Assault Squadron - Book One

by D K Evans

  “How’s she coming along?” Ford asked, nodding out the window.

  “Ahead of schedule,” Hubbard replied, “Though I’m not over there as much anymore – Duuven’s crew is finishing the job. Just the last of the armor plating and we’ll be good to go.”

  “Well just save me a space when you do go,” he smiled, “It’ll be better than hanging around here waiting for another suicide mission.

  “What’s that?” a shrill voice rang out, “Is Ford looking forward to piloting our very own carrier?”

  “It’s a bit beyond my skillset, Pim,” Ford smiled through gritted teeth as a familiar lanky figure came into view, “Though that definitely means it’s beyond yours.”

  “Hilarious as ever,” Pim crowed as he sauntered past their table clad in his usual blue flight suit with his squadron mates in tow, “You may think that you’re hot shit for flying your little courier runs, but it’s us in the attack wings who are doing the real fighting. And don’t you forget it.”

  “How can I when you keep telling me?” Ford called after him, “Fucking asshole.”

  “What’s his problem?” Hubbard asked.

  “It’s your stupid tally board. After that six-kill streak he probably thinks I’m trying to outshine him. It’s like the fighter jocks don’t realize that some of us only care about making it back alive.”

  “Well,” Hubbard said as he wolfed down the last of his eggs and threw his napkin back onto the table “At least I’ve engendered some healthy rivalry. Maybe the competition will get our guys to shoot down so many Feds that we’ll win the war before the end of the year!”

  “You’re truly a master strategist,” Ford said dryly.

  “Yeah well, just remember – stay away from level 4-G,” Hubbard said pointedly, tapping his fist on his napkin, “You’ll never get in without a keycard.”

  “Okay, I’ve been over this with Ellery already.”

  “No, Ford,” Hubbard leaned closer, tapping the napkin again, “You’ll never get in. Without. A. Keycard.”

  With that, he stood up and walked out, with Ford squinting after him. The cogs of his mind slowly turning, he reached over to the engineer’s used napkin and turned it over. A red keycard lay underneath it. Obviously the senior flight mechanic knew that if he was going to get some answers then he would have to use the one person on the station who was stupid enough to risk crossing Ellery.

  “Master strategist indeed.”

  -

  In general, people didn’t stray into the bowels of the station unless they had a bona fide reason to be there. It wasn’t because the lower levels were forbidden per se, but everybody had seen enough horror movies to know that the first person who strayed off on their own into the maze of access tunnels and service hallways would obviously become the first person to be eaten by an alien monster from beyond the realms of human understanding. Basically, the lower levels were just plain creepy. So much so that Ford was already regretting not fetching his sidearm from his locker as he held the keycard out towards the scanner and watched the metal doors to level 4-G screech open.

  Dim strip lighting flickered on automatically as he stepped inside, illuminating a long access corridor that bent around to the right, following an abrupt curve in the station’s outer surface. Tangles of wiring and miscellaneous machinery were piled up against the walls, relics of the station’s industrial past that the Rebels were yet to find a use for. To Ford, the scrap metal seemed as eerie as the gargoyles on the outside of ancient cathedrals. Mechanical rumblings from the core of the facility made their way through the walls, mercifully preventing a total silence from settling over the abandoned deck. Ford steeled himself and marched forward along the corridor. He peered into empty rooms as he passed by, looking for any sign of the crate he had recovered just days prior. The main doors disappeared behind him as he moved around the bend past more deserted office spaces and workshops. Then he stopped.

  The crate was sat in the middle of a blank chamber. Ford was reminded of an operating theatre by the masses of overhead lighting and sterile color scheme, though the place could just as easily have been an abattoir or torture chamber judging by the foreboding atmosphere that hung around it.

  “Don’t be an idiot, you’re the only one down here,” he hissed as he checked over his shoulder anyway, just to be sure.

  The box was cold to the touch and still as smooth and unblemished as when he had first found it. He grabbed the two handles on the nearest side and twisted, giving a firm pull as they clicked into position. With a slight hiss, the lid of the crate cracked open. Ford heaved it aside and let it fall to the floor with a dull thud, smiling as he turned to survey his prize.

  A second later, the smile dropped from his face.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Ford leaned in closer as the overhead lighting flickered. Inside the steel crate was yet another box. It was a dull off-white. Just about the same shape and size of a coffin, with a laminate window on the upper third. Through the gloom, he could just about make out a fine layer of frost on the other side of the glass, obscuring whatever lay on the other side. The automatic lights in the corridor shut off as he tried to peer beyond the ice. A shadow on the other side seemed to move back and forth at a slow pace.

  “Shit!” Ford cursed under his breath as he realized what he was looking at.

  The box was a sleeper pod. More advanced and compact than the few that Ford had laid eyes on, but a sleeper pod nonetheless. They were comparatively rare nowadays, mostly having been confined to use on the colony ships that had first carried humanity into the stars. Nowadays they were a last resort – the kind of thing you’d find on some luxury star yacht’s lifeboat. So who the hell was inside the damn thing? Some important Federation hostage? A defector? Either way, the pod itself looked too advanced for even Federation tech. Ford started to get the uncomfortable feeling that he’d bitten off a lot more than he could chew.

  Then the automatic lighting shut off. Ford swore under his breath and staggered through the darkness, almost tripping over the discarded lid of the crate and sending the noise of clattering metal echoing off through the deserted corridors. He swore again as a strange hissing noise filled the blackness, causing a chill to run down his back. The forbidden floor was giving him the creeps – he should finish up and get out as soon as possible. There had to be a manufacturer’s mark or something on the pod itself that would give him a clue as to what he was dealing with. He waved his arms towards the ceiling-mounted motion sensors and grumbled as the lights finally coaxed themselves back to life. As the white neon glow flickered back on, his heart jumped into his mouth – the room was filled with a thick cloud of chest-high vapor. Almost like someone had left a dry ice machine running for too long. He turned towards the pod and stopped in his tracks. The lid was open, spilling vapor and cold air into the room. And whoever had been inside was gone.

  Ford flicked his head this way and that, scanning the haze-filled room. The occupant of the pod had to still be in there somewhere – the motion-activated lights in the corridor outside were still turned off. Whoever it was had just woken up from a hell of a sleep – if they weren’t careful, they could cause all kinds of damage to their body by rushing their recovery. Unbidden thoughts of Ellery’s anger at hearing of the unexpected death of their new captive filled his head.

  “Hello?” Ford called out, his voice sounding a bit tenser than he had planned, “Can you hear me?”

  He thought he saw a shape move under the blanket of mist and he froze in place as he tried to focus on it. He lost it in the swirling mist as he stepped forward and instead tried to calm his breathing, listening for any sign of life. There was just silence, punctuated by the fading hiss of the pod and the distant noises of the station itself. For a moment, he relaxed.

  A shape reared up and struck him hard in the side of the head. Ford went sprawling down into the fog and only just managed to scramble to his feet as something skittered out of the doorway. He half-staggered, half
-ran after it and followed the pallid shape as it raced away from him down the corridor. Ford’s vision swam from the blow to his head as he broke into a sprint. He came around the corner to find the corridor ahead engulfed in darkness. For some reason the lighting hadn’t come back on.

  “Shit!” the realization dawned on him as the shape came blasting out of the room to his left and smacked him in the midriff, doubling him over before another blow smashed him to the floor. He kicked out wildly but his boot only met the air. Ford rolled back onto his feet in time to see a man carry on running around the bend away from him, his naked body trailing drip-feeders and monitoring devices from the sleeper pod that he hadn’t bothered to unplug before making his escape. A trail of wet footprints followed after, staining the floor with the bright blue coolant fluid from the pod.

  “He won’t get far,” Ford reassured himself, “There’s nowhere to run down here.”

  Instinctively, he put his hand to his belt. The knot in his stomach got tighter as he realized something wasn’t there. Hubbard’s keycard was missing.

  Ford ran over to one of the wall-mounted intercoms and held his thumb over the scanner.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” he hissed as the machine whirred and bleeped for a few moments before it recognized him and the communications system came online.

  “Yeah, what is it?” a tired voice came through the speakers. Probably one of the last guys in the command room left over from the previous night’s shift.

  “There’s an intruder on level 4-G!” Ford shouted, “Shut down the elevators and get some guys from security down here right now!”

  “Uh-huh,” the voice said before stifling a yawn, “And I suppose you’re being chased by the boogeyman as well, right?”

  “What are you talking about? This is a fucking emergency!”

  “You’re gonna have to do better than that, pal; 4-G is sealed off, nobody allowed in or out. So just cut the shit and let me get back to work.”

  “Listen!” Ford shoved his fists into his pockets to stop himself from punching the intercom, “Just take a look at your computer screen and see where I’m calling you from!”

  The voice went silent for a few seconds, “What the hell? Who is this and how did you get down there?”

  “It doesn’t matter! There’s someone loose on the station! Lock down the elevators, he can’t be allowed to leave!”

  Ford was up and running before the voice could ask any more questions. Up ahead, he could hear the noise of the entranceway blast doors grinding back open. His quarry had figured out how to use Hubbard’s keycard.

  He almost jumped out of his skin as the security alarm roared into life from the ceiling speakers. Pre-recorded messages warbled out alongside the siren, ordering security teams to their posts and for people to remain calm. Ford himself was anything but calm as he made a mad dash for the rapidly closing exit doors. He ducked and slid the last few feet on his side before the interlocking steel slabs sealed themselves firmly shut behind him.

  The atrium was deserted. The elevator doors were open and the panel guarding the access tunnel next to it was swinging from its hinges. A smear of blue cryogenic fluid was daubed across the entrance to the tunnel itself. Ford quickly worked out why – the screen of the security panel on the elevator was smashed. As though someone with an unnatural amount of strength had punched it in a fit of anger. Without knowing the four digit security code, his attacker couldn’t use the controls. Ford risked a glance through the open panel. In both directions, the maintenance shaft was enveloped in gloom, a metal chasm broken only by the narrow ladder and an occasional electronic junction box. The man from the pod was nowhere in sight.

  ‘Got to give him credit,’ he thought as he stepped into the elevator and punched in the code, ‘For a man who was frozen solid just a few minutes ago, the guy sure moves fast.’

  As the freight elevator started to move, Ford made a hasty plan. He would go up as far as the first habitable deck and then wait by the access panel – the guy would have to come to him. If he was the one to recapture the guy, then Ellery might go easy on him. She couldn’t punish out the guy who fixed this mess, right? Even if he was the one to start it. A metallic tapping noise roused him from his worries. He shook his head, realizing that he would need a weapon if he was to fight this guy one on one. Ford pulled the elevator’s fire extinguisher from its mounting and flipped it around in his hands, trying to grip it like a baseball bat. It might not make any home runs, but he reckoned it would suit him fine for now. The tapping sound reached his ears again and he glanced at the walls, suddenly wondering if the ancient machinery was about to choose this moment to fail. Something cold dripped onto his neck and he flinched and wiped at it with his hand. Ford frowned as he moved his palm away, a drop of blue liquid smeared across it. He froze as his breath caught in his throat.

  Ford turned and swung the fire extinguisher towards the ceiling as the man jumped down like a pouncing spider. The object caught the guy in the shoulder and sent him crashing into the wall, making the elevator jolt and sway as it moved. Ford rushed forward to strike again, but the man kicked his legs out from under him, knocking him to the floor and sending the extinguisher flying out of his grasp. The guy rolled forward and seized him by the front of his collar. Ford rained punches into the man’s head to no avail. With a flick of the wrist, the man threw him against the far wall so hard it dented the metal paneling. Ford fell back to the ground and moaned as the elevator came to a sudden halt and the doors opened with a merry chime.

  The corridor outside was deserted, though the alarms were still loudly ringing. Slowly, the man from the pod turned to the elevator controls and started to press the keys. Groggily, Ford realized that from his vantage point above him, the man had watched him input the security code. His stomach clenched as the man unlocked the console and selected the command deck as his next destination. As they started to move again, Ford slowly turned his head to see the fire extinguisher lying next to him. He only had seconds until the doors opened and the guy would be let loose in the nerve center of the station. Blinking the stars from his vision, he grabbed the extinguisher in one hand and pushed himself off the floor with the other. With a roar building in his throat, he swung the lump of metal in a wide arc straight into the side of the guy’s head.

  The man staggered and swayed on his feet, turning to face him with a puzzled look, blood streaming from a gash across his eyebrow. Ford swung again but the extinguisher stopped in place as the man grabbed it by the hose. A faint smile flashed across the pod man’s face as the doors opened. In a flash, he wrenched on the hose, pulling Ford off balance and filling the elevator with a cloud of carbon dioxide gas. Ford flailed wildly and emerged coughing into the corridor. Two guards were walking towards him from one direction with their weapons raised.

  “This way!” he spluttered as he started off in the other direction, following the fading blue footprints in the opposite direction.

  The two guards caught up with him just as he reached the command center. The footprints led inside and the doors were shut. He couldn’t hear anything on the other side.

  “The fuck is going on?” asked one of the guards.

  “Guy attacked me. Downstairs. He’s not one of ours.” Ford said breathlessly as he nodded to the footprints, “He went in here. Have to get in fast.”

  “Okay, stand back,” the other guard murmured as he readied his pistol and swiped his keycard across the access panel. The doors whirred apart and they rushed inside. Ford’s jaw dropped.

  “You can put the guns away,” Ellery said from the far side of the room, “It’s a false alarm. Nothing to worry about.”

  Beside her, a pale man with a gash across his eyebrow was finishing buttoning a rebel uniform shirt across his chest.

  -

  The three of them bustled into Ellery’s private office and locked the door behind them. Aeton was already waiting by the table.

  “Is someone going to tell me just what the hell is goin
g on?” Ford asked as he eyed the pale man, who had started to inspect the drinks cabinet in the corner.

  “You just disobeyed a direct order is what is going on,” Ellery said through gritted teeth, “I could have you shoved out an airlock for that alone. You put this entire outfit in danger.”

  “Danger? From what? This guy who you’re apparently best friends with all of a sudden?”

  “It’s the principle,” Aeton said patronizingly, “We may be a rebellion, but we can’t have people just doing whatever they want.”

  “Ah damn your principles,” Ford growled, “I want answers! For starters, who is this guy?”

  “That’s need-to-know,” Ellery said curtly.

  “You might as well bring him in on this,” Aeton shrugged, “After all, it’s not going to be a secret for much longer…”

  Ellery sat back in her chair and glanced from Aeton to Ford before throwing her hands up.

  “Fine,” she sighed, “But most of the info isn’t definite. It’s just a theory at this stage.”

  “Care to share?” Ford asked, pulling up a seat and sitting down by the desk.

  “I noticed it a few weeks back,” Ellery said as she tapped at her computer keyboard, “I make sure to read every report I get from the rest of the network; you never know what you might hear. If you know how to sift through this kind of data…”

  “Ellery, I just ran a half-marathon and got hit in the head more times than I can remember. Get to the point.”