Extinction (Extraterrestrial Empire Book 1)

by Tony Teora

  Ace yelled back. “No, Hiro, he won’t die. He’s got a good twenty minutes of oxygen in his internal lung modules. He lost a lung and the Big Gun medics added that system into his body.”

  Ivan gave a thumbs-up.

  “He might get hypothermia,” continued Hiro, looking at the temperature sensors.

  “That he might,” said Ace, looking at Ivan and the tin man descending toward their target. Ace dove like Superman, did some hand signals to Ivan, and they split up and dropped the last 15,000 feet. Ace saw Ivan putting his head behind the back of the tin man. It was going to be a cold one for Ivan, but then again, Russia was a cold country and Ivan had a big, warm heart.

  ***

  Mahan brought the Beta-Ray into orbit. The extremely small ship was designed for surveys but specially armed with two Cruise-6 missiles that she hoped she wouldn’t need, but Manpower had insisted loading them up. The engineers had refurbished it with all kinds of telecom equipment along with a stealth system, making Melissa the eyes and ears for Colonel Manpower and his men.

  Mahan looked down at the zoomed-in view of GEN-6. “Hard to believe this place’s got infected crazies building weapon systems. What kind of virus makes you build new and unknown laser weapons?”

  “Some of it is from the BOT Dream Land base. I bet they got hold of some new, secret technologies,” said Hiro.

  “How’re Ivan and the robot doing?” asked the co-pilot, Yarborough.

  Hiro looked at sensors. “Don’t know how the crazy Russian did it but he and my robot just landed outside of the Dream Land underground base. And the Russian’s vitals look reasonably good.”

  “And Ace?”

  “He landed a minute later. He took the slow route. Ivan seemed in a rush to get down to warmer ground. He landed on some hot desert ground. I see him in the zoomview. He’s rolling in the hot desert ground, probably trying to warm up … wait, now I see him eating the ground, no … maybe kissing it or something … what the hell, he brought some kind of stuffed animal with him. He’s fuckin’ nuts—he’s kissing the stuffed animal. Now he’s carrying it under his arm.”

  Yarborough and Mahan laughed. Mahan lowered the thrust, coasting into a geosynchronous orbit. The helm control showed all green with no enemy pings on their location.

  Yarborough looked over at the one large ocean and Africa-sized green continent. “The planet is beautiful. Can’t believe the place is infected with a virus. We should be able to find a cure instead of Manpower’s plans of blowin’ up the joint.”

  “Cure?” Hiro shook his head. “We should just blow the fuckin’ place up. Did you see what that robot did to Kumar? He cut our medical engineer’s head off.”

  “I don’t wanna think about it,” said Yarborough. “I saw the security vid—ugly shit. I heard you froze his head. That’s pretty sick.”

  “I’m sending it to Falcon Advanced Research along with a memory tape from SAI. SAI said they can use the data.”

  “Use the data? Sure, they’ll probably take his head and turn him into Frankenstein. Heard they do some strange shit there to the Big Guns. I think some of it’s evil.”

  “Want to talk about evil? Think about the EBE Greys. There’re deadly and evil; we need the Big Guns to even out the war,” added Hiro.

  Mahan sipped a water flask. “Well, a Samurai sword is a beautiful piece of art, or a deadly weapon, it’s just the hands that own it that decide its use. That alien virus decided to use the beauty of their work for evil intentions.”

  “I’m sure Colonel Manpower’s gonna use some beautiful tools on the sons of bitches. Wish I was down there to watch him land,” said Hiro.

  Mahan never really liked all the killing. She was a trained professional like Manpower, and she knew that killing was, in a sense, a survival quality. If you couldn’t kill, you might get killed. She remembered Colonel Manpower saying: “Those who said that violence never settled anything never studied history, nor made history.”

  Mahan looked at GEN-6, thinking: Is this mankind’s future with alien races? A fight for survival? Couldn’t alien races become friends, just like nations do? Melissa laughed at herself. Who was she kidding? Nations couldn’t get along, even when they had the same roots. The newly discovered planets, just like on Earth, would have the same laws of nature, that of survival. And something told her that Earth had opened up a Pandora’s Box. She prayed that Manpower would succeed, and she knew she played a part. She’d do whatever she needed to do, and she knew Manpower, Ace, and the crew knew that, too.

  ***

  Manpower’s team confirmed that Ace and Ivan had landed safely. It was time for the larger MLV craft to begin its decent. It left the Aurora and flew at a forty-degree angle, moving in quickly toward the planet and the outskirts GEN-6.

  From a distance, Mahan monitored Manpower’s MLV and sent back data to the Aurora. The ground electromagnetic emissions looked good. The laser cannons were cold, but no one knew for how long. The large MLV did not have a good cloaking signature, and sure enough, things started to get hot.

  Yarborough looked at the latest energy sweep and frowned. “We have a power surge near GEN-6. They’re getting ready to fire on Manpower’s shuttle. His cloaking’s shit—the ship’s too big, they must have picked up some infrared.”

  Mahan called into Colonel Manpower. “Colonel, they’re warming up the laser cannons. I don’t think you have much time, sir. It’s gonna get hot, and real soon.”

  Manpower’s image on the viewscreen was filled with static but Mahan could see the descent was a quick and bumpy one. Manpower spoke while holding onto his chair’s crash frame. “We’re dropping in like rocks, as fast as we can. We should be at the drop point in less than five minutes. Our heat shields are barely holding. There’s not much more we can do.”

  Mahan looked at her screen and saw they didn’t have enough time. “Sir, I don’t think you’ll make it. I think they’ve been waiting for you. They’ll be firing soon. I’ll see if I can draw some of their fire.”

  “Major, that’s not part of the plan. We’re running a random zigzag pattern, which should reduce their chances of a hit”

  “Sir, they’re gonna fire any second now. We can’t take the chance. We’ll lose your shuttle. You have hundreds of troops, but here, it’s just me, Lt. Yarborough, and Hiro. I’m changing direction to drop down over the cannons to attract fire. I’ll use the cruise missiles to draw attention. Major Mahan out.”

  “You’ll lose your stealth once you launch missiles,” said Manpower. The comm line dropped. The heat shields were melting as designed, causing too much radio static.

  ***

  Mahan knew that Manpower would complain later, but that wouldn’t matter unless she survived. She also knew that he would agree that she and the two others on the Beta-Ray were expendable when compared to the hundreds of people on board the drop MLV. This was a warrior’s instinct. If you could save more of your men by sacrificing your own life, well, that was just the job that had to be done. And that job been done for hundreds of years by men and women whose names might not even be written on a war memorial plaque, but were written in a more important place, in the hearts of their fellow men and women that they had saved.

  Mahan plotted her course. “Yarborough, lock in coordinates between the MLV and the cannons. Arm two Cruise-6 missiles. Send them in ten seconds apart toward the center of the laser cannons. That should focus their attention on something besides the shuttles.”

  “They’re armed, mapped in, and ready, sir.”

  “Fire on sequence … now!”

  The smaller scout, not really designed for Cruise-6 missiles, shook hard. Mahan had to adjust thrusters and a stabilizer to keep on track toward the laser cannons. She was coming in full speed to get in closer for the firing of the second missile and also to draw attention. She stabilized the scout and immediately fired the second cruise missile. Mahan adjusted and watched as the missiles flew in a supersonic speed to their targets.

  Yarborough looked a
t his combat screen. “They’re firing on the first missile … they got it.”

  “I’m going to eject some fuel and light it, then we’ll swerve away from the center of GEN-6.”

  “Fuel?” yelled Hiro. “We need our fuel! What are you people up to?”

  “Shut up. Yarborough, reroute the second missile to the same direction, so when they knock it out, it’ll explode and block some of their view to the shuttle. Maybe we can get out of range and go stealth. We might make it, but I think we’ve done our job in distracting the laser cannons. I think Manpower’s got his extra few minutes.”

  “Major, if we don’t make it, you did the right thing. If we die today— I die proud,” said Yarborough, setting plans in motion.

  Hiro shook his head. “You fuckin’ military assholes! I don’t wanna die.” Hiro unbuckled his seat belt and stood up.

  Mahan gave Hiro a “fuck you and sit down” look. “Get back into your seat, Hiro. Don’t make me draw my sidearm. You’ll force me to shoot you in the head.”

  Hiro knew the woman wasn’t bluffing, so he quickly sat down and re-buckled his seatbelt. He put his arms behind his head and looked down like he was bracing for a crash landing.

  Relieved at not having to shoot Hiro, Mahan put her eyes back on her holo screen. The second missile turned and she swerved the scout to follow, ejecting fuel. Another laser blast took out the second cruise missile. She lit the fuel at the same time and moved back into full stealth mode. She prayed that the laser cannons would lose track, but there was one more laser blast that must have calculated her estimated trajectory, not her newly adjusted position, because it missed—just barely. Then all systems went dead.

  Some kind of electromagnetic blast had been directed in their general direction. This shorted out all kinds of circuits. She was dead in the water, their orbit was in decline, and they were slowly gaining speed toward the ground. Without help, she, Yarborough, and Hiro would burn up in the planet’s atmosphere. There was not much they could do, and Mahan knew it. The onboard backup computer battery started. It indicated that she and the crew had about thirty minutes until structural integrity breach. That thought did not sit well.

  “Lieutenant, we’re gonna descend and burn. Fuck, I think we’re becoming heroes unless we can figure something out.”

  “Shit,” said Yarborough, looking at the system readouts showing that most systems were offline. Life support would last about as long as their orbit—which wasn’t more than twenty-nine minutes and counting.

  “Heroes? I don’t want to be a fuckin’ hero,” said Hiro, knowing his name, unfortunately, sounded the same.

  ***

  Captain Karr stared at the holo screen at the last known location of the Beta-Ray. “What do you mean the Beta-Ray’s lost? What the hell happened?”

  Brassfield frowned. “Sir, it either got blasted out of the sky or has been disabled. Our last communication shows Archer and Putsky dropping out via Man Jets. Mahan, Yarborough, and Hiro were on board—they didn’t land. We have no communication, so it may just be in stealth mode. Without communications, and at our location, we can’t assist.”

  “Do we have a plot of where she’d … I mean, where the Beta-Ray would be?”

  “Sir, I think the Beta-Ray will be in a rapidly declining orbit. Our last readout showed some kind of evasive maneuver before her engines cut out. We then lost the tracking signal. Plus, as you know, this is a DARPA stealth craft. It’s designed to be hard to find. Your orders, sir?”

  Karr knew that if he didn’t go after Melissa, she’d probably die, assuming she hadn’t already bit the dust. Why did she have to go and launch missiles? It had to be a diversion to help Manpower. For the first time in years, Karr felt he’d found his partner in life. Who was he kidding? They’d only known each other for a month. He was just like the new recruits he’d see on leave in the regular terrestrial Navy. They’d come back after a weekend of carousing and drinking at some port and want to marry some waitress or even a bar girl they’d met in a club. Some would even trade in their wives of many years for some sweet, young, sexy thing they found in some foreign port.

  But in the non-terrestrial Navy—the one that was secret for years—space captains were trained to stay away from that kind of shit. And now he’d fallen for someone. He had to make sure he didn’t let his feelings control his decisions. But this girl actually meant something to him.

  Karr sat in his command chair and shook his head. “I think Mahan may have saved Manpower and the mission here on Kabbalah. I think the least we can do is move the Aurora back toward GEN-6 to see if we can scan for her and the crew … astrogator, plot a course to intercept the Beta-Ray. Have engineering bring up shields to full. Put us in between the estimated position of the Beta-Ray and the GEN-6 base.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  The astrogator knew this would put the Aurora in range of the laser cannons, to protect the Beta-Ray from a laser blast, and he was sure the captain knew that, too, since shields were automatically going up.

  ***

  Ace hustled at double time in the hot red sand toward the east gate of GEN-6 and tapped his comm. “Ivan, you okay?”

  Ivan and tin man robot were methodically marching toward the west gate about five clicks from the underground entrance of GEN-6. Ivan and the tin man had their steps in union, marching like toy soldiers. “All going well except that the robot helmet is rubbing my eyebrows. Little too tight on big noggin’ but feel good and warm now.”

  “Glad to hear you’re okay, buddy. I’m sure it was a cold one.”

  “Not too cold,” said Ivan, stopping and looking ahead at the underground entrance. “Much worse when me and Yogi got stuck in frozen chicken locker in Novosibirsk.”

  “Stuck in a chicken locker? You can tell me that story when we get out of this place. Look, I’m about ready to get into the spider zone here and want to keep quiet. I’ll contact you in an hour. Until then, let’s keep radio silence.”

  “Me and Yogi don’t need radio to talk. We good.”

  “Okay, get the underground reactors wired and try to stay alive.”

  “Yogi says say hello to Big Jimbo.” Ivan smiled and shut off his radio.

  “Big Jimbo?” Ace shook his head and focused on the upcoming spider zone.

  ***

  Big Jimbo peeked around a GEN-6 hallway, looking for crazies. It was all clear but stunk like dead, rotten blood from an earlier skirmish. Hamburger-looking meat was splattered on the hallway walls. Nearby was the computer center he’d been in before. He entered, closed the door, and tapped his comm, still shocked from his return from the dead zone. Quietly, he spoke: “Is anyone out there? Anyone?”

  “Jimbo? Is that you? You’re alive!” gasped a friendly female voice. Jimbo knew it was Kiya.

  “It’s me … not sure why I’m alive. Some strange alien bullshit freak show is going on. I was out in the reactor room and passed out and then just came to. My radio can’t penetrate the outer walls. Seems like there’s some kind of signal-dampening field around the base. You in touch with Ace and Ivan?”

  “Jimbo, I’m so happy you’re alive. An EBE told me you survived, something about you being different, like them. I didn’t understand it, but Ace and Ivan left here over a day ago.”

  “A day? What the hell! I’ve been out for a day!?”

  “Twenty-six hours, to be exact. Look Jimbo, I’m in a lab working on an anti-viral formula. It’ll protect us from this alien infection. Can you see me on the FF sweep?”

  “I got your twenty,” said Jimbo, viewing his friend or foe comm badge. “I should be there in less than five minutes—assuming it doesn’t get hot.”

  “Be careful. A lot’s going on. I’ll explain when you get here.”

  Careful? Jimbo laughed to himself. Being different? Like them? The fucker was the reason he was in the reactor. He was a walking dead man. No one could survive the rads he got dosed with. What did he have to lose? “I’ll be careful—see you in five.”

&n
bsp; As Jimbo moved toward the door, he saw a video link of three laser cannons shooting into the sky. That can’t be good. That’s not fuckin’ good. Gonna need to figure a way to shut that fucked-up shit down. Jimbo sat down at a computer panel and hacked into a GRID CenStar weapons console. It was old technology, and the system was obviously not patched well. It was as if someone was re-routing the controls to another location. That didn’t make sense, but first things first. The three laser cannons needed to be shut down if Ace or anyone had a chance of rescuing them. That was assuming everyone wasn’t already dead. Or dead and not brought back to life.

  The memory of the alien was starting to remind Jimbo of his mission. Things were really fucked up, but at least he almost had access to the cannon control system. Soon, they’d be shut down, but only until someone figured out the problem. It’d at least give the team a chance. Somehow, Jimbo knew they were counting on him.

  ***

  The Aurora shook and sounded like a metal drum slamming down. The lights dimmed. They’d been hit with their first laser cannon blast from Kabbalah, and even with shields at more than triple power, they were quickly losing their protective field.

  “Sir, our shields are down to less than 50 percent from that blast. Actually, I think we got three hits at the same time, sir. We get another hit and we’re talking structural integrity and propulsion issues.”

  “And the Beta-Ray?” asked Karr.

  “We found it. It’s dead in the water, sir, and I don’t think we can get to it in time. It’s hitting the atmosphere ahead two miles on vector D6, but that’s still in range of the laser cannons.”

  “Ask engineering to do what they can to increase shields. Move in to position to capture the Beta-Ray with our maintenance docking clamps. On the double.”

  Lightfoot soberly walked over to Karr and spoke in a whisper. “Sir, this is too risky, and as your XO, I’m asking that you reconsider. We can’t afford another hit, and as much as I’d like to help the Beta-Ray, you’re endangering the whole ship. This is not the captain I know, sir. I know you’re trying to protect Mahan but you’ve putting the whole crew at risk.”