers get a hold of you. Duck. Roll. Whatever to get out of their
reach. Break ranks now and work in two-man units to attack them one at a time.”

The main assaulting force spread out and
started teaming up and in some instances making groups of three. With four
arms, the warriors were actually fairly effective against two of the operators
at a time. Seth saw several of his friends take injuries early on and at least
two fairly fast deaths. Seth was taken by surprise when one of the operators
did the most unexpected thing he had ever seen in combat.

~

Shar'tuk saw that this battle was
definitely turning against them. They still had the numbers to win but it would
be at the cost of too many of his friends. Shar'tuk knew that he didn't have
any royal DNA in his bloodline; that would have been discovered before he was
even born. With royal DNA, he could've just ordered the warriors to stop
fighting and they would but that wasn't an option. However, because the Nortes
were the ruling class of the old empire and the warriors were bred to recognize
that, he decided to take a chance that he might be able to use that to his
advantage.

As a Nortes soldier, he had been given
extensive simulator combat training against the warriors his ancestors had
created. Without making it seem too obvious, he had tried to incorporate that
knowledge into the many training scenarios he had been a part of during the
initial portion of the voyage. As he looked around, it seemed to be paying off
as the men from his team were doing a fairly good job of standing their ground.
But they were still starting to take more and more damage.

Shar'tuk removed his helmet to fully
expose his Nortes heritage and he simultaneously ducked under a bladed weapon
and added an injury to one of the warriors' legs with his own blade as he
passed. Shar'tuk didn't take the time to continue his engagement with this
warrior; he needed to make it to a console he had picked out a moment ago. As
he jumped on the console, his extremely out-of-place behavior made him a focal
point for the other combatants.

“Warriors of the empire!” Shar'tuk
bellowed out with all his might. “I am your Nortes master! Lay down your
weapons and stand beside these new members of our empire!”

Surgeon, as well as everyone else on the
team, looked to Shar'tuk with astonishment. The warriors looked to him and
momentarily paused their efforts. Some were confused by the order from a Nortes
who they were genetically programmed to associate with the empire's ruling
class. Most of the warriors, however, looked at him with hate in their eyes.

“Traitor!” one of the warriors yelled as
he charged Shar'tuk. This caused several of the warriors to break off their
engagement with their current opponents and join the attack on the betrayer of
the empire.

“Shit.” Shar'tuk had in fact changed the
pace and focus of the battle but he had done so at his own peril. Luckily, the
operators were skilled enough to see the opening and take advantage of it. With
several of the two-person teams now disengaged from hand-to-hand combat, they
could quickly transition to their shoulder-fired weapons and start cutting down
the warriors from behind.

The ceiling in the room was of open
construction so there were conduits, beams, and other protuberances for
Shar'tuk to grab onto. He jumped and grabbed part of what he thought was most
likely a fire suppression system; it held. Pulling himself up into the ceiling,
he barely missed the first warrior's swing at him. He knew he was only a second
or two away from one of them hitting their mark.

Shar'tuk could see some of the warriors
falling to the efforts of his team now using their guns again. He reached to
his gear and pulled out a CQB grenade. At this distance to his target, he was
risking taking some shrapnel and unwanted overpressure but that was better than
taking a sword to the face. He pulled the pin and released the grenade.

If the warriors knew what he was
dropping, they didn't act like it. They continued to surge forward, vying for a
killing position on Shar'tuk. Their anger and bloodlust actually worked in his
favor as they pushed one another and made a couple of potential killing blows
go wide and miss their intended target.

Whoomph. The grenade detonated and
cleared the warriors from below Shar'tuk. A couple of them were still alive but
obviously not for long. He dropped from the ceiling and immediately took a knee
as he realized his right leg had taken some shrapnel. The wound wasn't dire but
its unexpectedness kept him from bearing his full weight on it.

Shar'tuk took out his sidearm and
quickly finished off the warriors who hadn't died in the blast. The fighting
was coming to a close as more of the operators were finishing off their targets
and joining other groups, making them stronger, and ending their fights faster.