Extinction: The Will of the Protectors

by Jay Korza

  “So you need some alone time?” Bloom asked as he slowly shuffled up to the conversation.

  “In essence, yes.” Jenny smiled. “And you will not be taking over the empire; the Coalition will integrate with the empire and create something new, something better for everyone involved. It will be wondrous.”

  “How will all of this take place? It would take decades to make a merger of this size come together.” Emily’s anger was gone, slowly being replaced by the excitement of what might be.

  “Our people have been preparing for this moment for centuries. I will leave this planet, rendezvous with a Cherta envoy, and then meet with your president and the leaders from the majority of the primary Coalition worlds. In the end, we hope they will choose the right path, but we are leaving regardless.”

  “Okay, well, what about—”

  Jenny cut her off. “There are too many questions that could be asked and not enough time to discuss them all. I am sorry, Emily, but our time together is at an end. I will miss you the most. Goodbye.”

  Jenny then turned to Jeeves. “Could you open the main door please? I will be leaving now.”

  Jeeves looked at Emily, who gave him a nod. The automatic doors could be heard unlocking and then they opened. What lay beyond was pure carnage. Blue blood splattered over disemboweled warriors everywhere. A few Coalition soldiers lay with them.

  Jeeves rolled out of the command center and up to the mangled body of Jimmy “Patz” Patzer. His blood mixed with the warrior blood around him.

  Emily came up beside Jeeves. “What are you looking at?”

  “I am analyzing the blood on the floor. My passive sensors picked up an anomalous reading from this area. It is coming from the mixture of warrior and human blood.”

  “I don’t understand. How can two inert substances mix together and cause an energy output that your sensors would have picked up?”

  “I do not know. This reaction should not be happening, but it is. I will need to study this phenomenon in greater detail in a laboratory, but my initial scans show a synergistic effect within the mixture.”

  “To what end?”

  “I do not know and I cannot even hypothesize based on the amount of data I have.”

  “Just add that to the list of things we need to study.” Emily turned away and tapped her commlink. Seth’s team had retreated farther back the way they came when they had drawn out the cabal soldiers. “Seth, what’s your status?”

  It took a moment for him to reply. “We could really use Daria here. We have a lot of wounded. I don’t think anyone is uninjured. Reaper has his hands full. All fighting is over. The warriors have backed off. We’ve even started talking with a few of them. Whatever you did, it worked.”

  “Copy that. Jenny is leaving; if you see her, let her go. We have the empress in custody, Bloom is injured, Daria was knocked unconscious so we might need Reaper’s help with her. I’ll bring my wounded to you, and we can go from there.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  “Seth.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s over. We did it. Both wars are over. We have peace now.” Emily teared up.

  “I love you.”

  Epilogue

  “Fuuuuuck!!!” Daria screamed in pain. It was the worst pain she had ever felt. She knew she had to fight through it. She had no other choice; she had to complete the mission.

  “God damn it!” Daria winced as the pain subsided slightly. “Where is Mike! He was supposed to be here by now.”

  Daria knew she could complete the mission without him, but his backup would make all the difference in the world.

  Emily was right next to Daria. “He’ll be here. He hasn’t ever let us down before. Just hold on.”

  Mike ran for his life and dodged obstacles all the while. He had the package secured to his back. He couldn’t lose it now; he had worked too hard to get it to the target.

  He rounded a corner and ran full-on into a warrior who was standing on the other side. Both soldiers were equally surprised to see each other. The warrior roared with rage and reached out to grab Mike. Mike dropped to the ground while rolling and just barely escaped the warrior’s grasp. Mike didn’t have time to deal with the warrior, so he kept running and hoped he wouldn’t be chased.

  As Mike approached his destination, he heard his wife screaming and he winced. His heart almost leapt from his chest at the sound of Daria’s pain.

  He rounded one last corner and saw Seth and Nitaha in the hallway. Seth yelled for Mike to hurry up.

  “Mike, get in there, it’s almost over. Hurry!”

  Mike flew through the doorway and ran to his wife’s side.

  “I’m so sorry, honey. I’m here now. What do you need me to do?”

  “Where were you?!” She half moaned, half screamed.

  “I had to get the package.” Mike pulled his backpack off and removed the package from within.

  “A teddy bear? You kept me waiting for a teddy bear?!”

  “I had to have something to give our little boy after he’s born. I couldn’t be here empty-handed.” He defended himself.

  “I will kill you later.” Daria grabbed his hand. “But for now, I’ll let you live. Just don’t leave me again.”

  “Never again.”

  Moments later, Daria gave birth to their son. He was a large baby, just like his namesake had been in life.

  Daria held her baby close. “Well, hello, Scott Davies O’Connor. Welcome to the galaxy. This is your new family.”

  Scott fussed a little as Daria turned him around for everyone to see. Most of the team was spread out across the galaxy on new assignments, but all were gathered via a video conference link.

  Majors Seth Fields and Emily Fields were there in person, Emily being the first of the extended family to hold the baby. Nitaha stood next to her. “Mother, may I smell the child?”

  “Of course you can, honey.” Emily let her cub add Scott’s new scent to memory.

  Baldylocks came into the room and looked at Scott. “So small and squishy. But not bad-looking for a pink hairless ape child.” He then looked to Mike. “I dealt with the warrior you bumped into. He was mad of course, but the corporal backed down when I told him he had been chasing a sergeant major.”

  “Thanks, buddy. Would you like to hold the baby?”

  “No.” Although the warrior did touch the child’s forehead before leaving—an homage to the ‘Touching Ceremony’ from the old empire.

  Emily passed the baby off to Seth, who was more comfortable with the child than she thought he would be.

  “Ready for your own yet?” Daria teased.

  “Anytime is fine with me.” Seth didn’t even hesitate in his answer. “Talk to this one over here.”

  Emily put her hands up defensively. “Look, we already have a Shirka cub. Not to mention I have been called the mother of the new warrior race. That means I have several billion children of my own. I think that’s enough for now.”

  “I’m glad they were accepted into the Union,” Daria said. “They deserve the chance to prove themselves and show they aren’t the same people who enslaved the galaxy under the Nortes Empire.”

  “How are the conversions going?” Mike asked.

  “Great,” Emily said. “Jeeves has been working on a way to improve the process but so far we’re running into only minor issues.”

  Jeeves had been able to research the synergistic effect of mixing warrior and human blood. The warriors’ DNA had a programming backdoor that was unlocked when human DNA was introduced to the sequence. The DNA could be introduced to the warriors’ system in a variety of ways to cause the effect.

  The warrior could be in battle with a human, have an open injury, and then have human blood enter the wound. The warrior could exchange bodily fluids with a human, though that was the least likely scenario since they were asexual and tried to kill every human they saw. And the most likely way was for a warrior to consume a human.

 
; The warriors ate all of their prey live and raw, so the proteins and DNA would enter the warrior’s system undamaged. The warriors’ digestive system worked differently than humans; it was programmed to look for human DNA and not digest it, but rather take it and use it to unlock the hidden sequencing code.

  The Cherta programmed the original code for it; there was no other explanation. Which meant they had some inkling of what the future might hold. That also meant they must have had contact with the human race somewhere as far back as 4000 B.C. in order to obtain the human DNA samples.

  Jeeves and the other scientists who studied the phenomenon had no idea how it worked. By every scientific principle they were aware of, it shouldn’t work at all, but it did.

  And what it unlocked was a new code that made the warriors no longer beholden to their old programming. They were allowed to develop individuality and think for themselves.

  Had the war continued, eventually enough warriors would have consumed their human foes and the change would’ve taken hold on its own, allowing the warriors to make their own decisions and possibly come to a peaceful resolution with the Coalition that wouldn’t have been possible with their original programming.

  So now, the new warrior species was going through the galaxy to find their predecessor cousins and convert them when they could, or kill them when they couldn’t. The Union gave the warriors the latitude to deal with their own kind as they saw fit.

  That was the other major change: the Coalition and the Cherta Empire no longer existed. The two governments merged into the Union of Protectorate Systems.

  They still had a president who was elected to lead the government and their first elections kept the former president of the Coalition in place. He was more of a CEO than a ruler. The individually elected rulers of each world were his board of trustees that he was beholden to, and the citizens were the stock holders. The system improved on both former governments, which were pretty good to begin with.

  The Protectors were another issue altogether. The old Cherta Empire was used to hearing about the Protectors and living with the idea of them being a part of their government’s decision-making process. There were even religions based on them, some good and some bad. But to the Coalition citizens, it was an entirely new concept.

  The president had his first “meeting” with the Protectors before the Union was formed. He had no way of describing what took place, where it took place, or how it took place. All he knew was that he had had an interaction with the Protectors and it had helped him to decide on a course of action to create the Union. He was now a believer.

  Scott began to cry and Seth handed him back to Daria. “Here you go. I think he’s hungry.”

  “Probably.” Daria slid him under the covers and fed him.

  “And that’s our cue to end this video chat,” Snake said from orbit. The rest of the team stood around him.

  Daria laughed. “Thank you, guys, for being here with us. It means the world to Mike and me. We’ll see you all after our maternity leave is over. Some of you, and you know who you are, have visiting promises to keep over the next six months. We better not ever have an empty home. Someone has to change this kid.”

  The signal terminated, leaving the Fields family and the O’Connor family alone.

  “I really do like the new Union uniforms though.” Seth straightened his tunic.

  “Yes, very snappy. And with some nice Cherta technology built into them.” Mike sported civilian attire and hadn’t had the chance yet to get his new uniforms. “Daria and I should have ours by the time the dedication ceremony takes place.”

  Daria groaned. “I’m glad it’s next month. I hope to be able to fit into my regular uniform by then. I don’t want to have to wear post-partum maternity clothes while I’m on that stage.”

  Emily got excited. “I can’t wait to have the whole team on that platform. I know ceremonies can be a drag, but we’ve been apart for a while now and it will be nice to be back together. Even if it is only temporarily.”

  The dedication ceremony was to honor the achievements and losses from the team that had brought the war to an end and helped to make the Union possible. Each of the team’s members would be memorialized in the main hall of the Union’s new headquarters. The deceased would receive Medal of Valor engravings next to their names, along with a few Medals of Honor for certain operators, Davies chief among them.

  The team hadn’t been disbanded per se, but with so much happening after the war, the team had been parted to help in other areas of the Union where their specialties were needed. The president promised that the team could be made whole again if that’s what everyone wanted, but it would be awhile before he could make that happen.

  Fang was out with the Shirka commandos. He worked on infiltrating deep into warrior territory to distribute the new DNA key. His mate, Huj’pa’ul, was pregnant and had to return to Union space so she could lay her egg sack on a Shirka birthing planet. They had chosen Nitaha’s birthing planet for their own brood.

  Jockey was training with the pilots the Cherta had been using for centuries. He was getting checked out on all of the new fly-forms the Union had at its disposal and in turn was slated to become an instructor himself.

  Reaper was involved with the Union’s transition training unit. The unit was put together with experts from hundreds of military disciplines from both the Coalition and Cherta Empire. The unit’s goal was to bring the knowledge from both sides into one training center in order to train the new Union military with the best of both sides. Reaper was, of course, heading up the medical training unit, waiting for Daria to get back from maternity leave to help him out.

  Joker was also at the training unit but in the Special Forces recruitment division. Bloom was there teaching language arts and technology trade craft.

  Surgeon would be heading up the Special Forces training division once he was off maternity leave. Originally he had planned to go back into the field, with Daria taking a hospital post. But then the training unit was formed and it was a perfect match for the new family. The positions also allowed them to go into the field for training exercises, so they would have the best of both worlds. They would be doing what they loved in a teaching environment and coming home to each other on most nights.

  Baldylocks and Snake had been offered positions as well but declined so they could stay with the team. Neither one wanted to be out of the field for the three-to-five year assignment at the training center, although they were slated as guest lecturers for several different courses.

  Wilks and Telfer were engaged. The Uniformed Code of Military Justice allowed for an officer to have a relationship if the request was run up the chain of command and approved. The president approved it himself and even allowed the two to work together, which was against the code. But he was the president and he made the exception. The two were in charge of the old unit under Seth.

  The unit still had Ratchet, Demetri, Blaze, and Shar’tuk. They had taken on more operators from both sides, including a female warrior.

  Baldylocks was still asexual. He couldn’t be genetically altered since he had already been born, and he had no desire to be anyway. But he still seemed to have affections for the female warrior. After Shar’tuk received a broken nose for the mistake of teasing him early on, all other related teasing stopped.

  The Grethnarians joined the Union, which made Jenarah and Kuruk Union officers. The two were promoted to captain and had formed the first scientific research unit. The unit structure was created by Emily, who now headed the Union’s Special Operations Scientific Unit.

  Jeeves and Bloom were having a little bit of separation anxiety as Jeeves worked under Emily’s command. The Union was still trying to determine his state of being, but leaned towards giving him an enlisted rank. He had argued that his level of programming put him on par with graduates from any of the military colleges in the Union, and therefore he should be an officer. The Union wasn’t buying the argument, at least not for now.
r />   “I heard the president is having a Union uniform onesie made for Scott,” Daria said.

  “Holy crap! I hope so.” Emily gushed. “He would be so cute in it. We could even add a sniper rocker to the arm along with our unit patch.”

  “Davies would have liked that,” Mike said.

  Scott finished feeding and Daria handed him to Mike. “Let me tell you about your uncle, little buddy. He was a great soldier and a great friend. The first time I met him…”

  The End

  Thank you for reading the Extinction series. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I have several other projects in the works and in my thoughts for now, but I may return to this universe for more stories in the future. I would love to see Nitaha on an honor mission for a coming of age story. Or maybe the new O’Connor baby will have exciting times waiting for him in the future.

  Regardless of what happens to the Union of Protectorate Systems, rest assured that the universe is in good hands with the dedicated soldiers of Extinction.

  Excerpt from: This Is Not What I Wished For…

  The day was already more exhausting than it should have been and the night wasn't shaping up to be any better. The city was cold and angry, with shadows portraying malicious acts being carried out by monsters that defied imagination. I only hoped that my mother and sister were faring better than I was.

  I had left them earlier in the day, after the violence started, after my father had been killed. I took solace in the knowledge that I hadn't left them out of fear but in a rather courageous act of gallantry; at least that’s what I told myself. The three of us had been hiding in a closet but my sister's muffled sobs were still loud enough to attract unwanted attention. The demons, as I had come to call them, were slowly getting closer and no doubt would've found us had I not acted.

  I sprung from the closet, making sure to slam it shut behind me as I sprinted by one of the demons on my way out of the room. I paused in the hallway to make sure I hadn't been so fleet of foot that they didn't follow me. Luckily or unluckily, depending on how you viewed the situation, the demons forgot about my sobbing sister and came after me.