The Intruder Mandate: The Farthest Star from Home: a military sci-fi suspense novel

by William Cray

  Duran spoke over the com-net. “Any ideas what happened here?” He stood and turned to the two specialists. “Any ideas?”

  The woman, Edie, approached one of the other corpses. She bit her lip and her eyes were watery as she looked down in pity. Her voice rang through the room. “These people killed themselves, or, each other rather. They mutilated themselves first, then murdered one another.”

  “Why? Were they that afraid of us? I would have done it for them if they asked nicely.” Anne Braiselle said.

  Jon spoke from behind another console, examining a body. “No, this was a mass sadistic act. Not suicide out of fear.”

  Duran cut in, “Did the Intruders make these people do this before we arrived?”

  “These are Intruders Major.” Edie interjected.

  “What?” Hansen cut in.

  “Intruders are humans just like us, with enhanced mental abilities.”

  “Explain now. The abbreviated version.” Duran interjected.

  The one named Jon came forward. “Lauran's Expedition in late last century. They disappeared shortly after they left the frontier in search of a world they could claim for their own, away from Imperial oversight. They found a planet, the planet above us. On it were the remains of an alien civilization. Their race had developed incredible mental capacities and Lauran’s settlers adapted a form of it for human use.”

  Duran jumped in, “How long have you known this?”

  “Since the beginning. We are descendants of Lauran's Expedition,” the woman said. “Refugees.”

  “Fuck me...” Hansen exclaimed. “The two of you are Intruders?”

  Ryo cut in, “I've got movement…next chamber.”

  Without prompt, the team moved away from their morbid examinations, spreading out further and orienting on the door painted on their displays by the sprites.

  Over a private channel Hansen cut in even as he moved towards the door, further into the darkened chamber, “This is bullshit Rory.”

  Duran responded by giving the order over the command link to the entire team. “Continue Mission.”

  The team deployed to enter the room, Hansen on point, Duran behind him with Claymore and the specialists behind. Anne Braiselle pushed the specialists behind her as she raised her weapon, stalking forward behind Duran.

  Hansen disengaged the door locks, prying them open. Duran crashed into the room, rifle up, setting the ammo for proximity burst, sweeping the room, which was much longer and wider than the previous chamber. The red sweeping beams of the others followed behind him.

  The team worked further into the room with a hallway beyond. They had a little more room to maneuver, but the tight confines of the room still restricted their fields of fire. One burst of fire from a Talon inside the chamber would cause terrible carnage, shredding anyone not behind thick armor shells.

  Duran worked further down the hall, leading the team. Each side of the hall had an open doorway to a room with a bed, a waste incinerator, water utilities and a small desk. There were five disemboweled corpses in the cells, with two other corpses lying disjointed in the hallway.

  Duran followed his beams as they swept forward, oscillating and turning based on sensor returns, searching for movement and zeroing on thermal differentials. His forward beam spiked up, towards the end of the hall, spotlighting the ceiling. More invisible spectrum beams followed his, tracking from behind. Duran approached as readings streamed across his visor, but he ignored them, focusing on the horror suspended above him.

  What was left of a man hung above them, suspended in crucifixion, dangling from the blood-smeared ceiling. Makeshift hooks pierced his skin with thick sharpened prongs bent into him, digging into the skinned flesh. The figure struggled against the hooks, with finger twitches and tiny jerks that shook the wires, digging them in deeper and shaking the evil apparatus. Steel stylus jutted from eye sockets, dripping stringy fluids from their torn orifices. His mouth was pealed back from his lips revealing a wicked grin. A blood soaked tongue wagged between his teeth in mock conversation. From his torso, his organs hung down out of his body, stretching the fleshy tissues keeping them in place as they drooped towards the blood soaked floor. The heart of the pitiful creature still beat, in slow irregular pulses, before breaking into gouts of rapid pounding.

  The mangled form burst into flames as Hansen ended its suffering with a blue-white pulse from his plasma gun.

  “Cease fire…. Axe… cease fire.”

  Hansen shut down the plasma gun, and then looked away from his target as it burned.

  The smell of burnt flesh filled the room as the tortured remains of the man began to jerk on the metal hooks, its entrails cooking and pealing away. It stopped shaking on the hooks as the flames and smoke filled the room.

  Duran walked to within arms reach of the burned figure as it stopped struggling. It was beyond hope. He wondered what could the man have done to deserve this. It was inhuman.

  The remains of the man wore the same belt around his waist as the others. His bloodied uniform shirt hung loose on his shoulders. Duran reached the final step below the creature. Its maniacal grin stared down at him.

  Duran looked at he remnants of the man's uniform then back around the corridor. Each door had a numeral digit above it with a set of fixed surveillance pods at each end.

  This is a prison.

  Duran started to feel light headed from the fumes, a wave of nausea flushing his throat. His head tingled like gentle fingers running across the top of his head.

  No, not the top, inside his head, Duran thought.

  The feeling increased until he struggled against the popping strobe in his head, driving deeper and deeper into his mind. Duran weakened, dropping to one knee. As an act of desperation he opened his visor, drawing in gasps of fouled air then retched into the bile below, adding to the gore underneath this most hated jailer that hung from the ceiling.

  Someone cried out, “We’re under attack…Longbow…we’re…”

  As Duran neared collapse, another black figure stepped in front of him, dropping to his level and taking his head into her hands. She lifted him up, supporting him so that he was looking into her penetrating blue eyes. She wasn’t speaking to him, but he could hear her in his mind through the torrent.

  Focus on me. Release your thoughts.

  Open your mind to me.

  Duran fought the strobe, fought the new Intruder trying to enter his mind. He tried to fight off the images bursting in his head. One was managing to keep out the other. The violent and destructive images strobing into his consciousness, merged with vivid memories from his past.

  “Open you mind to me.”

  He looked desperately into the blue eyes of Edie. He wanted to swim in them, wanted to surrender to them, wanted to find rest and redemption in them. She invited him into her, into salvation. Her eyes were ripped away from him by a bolt of blue plasma, scything her down in torrent of fire. Duran screamed as her skin and face boiled under the stream of energy.

  The terror returned. He wanted to run away. He surrendered to the blinding white strobe in his head. The pain left him as his mind and body separated from each other. A dark figure emerged from the haze of the corridor ahead.

  Duran stood, the burned body of Edie Caralon lying at his feet in a pool of gore. He watched the dark figure move past her, his shaven head matted down with blood. His skin was stretched over a metal band that distorted the shape of his skull. Duran looked up at the gray jumpsuit the figure wore. A nametag over his left breast read “Rinsler”.

  The figure came to a stop above the plasma-severed body of Jon Caralon, kneeling to examine the hole burned through his armor at point blank range. Cold air escaped his lips as he muttered, “Goodbye Jon. Never thought to see you again.”

  His face was a mask of pleasure.

  Duran stood with what was left of his team… watching. Edie and Jon lay motionless on the blood stained floor, just feet from each other. His Commander in the gray jumpsuit approached Du
ran, looking into his eyes through the open visor of his helmet. Images of death and mutilation continued to run through his mind.

  “Attack.” His Commander said. “Kill them all.”

  Duran started to give orders, but his troops lined up behind him before he could issue them. He lowered his visor and resealed the environment of his suit and switched on the S.P.E.C.A.T.S electronic warfare system. They moved forward in a line, back the way they came.

     

  Duran laid on the icy surface of the moon. He stared up at burning cinder of V-Prime as it consumed itself. The planet seemed to come apart in seismic spasms that tore continents from the planets crust. Red flames shot thousands of kilometers into space like a blowtorch. It was the end of all life on the planet…the end of the human Intruders.

  Commandos lay in heaps around him. Others were providing aid alongside Med-Teks. A group clustered around a legless Marine that waved about, still attempting to give orders. A grim faced Commando was aiming a rifle down at his head, just centimeters away from his faceplate. The young Marine had a murderous glare.

  His combat suit worked to repair the damage done to it during the battle, before the dirtsquids could get to him. Warning systems and status updates flashed across his faceplate. The triage protocols dumped sedatives into his bloodstream as it struggled to save his life. He gasped shallow breaths.

  As he started to fade, he felt a presence next to him. Turning his head, he expected to see the tortured creature hanging from the ceiling, laughing over. He didn’t want to look, but he didn’t care anymore. He glanced over.

  He felt his body rise up and begin to move across the cratered moon’s surface. A Med-Tek carried his body away on a stretcher, past one of the black suits lying next to him in the dirt. Duran recognized the damaged suit as Kord’s, with antennas and aerials sheered away. Duran looked for any sign of Jonas Kord, but instead, he sensed the something else inside. Something that reveled silently in the carnage.

  6 Hours prior to NOVA Event

  19

  Operations Center

  Phobos Commonwealth Military Depot

  Peligrew entered the half-moon shaped control station in the operations center. “Problem?”

  “No problem sir, equipment is fine.” Ensign Yancy said. “Petty Officer Martes believes he has a transient contact.”

  “Contact?” Peligrew asked. “H-Band?”

  He glanced up at the main display in the center’s operations area, locating the icons representing the mobile H-Band sets, traversing the moon on slow spider legs. The sets were still far from their destinations, too soon for them to be able to orient their sensors down into New Meridian City.

  “Yes sir.” Petty Officer Martes shifted his specs then pointed to an intersection of bearing lines. They converged above the Martian horizon, but on a plane below the station. Peligrew looked at the display, still waiting for an explanation.

  “Go ahead Petty Officer,” he said finally.

  “Right there, sir.” Martes responded. “I was calibrating the mobile H-Bands we have moving to the southern poles, and these two bearings got thirty-two percent returns on the meters. I recycled and got only 24 percent the second time, but that’s still pretty solid with the Doppler shift moving away from us.”

  “Still there?”

  “No sir, only those two returns.”

  “How long ago?” Peligrew asked. His hunters’ instincts were primed.

  “Eight minutes sir. I got the returns, ran analysis, reinitialized then notified watch.”

  “No contacts since?”

  “No sir. Whatever it was it’s below the terminus, probably in low orbit.”

  “A ship?”

  Ensign Yancy looked over at Martes before responding. “Yes sir. I think so. There’s nothing on the board though.”

  Peligrew glanced down at the sensor readouts, “You ran analysis?”

  Yancy handed the filament paper rolled up in her hand to Peligrew who stood silent for a moment, studying the stations computer evaluation of the return. He scrolled down the paper, the characters and images rolling across the sheet with his finger. Glancing back at the board, Peligrew studied the return closer, looking at the actual frequencies and harmonics of the H-Band return.

  “This is a pretty tight return Martes.” Peligrew said.

  “I checked it twice, sir.”

  Ensign Yancy jumped in to back up her operator. “He did, sir. I watched him.”

  Peligrew looked at the sheet one more time, checking for flaws in the analysis. What he was about to do would cause a stir, but it was his job. He enabled the mic on his uniform collar, turning to the Operations Director stationed high in a cupola in the center of the room. “Ops, Spectrum…Transient bearing eight zero zero mils. Elevation six-two. Possible fast-attack.”

     

  John Cochrane stepped into the Operations center three minutes later. The station operations officer had summoned him after the alert had gone out and he headed down to Ops on aching legs. Peligrew waited at the H-Band sensor net station. As he approached, Peligrew came to attention, “Good call Colonel. Those mobile H-band nets you asked me to stroll out got a sniff. We’re reviewing the tapes now but I’m pretty sure a fast attack has been orbiting below us for at least sixty orbits.”

  “Ours, I hope?” Cochrane asked.

  “If it is, no one sent a flyer that it would be out here. If this is a drill, you or Ops would know wouldn’t you?”

  Cochrane shook his head. “I haven’t seen anything. If it’s not ours, then who?”

  Peligrew leaned in, “Sir, I’m not sure you want to ask that question.”

  “I’m senior enough to listen.” Cochrane said. “Go on,”

  “On most Fury-class boats there is a curve along the frequency shift as they cross the ULF magnetic fields that shield planets like Mars from cosmic radiation.” Peligrew pointed to the linear read out he was holding in his hand. He continued. “See, there isn’t one here.”

  He got a little spark in his eye as he spoke. “Now the AFAC community knows the Emperor operates some fast attacks for deep intelligence work. I’ve got a buddy that swears he tracked one way out in front of Emperor Paulus during the Vendetta. Every now and then you can spot one passing in and out of Singlon and it’s missing that specific frequency shift. This contact has to be one of his. No one else has access to the small transference drives required for a ship that size. For it to be this far inside Commonwealth space, the boat is either his or ours, and it ain’t ours.”

  “Where did you spot it, Captain?” Cochrane asked, folding his arms.

  “On its outward leg in low orbit along the equator. Its offset is about one hundred twenty kilometers north to give the Stratospire a wide berth. It should be coming around again in another hour if it hasn’t changed course, and we’ll be waiting for it. I’ve got all H-Band nets on our geo-sats spooled up and on standby to reorient down, but it will be hard to spot anything against background of the planet.”

  “Does it know it’s been spotted?” Cochrane asked.

  “Not likely. We only caught an echo, but going through the histories shows a strong indication that it has been there for at least sixty orbits, possibly more.”

  “What’s it doing?”

  “I thought you might be able to tell us that, since you cued us to look for it.”

  “Well not exactly.” Cochrane responded. “Have you searched the city with the H-band yet?”

  “No sir, the antennas won’t be in a position for another six hours at least, but I’ve already re-tasked them to assist in tracking the contact.”

  Cochrane frowned, still trying to make the connection between Duran’s mission and this development. The presence of the fast attack didn’t mean anything. But combine it with Duran’s arrival and a possible Intruder on the planet below, an Imperial fast attack in orbit wouldn’t be a stretch. What it was doing there was the question.

  The ship could be there t
o support Duran. But what other assistance could it provide him besides communications or surveillance. Perhaps the Emperor was monitoring the situation with his own assets, but he didn’t need to risk one of his most valuable assets to keep track of the situation. His small intelligence service was the best in the galaxy. Duran had acted like he was alone. That meant he probably didn’t know about the ship in orbit. If that was the case, then again, why was it there?

  Cochrane put a curled finger up to his lips, “Tell me Captain, what capabilities could a ship like you describe have for surveillance.”

  Peligrew raised an eyebrow. “Survaillence? Well sir, if it’s like ours, it will have a wide capability depending on its mission. There are no specifications or Imperial designs available, but you can expect they would be very advanced. Mostly passive systems, Zero-emissions arrays, multi-spec telescopes, sophisticated intercept gear. Overall a very nice suite, but limited by its need to maintain stealth.”

  Cochrane looked at the projected track of the ship if it held course. “And weapons for surface attack?”

  “Surface attack? Sir, the Emperor is forbidden by treaty from offensively arming any of his ships.”

  “You and I both know different Captain. Indulge me.”

  “Missiles or a KERG like ours, but no beam weapons, that would just give away their position.”

  “Nukes or gas?”