Kael leaned over his shoulder and looked at the grainy radar return as it slowly gained resolution, “it’s drifting.”
“Yes. We’re running scans but don’t have any returns yet. Still a little too far out.”
“Well get us over there. My team will be ready to board in two minutes,” Kael keyed the radio on his shoulder and gave the order to the rest of the soldiers throughout the ship. His eyes never left the tiny pixelated image, floating ominously in the darkness ahead.
**
Stone blinked through a layer of blood across his eyes and found himself on the floor, his entire body screaming in pain from the broken ribs spiraling outwards from his crushed sternum. The armor plate on his chest had barely saved his life; it was now little more than ceramic shards and steel bearings, pulverized by the blast. He looked around for Dove but didn’t see any sign of her.
As before, he could sense what was happening around him, but not as if it was impacting him directly. The burning streaks of tracer rounds zipped above his head as multiple aliens made the jump from the walkway and landed beside him on the ground floor. Deftly they returned fire with their recovered weapons, quickly closing on the remaining humans who were quickly outnumbered and surrounded.
The exchanges dwindled and finally ceased as the last few shots echoed off the walls, giving way to cold silence. Stone attempted to push himself around to see what had transpired but one of the aliens was already on its way back. With an armored hand it took hold of his neck and wrenched him messily across the floor and threw him into the starboard wall. The lieutenant’s body screamed in protest but couldn’t make a move to protect itself. He lay still until a single, cleanly attired Aquillian approached from the battle.
Judging by the creature’s mask and stature, it was the same that had taken the captain’s life hours earlier. It considered Lieutenant Stone for a moment and quietly conversed with the larger alien to the side before kneeling in front of his face.
It drew a long breath in through its facemask. The compensated, metallic voice made it sound far more machine than organic. “You’ve fought bravely today. May your actions not be forgotten.”
Stone wanted to curse the alien out, shove the mask down its throat and let it beg for its life with its own artificial translator. He went to breathe but only coughed up blood.
“I know,” the alien consoled him, “you might think your actions were in vain but believe me, they are part of something much larger.”
A roaring siren interjected on the speech. The alien looked back as the massive airlock of the loading bay separated and swung aside, revealing the interior of a docked Aquillian ship.
“Don’t think we don’t know what you were up to; you were pre-positioning a massive load of arms in preparation for an invasion of our home system,” it shook its head, “don’t try to deny it. Your leaders have been planning our elimination for years so as to establish their empire. We might have surpassed the need for warfare a thousand lives ago but that doesn’t mean we don’t know how to reason. We’ve seen the signs and it will cost your warlike tribe dearly. You have no idea of the power you are dealing with.”
In the foggy corner of his vision, Stone could make out the cargo containers begin to shift and move towards the waiting alien craft. He let his head fall.
“Stabilize him,” the alien instructed another to its side, which quickly administered a bundle of shots from a medical bag.
Stone felt the stabbing pain subside and become overtaken by a warm, mellow nothing.
It waited until the lieutenant’s eyes slowly hinged open again before continuing, “Maybe you’ll survive this. You can tell your leaders how we have taken the precautions and equipment to ensure our survival against whatever attack you have prepared. We both know you’d do the same thing. Let them know what waits, should they provoke us further,” the alien stood and looked back to the larger, armored figure behind it, “secure him,” it ordered before fading into the receding fog of the deck.
Stone felt himself being moved about, dragged up through the ship and dropped on a rack in their meager medical station. Only slightly larger than a closet, it contained the bare essentials to stich or set an injury. A single bed, a tiny workstation and a few cabinets of supplies were the only surroundings. He blinked, only to see his navigator suddenly standing beside him. He must have blacked out.
“Taz…” Stone mumbled, reaching out as far as his arm would allow.
“Cap’n, I’m sorry, I—“ Taz stopped mid-thought as the razor edge of the alien’s bladed weapon sliced down from his collar to his heart. He instantly collapsed under the strike.
The armored alien stoically stood behind the fallen officer as if to express its approval of the situation. It processed the lieutenant’s frozen response before turning and leaving Stone alone with the crumpled corpse of his friend. The door slid shut, leaving him more alone than he had ever felt before in his life. Every sensation slowly faded to darkness, silence and then to nothing at all.
**
A sharp pop echoed through the landing bay of the transport, “lock’s open! Breaching!” Kael called out as the cargo door to the Defiance’s bay slid aside. Two members of his team tossed flashes through the gap and fanned out into the ship as the blasts subsided.
“Empty. All of it.”
Kael instantly confirmed his sergeant’s report. The entire floor was cleared of anything of value; no containers, support equipment. Nothing at all. The room was dark aside from his soldiers’ weapon lights which illuminated the walls in an unorganized dance. White layers of crisp frost coated every surface.
“Life support’s down too,” Kael replied.
“Sir, got three deceased crew over here,” one of the soldiers reported from the starboard wall, “gunshot wounds, blood streaks like they were dragged from somewhere else in the bay.”
“You heard it,” Kael announced and relaxed his stance, “hostile force likely. Secure the exits and sweep the ship,” he jogged to the collection of bodies and began to look them over alongside his sergeant.
There were glancing shots across their armor along with the kill shots that had found gaps at the arms and neck. Kael rubbed a gloved hand across one of the blasts, “it looks like lead shot. Sabotage? Maybe one of the crew?”
“I can’t imagine that,” the sergeant said, “where’s the security force? One guy can’t do this much damage. Plus, where’s the cargo?”
“Armed APERS mines on the catwalk!” another soldier announced, “looks like two additional detonations, one crew KIA as well.”
The sergeant looked up at Lieutenant Kael, “they must have been defending the cargo.”
“Aye. Look sharp and check the corners. No telling what’s waiting around here.”
Kael continued through the ship alongside the rest of his forces. They first made for the bridge but found it sealed and ruptured from the outside before moving on. His soldiers worked their way back, finding occasional burns and spent magazines from the various skirmishes that had crisscrossed the ship.
The starboard airlock was completely destroyed, painted with blood and littered with the bodies of humans and aliens alike. The discovery of Aquillian corpses gave Kael the last data point that he was trying to will away. By the time they found a reduced gravity field around the medical facility, they had recovered most of the crew and dozens of alien bodies.
The ship’s navigator had apparently floated halfway down the corridor outside after taking a deep knife wound in the shoulder. At the door, Kael took a deep breath and swung the metal shield aside. Inside, the med bay was in relatively good condition, except for the officer’s body strapped to the examination table. Kael could see as he approached that the man was long gone. Four auto-injecting needles were stuck in his legs while his face and chest were a mess of dark, frosty blood. His skin was nearly the color of the wall.
In his right hand he held the armored helmet he had likely worn throughout the mission. Kael pulled it free
while his squad’s medic floated past, “how long’s he been gone?” the lieutenant asked.
“Maybe two days. He made it longer than the rest of the guys onboard.”
Kael ground his teeth in silence and removed the memory card from the lieutenant’s helmet-mounted recorder. He cycled through the feed on the screen mounted to his inner arm until he saw the same beaten face staring back in the screen as what was beside him. He let it roll.
“This is Lieutenant Christian W. Stone, Executive Officer of the U.S.C. Defiance. If you are watching this, I likely didn’t survive and the cargo has been compromised. The battalion’s full armament is now possessed by the Aquillians,” Stone’s voice was hardly more than a whisper and wavered in tone as if he was overcoming a significant injury, “as acting commanding officer, I take full responsibility for this failure and the loss of my crew.”
Kael glanced to the medic as he paused the recording, “can you give me a minute?” he asked and waited for the room to clear before allowing it to continue.
“I’m sure you’ll be reviewing the rest of the security feeds and have already guessed this was an unprovoked attack. I wish this was the end of it but they’re preparing for far more,” Stone stopped and sighed, “This won’t be the last battle. I wish I could be there with you for the next.”
**
Some minutes later, Lieutenant Kael trudged his way back up the ramp of his shuttle and dropped down beside the pilot. He pulled the full helmet from his head and set it on the console between them. They stared at each other in a long silence.
“So what’s the story?”
“Attack by the Aquillians. Take us to Earth,” Kael sighed and looked out the forward screen, across the edge of the Defiance and onward into the void, “We’re at war.”
http://goo.gl/1UxEox
MissionSRX: Before Space Recon Page 4