Extinction (72 page)

Reaper stood. “We lost approximately
one-fifth of the crew on the planet. Of those we got back, we've had nine deaths
so far, mostly from shock. The injuries are pretty heinous but extremely
advanced surgically so most should survive.

“I think we'll even have maybe twenty or
so up and walking in a few days. That should be beneficial to ship's
operations. Until then, there are plenty of crew members who we can talk to if
we have questions about the ship. They may not be mobile but they are still
intact enough to help us out.”

“Cadet.” Surgeon turned to his unspoken
number two.

“We were able to bring all of our
stealth ships back on board so we still have those assets. We have done a
preliminary inventory check on the ship and it seems like we still have a fair number
of weapons and supplies. They did take some inventory to study, but thankfully
not that much.

“The troop transport we took from their
base has navigational charts for this region of space, but that's about it. I
wouldn't expect this sort of ship to have a full database on their people but
we'll go over it again just to make sure we didn't miss some command codes or
other useful information.” Seth looked to Shar'tuk because he would be the one
doing most of the scanning.

Shar'tuk added, “We have sent a message
back to my people asking them to send us a translation key for the ancient
Nortes dialect that is in the transport's system. Once we have that key, any
one of us can look through the files we have. Until then, we're going to have
to rely on me trying to pick out stuff I can understand.”

“That leads me to the last part of this
debrief.” Surgeon pulled out a datapad. “About forty hours ago, the Coalition
sent a message to us about a pending threat in this sector of space. We just
received the message and I barely had time to read through it all before this
gathering. It's marked as highest priority and classification so don't forward
copies home to your family.” This got a slight chuckle from the group.

He continued. “I'll let you read through
the majority of it on your own time but here's the basics. The warriors we've
encountered used to be grown on a planet dedicated to that one specific task.
For more than a thousand years now, the warriors have been denied access to
that planet due to an automated defense system and a built-in genetic code that
keeps them from approaching that sector of space.

“Something has changed; we don't know
what or how, but it has. The Nortes have had remote monitoring devices in that
system since they left the empire and those sensors recently detected
intrusions in the area. The sensors are passive so there is no information on the
types of ships, just that ships have entered the area.

“Another recon team was on a planet
investigating an ancient base that was associated with the succession Emperor
just briefed us on.”

All eyes went to Shar'tuk and he just
rolled his eyes. “You know, if you call me that around any Nortes military
personnel or, gods forbid, the empress herself, I'll probably be imprisoned or
executed.”

Surgeon thought for a moment, his facial
expression looking as though he was trying a piece of food for the first time
and trying to decide whether he liked it or not. “Worth it”, he concluded.

“Moving along,” Surgeon continued. “The
team was led by a Marine Science Corps officer, Lieutenant Emily Riley,
apparently now Captain Emily Riley after she proved herself on the mission.”

Seth was so dead tired from everything
he almost missed what Surgeon had said. The name, the name he wanted to hear
and speak out loud for so long now had been said. He quickly pulled out his
tablet and began looking for the name. The officer's bio was present with the
debrief material. It was her.

It was his chance encounter, his one
unbelievable moment in his life. Of all the things that Seth had witnessed on
this mission alone, it was still more unbelievable to him that he had fallen in
love in less than twenty minutes after meeting Emily. Scratch that, less than
twenty seconds after meeting her.

Seth wasn't even aware of the meeting
anymore until Surgeon smacked him in the back of the head. “Am I boring you,
Cadet?” Seth shook his head back and forth. “Good, now moving on.

“They found a lot of intelligence on
that mission, most of it is detailed in your tablets for you to look through
later. One important piece of information is one of their operators created a
translation program for the alien language. That program will be coming in the
next transmission burst. They wanted to make sure we were still alive before
they sent it out. We've sent them our ship's private encryption key so they can
encode it just for us in case anyone else intercepts the message.

“And finally, that leads us to the next
part of our mission. We are moving to a staging area in this portion of the
galaxy. Once at the staging area, we will be met by ships from the Coalition
fleet as well as the Nortes, Detrill, and a few other non-member species that
share a piece of the history we just went over.

“We are already in this sector, so we
will get to the staging area first. We will recon it, determine if it's safe
and report back. If we choose to keep that location, it will take approximately
five months for the other ships to arrive.”

“At least I finally get to use my saved
vacation time”, someone quipped. This got a much bigger laugh from the group.

Surgeon smiled. “Absolutely! We will
have plenty of downtime after we finish our initial task of securing the
staging area. We will definitely use some of that time to recuperate and heal
both physically and emotionally.

“We'll also be starting a new training
program to integrate everything we now know about these warriors and how they
fight. We need to get much better at hand-to-hand combat with them if we want
to survive future encounters.

“And of course that time will also be
used to help rehabilitate as many of the crew members as we possibly can. I
know you guys aren't nurses and doctors but they need our help. They went
through more than any ten of us put together ever have or ever will. Reaper
will be in charge of their continued rehab until we can get them the specialists
they need.”

“Fuck yeah!” someone said. Then the
group replied in unison, “Fuck yeah!”

Surgeon didn't expect anything less of
his men but it still moved him to see them all get behind the idea of helping
out their shipmates. “Thank you, men. We will have a memorial service tomorrow
at oh-nine hundred hours. I will be conducting the service from the forward
hangar bay we've converted to an extended sickbay. It will be crowded but I'd
like as many men in there as possible with the crew members who are bedridden.
Some of you also need to be with the more seriously injured who are in the
proper sickbay to give them your support. If you have a preference because you
are close to any certain crew members, work it out among yourselves and get it
done.”

After receiving head nods and a few
verbal responses, he concluded the meeting. “Dismissed.”

As people got up and left, Surgeon saw
Seth studying his tablet again. “She's fairly attractive.”

“Um, yeah. What?” Seth noticed Surgeon
looking over his shoulder.

“What's going on with you? I know you're
beyond exhausted right now but you seem kind of gone at the moment.”

“Do you remember that day in the
training room when I mentioned a woman I sort of had back home?” Seth turned
the tablet towards Surgeon. “That's her!”

“Wow. Small universe, huh? You want to
see something that will totally blow your already frazzled mind?”

Surgeon took the tablet from Seth's
hands and moved through the other team's personnel bios. When he got to an
attractive and somewhat obviously seasoned woman, Surgeon gave the tablet back
to Seth. “That's my wife.”

Seth was astounded by the absolutely
insane number of chances that would have to happen in the universe to cause
this chain of events to occur and put them in the conversation they were now
having. Seth looked at the file again; something was niggling at his brain and
he couldn’t quite put a finger on it. Then he read the name to himself again.
Daria
O’Connor
.

“Holy crap. Your name is Mike.”

They had never discussed real names
before so Surgeon was a little taken aback. “Yeah, how did you know that?”

“Your wife, Daria O’Connor. I’ve been
hoping to meet her ever since I signed up for the marines.”

“I’m really not following you at all.”
Surgeon had no idea how Seth could’ve known Daria.

“I’ve got a story for you.” Seth then
laid out his dealings with AeroTech and how he had discovered that Mike had
been “murdered” which eventually led Seth to join the marines.

“This mission keeps getting stranger by
the day.” Mike just sat back to think about it for a minute.

Seth was still reviewing the file. “What
are you going to say to her when you see her?”

Mike thought for a second. “I'm sorry I
forgot to take the garbage out before I left.”

Deep Inside Enemy
Territory – Fancy Meeting You Here

“Sir, the
Emilian
is on final
approach to the staging area and requesting permission to join the fleet”, the conn
officer announced.

The captain had been on the bridge for
the last three weeks, though he could only take four to six hours at a time on
shift before he had to rest again. He was surprised at how well his conn officer
was adjusting to his new life with only two fingers on his right hand and four
on his left. Almost every one of the crew members who had survived their stint
as prisoners were left with some sort of physical disfigurement. Some were
adjusting well and others would never make a full physical or psychological
recovery.

 For the last several hours, ships from
the Coalition Task Force had been jumping into the system. The ships were
coming in twos or threes and then receiving positioning coordinates from the
Vanguard,
who was in charge of placing the vessels in strategic formations while they
waited for further orders. The task was important, yet dull and repetitive.

“Give them their coordinates along with
their companion vessels. Extend them the usual greeting and protocol
instruction packet.” The captain looked over the ship names for the newest trio
of vessels and laughed out loud when he saw the last one. “Also tell the crew
of
The Goonies
that we are ready to receive their envoy for the combined
debrief. I’ll tell Surgeon that his guest is about to arrive.”

~

Surgeon and Cadet were training with several
other members from their team. Intermixed with them were some of the more able-bodied
crew members. After their ordeal, they wanted to learn to fight better in case
they ever got boarded again. Most of them were doing well for swabbies and all
were doing great considering what they had recently been through.

The captain approached Surgeon, who was
going through weapons malfunction and reload drills with a few of the crew
members. “Surgeon, I thought you’d like to know your, uh, special guest has
just arrived in-system. The envoy should be on the
Vanguard
within a
couple of hours.”

Surgeon’s eyes lit up just a little for
a second before his years of combat poker face kicked in. “Thank you, sir. It’s
good to see you up and around lately. I really didn’t like being in charge of
your ship while you were still on it.”

The captain smiled. “You weren’t. I’ll
give you a heads-up when their shuttle is on its way.”

“Thank you again, sir.” Surgeon turned
to Seth as the captain walked away. “Let’s do about an hour more here before we
get cleaned up for our guests.”

Seth nodded in agreement and ushered a
few of the crew to Joker so they could all work on some hand-to-hand combat
skills.

~

It took almost four hours for the envoy
to arrive. The captain was complaining to Surgeon, saying that the envoy had
the Coalition president along with the Detrill and Nortes heads of state, and
the security teams from the three different parties couldn’t agree on anything.
Not to mention the protocol officers from each party having different ideas on
how things should be run. In truth, the three people in charge couldn’t care
less who walked through a doorway first or whose national colors were used as
room decorations.

In the end, the president came up with
the idea, and ultimately a direct order, that the heroes who had captured the
first enemy vessel should be the ones to depart the shuttle first.

Surgeon stood with Seth and several
other members of the strike team and ship’s crew to welcome the special envoy.
Seth was surprised at how much his hands were sweating. He had survived one of the
most harrowing battles in recent Coalition history and he was more nervous than
ever before. Would she remember him? Would that spark still be there? Were his
feelings just drug-induced shadows from being roofied by Joker? He was about to
find out and the thought almost made him throw up.

The boarding ramp lowered from the side
of the shuttle and touched the deck before the first person showed their face
in the doorway. Surgeon recognized the operator from his picture in the files; his
name was Bloom. Bloom looked around and descended the ramp. He was closely
followed by the droid they repurposed, Jeeves. The droid said something that
only Bloom could hear and he gave what seemed to be a sharp reply. Interesting.

Two women came next and Surgeon could
barely keep himself in one place as he looked at his wife. Daria was scanning
the faces in the reception party when her eyes finally fell on Surgeon. Their
eyes locked. Daria started to move down the ramp faster and saw that the way
was blocked by the slow-moving Jeeves and Bloom. Without hesitation, she jumped
over the side of the boarding ramp and landed six feet later in a dead run to
Surgeon.