Extinction (28 page)

“I’m going to set these little devices,”
he held up a device that was about two times the size of a standard comlink, “about
every three to four hundred meters. They’ll relay the data to my portable
console. I should have enough for almost ten kilometers of travel. More if
there aren’t too many things down there to disrupt the signal. And, of course,
less if there is.”

“Corporal Davies reporting for duty, ma’am”,
Davies said from behind the group.

“Is he OK to travel?” the CO asked.

“Yeah, a little slower and more clumsy
than usual, but he’s OK.” Daria walked over and took Davies’ weapon. “Now,
c’mon, you know the regs. No weapon will be carried by a soldier who has had a
recent head injury. When I think that you’re safe, you’ll get it back.”

Daria locked the weapon down to a pack
that was being strapped on to Scan. His strength would allow him to handle the
little bit of extra weight better than anyone else, even with only one hand.

The first team stepped up. They had
decided to use their two ropes to have two people to go down at a time rather
than one person on one with a backup rope shouldered. As they double-checked
their harnesses, Bloom spoke up from behind.

“By the way, I thought that everyone
might be interested in this. I still haven’t found out what planet they come
from, but apparently they didn’t name their species after their planet like
most species do.”

“What do they call themselves?” Snake
asked as he readied himself for descent.”

Bloom simply said, “Extinction.”

The
Vanguard
–
Sensor Deployment

“So, got anyone back home?” Seth asked
Surgeon from the co-pilot’s seat.

“We’re coming up on site one-A for
scanner deployment”, Surgeon said with a complete absence of emotion.

Seth eyed his friend and knew not to
press the question any further. “Fire team one.” Seth’s helmet automatically
opened a channel to his wingman after he announced their call sign. “Perform a
twenty-meter perimeter sweep of lead vehicle and then settle into a covering
position as we deploy our first sensor array.”

“Fire team one, on our first sweep. See
you guys in about five mikes. Out.”

Surgeon’s movements became more
deliberate and focused. More so than a veteran of his caliber needed to be. He
was obviously thinking of something, or someone, else. Seth couldn’t help but
feel bad for bringing up such an obviously sore subject with Surgeon.

In their line of work, it seemed to be
one of three stories that most professional soldiers had when it came to women.
            First and most common was that some farm boy had met the woman of
his dreams, most likely the first woman to make him cum harder than a freight
train, and she turned out to be a whore. No surprise there. He woke one morning
to find her and most of his belongings, especially money, gone. And through all
that, he still loves her. So he joins the military to forget her and with the
secret dream of finding her again while stationed on some planet far from home.
And of course she runs back into his arms at the first sight of his face,
apologizing out her ass for how much she hurt him and how she had no choice
because her mom, sister, dad, brother, aunt, or grandparent was ill and she had
to get the money somehow for their much-needed kidney, liver, lung, or heart
transplant. This, of course, never happened, at least not that Seth was aware
of.

The second most common love story was of
a dedicated soldier who had the most beautiful and loving wife at home that any
man could ever want. She was dedicated to their marriage and to the man in the
uniform. Unfortunately, the man was almost always more dedicated to the uniform
than the woman. And although she tried to deal with it and he tried to change,
nothing ever gave and the vid-calls from light-years away changed from “I love
you’s” to “Fuck you’s” and everything went to shit. Either she started drinking
or he did, and more commonly both did. And in the end she either leaves him,
sleeps with some REMF while he’s out on tour, or kills herself. Sometimes it
gets real dicey and she sleeps with his best friend, leaves him, and then kills
herself. But that’s only if you’re lucky.

The third, and absolutely least common
type of military romance, is also the worst kind. It will chew up a
professional like Surgeon as though he had stepped on a bouncing betty while
getting hit with flechette rounds at close range. It’s almost like romance type
number two. A soldier finds his perfect soul mate. The two lovers intertwine
mentally and physically as though they were the same radiant energy trapped in
different bodies. And no matter how many times duty calls him away, she is
always there for him when—if—he comes home. Her strength does not waver and his
love for her never fades. But again he is torn from her when duty calls and he
never knows whether he’ll see her again. Death doesn’t scare him, but the
thought of leaving her all alone and without his love to hold her does. He
can’t bear the burden that is weighted on his soul. He knows what pain she’ll
go through when the base commander knocks on her door carrying an envelope that
contains a letter coldly outlining the death of her beloved. It’s too much for
any one man to bear for any length of time.

Seth looked at Surgeon and decided that
it was romance number three that made his face turn to stone at Seth’s inquiry.
Seth thought that he could empathize with Surgeon, for he, too, felt as though
he had found his soul mate. They had only touched briefly for an instant but he
just knew what she could—would—mean to his life if he ever got back to find her
again. He would get back to find her again; he had no other choice.

“Hello!” Surgeon knocked on Seth’s
helmet. “Would you like me to wake you when I’m done setting up the sensors or
would you like to help?”

“Yeah, uh, sorry.” Seth’s helmet hid his
blushing. “I’ll get the drilling equipment and survey gear. You get the sensor
array.”

“Hold on a second.” Surgeon started
patting down Seth’s uniformed body. “I’m just looking for the general you have
shoved up your ass somewhere, because I know that you by yourself wouldn’t be
ordering me around.”

“Yeah, yeah, let’s just get on with it.”
Seth couldn’t tell but he was pretty sure that Surgeon was grinning behind his
visor.

“Survey team one,” the pilot of fire
team one called, “we have finished a perimeter sweep and are taking up position
on your six for rear guard. We did detect a minor power fluctuation from
bearing two-six-three degrees of your present position, at fifteen meters out.
It looked like it could be just a stray radioactive isotope. Probably nothing
but you’re gonna be walking around anyway, so you might wanna check it out.”

“Copy, fire team one. Thanks for the
intel. Now just sit back and start on that picnic lunch you brought while Cadet
and I do the work.” Surgeon picked up his gear and started the pressure hatch’s
decompression cycle.

The asteroid’s gravity was about equal
to that of Earth’s own moon. It made the ninety kilo drilling gear that Seth
carried much easier to manage than if he would’ve had to carry its entire
weight unaided. Surgeon took the lead and used his handheld positioning sensor
to find the exact coordinates of the predetermined spot the computers had
picked out for their first sensor array.

As they neared the point, Surgeon’s
sensor began to detect the energy reading that fire team one had told them
about. “Hold up here.” Surgeon put his gear on the ground and Seth followed
suit. “I want to find out what this reading is. You know, make sure that it
won’t interfere with our sensors.”

“I’m with you on that. I’d hate to have
to relocate an entire net after setting it up.” A sensor net was a precisely
set circuit of sensor arrays over a one kilometer square area. Each sensor had
to be placed within five cubic centimeters of a pre-designated computer plotted
coordinate. If the energy reading that Surgeon was detecting interfered with
signal quality, and they found out after setting up the entire net, they would
have to take it all down and start over just because their first placed sensor
was getting fuzzy signals.

The signal suddenly vanished. “What the
hell?” Surgeon whispered.

Seth approached him and looked over his
shoulder to review the sensor’s data. “It could’ve been a space rock with a
radioactive isotope in that had a short half-life. Maybe it landed here right
before we began a sweep of the area and then faded out. It happens all the time
in space.”

“Possible, but I want to keep an eye on
this area just to be sure. I’m gonna set my scanner up to relay info back to us
from this position.” Surgeon tapped the keys on the instrument’s panel and set
it down before heading back to the drill site.

Seth set up the drilling platform and
began his excavation of the fifteen-meter hole that would be necessary to plant
the first of ten sensors that would make up the net. “I set it for automatic.
The computer estimates thirty minutes for completion.”

“How about you?” Surgeon asked. Seth had
no idea what he was talking about. “Do you have a woman back home to talk
about?” Surgeon clarified his question.

Behind his opaque visor, Seth’s eyes
stared blankly into space. “Not really. There was one girl back home before I
went to boot, but she was a superficial bitch who didn’t love me enough to
stand by me when things got rough. But then I met someone, someone I really
wanted to get to know.”

“What happened to her?”

“You broke my nose and I ended up here
with you. Not much of a trade-off, to tell you the truth.” Seth patted Surgeon
on the back. “I mean, you and I are buds, but c’mon, you don’t hold a candle to
her.”

“Why don’t you tell me about her?
Sometimes it’s nice to hear about home from someone other than your own memory.”
Surgeon just didn’t want to think about his own home right at that moment.

“Well, she has”—” Seth didn’t get a
chance to finish; the small explosion that came from the drill stopped all
conversation.

The explosion was the drill bit heating
up and fracturing at its weakest point. The lack of sufficient oxygen limited
the flames to an initial small chemical burn, which ceased when the
self-oxygenating fuel source from the magnesium burned itself out. “What the
hell was that?!” Seth said, jumping to the drill’s display screen.

“It looks like the drill bit got caught
on something that over-torqued the shaft and blew the bit. But I don’t know
what could’ve done that so fast. The drill should’ve stopped as soon as it hit
something too hard to penetrate.” Surgeon was scanning the ground with Seth’s
handheld sensor. “Holy shit”, he mouthed from behind his visor.

“A sonar scan shows a hollow cavern
below us. About ten meters cubed. Small enough to evade our ship’s scanners.
It’s made of an unknown metal alloy.” Surgeon looked at Seth and then turned
towards where he had placed his own scanner. “That radioactive isotope was
positioned at the far edge of the cube below us. I’m willing to bet that it’s
not a natural occurrence.”

“Tell me something I don’t know, like
what it is.” Seth came to Surgeon’s side.

“Get out the laser drill bit. The one-centimeter
diameter bit. We’re gonna see if we can crack this egg.” Surgeon turned towards
his rear guard. “Sensor team one to all units and command ship. We have found
something at site one. I am relaying data to all hands now.”

“I have received the data.” The general’s
voice was anything but pleased. “What’s your plan?”

“We’re setting up a one-centimeter laser
drill bit to try to penetrate the structure. After which we’ll insert an optic
camera to take a look around”, Surgeon said as Seth began to drill into the
structure.

“Keep your visor on relay mode. I want
to see the operation in real time”, the general said from the ship’s operations
room.