Extinction (71 page)

“With most of the structure below
ground, I don't think it will do that much damage.” Seth understood the desire
for as much destruction as possible in this situation. “I guess it couldn't
hurt to give it a try, though.”

The comm line went silent and everyone
went on with their assigned tasks. Seth turned to Shar'tuk. “I'm going to take
a look in one of these troop transports they left behind to see if there is a
remote switch for the hangar bay. Look around to see if you can find a control
room or something to open it up. If you don't find anything, come to the
transport in ten minutes.”

With just a nod between them, both
operators took off in opposite directions. Shar'tuk found the control room
fairly fast but it was of no use. All of the control panels were locked out and
flashing a steady blue message. He went back to Seth.

“The control panels are completely
locked out. I can't access anything.” Shar'tuk was looking over Seth's shoulder
at functioning displays in the cockpit. “It looks like the base is locked out
but this craft isn't tied into the main computer system of the complex.”

Shar'tuk moved Seth out of his way to
get a better look at the control display. “I can't pick out any useful words
here. The configuration looks very distantly like some I've seen in museums of
our oldest warships.”

Shar'tuk settled into the extremely
oversized pilot's seat and thought out loud. “OK, I'm a four-armed fucker with
two central-ish arms that look like they would control this panel here.” He
motioned to the panels in front of him and a terminal between his knees.

“While I'm accessing the panels with my
central arms, my upper arms have the flight controls here...” He put his arms
out to the sides. “So, a natural start-up sequence might be somewhere in this
area.”

Shar'tuk moved his hand over the panel
and touched a button. Seth thought it was more random than anything but it did
get a response from the ship. The screens all blanked for a quick second before
blinking back to life, this time in a different language.

“Holy shit.” Shar'tuk was hovering his
hand above the panel, moving it from bottom to top. “This is a very ancient
Nortes dialect. It was used by the royal family. It's now only taught in our
version of your seminary schools. I think it sensed my DNA or something and
knew I was Nortes. That’s why the controls changed.”

“Please tell me you're a religious man.”
Seth was looking at the new configuration.

“We all are. Deeply.” Shar'tuk started
to push buttons in a much more knowingly manner. “But that doesn't mean we all
went to seminary school. Though I can grasp enough of this panel to get it to
work.”

A button began flashing yellow and
Shar'tuk leaned forward to look out the viewport. Up at the top of the hangar,
he could barely see some distant blue flashing lights. Happy with the results,
he grabbed the flight controls. “Here we go.”

As the craft lifted Seth comm'ed Surgeon.
“We have an enemy troop transport operational and the hangar doors are opening.
We're going to take a look outside and make sure our path is cleared for the
ship.”

“Copy that. We're moving the crew fairly
fast. Reaper thinks we'll be done in about forty minutes.” Surgeon was helping
to load a poor soul onto one of the transports.

Seth looked at his watch. “That puts us
at roughly fifty-six minutes since the warrior put that command into the
system. I'm starting to question whether or not it was a self-destruct command.
I wouldn't think a self-destruct would be set for that long of a period of
time.”

“Regardless, I don't want to stay here
any longer than needed.” Surgeon sighed and then added to the rest of the team,
“We won't have time to get the dead and dying from the facility. Only evacuate
the yellow flashing tubes. Leave the blue ones as they are.”

One of the operators posed a question. “Can
we at least help them out?”

The question was obviously to get
permission to end their suffering, with a bullet. Reaper jumped in to take the
burden off his friend. “No. We don't even have time for that. I've noticed that
most of the blue flashers are dying pretty fast after the tube disengages and
those that don't, are being allowed to go unconscious. The system isn't keeping
them awake anymore.”

With that, the discussion was over. The
transports kept moving and the living, though some barely, were being taken to
their ship. Surgeon allowed himself a slight bit of optimism but was still
prepared for the other shoe to drop and take action if necessary.

As the troop transport headed to the top
of the hangar bay, Seth was once again astonished at the sheer massiveness of
the facility. Some facilities in the Coalition came close but were still maybe
only two-thirds this size. Light spilled into the transport's canopy and Seth
could see the surface of the planet falling below them as they cleared the
hangar doors.

They had approached the facility from
the other side of the planet and they had stayed as close to the ground as
possible to avoid detection. As they rose several thousand feet above the
facility, Seth was able to get a much better perspective on the area.

The facility had two distinct sides to
it. The one the team had approached from seemed to be the front and now they
were looking at the rear. The base had its back to an expansive and extremely
lush jungle-looking landscape. Seth could easily pick out wild animals running
below and jumping or swinging from tree to tree as the transport's engines
scared them out of hiding.

Seth comm’ed Surgeon. “The exterior
looks clear on initial inspection. No reinforcements heading here by ground and
we think we've got our sensors on line and they aren't showing anything.”

“We've got our ship prepped and ready.
Start-up sequence is almost done and we should be ready to lift before the last
of the crew are brought on board.” Joker wasn't used to piloting something this
large but luckily the ship's AI and intuitive systems allowed someone with
basic piloting skills to get away with what they were attempting to do.

Surgeon was just stepping onto the
bridge when Joker finished his sit-rep. He nodded to his friend. “Good job.
Cadet, don't rely on just the sensors; they might know how to fool their own
systems. Circle the base and make a spiral sweep out to five kilometers. Be
ready to land that thing in our shuttle bay after we launch.”

“Copy that.” Seth pointed to an edge of
the facility. “Start there. I want to check out that odd building that's
separated from everything else.”

As the transport flew over the area Seth
had indicated, what he had thought was a building was actually an open
structure that looked sort of like an outdoor playhouse like the ones you would
go to for a Shakespeare in the Park play. Closer still, he could see there were
horizontal and vertical bars randomly placed around blocks and tunnels of
different heights along with randomly placed hazards to be avoided or
conquered.

“That looks like a training area, and
obstacle course of some sort.” Shar'tuk was making a lower pass over it before
heading out to the jungle.

“I see blood all over down there. Some
blue and some red.” Seth had a flash of anger as he realized that some of their
friends may have been made to fight and die in there.

“There are also some cages along one
wall.” Shar'tuk could see something moving in one of them. “That one has a
pretty big animal in it. Maybe they practice hunting in here. With the seating
area at the top, I think it's obvious they had spectators for whatever they did
use it for.”

“All right, let's get to the sweep.”
Seth gestured towards the jungle. Without a co-pilot's chair, Seth had to stand
in the canopy area to keep an eye on the screens and area outside the ship.

“This is a fairly remarkable area.”
Shar'tuk was trying to make small talk. As the adrenaline of battle wore off
and the tension started to fade, it was a common desire to make things feel
normal again.

“Yes, it is.” Seth needed the
conversation also. “I've seen several primate-looking species down there. A
couple of pretty huge things that I couldn't even compare to any animal I've
seen. I couldn't even tell where the one had a head, if he had a head.”

They continued to chat as they made
their sweeps and checked in every five minutes. As their ship was lifting off,
Shar'tuk pointed the transport back to the hangar and was able to land in the
shuttle bay without issue. He stayed with the transport to lock it down and
Seth headed for the bridge.

Seth arrived to find most of the
consoles manned by two people instead of one. These were all Special Forces operators,
not starship pilots. Surgeon wanted two sets of eyes on the panels to make sure
things weren't missed and avoidable mistakes were avoided. A lot of the men had
basic piloting skills and even some advanced skills but flying a fighter was
not the same as a vessel of this size and complexity.

“Where do you need me?” Seth stood in
front of his mentor.

“I'm sending all available hands to
sickbay. There's a lot of wounds to be tended to. Hopefully we can keep
everyone we saved alive. Some of them are pretty bad. I don't know how they
even survived this long.” Surgeon shook his head as if it were an Etch A Sketch
and he could remove the images from its screen.

Turning back to Seth, he said, “Looks
like you were wrong, Cadet, for once.” Surgeon smiled.

“I think so”, Seth agreed. “All of the
terminals were locked out, so maybe it was a data wipe or just a simple lockout
command to keep us from information the base had.”

“That makes me want to rethink setting
our stealth ships to detonate.” Surgeon was mulling over his decision. “If the
information this base holds is that important, maybe we should keep it around
to come back for later.”

“I think that's a good”—” Seth didn't
finish his sentence as the ship was rocked violently backward and he was thrown
to the deck.

The forward viewer had a split screen of
the forward and aft images from the ship. The aft image showed the hangar bay
they had just come from erupting like the most massive volcano anyone had ever
seen. Fire, debris, molten metal, ships, and everything else imaginable was
being shot from the mouth of the hangar.

The base and the ground immediately
surrounding it burped upward at least ten meters before sinking into the ground
like a soufflé that was taken from the oven too soon. Flames began to shoot out
from destroyed areas of the base as it sank in on itself.

Surgeon, who had been sitting securely
in the command chair, got up and helped Seth to his feet. He surveyed the
bridge and didn't see any major injuries. “Is everyone all right?” After
getting affirmative head nods and a few verbal acknowledgements, he turned to
Joker. “Are we going to stay up?”

“Yes, sir.” Joker was checking things on
his panel. “Luckily this ship likes an angled trajectory out of the atmosphere
instead of going straight up. Otherwise we would have been directly over that
geyser when it lit up.” He went back to his controls to make sure he didn't
miss anything important.

Seth wasn't sure gloating was
appropriate in this moment so he smiled when Surgeon did it for him. “I guess
your record is still mostly untarnished.” He sat back in the command chair and
added, “I hate it when you're right.”

Seth was rubbing the newest knot on his
head. “Sometimes I wish I could be wrong more often.” As though the rubbing
kick-started his thoughts, he went on. “You know, because I was right about the
self-destruct, along with all of the ships we saw leaving the area when we
first arrived, I don't think they called for reinforcements. With that in mind,
I think we should take the time to recover our stealth craft.”

“I agree. Take as many men that can be
spared from medical duty and get our craft back. Joker, can you get us back to
our original landing area?” Surgeon was still watching the base destroy itself.

“Yes, sir.” Joker was adjusting the
atmospheric trajectory and heading towards the landing site. “We'll be in a
good position to launch and receive craft in about five minutes.”

~

Ten hours later, all available hands
were in the hangar bay for a mission status and debrief. All unavailable hands
would be listening on their comm system or watching from a remote viewing
screen at their station.

Shar'tuk was just finishing up. “So
that's the basic history of my people. We were deeply ashamed of our past but
for the last several generations we have begun to shed those feelings and move
on. How long can we persecute ourselves for decisions that we were never a part
of? How long can we feel bad for something we didn't do?”

“You shouldn't.” Surgeon was sitting in
the center of the amassed group. “Especially considering your ancestors were
the ones who risked everything to change the empire.”

To the group, he finished, “All right,
we now have a little better idea of what we are up against. We've fought them
and we won. It's the first victory we, as the Coalition, have had against this
new enemy. We can't let that go to our heads. We have to use this information to
keep having victories in the future.

“After we're done here, I want every
single operator to put together an independent report on this mission. I want
every second of battle that you can remember to be detailed in that report.
Focus on the strengths and weaknesses in the enemy for every mode of combat we
were involved in. Also be sure to detail what you think we did wrong and why.
You won't be hurting my feelings at all. Hindsight is twenty-twenty and we need
that hindsight to make our future engagements better. Don't pull any punches.”

After Surgeon was sure that there were
no questions up to this point, he nodded to Reaper. “Casualty report.”