Extinction

by Korza, Jay

  Now sitting in the attack craft, he thought about his options. He could just not launch and die the inevitable death coming for his ship and crewmates. He could launch and try to be of some use in the battle but flying against the other ships so far, he knew he wasn't a match for the other pilots, especially in a smaller craft. He could follow orders but he knew he'd most likely get shot down rather than actually being able to ram one of the larger ships. He could run away. He could try to defect. He could allow himself to be taken prisoner and hope the enemy was more civil than his own people.

  He could feel his ship taking more damage and getting hit more often. The captain was definitely a better pilot than he was but the end was already written and no sacrifice was going to change that. He made a decision, or at least a partial decision. He was going to launch, not die with his brothers, and decide the rest later.

  The interior of the launch bay seemed to warp and elongate as the fighter craft was expelled from the dying vessel. The pilot was flattened against his seat for a moment until his smaller craft was birthed into the atmosphere and the warped launch bay was replaced by a greenish-blue sky.

  The pilot quickly consulted his instruments and turned his craft to a course that was the least threatening to the rest of the ships still locked in battle. He hit his afterburners and raced away from the fight as quickly as possible. Before he launched, he had turned off the communications system in the craft but he was certain he could still hear his captain cursing him from his seat on the bridge.

  ~

  “Wilks,” Bloom was reading the tactical readout, “a fighter craft has launched from the enemy vessel but he is definitely leaving the battle. He's not engaging anyone and making a beeline for the safest route away from the fighting. His course does go near our operations base but not directly to it.”

  Wilks could see the battle was going to be over soon and his side the victor. He wasn't getting cocky or complacent; it was just how things were. He spoke to the Detrill captain. “Sir, can you spare a fighter to follow and possibly engage that enemy fighter who just launched and left the battle?”

  “Yes, we can. Unfortunately the other fighter we were attempting to capture self-destructed when he realized we were just about to get him. Maybe this other fighter will be more eager to cooperate because it looks like he's fleeing rather than joining the fun. My craft are already heading towards the enemy fighter.”

  Wilks felt the now familiar “chug” of the belly launchers letting lose two more missiles. The targeting screen showed the view from the nose of both missiles and the enemy vessel was in the dead center of both. The vessel started an evasive maneuver but the Detrill weapons officer was working in concert with Fang and laid down fire in the only escape path the ship had.

  His choices were to get hit by energy weapons or missiles but not to avoid either. He chose the energy weapons considering his forward shields were strongest right now and the energy weapons would be glancing blows compared to the direct hits of the missiles. Fang knew his teammates were working as fast as they could but their lag in manually arming the missiles meant he couldn't fire follow-up shots to the enemy's evasive maneuver that would have finished the fight.

  The two ships were working well together and none of the respective crews were talking with each other at all. All of their tactics could be described as synergistic as they read one another’s moves and added to what the last person did until the symphony of battle crescendoed with the final act.

  The enemy vessel was in the middle of the other two ships. One was vectored towards space on the underside of the enemy and the other was vectored towards the ground coming from above the enemy. They were tens of miles apart but with the speeds these vessels commanded, they might as well have been playing chicken in a parking lot with Formula One race cars.

  The Detrill weapons officer didn't know why his allies couldn't fire more than two missiles every forty seconds but he had figured that out early on. The Detrill didn't fire directly at his target because that would just encourage the enemy to try to slip out of the attack in one of several possible escape routes. He had a limited spread that his ship could fire at his current attack angle, so instead he used that spread to close off the likely evasive routes the enemy pilot would take.

  Fang saw the plan as his counterpart's firing solution gave the enemy vessel but a single escape route. Fang launched his two missiles into the only path the enemy could take and watched as they hit home on the bridge and majority of the superstructure of the enemy vessel.

  The ship bucked and erupted with fire. No longer under the control of its pilot, the ship continued on its last trajectory as momentum carried it through the atmosphere. Both allied ships switched their fire to direct targeting and sent everything they had to the dying ship.

  ~

  The captain knew it was about to end. He was getting boxed in and while he was better than one of the pilots, the other was definitely his equal. Although he refused to give the other pilot a personal rating of better than himself considering he couldn't accurately judge the other's talent in these circumstances. The captain wished he could call a ceasefire, if only to challenge the other pilot to face off in personal attack fighters so they could truly test each other in battle.

  The captain saw the Detrill's weapons barrage and knew he was being herded to a certain vector. He also knew that his ship wouldn't survive doing the unthinkable and heading through the barrage on purpose. His only chance was to go where they wanted him to go and hope that the universe intervened on his behalf and made the other weapons officer make a mistake, or maybe the other pilot would suffer a stroke at just the right moment or...

  The bridge disintegrated and proved the universe was decidedly not on the captain's side for this infinitely minuscule and insignificant moment in the universe's existence.

  ~

  “And that is, as they say, that.” Wilks walked to Jockey and shook his hand.

  Bloom took it a step further and gave him a hug. “Flying with you always makes me want to vomit but it never makes me dead. Thanks, buddy.”

  “Captain Wilks,” the Detrill captain purposely addressed the sergeant, “my congratulations to your crew for their exceptional work. We fought well together today, which will surely help us in our battles yet to come.

  “My fighters have grounded the last enemy ship that tried to escape and the pilot has surrendered. He's talking but we have no idea what he's saying.”

  Wilks appreciated the captain's assessment of his team and the respectful consideration of calling Wilks a captain. “Sir, I believe we can help you with that. We have deciphered their language and have a program, along with a specialist, we can send over. I suggest we bring this party back to our base. We have facilities to conduct a proper debrief and my men need to prep for whatever our next move is. Not to mention we need to check on our personnel at the base and report back in to our chain of command.”

  Bloom interrupted, “Sergeant, the enemy ship must have destroyed the base's communication array when they started their attack. However, the base has sent out a few ground craft to determine what was going on. I am just now getting communication from the OIC of those units.”

  “Copy that, Bloom. Give him a quick sit-rep and tell him we'll give the base CO a full debrief at the base. Jockey, head back to the hangar so we can pick up Doc and her team. I need to go check on the lieutenant. Davies, meet me in the med bay.”

  A new mission started as everyone began to carry out their instructions. Daria and her team were picked up; the lieutenant was unconscious but doing well. Jeeves was talking with Bloom and Patz about the ship's condition and giving a detailed plan for the best use of their time for repairs.

  As they were landing at their primary base, Wilks saw the Detrill captain being introduced to the base commander. As they shook hands, the warrior prisoner was being led into the base. He was shackled but Wilks knew what the base security didn't: if the warrior didn't want to be shackled, tho
se restraints wouldn't hold him. Wilks sent Snake to catch up with the security officers to debrief them on their prisoner and his abilities.

  Everything seemed calm and exceptionally slow at the moment and Wilks took a small moment to enjoy the feeling. He knew it wouldn't last for long. It never did.

  Beast

  The litter had been laid in the traditional way, as it had always been done and always would be done. The mother left without sadness, regret, or remorse. When she returned to the nesting place in four months’ time, she expected no more than five out of fifteen of her litter would be alive to meet her. Looking at two of the smaller sacks she reconsidered; probably only four. She had carried them within her body for almost a year now. It was time for them to decide who was strong enough to live and who wasn't.

  The litter sacks were lumped together in a teardrop formation and held together with a thick membrane that would keep them that way until the firstborn chewed his way out, thereby releasing the rest of his litter-mates.

  A cloudy liquid filled the sacks and provided nutrients for the small dark masses that occupied the center of each one. Bound together by a communal umbilical cord of sorts, each individual teardrop would try to siphon nutrients from the others. In a litter this size, it was likely that at least four of the litter would be completely used to feed the others. Two would be so nutrient-starved they wouldn't survive the final stages of birth. Two or three more would be the runts of the litter and of those, one would be lucky to live long enough to be reclaimed when their mother came back. The rest would fight among themselves or band together as a pack in order to survive.

  The Shirka had been a spacefaring species for almost three hundred years. Their written history dated back almost ten thousand years. And with all of their technological advances, they easily could have made it so every fetus in every litter survived, but that wasn't their way.

  The Shirka were a strong species and had quickly tamed their planet once they became sentient. Each female was capable of bearing ten or more cubs per litter every two years of their adult life, if they wanted to. They realized early on that if they abandoned their natural ancestral birthing practices, they would quickly overpopulate their planet.

  They were also a species that was very in tune with nature, and that harmonic relationship called for sacrifice. Every species on the planet had to be sacrificed to another species at some point. Without this sacrifice, nature would not survive. Every plant and every creature fed the environment somehow, even the cubs of a Shirka litter.

  This process of weeding out the weak had kept their species strong and the planet in balance since time immemorial. The ones who survived were strong physically or mentally and sometimes both. This is the way it always had been and always would be.

  The litter had been left in the forest four months ago to finish its incubation period. Three would definitely be in competition for the alpha role. Five of the fifteen sacs were completely used for nutrients and a sixth was used just enough to kill its embryo. There were four runts, one particularly smaller than the rest.

  The would-be alpha that was closest to the outer membrane started to feel something that he hadn't felt before. This sensation, though new, was immediately recognized as hunger. The sacs had stopped feeding them almost three days ago in order to prepare their hunger to be strong enough to make them chew through their protective and potentially deadly outer sack layer.

  His lips curled back and he bared his teeth for the first time in his predatory life. He had exceptional long fangs for a cub, which worked to his advantage. Even so, it was difficult to get a good bite on the sack as its natural shape curved away from his mouth. In the end, he settled on chewing through his umbilical cord and eating it so that as he chewed and swallowed, it brought the sac closer and closer to his mouth until it was chewed instead of the cord.

  He finally breached the outer layer and felt the cool morning air on his muzzle. He was cute by any species' definition of the word. Cute and absolutely deadly.

  At this point, he was less than a half meter tall, lanky, covered in matted fur and exhibiting a temporary tail. Shirkas were a little oddly balanced as younglings and the tails helped stabilize them. As they grew older, the tails became part of their lower spine and essentially absorbed into their adult form. Some female Shirkas didn't lose all of their tail after puberty and this was commonly thought of as a sexy trait.

  Shirkas had a rounded head, much like a Grizzly bear from Earth, and a muzzle that resembled a wolf's. If a human had ever seen a Shirka before they knew about alien life, the human would have probably thought they were looking at a real life werewolf.

  They usually reached just short of three meters in height and looked thin for their size. They had no body fat for insulation; instead, they relied on a very adaptable system of fur that was self-regulating depending on the environment. It could thicken the undercoat in a matter of hours or shed top layers in minutes if necessary.

  Each hand had five fingers with retractable claws. An opposable thumb came from the center of their wrist near the palm of their hand, a dew claw that evolved into that position and allowed them to become more than forest-dwelling predators. Their feet were naturally padded and had stubby claws that weren't retractable.

  Overall, they were a formidable enemy and they enjoyed battle. The Shirka almost never ran from a fight but they almost never started one, either. As they expanded through their small portion of the galaxy, they never fought other species for resources or planets. Shirkas were firm believers in a code of honor that forbade them from taking what wasn't rightfully theirs. Some species had mistaken this code of honor for weakness and tried to take resources from the Shirkas. Although the Shirkas were no stranger to defeat, they never lost a single planet, asteroid or solar system they had claimed for themselves. This was a lesson the humans would eventually learn the hard way.

  And now the cubs were fighting their first battle, escaping the membranes that kept them safe and fed them for over a year now. Once the first cub breached the membrane, the remaining fluid in the sacks would start to drain and the self-contained ecosystem would stop supporting them. They had a little over an hour to get out before they would start the slow metabolic suffocation that would kill them.

  Once the first cub was out, he looked around. Shirka cubs emerged from the sacks as fully functional predators. It took only a few steps before he understood what his body could do and how to make it move. A shriek in the distance caused him to crouch and growl in the direction he heard the sound. Another predator, he was sure of it.

  It was time for a decision. He had several options to choose from, as his ancestors always had. He could eat the pups that weren't out yet, use them for his very important first meal. He could leave the litter and strike out on his own; they were taking so long to emerge and every minute he stayed here was another minute that a predator had to find him. He could help his siblings escape their sacks but that may save the weak ones who weren't supposed to survive. Or he could stay with his litter, watch over them, wait for them, and protect them as best he could if danger found them.

  No Shirka was ever judged on the decision he or she made after they emerged. If their mother returned to find one cub left and he had eaten the rest of his siblings, it was what he felt was necessary to survive and she would not hold it against him. Shirkas never discussed their birth decision with anyone outside of their family, ever.

  This cub decided to stay and protect his family. He wasn't going to help them emerge, but he would give his life to defend them if needed. He was hoping to get a kill before they emerged so he could present it to them and secure his position as alpha. Emerging first didn't automatically make you the alpha, but it helped.

  No sooner had that impulse crossed his mind than he heard an excited yelp behind him. His first sister had mostly emerged, with one leg still left in the sack. She yelped to get his attention and he came over. The look on her face was fairly obvious. Help me, brother.
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  The first cub growled a negative and gave her a few short barks of encouragement.

  Even though they were fully formed and aware, they still hadn't been taught advanced language and verbal skills from their parents. All they had at this point was their instinctual communication that was based on body language and basic primitive sounds. But she got the point. Do it yourself. I know you can!

  She was going to bite him at some point for that but she had to get out first. The umbilical cord was wrapped around her ankle and she eventually chewed herself free, just seconds before her second brother freed himself.

  Three down, six to go. Over the next twenty minutes, three more emerged, including two of the runts. Of the three who remained, there was one any betting Shirka would've called an alpha. The other two were the last runts, with one of them being the smallest from the litter.

  The bigger runt was having problems breathing and losing strength as he struggled. His brothers and sisters were barking encouragement but he just didn't have it in him to continue. He gave up. His body went still and he slowly faded away into unconsciousness and eventually death. His brothers and sisters didn't mourn him: he was a quitter—he still had life in him and he gave up. They turned their attention to the two remaining litter-mates.

  The once would-be alpha was near the center of the sacks and that's what had been hampering his progress. He was fighting his way through the sacks but he was losing steam; he wasn't sure whether he was going to make it. He wasn't going to give up, though. He would die trying; he knew that unequivocally.

  He finally broke the surface with his nose. Fresh air, the first his lungs had ever felt. The internal metabolism that had kept him alive without actually breathing had already come to an end so this breath of air was the sweetest thing he had ever or would ever smell.