Extinction

by Korza, Jay

  Bloom was now at the controls helping Jockey. “The scout ship has deployed three smaller ships, probably individual flyers of some sort.”

  Patz had moved away from the controls to make room for Bloom but something struck him as he looked at the craft designations on the screen. “Hey guys,” he started, “if the ship we are in is designating those other vessels as friendlies, doesn't that mean they're actually not friendly?”

  Wilks knew at that moment, as did the rest of the team, Patz was absolutely right. Bloom hadn't updated their new ship with Coalition codes for the IFF (identify friend-or-foe), so the ship was using its original codes to designate new contacts. And if the new contact was a friendly to their ship, it most certainly was not friendly to its new occupants.

  Jockey jumped into the pilot's seat, Bloom took the co-pilot's seat, Fang went to weapons, and Wilks took center seat in the command chair. Other team members filled vacant seats and the leftovers stood in place, waiting to take up a console if its current occupant became unable to man it during the inevitable upcoming battle.

  Bloom reported from his console, “Jockey, we're not ready to launch. Close the hangar bay doors.”

  “I'd love to”, he replied. “But I'm not the one who did it. The incoming vessel did it remotely. They must have activated a docking protocol or something.”

  “Damn it!” Bloom turned to look at Wilks. “It's too late to override the command. The hangar is opening whether we want it to or not.”

  Wilks turned to look at each one of his men individually. “Men, we are marines. We adapt, we improvise, and we overcome. I'd rather fight these bastards on the ground than in the air in a ship we just stole. But we are recon marines, which means we have never got to choose who we fight and most of the time we've never even got to decide where we're going to fight. Make no mistake about it: we will kill these motherfuckers before the day is over.”

  Wilks swiveled his chair back to the front. No one cheered, no one clapped, no one acknowledged the impromptu speech; everyone went to work doing what they could to try to help turn the tables at least a little bit in their favor. But if you could look into their hearts, you'd see that Wilks had sparked a fire that would burn and fuel them through the upcoming battle.

  “Get us out of here, Jockey.” Wilks could feel the ship responding to his order so he knew Jockey had already started moving towards the hangar exit. “We don't know the defensive or offensive capabilities of either ship so we are going on the offensive and hard. We can't rely on this ship to hold up to whatever they can throw at us, so let's just knock them out of the sky first. This is a heavyweight bout, gentlemen: blow for blow until someone drops.”

  As they were about to clear the doors of the hangar, the first salvo of weapons fire struck their hull. The three individual fighters had sped ahead of their mother ship and started the fight. The blasts were barely felt inside the much larger ship. Wilks looked to Bloom. “That didn't seem too bad. Do those ships have enough power to even damage us?”

  “I'm still trying to figure things out but it seems like they had little effect on our shields.” Bloom tapped a few more commands. “They are, however, able to cause momentary weak points in our shielding. A unified attack on a strategic point will cause a significant weak point that I'm sure the scout ship will take advantage of.”

  “Copy that, Bloom. Jockey, do your best to keep us between the attack craft and the scout ship. If they aren't ever lined up together then they can't use each other to their advantage.” Wilks turned to Fang. “Any time you want to start shooting, please feel free.”

  Wilks' obvious sarcasm hung in the air a moment while Fang just growled at him, “I would love to start shooting but there are safeties that prevent us from arming or using our weapons inside the hangar. I have firing solutions ready to go as soon as we clear the hangar.”

  Almost on cue, the slight “chug” of weapons fire could be felt as the ship loosed some of its thousand-year-old ordinance on their attackers. On the view screen, Wilks could see the edge of the hangar falling below the ship and several rockets shooting out from weapons bays somewhere on the belly of the ship. Energy weapons were firing from multiple points on the ship's hull and Wilks smiled in satisfaction as one of the smaller attack craft quickly came apart under the barrage. A smile appeared on everyone's face almost simultaneously as the ship flew through the debris of their fallen enemy.

  Wilks gripped his command chair as he saw what awaited the ship on the other side of the explosion. An almost imperceptible mutter slipped out. “You've got to be fucking kidding me.”

  One of the smaller craft was trying to fly across their path, maybe in an attempt to herd them somewhere, maybe to make a suicide run, or maybe just plain old pilot error. Whatever the cause, the outcome seemed inevitable. Jockey kept his calm as he flew the ship right through the smaller craft. “Fuck it”, was all he said as his new ship destroyed the much smaller attack craft.

  At first, the collision seemed pretty horrible to everyone as the bridge became a shower of flying bodies. A second after the initial hit, the ship seemed to smooth out and Wilks thought maybe it wasn't going to be that bad after all. Then the spinning started and Wilks knew it was probably worse than he cared to think about.

  The ship's inertial dampers tried to compensate but they couldn't fix the complete abortion of physics Jockey was performing on the ship and its occupants. As the ship tumbled through the atmosphere, Jockey repeatedly whispered a mantra to himself. Luckily they had been in an upward trajectory when the collision happened so all of their momentum was taking them away from the planet instead of towards it.

  As they tumbled through the air, Wilks could feel the ship starting to get hit with more weapons fire. The enemy was using this obvious lack of control to their advantage. Wilks was still stuck to the floor because of the ship's rotation, but he could still talk. “Does anyone want to trade places with Jockey? Anyone? Maybe a one-armed blind kid?”

  “I appreciate your confidence, buddy.” Jockey was still smiling. This was how his team interacted in a crisis and it was always fun, even if they were about to die. “I got this. I got this. I got this.”

  The ship started to stabilize and the crew could start peeling themselves from the floor. Wilks crawled his way back to the command chair and he could see on the screen that not only was the ship coming under control but Jockey had managed to bring them into position of slight advantage with the attack ship in front of and blocking the weapons of the scout ship.

  “So maybe in the future we can just shoot things down instead of crashing into them?” Wilks could feel the ship was completely under control now.

  “I didn't have time to fully evade that bastard so I figured a head-on collision would keep him from sliding along our bottom side weapons bays and destroying those. Without weapons we'll definitely lose this fight so...” Jockey trailed off as he dodged some weapons fire.

  “Good choice, buddy.” Had there been time to discuss the options, Wilks never would have gone with Jockey's plan and he would've risked losing the belly weapons. But there wasn't time, and he needed his men to feel confident in their decisions so now wasn't the proper moment to pose the obvious question of, ”Seriously? Head-on collision seemed the better choice?!“

  As Jockey flew around the other ships, two additional images overlaid the main forward image on the screen. Fang was firing on his opponents. “I'm not sure what I pressed but those additional images are the views from the targeting computer. That little guy is about to go...”

  On the screen, Wilks saw the contrail of the missile as it sped towards the small attack craft. The missile struck home almost dead center on the top of the craft, and then bounced off without exploding. Everyone turned to look at Fang, who just shrugged and then started looking at his weapons board to see if he could figure out what had happened.

  “Pardon me, sir, if I may, I have a suggestion.” The voice came from the side of the bridge. As the eyes turned away fr
om Fang and towards the droid everyone had forgotten until now, it continued, “Mr. Fang has accidentally fired a disarmed missile. During our unfortunate physical encounter with the other craft, the missiles have been remotely disarmed. It is a safety feature in the event of a crash landing that prevents the ordinance from detonating. The impact from the collision was enough to bring the safety feature on line.”

  Wilks turned to Bloom. “I didn't realize we were taking new recruits on our squad. And why the hell does he sound like an English butler?”

  “Uh, yeah, I was working on that when we came under attack.” Bloom opened his mouth to speak and then obviously decided to change his oncoming rant before it even began. “The short story is he, it, is on our side now and will help us. And I have always wanted an English butler so...”

  Wilks turned to the droid. “Okay, Jeeves, can you fix the problem?”

  “New designation, 'Jeeves' accepted.” Jeeves rolled by Patz and pointed at him. “If you would be so kind as to join me in the weapons bay, I will need your assistance to reset the warheads.”

  Patz nodded and followed Jeeves off the bridge. Wilks could hear Jeeves starting to tell Patz what they would have to do once they reached the bay. Wilks turned to Fang. “We still have energy weapons so use those until we get missiles back on line.”

  “Aye, sir.” Fang adjusted his control board to remove the missile controls from his screen so he wouldn't use them anymore. The ship continued to fire but the chug couldn't be felt anymore without any missiles being launched.

  The pilot of the last small attack fighter was definitely much better than his companions were and wasn't allowing Jockey to keep the small craft between the two larger ships. As a result, they were starting to take a lot of hits from the recon vessel that had much better armament than the smaller attack fighter.

  Patz' voice came over the comlink. “There's a fair amount of damage down here. It's probably a good thing the safety protocols enacted or we might have blown up. Jeeves is trying to figure out the best way to arm the missiles as we can't access the software controls to do it electronically. We may have to arm each one by hand before it's fired. I could use everyone who isn't actively doing something to come down here and help out.”

  Without Wilks saying anything, the remaining team members who weren't doing anything left the bridge. “You've got more hands on their way down. Our energy weapons are working their shields pretty well but the missiles will really help us out.”

  “Copy that, Sarge.” Patz was already mentally setting up teams to man the missiles' manual arming controls. When the extra hands arrived, he directed them to their stations and showed them what Jeeves had shown him about arming the missiles.

  A few minutes later, he reported back in. “Wilks, we're ready to start arming the missiles. It will take about thirty seconds to arm each one. We can arm up to two simultaneously. We have to wait for those to fire before the next set load into place and then those can be armed. From the time you fire one missile to the time you can fire the next, figure on a minimum of forty-five seconds.”

  “Great job, guys.” Wilks turned to Fang. “Missiles are a go, buddy. Let slip lose the dogs of war.”

  Fang smiled and brought his weapons panel back to showing the missiles again. The control panel was obviously designed by a weapons officer and not an engineer sitting at a desk somewhere. There were virtually no words on the panel; everything was a simple pictogram and most were readily apparent as to what they were for. It seemed that missiles, energy weapons and countermeasures might be a universal constant to advanced species. Fang thought he understood probably more than ninety percent of what he was looking at.

  As the evasive maneuvers started to outnumber the offensive maneuvers, Wilks began to worry that they were slowly losing the fight. Then Bloom turned and shouted, “New enemy contact! Coming in hard and fast, just clearing the upper atmosphere now.”

  “Wait, 'enemy' enemy contact?” Wilks asked. “Or a contact this ship thinks is an enemy?”

  “Sorry, sir, you're right. The ship IFF is designating enemy so it's probably one of our friends.” Bloom worked his controls for a couple of seconds before continuing, “It looks to be Detrill in origin. A fast attack cruiser. I'm hailing on all frequencies and requesting assistance. I'm also updating our IFF. I'll let you know when that's complete.”

  “Thank you, Bloom.” Wilks used his comlink to tap into the hail Bloom had set up. “This is Gunnery Sergeant Wilks of the Coalition. My crew is aboard the larger enemy vessel and we are in control of it. Any assistance you can give would be greatly appreciated.”

  “Sergeant Wilks, this is Captain Netid of the Detrill warship Emilian. We would be happy to assist you. Please cease all fire directed at the smaller vessel; we would like to take that ship intact to review its systems and gather intelligence. I have already deployed three fighters to deal with it. If our two ships could focus on the larger vessel, we'll be done with this in no time.”

  “Sounds good to me, Captain.” Wilks looked to Fang to make sure he understood and when Fang nodded, Wilks looked to Jockey. “Let's separate ourselves from the smaller vessels and finish this.”

  Jockey jerked the ship around and sent it into a dive. The sudden move looked evasive but Jockey knew it was just a setup so that he could turn back to the offensive in just a few quick seconds.

  He had already picked out a seemingly arbitrary point in the atmosphere for his next move, but it wasn't arbitrary at all. The atmosphere is always full of thermocline pockets and bubbles where there is a sudden and drastic change of temperature, sometimes colder and sometimes hotter. Jockey liked to set his board to show these pockets anytime there was a significant temperature difference. This planet had some of the hottest thermoclines he had ever seen and that could work to his advantage.

  As they approached a fifteen degree Celsius thermocline, Jockey got ready for his move. The sudden increase of temperature made that pocket of air thinner and gave any ship traveling through it greater maneuverability. If a pilot was paying attention to how his ship and his enemy's ship moved through a given atmosphere, he could determine what either ship was capable of and use that information to create better attack or evasive angles. By using a small pocket of increased maneuverability, Jockey could add several degrees to an escape turn that his enemy wouldn't be prepared for.

  Jockey made his move and brought the ship in to a spinning turn pullout that seemed to defy Newtonian physics all together. Wilks thought for sure he was going to pass out as he was sucked into his chair and almost out the other side. Fang was pushed down into a squatting position and even contemplated whether or not he should just let gravity lay him down until it was all over.

  As the ship came around and ultimately behind and above the Emilian, Captain Netid's voice came over the comlink. “That was a most...impressive maneuver, Sergeant Wilks. And I'm a bit embarrassed to say this, but my pilot has requested that your pilot 'tone it down' just a bit. He doesn't think he can keep up if you pull any more stunts like that.”

  “My apologies, Captain.” Wilks smiled and gave Jockey a thumbs-up. “Jockey was dropped a lot as a baby and consequently he never really did well in physics class. So he's incapable of understanding what ships are supposed to be able to do and not do.”

  A chuckle came through on the other end of the comlink. “Apparently my pilot should've been dropped more often then.”

  Through the banter between ships' commanders, the respective pilots and weapons officers were getting their synchronicity together and starting to hammer the enemy ship.

  ~

  Aboard the enemy ship, the warrior captain was furious. “By all that is sacred, why are you so incompetent?!”

  The verbal attack turned into a physical one as the captain pulled his junior officer out of the pilot's seat and threw him across the bridge. The captain started as a pilot and was one of the best in the empire.

  Although he knew that he couldn't have kept up with
the evasive turn the enemy pilot had just performed, he would've at least used the opportunity to switch targets and gone after the Detrill ship. The pilot of the Detrill ship also couldn't keep up with the turn but he tried and in doing so, had exposed himself to an attack angle that could have been used to deliver a devastating attack to his ship's underside.

  With the captain now flying his ship, he decided to put all of his efforts into going after the less-experienced Detrill pilot. A warship wasn't just one man, and the captain knew that. There were others on that bridge affecting the outcome of this fight, but the pilot was the first link in the chain and he had no doubt that this link was weaker than he was.

  The captain didn't turn his head as he spoke to his weapons officer. “I will be focusing on the Detrill ship, but you may fire at any target you have.” The junior pilot was just pulling himself off the deck when the captain addressed him. “If you want to redeem yourself and die with honor, you will get yourself to an attack fighter and use your limited skills to try to crash yourself through one of their hulls.”

  The junior officer stood straight and put his fist to his chest and said, “Yes, sir.” But in the core of his being, he knew that he didn't want to redeem himself, at least not if it meant he had to die to do so.

  As the pilot headed towards the launch bay, he contemplated his options. The very fact that he thought he had options, other than following his captain's orders, proved to him something he had always felt: he wasn't made right. Something must have happened in his incubation tube. Maybe a gene wasn't spliced together correctly or a stray mutation had been missed during his final physical exam. He didn't know what was wrong, just that something was.

  Although he did enjoy war and fighting, he never enjoyed it as much as his brothers. And although they all didn't mind dying for any reason at any time, he felt his life was more important than that. He wasn't opposed to dying if it would serve a purpose and the greater good, but he didn't want to die just for the sake of dying.