The man staggered forward as he felt the impact of the blade embed itself in the back of his skull. His eyes began to roll, and he began foaming at the mouth as he desperately clutched at the blade protruding from the back of his head to no avail. Finally, his legs buckled and he collapsed with a thud onto his back. His head snapped back and slammed into the deck plating, forcing the knife ever deeper inside his skull, until the very tip of the blade was faintly visible protruding through his forehead.
“Maybe that will teach you some respect,” Lathiel spat at the corpse as he dragged the body into a side room taking care to seal the door shut behind him. Only nine more to go, he thought with a sadistic grin.
Siccio arrived in the toilet block and immediately noticed one of the cubicles was busy, there was no sound coming from the cubicle though which was strange. One of the crew might have fallen asleep on the toilet, he thought.
After relieving himself he asked, “You okay in there buddy?”
Siccio didn’t know whether to open the door or not, after waiting a few seconds he bit the bullet and forced the door open.
The pale form of Ensign Fletcher stared blankly at him.
“Damn man! You could have said something!” Siccio said, angered at the ignorance of the man slumped in front of him.
The body slowly gave way, and flopped off the toilet seat, leaving a crimson smear along the cistern.
“Holy shit!” Siccio panicked, as terror gripped him, his heart pounded in his chest, dashing out of the toilet block and into the corridor, wanting to be anywhere but back in there. He sprinted back to the command centre to tell Lieutenant Pryce the grisly news.
Back in engineering Lathiel had reverted to the form of the man he had just killed, looking at his I.D. card his name was Lieutenant Junior Grade Wesley Forrest. He was the ships chief engineer. Unsure of his next move, he decided to take a walk through the ship waiting for a target to present itself.
Finally it did, in the form of a rather attractive dark haired young woman, heading toward the mess area, it was almost a shame he had to kill her. Lathiel elected to calmly follow the woman, another crewmember walked past them; greeting him informally.
The two of them arrived at the mess area, Lathiel sat down and quietly observed. The woman proceeded to order some disgusting smelling Terran food from a simplistic, battered looking food synthesiser; he was hard pushed not to be sick. However, he deigned to push such thoughts to the back of his mind. He had a mission to complete and nothing was going to stop him.
He made his way toward the machine as if going to order something himself.
“Oh hello Wesley, is everything going okay down in engineering?” The woman asked politely.
“Perfectly,” Lathiel replied, resisting the urge to sneer.
“Oh good, I suppose that’s one thing to be grateful for at least,” The woman said as she moved to walk away from the machine and sat down at a table not too far away.
As he was pretending to order the food, he ever so gently unsheathed one of his blades, and as he walked past the seated woman; rammed it straight through the back of her chair. The woman lurched forward under the force of Lathiels powerful thrust, blood spurted across the table from her mouth and she flopped forward into her food. Lathiel retrieved the knife and calmly left the mess area.
Siccio had now arrived on the bridge, panting and panicking. “Lieutenant!”
Pryce could see the man was in a state, “calm down Siccio, what’s wrong?”
“It’s Fletcher, he’s been murdered.” Siccio gasped, his heart still racing.
“How?”
“Looks like someone’s stabbed him,” he said.
“Let’s go; Chambers, set the ship to computer control.”
Pryce, Chambers, and Siccio all left the command centre, and made their way to the toilet block to see the body for themselves.
“I swear, I’ll have whoever’s done this blown out the airlock,” Pryce said as they headed to the elevator.
A few minutes later, they had arrived at the grisly scene.
Pryce checked over the body, “He’s been stabbed alright, in the lower back. He wouldn’t have even seen his attacker; poor bastard.” He turned to face Siccio, “since at this moment, you are the prime suspect, I’m placing you under house arrest for murder, until we can rule you out as a suspect.”
“But I didn’t do it!” Siccio protested.
“You were the first one on the scene, are there any other witnesses that can provide an alibi?”
“Well, err, no. But I swear I didn’t kill Fletcher! I was taking a piss for Christ sake!”
“Chambers, lock him in the forward hold until we can find out who did this.”
Chambers advanced on Siccio, who pleaded once again. “Pryce, you’ve gotta believe me, I didn’t do this!” He said pleading as he pointed to the body.
“Sorry man,” Chambers said as he ushered an irate Siccio out of the door.
“You believe me, don’t you?” Siccio asked, as Chambers continued to lead him away.
“For my part, yes, I believe you,” Chambers acknowledged. “But you know better than I do, rules are rules, I don’t like it but I have to follow it. You were the first on the scene, and you have no one who can back up your story. Standard E.D.F policy dictates that you are the prime suspect until proven otherwise.”
“Damned E.D.F rules, I liked it more when we were civilian.”
“Blue-177 is a Lincoln class supply ship, built by the E.D.F, maintained by the E.D.F, And ultimately governed by the E.D.F, sorry man.” Chambers repeated as they headed to the forward hold.
Lathiel arrived on the bridge, strangely it was deserted. He quickly checked over the room and the captain’s quarters, not a soul in sight, the ship was flying under computer control.
This presented a unique opportunity, he thought as he studied the dirty, scratched computerised displays lining certain areas of the oval perimeter.
Finally he came across a control that sealed the bridge doors shut in-case the ship was boarded. With a sadistic grin, Lathiel keyed in the controls and with a heavy metallic clunking noise the bridge door interlocks closed.
Soon stage one of my mission will be complete, he thought as he glanced over the environmental systems monitor and began to experiment with the controls. Finally he pressed the activate button.
Along the entire length of the port and starboard sides of the transport, exhaust vents slowly opened, and began venting the ships oxygen out into space. The remaining crewmen on board gasped for breath as the deadly vacuum of space sucked the air out of the vessel. Temperatures plummeted, as lieutenant Pryce, crewmen Franklin and Chambers, Siccio, and everyone else on the ship all fell to their knees, as they slowly, horribly, suffocated before gently freezing to death.
Lathiel was protected from venting the oxygen from the ship, through the act of sealing off the bridge earlier, effectively creating a separate environment within the room. He calmly waited seven or eight minutes, just to be absolutely certain that everyone else onboard was dead.
“Ah at last, a little peace and quiet,” he smiled to himself as he keyed in the controls, returning the exhaust vents to their original positions.
Making his way to the pilot’s position, he strapped himself in, and calmly plotted in a new course. Zero-six-seven degrees, elevation zero, straight for earth.
On the Liberty, Captain Michael Alexander was attempting to tune into the outer colony news service, to get a glimpse of what he had to expect on Earth. They were two days into the journey now, and had just passed through the Wolf 359 system.
Finally he had found the correct frequency, and in a small corner of the cracked display the video feed from the outer colony news service flickered into existence.
“I am Annika Raumov; this is the outer colony news service. The top stories today; it has now been two days since the historic Gamma IV peace treaty was signed between a team of E.O.C.A diplomats, and the Krenaran military, bringing
peace to the war ravaged outer colonies. Celebrations and street parties continue to take place on colony worlds across E.O.C.A territory as news of the peace treaty spreads. In three days time, E.O.C.A president James Rushfeldt will be giving a speech broadcast throughout the colony worlds, congratulating the valiant struggles of the military, the population, and the spirit of humanity. There will also be a two minute silence to remember the greatest loss of life humanity has suffered since the second world war over one hundred and twenty five years ago. There will also be a warning about the tough times still to come, as the devastated outer colonies begin to re-build.”
“That is when he’ll strike,” Dalvosh said, his lumbering form hunched over Michael.
“Then we’ll have to make sure that he doesn’t.” Michael said as he continued to study the display, “do you have any other information that might help us with this guy?”
“Not really, I wasn’t at the facility where he was trained, all that I know is that he’s an expert assassin who has a specially created bio-technological gland that secretes this morphos x into his bloodstream. This gland also has a memory that keeps his original Krenaran D.N.A in a state of suspended animation. So that he can revert back to his Krenaran form. Ultimately, the stresses of changing shape and bone structure will kill him, but by then the damage will have already been done.”
“Tough break, so basically he is expendable,” Vargev said.
“Yes, Lathiel is just an experiment, if he proved successful we were going to recruit more subjects in an attempt to eliminate your highest value targets.”
“Jesus, if the war didn’t end when it did, we could be looking at hundreds of Lathiels,” Michael said.
Dalvosh silently nodded, his reptilian eyes almost giving away a hint of sadness at the level his people had sank to.
“Just how much of an expert is this guy?” Vargev asked.
“There are rumours amongst the higher ranks in the Krenaran military, that he can approach, kill you, and then disappear before you even knew he was there,” Dalvosh replied.
“Then I guess that the odds are not on our side,” Michael said rubbing his temples.
“I would say not.”
Lathiel was sat alone in the pilot’s chair of the now captured E.D.F Lincoln class transport blue-177. He grew weary, he was weary of the simplistic, cumbersome nature of Terran shipping. Indeed, Terran ships were grand and massive, but they were also awkward, and slow to maneuver, on top of that they had a woeful top speed. It was no wonder, he thought, that Krenaran ships had decimated scores of them.
He was just passing the Barnards star system, and was only three days away from his destination. Three days until the weakling E.O.C.A president dies, and the Terrans will have no choice but to surrender to Krenaran superiority. Then he could go back to his home on the Krenaran moon of Klymar, a rich man. He had heard no word from his lord Alax on Gamma IV, Lathiel presumed that he was either still fighting the Terran ships around that area, or that he had finally claimed the large Terran base there and would resume contact soon, the thought heartened him. Somehow Lathiel doubted that the pitiful resistance offered by the Terrans and the hated meddling Solarians, would stop the overlord of the Krenaran empire.
Alax had once visited the top secret training facility on Corvandris, and in his Krenaran form Lathiel was slightly taller than average, standing at just over 9 feet tall. But even he was in awe of the size and power Alax exuded on those powerful mechanical legs of his. He was the epitome of raw Krenaran strength and power.
Strangely though, it wasn’t Alax himself who had sent him on this mission, it was another high ranking Krenaran officer by the name of Galdon. Lathiel had managed to check this Galdon’s clearance before departing for Terran space. And it was definitely high, he had level ugro access codes, and only a member of Alax’s personal staff had that high a level.
Lathiel, who’s real name was Krovash, a name that only Alax and Axus had known, although Axus was killed. This was intentional, for fear of it leaking out into public knowledge.
He had spent his early years with his father Vugron, who was a Krenaran foot trooper, the young Krovash desperately wanted to follow in his fathers glorious footsteps. To be in the Krenaran military was one of the most powerful positions a Krenaran could obtain. It granted housing, land, even political power. Indeed, the head of the Krenaran military is widely judged to be the head of the Krenaran race.
Vugron, however never got to that lofty height, he was just an ordinary rank and file soldier. He had his small house on Gravosh III, he had his family, and that was all that his father wanted in life, and this was where the young Krovash grew up.
However, things were to change when Krovash came of age to join one of the many Krenaran military academies, he knew very early on that he was destined for some other purpose.
In Krovash’s training, he would never accept that a frontal charge using brute force and with all weapons blazing was the answer. Much to the chagrin of his superiors, instead Krovash repeatedly opted to attack from the shadows, to blend in with his surroundings, and to strike when his enemy was at his most vulnerable. Many thought Krovash’s techniques were superior, however military commanders viewed it as a cowardly affront to the pride and power of their military, Krenarans skulking in dark corners like frightened children, never.
It was this tendency that ultimately unsettled the warriors within his company, many thought it an insult to the Krenaran sense of honour and pride in combat. This led to him being given the title Gromish alcra, the sword from the dark.
His company commander however, recognised his talents and transferred the young warrior to the newly operational top secret training facility on Corvandris. Where, for many years he perfected the art of striking from the shadows, as well as from distance; to kill without ever being seen.
It was this innate ability led to him being selected for this most dangerous of missions.
Three days later, the transport blue-177 finally entered the Sol system. Lathiel, with consummate skill dropped the ship out of plasma drive on the far side of the moon. He wanted to get as far in-system on plasma drive as he could. Thereby shortening the time in which the pathetic E.D.F could react to his intrusion.
A communication blazed through the speakers, interrupting his concentration. “Transport blue-177, this is lunar control, state your reason for approach?”
Lathiel had to think hard, and quickly. “Lunar control, this is transport blue-177, we are on approach to Earth to deliver medical supplies from Barnards star.” He managed to remember from the late Siccio’s flightplan.
“Transport blue-177, you are earlier than scheduled. Can you give any satisfactory reason?”
Lathiel grew anxious, if he didn’t give the correct response now, within five minutes fighters would be all over him picking him apart. “Lunar control, we were loaded faster than anticipated at Barnards star.”
A long pause ensued, which only served to heighten the tension. Finally, a communication broke the silence. “Transport blue-177, you are cleared for approach to Earth.”
Never had Lathiel felt such relief at hearing that news, he gently increased the power to the ships inter-system engines which roared into life, and the transport gradually picked up speed and headed towards Earth itself, the inter system boosters blazing white hot.
Barely half an hour later, the battered Liberty dropped out of plasma drive near alpha base, orbiting mars.
“Get me alpha base command,” Michael said, he had no time for pleasantries.
“Admiral Mason here, welcome back Liberty, I’ve heard great things happened over at Gamma IV.”
“Sorry admiral we are here on business, it’s an emergency. Have there been any unusual events happening around Earth?”
“Not around Earth captain, there was an E.D.F transport that came in out of plasma drive near the lunar control station. I found it a little odd, since transports don’t usually drop out of plasma drive this far inside a
system and it was much earlier than expected.”
Michael grew tense, half an hour. That would mean it would be getting ready to dock at Earth.
“What was the identification of the transport?” Michael asked.
Mason consulted something off-screen for a few seconds, “blue-177, what kind of emergency captain?”
“There is going to be an assassination attempt on the president at his speech today, do you know where it is taking place?”
“Sure, everyone knows. It’s in Prague, at the institute of quantum mechanics. Due to start in about an hour and a half’s time, what proof of this do you have captain?”
The huge form of Dalvosh stomped into view of the admiral, “The threat is real admiral, he is a rogue agent activated before the war ended, and he can take on the form of any humanoid he touches; only we can stop him.”
“My god!” The admiral gasped, “I’ll contact Earth, let them know of the situation, and get you emergency landing clearance.”
“I would recommend alerting your guards quietly, if Lathiel notices any sign of increased activity, it could spook him,” Dalvosh suggested.
“Understood; Mason out,” the communication ceased.
“Continue on course for Earth, maximum sub-light.” Michael said, preying that they weren’t too late.
“Yes captain.” Eldathar replied working the controls.
The Liberty rapidly accelerated past the gigantic spherical installation of alpha base, and headed for Earth.
The small transport had cut through Earth’s atmosphere with relative ease, and continued to descend through the cloud cover towards a freight loading platform, just outside of Prague.
The speakers blazed into crackled life once again, “Transport blue-177 you are cleared to dock at pad D, once docked please have your crew remain onboard for security checks.”
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