E. D. F resurgent (e.d.f chronicles)

by Ian. J. Smethurst

  11. The mystery of transport blue-177

  Lathiel knew there would be problems, with such a small crew everyone knew everyone, so he had to keep to himself as much as possible. Since everyone was busily getting the ship ready for departure, he decided that he would hole up in a cramped, confined, gloomy maintenance access corridor on deck six for the time being.

  “ Hey Siccio!” One of the crewmen shouted.

  Crewman Siccio walked over to him, “whassup Frankie?”

  “ You seen a weird looking guy walking around here lately?” crewman mike ‘Frankie’ Franklin asked.

  “ Nope, not a thing, why do you ask?”

  “ I saw a guy before, coming from the cargo hold. Never saw him before in my life.”

  “ It’s probably one of the loaders from the station, you know how people get moved about in this dumbass war, besides I heard something earlier about some new guy transferring over, might be him.”

  “ Yeah, your probably right prettyboy.”

  Prettyboy was Siccio’s nickname, ever since the crew used to make fun of how long he spent in the mirror, Siccio was the ships pilot and sometime helper, he modelled himself on the classic brylcreem boys of the 1950’s and was vain to a fault.

  Siccio left the cargo hold and headed back in the direction of the station, while ‘Frankie’ made his way towards the command centre. Once there he met up with the transports commanding officer, Lieutenant Pryce.

  “ What’s our status?” he asked.

  “ All supplies have been stowed onboard, everyone is accounted for, Siccio has just popped over to the station to get his flightplan approved, then we should be all set.”

  “ Good, as soon as Siccio returns I want to get underway,” Pryce said nodding.

  “ Understood.”

  Half an hour later Siccio had returned, and the transport began to get underway.

  “ Contact Delta base control and request permission to depart,” Pryce said as he settled in his cracked and worn command chair, letting out a small yawn, he had done this a thousand times, the monotony was unending.

  “ Delta base confirms,” Frankie replied after a few seconds.

  “ Release docking hatch and back us away from the station, ten percent reverse thrust.”

  The crew complied and the comparatively tiny transport began to back away from the gargantuan station, navigation lights and the light from observation platforms played gently across the outer hull of the small vessel, its twin forward thrusters shot out streams of super heated hydrogen, forcing the vast bulk of the transport into reverse.

  When the transport was clear, the rear thrusters briefly fired to kill the reverse motion, and then the rear port and front starboard thrusters fired simultaneously to gradually turn the transport away from the facility.

  Once a safe distance away, its much more powerful inter-system engines blazed into life and accelerated the transport away from the station.

  Lathiel crouched motionless in the maintenance corridor, he could feel the ship accelerate through the gentle vibrations in the deck plating under his feet. He knew his time had almost come, they would soon enter into plasma drive; and then he would act.

  The transport continued on its course away from the station, until what was a gigantic near spherical structure with its outer defence perimeter surrounding it like an enormous halo, was just a tiny metallic gleam, glinting far in the distance.

  Finally, Pryce gave the command with all of the tiny amount of enthusiasm he could muster, “activate plasma drive.”

  Siccio keyed in the controls and a single incandescent beam of bright blue energy shot forth from the transports plasma emitter and opened the familiar swirling energy of the plasma wake directly ahead of the transport.

  “ Enter plasma drive,” Pryce said.

  The ships inter-system engines roared once more, and it gradually disappeared inside the wake, the energy quickly collapsing behind it.

  “ Now it’s this all the way to Barnards star.” Pryce said, slouching in his command chair.

  Lieutenant Pryce was a full blooded E.D. F naval officer, or that was what he thought, he should be serving on one of the huge and powerful warships of the fleet patrolling the front lines, getting in on the action.

  Instead, he commanded this flying rust bucket, it was degrading. Truth be known, Lieutenant Samuel Pryce wasn’t nearly as clever as he thought he was, poor results at the academy meant that he wasn’t chosen to be a serving officer in the fleet, and when war broke out he was posted to this transport vessel, dashing his dreams of front line action overnight.

  Only when the elderly former commander Ben Howard died four months ago, was he even placed in command of the ship.

  As soon as the transport had leapt into plasma drive Lathiel acted, he cautiously made his way along the tight confines of the maintenance corridor, stopping at the hatch at the end, gently pressing his ear against its cold steel. He could hear nothing, so he took a calculated risk and quietly forced the hatch open. The corridor was clear.

  Replacing the hatch, he continued to cautiously advance down a larger, more brightly lit corridor. He could hear footsteps approaching, looking around the corridor, he noticed a door was ajar. Diving into a smelly, dimly lit room, he silently unsheathed his stolen knives. The room happened to be a communal toilet block, he entered a cubicle and closed the door behind him.

  “ Man I gotta pee,” a voice said as its owner noisily burst into the room, the sound of footsteps went past the cubicle and stopped. The familiar sound of a zipper being undone and then liquid splashing against a hard surface gave Lathiel all the clues he needed.

  While the man was busily relieving himself, Lathiel silently and very gently opened the cubicle door. The man had his back to him, taking great care Lathiel silently stalked the man.

  His target, completely unaware of his impending doom went to zip himself back up, when he felt a sharp, agonizing, searing pain in his lower back, as though something had bitten into him. His hand went to feel the source of the pain, and it returned slick with blood.

  He staggered around, and to his incredulity saw another E.D. F officer, smiling, and brandishing a combat knife, coated in blood.

  As the mans vision began to fade, he spluttered. “you?….who the hell are….you.” The victim gave up his struggle for consciousness and flopped face first onto Lathiel, who picked up the man in a firemans lift and seated the body on the toilet.

  “ Death,” Lathiel replied with a sadistic grin, gently brushing his hand on the man’s pale cheek as he activated his crodes gland. With a roar of agonizing pain, slowly but surely took on the form of the man he had just murdered in cold blood.

  He took the I.D. card from the corpse and learned that the mans name was Bryan Fletcher, and was another engineering assistant. Lathiel gently closed the cubicle door on the corpse of the real Bryan Fletcher.

  The Krenaran assassin washed his bloodstained knife in the toilet sink, hid them back inside his uniform, and left the toilet. One down, eleven to go, he thought as he headed to engineering, eager not to arouse any undue suspicion.

  The transport continued on its journey through the swirling vortex of plasma drive. On the command centre, Siccio was making minor course corrections and Lieutenant Pryce was getting increasingly bored. However down in engineering Lathiel was already planning his next move.

  “ At last, glad you could join us, how long does it take to go for a piss,” a dark skinned man said.

  Lathiel guessed the man to be in his forties, he was slightly greying at the sides of his short fuzzy looking hair, and he didn’t like the mans tone. Something he would remedy later, however at this moment in time he was stood in the middle of a wide-open engineering bay and there were witnesses.

  “ Listen Fletcher, the main power conduit on deck seven has come loose again, things a pain in the ass. I need you to go help Jackson fix it.”

  “ Yes sir,” Lathiel replied.

  “ You feeling okay Fl
etcher?” The man asked.

  “ Yes sir, why do you ask?”

  “ Because you never call me sir it has always been lieutenant.”

  “ Sorry lieutenant,” Lathiel replied, mentally chastising himself.

  With that, he left engineering and headed straight for deck seven, a few minutes later and after a short journey on the elevator, he had arrived.

  Finding that there was no power anywhere on the deck, Lathiel’s Terran eyes found it hard to adjust to the gloom, however he could just about see the beam from Jackson’s torch in the distance.

  Lathiel drew his knife again, and steadily advanced, like a panther stalking its prey, waiting for the exact moment to make the kill.

  Jackson was busy working on the coupling, the conduit had worked its way loose from a vital connection. It was to be expected, he thought. The ship was nearly thirty years old after all.

  He heard movement behind him, in blind panic he whirled around, his heart thumping, sweeping his torch left and right, the surrounding supports and bulkheads threw off a myriad of shadows as the torchlight swept over it, his eyes strained in the dark. There was nothing. Jeez Jackson, get a grip, the sooner this damned power coupling is fixed the sooner the lights come back on, he thought.

  “ Hey Fletcher, is that you!” He shouted down the corridor, just in case. There was no answer.

  “ Where the hell is that asshole,” Jackson mumbled to himself.

  Lathiel had secreted himself behind a small support girder a few feet away from Jackson. He gently adjusted his grip on the knives so that the blades pointed inwards following the contours of his forearm, and slowly approached the doomed Terran.

  As Lathiel approached, Jackson spun around to face him. “Jesus, Fletcher don’t creep up on me like that,” he said as his hand clung to his chest.

  He was jumpy, nervous, Lathiel was enjoying this, without another word, the Krenaran assassin swung the concealed knife upwards and outwards in a wide arc, catching and slicing open Jacksons throat.

  He dropped his torch and fell to his knees gurgling, spluttering, and clutching at his ruined throat, to help the man on his way Lathiel gripped the mans neck, and with a sharp twist broke it. Jacksons body fell face first on the floor, motionless.

  Lathiel quietly picked up the torch and scanned the corridor for a door. There was one on his right, about ten metres ahead.

  Dragging the blood soaked body into the room, he found it was a very small sickbay, and was deserted. The entire deck was until they got the power back online down here. Shining his torch around the room, Lathiel could only see a single bed, it would have to do. He hauled the limp body of Jackson onto it, before cleaning his knives again and exiting the room.

  Re-sheathing and hiding the blades back inside his uniform, Lathiel headed back the engineering section, three decks above.

  Once there, the dark skinned man greeted him again, “Hey Fletcher, you fixed that coupling I told you about?”

  “ Yes lieutenant,” Lathiel lied.

  “ Where’s Jackson?”

  “ Oh, he’s just finishing up, getting the tools together,” Lathiel lied again.

  “ Couldn’t you have helped him?”

  Lathiel knew this man had a dislike for him from the tone of his voice, and from his posture as the man disrespectfully turned his back on him. He did a quick scan of the room, nobody else was here, it was just the two of them, and time for a little sweet revenge. Lathiel drew one of his knives, and before the man even had a chance to turn around he threw the blade with such force straight at him, the knife whistled through the air.

  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.