Extinction (7 page)

“I don’t understand. Why are we trying
to cover this up? Two soldiers died in the crash. Don’t they deserve the truth?”
Seth was starting to wonder about the company he was soon to be employed by.

“Look, I don’t like it either but
sometimes we have to look at the greater good. Those brave men are dead and
nothing we do will change that. It doesn’t matter if we say the crash was our
fault or theirs; their families will still get their death benefits and they
will still be buried as heroes.” Jack sat back in his chair and waited for a
response.

Seth was even more puzzled now. “Why would
we say it was our fault?”

“Exactly.” Jack leaned forward again. “If
we say it was our fault, then we may lose the contract on the fighter project.
Best-case scenario is our fighters all get grounded for months or even longer
while we do millions and millions of dollars’ worth of testing to show that
this accident was an isolated incident. Which is exactly what it was. If we say
it was operator error, then none of that happens.

“Trust me, Seth, if I thought our
fighters weren’t safe, I’d recall them myself even if it meant my career to do
it. Do you understand now?”

“No. I don’t.”

Jack was back to his exhausted look. “What
part of it? Saving the company or saving our jobs?”

“I don’t understand why we would say it
was our fault or theirs when it was neither.” Seth was truly lost and he could
tell Jack was also.

“Well, someone or something has to be
blamed.” Jack thought maybe he was too tired to explain it well enough to Seth.

“Right.” Seth was wondering whether Jack
was so far gone that he was a little delirious right now. “But, how about we
blame the person or persons who murdered the pilot and gunner”?

“Okay, now I’m truly lost, Seth. Please
tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Look.” Seth reached for a datapad and
was surprised when Jack didn’t stop him. Seth took a moment to find and pull up
the information he was looking for. “Right here. It wasn’t an accident or user
error. Someone added a line of code here. It changes the plasma intake
tolerance levels. Not by much, but it does.”

Jack looked at the code and wasn’t sure
but thought maybe Seth was correct. “Okay. Maybe there is altered code but that
doesn’t prove anything. You know that these pilots and crew chiefs have altered
our specs in the past because they think they know better than us. This
tolerance change wouldn’t cause the failure we’re looking at.”

“No. It wouldn’t”, Seth admitted. “But,
couple that with this other line of code here, along with a slight physical
alteration to the intake valve here...” Seth pulled up some detailed photos and
scans of the wreckage.

“This isn’t looking good.” Jack was
putting the pieces together now.

“This still isn’t the complete picture.
I’m guessing there are several other line changes and maybe even some other
physical alterations. I’d need access to everything we have to put together a
proper synopsis and theory.” Seth looked Jack in the eye. “But I’m sure these
guys were murdered. This was not an accident, theirs or ours.”

“But why?” came the rhetorical question.

“Angry girlfriend or wife. Crew chief
hated the pilot or gunner. Military or corporate espionage. Who knows? But we
might be able to find out.” Seth started looking through more data as Jack
didn’t seem to care now.

“If anything, I’d say corporate
espionage. How many spouses have the ability to do this to a fighter jet?” Jack
picked up his phone to make a call. “Keep working on this. From now on it’s
just you and me. I’m sending everyone else home. I want to keep this close to
the vest for now.”

Seth started making a work area for
himself at the conference table while Jack notified the rest of the team that
they weren’t needed anymore tonight. Seth was actually a little impressed with
the story that Jack concocted to make it seem less odd that the most important
project of the decade suddenly became not important at all.

By morning, Seth had all of the pieces
to the puzzle and put them together to show the sabotage the fighter had been
subjected to. The only pieces missing were who and why. The how and when were
perfectly clear. Jack sent Seth home and said that he would call later when he
had more information. For now, Jack was taking this straight to the top, on his
own.

Seth knew he couldn’t take another day
in his own lab being this tired again. He sent out a message to his team and
gave them the day off, explaining that he needed to take the project in a new
direction but he was too tired from working on it all night. Without Seth in
the lab with his new equations and ideas, there was no reason for anyone else
to show up.

Seth fell on to his bed and was
immediately unconscious. He woke several hours later, a bit refreshed but still
tired from two days of very little sleep. He had ten messages from his
girlfriend, starting off friendly and then progressing through worried and
ending up at angry. Where was he? Why hadn’t he called her? Was there someone
else?

Seth tried to call her first but she
didn’t answer. Not knowing whether she was busy or just mad, he left her a
message, trying to be as nice and penitent as possible. He then showered and
checked his email for messages from Jack. Nothing.

Seth ended up eating dinner alone and
watching some old movies from the comfort of his couch and boxer shorts. He was
still recovering from a lack of sleep, so he never really thought it was odd
that he wasn’t receiving his usual texts or messages from friends and family.
No email either. No electronic correspondence of any sort, not even spam.

The next day, he finally realized that
something was wrong. After waking up, showering and getting ready for the day,
he finally noticed the lack of contact with anyone outside his apartment. Seth
decided to head into the lab and check his accounts from the university’s data
connection to see whether that made a difference.

Seth left his apartment, half thinking
he would find the planet deserted as though he were in some sort of “last man alive”
scenario. That would certainly account for the lack of human contact he had
yesterday. As he got to the street, he saw that that theory was blown out of
the water: the streets were just as crowded as usual and not a single zombie or
alien mind control device was in sight.

When Seth got to his lab, he did run
into one problem. His access code wasn’t working. He tried it several times but
the light stayed red and the automatic lock never clicked open. A moment later,
campus security showed up.

Seth smiled when he saw Doris. “Hey
there! I haven’t seen you in a while but I’m glad you’re here. Can you let me
in? The lock is messed up and won’t let me in.”

Doris looked a little embarrassed. “I’m
sorry, Seth, but I can’t let you in. I have instructions to take you to the dean’s
office.”

“Why?” Seth wondered whether somehow not
coming in yesterday and giving his team the day off had gotten him in trouble.
This seemed pretty severe for something that he was pretty sure didn’t violate
any department or school rules.

“I don’t know, I really don’t, Seth. But
I have to. I was told you aren’t allowed to go anywhere but the dean’s office.”
Doris put her arm out in the direction they needed to walk and Seth followed
her silent instruction.

Three hours later, Seth was standing at
the edge of the university’s property with a letter of dismissal in his hand.
He was told that all of his personal property that the university didn’t have
any rights to would be sent to his apartment within two weeks.

The dean had told him that the school’s
code of conduct clearly prohibited the use of illegal drugs. Due to the
extremely hazardous nature of the street drug Track Star, along with the huge
amounts of it found in Seth’s secure and private lab locker, the school had no
choice but to dismiss him.

Seth did have an appeals process but the
dean warned him against using it. The dean told Seth that the school was
grateful for his work and would give him his degree, along with not putting the
drug infraction on his official record. After all, he was only a week away from
graduation and they still recognized that he had earned the degree with all of
his hard work. The dean didn’t want Seth to have the rest of his life tarnished
and just wanted him to get the help he needed. But if Seth appealed, then the
drug use would become official and on the record. So Seth left without so much
as a word.

Seth was still trying to figure things
out when he found himself at the doors to AeroTech. The only thing he could do
now was go talk to Jack. He wanted to make sure Jack heard the story from him
first so he would know the truth. Seth would submit to any form of drug testing
or lie-detecting tests to prove that he had no idea what had happened at the university.

Seth put his security badge up against
the reader and received the same red lights he got from his lab doors on
campus. “Shit. You have got to be kidding me.”

It seemed as though the universe was
repeating itself as Seth watched two security guards approach him from inside
the building. When they reached the door, one spoke through the intercom. “I’m
sorry, sir, but you need to leave. Your building privileges have been revoked.
You have the legal right to stand outside the building on public property, but
we’d prefer if you didn’t. Thank you and have a nice day.”

Seth couldn’t believe what was going on.
This was all bullshit but he couldn’t figure out why. Then his phone beeped,
for the first time in almost two days. When he read the text message, it was
from his girlfriend. “Don’t ever contact me again.”
Ex-girlfriend
.

If Seth had been firing on all cylinders
today, he would’ve put it together sooner. The fighter crash. This was all a
part of that. It had to be. The timing was too coincidental to be a chance
event.

Jack. Was he a part of this? Or was he
being systematically destroyed just like Seth was? Jack hadn’t returned any of
Seth’s communication attempts, but maybe he couldn’t. Seth was equal parts
worried and angry; he didn’t have enough information to know which one he
should totally be right now.

Two weeks had gone by without contact
from anyone Seth knew. Luckily for him, his parents had been on the other side
of the Coalition, for an ambassador function of his father’s, and hadn’t
planned to make it back for his graduation anyway. So there was at least one
story he didn’t have to come up with for why there wasn’t a graduation for him.

Seth had watched the graduation from a
safe and non-trespassing location. When he got home, he found a small piece of
a newspaper stuck in the crack of his front door. Two words were printed on one
side: “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t recognize the handwriting; in
fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he had seen actual handwritten
anything
.
That was smart of the sender; it would be harder to track handwriting than a
computer-generated message. Probably from Jack, Seth thought.

It was time to come up with a plan. Seth
knew he couldn’t sit around in his apartment forever. He was starting to run
out of rent money, for one thing. As far as he could tell, none of his newly
acquired ill-repute extended beyond the university or AeroTech. It was time to
find a job.

A week later, Seth found himself in a
Marine Corps officer-recruiting seminar. By the end of the presentation, Seth
knew what he wanted to do. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to find out what
had happened to the fighter crew or why, but maybe he could make a difference
somewhere so it wouldn’t happen again.

And who knows, he thought, maybe one day
he would be able to walk up to Gunnery Sergeant Mike O’Connor’s widow and show
her proof that her husband didn’t cause the fatal accident that day. Maybe he
would someday be able to give her that simple peace of mind.

~

Somewhere
Inside The Coalition Strategic Operations Command Center:

As the intelligence officer was perusing
his morning emails, his monitor lit up with an emergency flash traffic message.
A keyword search had hit the monitoring station just over eight seconds ago.

After checking the message, he verified
its contents, and then opened the protocols database and matched the protocol
on the keyword search with the one in the database. The protocols database
match showed that the target of the keyword had a priority cancellation order.
It also showed that this particular protocol couldn’t be enacted without verbal
confirmation from the general.

The captain contacted the general through
a secure video link. “Good morning, sir. I hope you’re not busy.”

The general was eating his breakfast. “Not
at all, Joe. How are things in your section?”

“Good, sir, thank you for asking.” The captain
tapped a few keys on his console. “I’m sending you a flash comm I just received
a few moments ago. The protocols database lists the subject for cancellation
but it also requires a verbal confirmation from you, sir. In fact, it looks
like you authored this specific protocol yourself.”

The general pushed his breakfast aside
so he could use both hands on the computer. “Indeed I did, Joe, indeed I did.”
He read further down the message. “Well, that’s a very unexpected turn, but for
the better, I’d say. It looks like Seth has dropped his quest for the truth in
order to serve the greater good and join the Marine Corps.”

“Yes, sir.” The captain had no idea what
this was about and most likely never would. He would just do his part and that
part was dependent on whatever the general told him to do next. “When he signed
up for Officer Candidate School, his name hit the keyword database and was
flagged as an ‘important event.’ I’m guessing it was because he signed up for
the service. Had he laid low and got a job with your average tech company, I
don’t think he would’ve been flagged.”