Extinction (37 page)

“Thank you. Conn, when was the last
battle drill?” The XO hated being on watch during warp travel; never anything
to do but wait.

“At the beginning of last shift, sir.”
He grimaced to himself because he knew what was coming next.

The XO touched a key on his control
panel. “All hands, red alert! Battle stations! Red alert!”

The klaxon began to pound into
everyone’s head and the XO sat back and smiled. The crew of the
Emilian
raced to their battle stations. His watch always had the fastest response
times. Today would be no different.

Still Deep Inside Enemy
Territory

Surgeon laid in his course towards the
leader of the enemy cruisers and then engaged his maneuvering thrusters for his
third “attack” on the ship in the last five hours. At the end of his run, Seth
reviewed the sensor readings before giving his report.

“Again nothing.” Seth spoke with a
mixture of disappointment and relief. The waiting was getting to be nerve-racking.
“I don’t think that they can see us at all. We’ve been moving around all their
ships for almost two days now and nothing.”

“I’m not sure that I agree with you.”
Surgeon was almost on Seth’s side but something told him that all of their
maneuvers hadn’t gone unnoticed. “I do, of course, hope that you’re right but
wishful thinking won’t win this fight.”

“Three to one.” Blaze keyed his comlink
to Surgeon’s. “We’ve got an analysis of their patrol pattern. I’m sending it to
all our ships now. The computer recommends that we implement our attack when
their ships are in this position.” Everyone’s display in their visors showed a
hologram of the enemy forces as they would appear in seven hours. “So as long
as they’re on schedule as precisely as they have been, that will be our best
shot.”

Transmissions between Surgeon’s ships
were encrypted using a method that had become known as the “debris” code.
Before each mission, each ship’s comlink was programmed using a random set of
algorithms that five separate computers put together. After each algorithm was
entered into the lead ship, its central computer would arrange the equations
into an order in which the second algorithm would use the solution from the
first one as the variable in its equation. Then the third algorithm used the
answer produced by the second one as its variable, and so on.

Then the lead ship was hooked up to the
other scout ships via cables and the code sequence was transferred to them.
This ensured that the only ships with the whole encryption code were the scout
ships.

The second part of the encryption code
used space debris to send the signal to each ship. Gasses and other elements
that were floating near each ship were gathered into collectors all along the
hull. They were then dispersed in a pattern according to their atomic weight.
The receiving ship’s sensors would analyze the debris from the sender and use
the element’s atomic weight as the variables in the algorithms and then decode
the transmissions.

To the unknowing onlooker, their sensors
would just pick up a random scattering of elements that were common in that
particular sector. Unless the onlooker had their sensors trained on a minute portion
of space, they would never realize that the elements were in any sort of
pattern. And even if they did, they would never be able to break the code.

Surgeon ran through the
computer-generated simulation a few times before he said anything. “Unless anyone
has any objections, we’ll go ahead with the plan as it stands now.” No one
objected. “Continue with your prearranged flight plans.”

Seth keyed in what he wanted for dinner
and turned to the dispenser to get his meal. “You want me to get something for
you?”

“No, I’ll eat a little bit later. I need
to look over some schematics first. I’ve been going over our scans of the alien
hulls and I think that I found something.”

“Send it over to me”, Seth said through
a mouthful of his dinner. “I’d like to take a look while I’m eating.”

Surgeon sent the transmission from his
visor to Seth’s view screen on the bulkhead. “There.” He zoomed in on a portion
of the hull. “See that scoring on the side that has new plating over it? The
ship, along with all the others, has similar shitty patch work all over the
hull.”

“I honestly don’t know where you’re
going with this”, Seth commented after taking a sip of water and studying the
view for a moment.

“These ships are works of art. The
detailing, the craftsmanship, and the technology used to put them together are
outstanding. Yet they can’t even patch a simple meteorite scoring on their
hull? I don’t think so. I don’t think that they have the means to.”

“So then where did the ships come from?
Who made them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe their ancestors did
and they lost the technology somehow. Or maybe they conquered a species and
took the ships for themselves. Either way, I think that these ships are at
least a thousand years old. The scanners say that the designs are exactly the
same as the ones we found in the alien database from a thousand years ago. You
would guess that something would have changed in all that time.”

Six hours had passed before the warning
light on Blaze’s console came to life. “Oh shit! We’ve got company, everyone.
Look alive!”

Everyone in the scout team stared, shell
shocked, at their screens as sixty more battle cruisers entered the immediate
area from high warp.

“Surgeon to all units. Abort all flight
plans and regroup at rendezvous point Delta.” Turning to Seth, he said, “The general
is going to have to wait just a little bit longer. We can’t go ahead with our
plan in the middle of all those giants.”

Just then Seth noticed something. “Wait
a minute. They’re all lining up on the same trajectory.” And then they were
gone. All of the ships jumped into warp in a single-file order and suddenly the
space around them was empty.

“Surgeon,” Blaze came on the link, “I’m
already recalculating an attack vector. I think we can slip in past their
planetary defense grid at this point.” A red flashing arrow came on in
everyone’s visor. “It is the weakest part of their sensors and in three hours
it will be facing the sun in such a way that solar radiation and debris that
moves along the solar currents will mask our entry into their atmosphere. Then
we just need to do a little hunting.”

“Good. Beast, I want you to lead assault
team two with everyone from units three, four, and five. Units one and two are
with me. We’re going to stick to our original assault plan by homing in on the crew’s
beacon implants. There aren’t any ships in the area, so we’ll have to hope that
we will be able to find one on the ground. Otherwise we go with plan B.”

No one wanted plan B. It called for all
the scout ships to be remotely brought in above the rescue site and then their
fusion reactors would be overloaded in order to sanitize the area. It wouldn’t
destroy the planet but it wouldn’t be a vacation spot for at least a few
hundred years.

One thousand years ago -
Primary Site of the Advance Exploration Colony

The Day of the Cleansing

The emperor stood in chambers as reports
of the sick and dying flooded his communications console. “Minister D’Bath. Do
you know what is causing this?” He was reading from a script in his mind that
had been memorized and then incinerated immediately. The plan required that all
formalities be taken, otherwise someone might get suspicious.

“No, Your Highness. I cannot tell you
for sure. Some of my colleagues think that it might be the vegetation and some
think that it might be the radiation in this sector of space. No one knows for
certain.” At that moment, a victim of the plague was wheeled to D’Bath for
help. The other doctors were trying to resuscitate the patient but couldn’t. D’Bath
fought desperately to clear the froth and blood from the victim’s mouth but it was
coming up too quickly.

With a final series of convulsions, the
young child died. D’Bath turned back to the screen. “As minister of health, I
declare a quarantine on this sector of space until we can figure out what is
going on. No more colonies will come in and none of the current colonists will
leave. I am sorry, Your Highness, but I must order you to stay as well.”

“I agree fully, my friend. I would not
want to infect the rest of our empire, even to save myself. How long will this
quarantine be in place?” The emperor had a tear in his eye from the death of
the child. But many others would have died if they had tried to secede from the
empire any other way, he tried to console himself. But it wasn’t working.

“At the moment, I’d have to say
indefinitely, sire. I suggest that you issue a royal order forbidding any other
members of our empire to come to this sector until this disease is taken care
of. I must go now, sire; there are many others who need my help.” The screen
went blank and was quickly replaced with the royal seal.

The emperor tapped in a few commands and
quickly got the office of Supreme Command back in the heart of the empire. The
warrior who stood on the other end of the transmission quickly knelt to the
floor and put his four arms out in submission to his emperor. “Master, what do
I owe this great honor to?”

“Please stand, warrior. I have some
grave news about our future.” The warrior stood. “We have had a terrible
outbreak of some virus here on the new colonies. It is killing almost everyone.
It has already killed all of your warrior brothers; it seems as though they
were more susceptible to it than everyone else.”

“Master, we will send a rescue ship for
you and the war council immediately to bring you home.”

“No, that is the last thing you will do.
Minister of Health D’Bath has declared a state of quarantine for this sector. I
give you now a royal order that no one will disobey. This sector is completely
off limits to all of my subjects forever if we cannot find a cure for this
disease. I have unknowingly destroyed a large portion of my empire by bringing
them here and I will not destroy the other.

“Until such time as this crisis is over,
Supreme Command will be in charge of the core worlds and empire. I am sending
complete documentation on what has happened here so that you may see for
yourself what devastation this sector holds for our empire.”

“I will notify Supreme Command at once.
They will, of course, want confirmation from General N’thoth”, the warrior said
without looking up.

Emperor T’Leh tapped a few keys on the
panel. “The general is very ill with the plague and most of the war council has
already died.” The warrior was so stunned he actually looked directly at the
emperor. “I will, however, patch this transmission over to the hospital where
you can confer with General N’thoth as he is cared for. I fear his time to
venture forward into the next existence is near.” The emperor knew N’thoth was
dead and he hoped that the General’s stand-in would be able to fool the warrior
on the other end of the transmission.

After completing the transfer, the
screen went blank. The emperor sat in his chair in front of his favorite desk
and contemplated what he had done. He knew that it was right but he still
couldn’t get the image of that dying child out of his mind. “May the gods
forgive me”, he whispered to himself.

Dig Site One

In the hanger bay, the team found the
most impressive ship any of them had ever seen. Jockey was the first to
approach it. “God, am I glad that I’m the only pilot here. I’d hate to have to
fight someone just to be the first to fly her. She’s beautiful.” Had the rest
of the team not been there, Daria was sure that Jockey would have started
caressing the hull with his own body.

“Jockey, Cannon, and Bloom, take a look
through her and find out how to get her off the ground. I want weapons systems
to be the second priority after flight controls.” Wilks turned to Emily. “Hey, el-tee,
after Doc gets finished checking my ankle, how about the three of us going over
some of the data we’ve collected so far?”