Chronicle 1, Episode 1, Chapter 4

The Interstell Chronicles

Episode 1 - War from Above

Chapter 4:-

The waiting was the hardest. It had been four months since Matthew had been recruited by a man he only knew as ‘Agent 12’. Day after day, he reported to his duty shift in the medical bay. Day after day, there was little or nothing to do except patch up minor injuries caused in training sessions.
On the other hand, the fact that none of the people under his care needed medical attention was the ideal situation for a nurse. It meant that people were not hurting.
However, that was really not true. Outside the confines of the bunker and surrounding military base, people were hurting. In Britain, crime had risen exponentially. Abroad in America, police were hard pressed to stop bands of gunmen roaming around the major towns and cities picking off the public. In New York and Washington, army units had been called in because the situation had gotten so bad. Similar occurrences were happening all over the world.
China had closed it’s boarders recently, and was now threatening to attack anyone trying to enter the country. Russia had moved military units towards their boarders near china in response to a MIG fighter jet going missing on a training exercise, and presumed it to have been shot down.
Just finishing cleaning up a minor cut on the forehead of a trooper that had not ducked during a hand to hand practice fight, Matthew carefully positioned a bandage.
"Next time learn to duck eh?"
"Thanks Mat. See you at the morning session?"
"Sure, not much else to do at the mome…" Matthew sentence was interrupted by the double tone announcing a tannoy message.
"Attention. Squad 1 to launch stations. Repeat, Squad 1 to launch positions. This is not a drill. Squad 2, report to ready room."
The tannoy announcement ended with the same double tone that started it. Matthew and the soldier he had place a bandage over just stared at each other for the briefest of moments, then charged from the room.
Matthew reached the door slightly before the trooper, and sprinted for the stairs down to the command level. The soldier also headed for the stairs but went up towards the ready room.
Tackling the stairs at break neck speed, Matthew grabbed hold of the railings in the middle of the stairs and slid down them. Reaching his arm round the corner just before he reached it, he got a secure grip on the railing. Using that arm as leverage, as he flew off the end of the railing, and his tensed arm caused him to spin round the corner. Bringing his other hand round to stop himself from smashing into the wall, he brought his knees up onto the railing and continued to slide down to the next corner. This time he reached round the corner with his other hand, braced it again, and repeated the maneuver, so he ended up with his back to he wall, sliding down the banister on his backside again, passing a couple of stunned personnel on the way.
When he reached the command level, he flew off the end of the railing and hit the ground running towards the operations room. Charging through the door and stopping dead before the glass barrier doors.
Looking over the array of equipment in the room, his eyes fixed on the largest screen in the room. It normally showed a map of the world, but was now displaying a map of England. Even as he watched, the map focused again. This time on the south eastern part of the country. Parts of the conversation drifted through the glass retaining wall that made up the foyer to the operations room.
"They just turned up on radar. They have landed outside London."
"They are getting bolder!"
"Team 1 is outbound, team 2 is prepping now."
It was a tense wait of fifteen minutes while the helicopter took the assault team towards the first alien landing that the organization was going to deal with.
Finally, the radio reports from the team began to roll in, and the main monitor showed several small green lights move out over the map. Smaller screens around the room would pick up visual feeds from remote cameras mounted on the helicopter and the helmets of the squad leaders, but being in the foyer, none of them were visible to Matthew.
"Squad one, move forward. Squad two, left flank. Watch the farmhouse. Squad three, hold down the helicopter landing zone."
Various conformation messages filtered back to the team leaders commands. More followed as the two teams moved forward through the fields towards a grove of apple trees just visible in the dimness of the evening.
Then it happened.
"This is six. I have movement of to the left."
A blast of noise sounded over the mike, followed by a human scream, and then there were more. Overlapping shouts fought for volume over the sound of high pitched blasts and the sound of AR-15 rifles
"Squad three, we need cover. Move up to the…."
Static filled in after a scream died. Sounds from squad three then filled the air.
"They’re attacking the chopper…. Over there on the left…. Noooo!"
More screams.
Matthew had been standing here in shocked silence with the rest of the command staff, but he snapped out of it. Turning towards the glass doors, he burst through bellowing "Get them out of there!"
The people around him snapped out of the daze they were in. Having been horrified by the images flashing over their monitors.
The commander picked up his headset and spoke into the microphone. "Team One, this is command. Retreat! Repeat, retreat!" Receiving no response, he repeated his message.
Matthew shook his head slightly and stepped forward again. "We have to go get them."
The lieutenant standing to the side of the commander turned towards Matthew fuming. "We will not send in more troops to their death!"
Matthew turned to face him and let his own fury filter into his voice. "Wrong. You will retrieve them!"
The lieutenant seemed momentarily taken aback, but the commander interposed himself between the two. "Correct, we will retrieve them. We never leave a man behind!" As he said that last line he spoke it in the direction of his subordinate. Turning back to Matthew he addressed him. "Will you join the med. team with team two?"
Matthew stood there for the briefest of seconds debating the issue. It had seemed only natural that they should send in someone to pull out the troops. But did he want it to be him? He had been trained for four months to survive in a hostile situation, but the soldiers that had gone out and been attacked were professionals.
In the end it came down to the fact that if he did not go, then someone else would have to. The entire reason he fought now was to allow some other person to have a ‘normal’ life. But there was also the point that any team taking off now would not arrive for half an hour.
So he just nodded at the commander, spun on his heel and headed for the lifts, grabbing a headset on the way. Hearing behind him the commander order a set of extra equipment, and extra medical supplies added to team two’s inventory for a member of the medical support staff.
Entering the lift, he hit the button that would deposit him on the hangar level. Bringing the headset he wore up, he flicked the selector switch over to the on position.
"Change of plan team two. Load up the Sky Ranger!"
The Sky Ranger was a prototype craft designed for vertical take off and landing, like a helicopter, but had high powered jet engines for horizontal flight. With it, even taking into account the five minutes to load it up with equipment, they would arrive at the combat zone in a fraction of the time.
He heard the lieutenant in the command center begin to oppose this idea, stating the vehicle had not been tested, but the commander just overruled him and wished the squad good luck.
Bursting out of the lift as the doors opened, Matthew sprinted into the hangar complex and charged straight towards the helicopter they were to have taken. Grabbed as much of the equipment inside he could carry, and made for the Ranger as fast as he could. Depositing the pile of gear at the top of the ramp, he sprinted back to the helicopter, grabbed more equipment and ran back to the Ranger. Heading back for a third time, he grabbed the last of the equipment with pacing a soldier back to the Ranger, stumbled up the ramp as it began to close.
Out a small side window, he saw the platform the Ranger sitting on begin to rise towards the heavy doors opening overhead. This deposited them in one of the surface hangars. Barging into the cockpit, he sat down in the chair behind the pilot. Dimitry turned for a second, saw who it was then returned his attention back to his controls.
Matthew began muttering under his breath about the slowness of the rising platform, feeling the absolute urgency in his very core. As daylight became visible over the edge of the rising platform, Matthew leaned forward in his seat.
It was taking too long. Reaching forward, he pushed the throttle lever forward and the Ranger began to blast heat out the rear of the engines and it shot forward. Dimitry and his co-pilot, caught completely by surprise held onto their control columns as the Ranger hit the lip of the surface with the lift still rising. Although there were only a few inches left before the platform and surface were level, the front of the Ranger bounced up in the air slightly, but the back wheels ran straight over the now flush surfaces, and the Ranger blasted out of the surface hangar like a spooked animal, much to the protest of the launch control crew.
Dimitry moved his hand down to a selector switch and diverted some of the thrust from the engines downwards, causing the Ranger to lift into the air. Looking back at Matthew for a brief moment, he smirked "I guess we are in hurry. No?"
Matthew nodded in return. "Give it all it’s worth my friend. We have some people to save."
Dimitry returned the nod and pushed the throttle full forwards. The Ranger shot forwards with the full power of four jet engines, accelerating rapidly towards supersonic speeds.
Moving back into the rear compartment, Matthew took one of the available seats running down the side of the fuselage, and began to gear up. Many of the other personnel present gave him sidelong glances. Matthew could almost sense what they were thinking. Some were slightly hostile at his intervention on what was supposed to be a military operation. No, hostile wasn’t right. The situation magnified their emotions and they were just concerned that he was not as well trained as they were, and he might get them into trouble. They obviously knew that the other team were in deep, otherwise they would not be rushing towards them now.
"We need a plan. The last team split up. We need overwhealming firepower at any one time." Matthew shouted above the noise of the engines as they labored under the strains of speed. "Squad One head out straight from the landing ramp, squad two, cover the left arc, squad three the right arc."
Many of them just stared at him, then the team commander nodded and confirmed the orders, adding his own on top. "Deployment as Hunter said. This is just a rescue mission. We are not here to engage the hostiles unless we really need to. Squad three will cover our med. team in close. Squads one and two will provide perimeter cover. The Ranger will dust off as soon as we are out and maintain Ariel reconnaissance. We have two Euro Fighters scrambling from the base now, so if we need it, we will have heavy air cover." He set his face into a grim mask as he continued. "No heroics here people. Our best team got pasted, and we know it. I want everyone to come back from this!"
The sound of the engines quietened, and Matthew’s stomach seemed to drop out from under him as the Ranger landed. The ramp at the rear of the Ranger began to lower, giving a view of the landscape as the Ranger continued to drop down. Then helicopter that team one had used came into view, and the troops were moving out. Matthew got up and ran out with them into the center of the formation they had made, with the rest of the med. team surrounding him.
The four members of team one ran off to the cover of a low wall to the left, while team two broke right towards a barn. Team three, along with the medics and Matthew headed straight for the helicopter. The sight that greeted them close up was horrific. Four member of Team one were lying on the grass next to the chopper, all dead and showing horrendous burn marks in their chests. The pilot was dead without a doubt. He had lost some of his head when something had penetrated the perspex bubble of the cockpit. The co-pilot was lying prone in he rear of the chopper, groaning and clutching at the stump of his left arm. Whatever had taken it off had cauterized the wound, preventing him from bleeding to death.
The doctor and Team two’s medic moved forward to deal with the co-pilot, injecting him with Morphine, and bandaging his stump of an arm up across his chest.
Matthew looked around him. The darkness was not helping the situation. Then he saw it. A tiny glint of something metallic at the edge of the trees on the left. Spinning round, he grabbed the night vision goggles from the soldier that was sticking close to him. He got a hostile look in return, but Matthew gave a slight signal that the soldier interpreted as possible hostile. He nodded slightly, and sank into a half crouch.
Placing the goggles over his eyes, Matthew turned back around slowly, pretending to scan the line of trees. There was nothing out there. He could make out some details, but the goggles were set to infra-red mode.
Frowning, he looked again. Then he saw it. A dark outline, and the movement of the foliage. Switching the goggles to low light mode, the surroundings turned green and fuzzy. But visible, partly covered by a hedgerow, was something that was definitely not human, and definitely holding some sort of weapon. It was looking towards the Ranger, circling slowly about sixty feet overhead.
The AR-15 in his hands, Matthew knew what he had to do. It seemed as though everything around him went into slow motion, but he didn’t. Running headlong towards the alien in his field of view, he took the low wall running, planting his right foot on top, and using it as a springboard to vault over the ditch beyond, and deposit him on the other side. Landing hard enough to be heard, even on the soft ground, he rolled forwards and up into a crouch, firing his rifle as soon as he dared.
Bullets sliced up the damp ground just in front of the hedge, but his rifle still tracking up, poured fire into the hedges and through.
The goggles clearly showed his result. The short alien flew back, some fluid splattering from bullet wounds, and emitting a high pitched screech from it’s small slit of a mouth.
Sensing movement off to the right, Matthew sprung up, and dived over the hedgerow sideways and pulling the trigger, causing more bullets to fly out towards another alien that had been hidden behind the trunk of a tree. Landing next to his first target, he scanned the area again. He could hear some of the other troops shouting at him as they moved forwards.
The commander spoke into his microphone, but Matthew was not listening, he just continued to scan the surroundings. There were two more of them out there. He could feel it.
What the commander had asked for soon became apparent as the Ranger dropped a series of flares around the area, lighting it up.
More movement off to the right, and most of the squad opened up, pouring fire in the direction of a third alien.
Fanning out in twos’, they began to search for the rest of the squad. The commander moved up besides Matthew as he crouched behind a tree.
He had obviously come to reprimand what he saw as a rebellious element in a dangerous situation, but seeing the look upon his face, he looked along his line of sight.
Sitting there is a clearing, was the UFO. It was the same design as Matthew had seen four months ago on a video in MI5 headquarters. Basically a square with rounded edges, it was just over three meters tall. What he had taken to be gunmetal gray when he saw it on video, now took up a slightly blue tinge close up. What appeared to be a door stood in the middle of one side.
"Shall we take it?"
The commander looked down at Matthew, who was now looking up at him. Frowning, he ran through options in his mind. The size of the craft would indicate four aliens at most could have traveled in it. But that was assuming they were all the same. The risks were great, but were probably worth it to get their hands on an undamaged UFO.
The commander nodded, and signaled more members of the team to move in on their location.
Shortly, squads one and two had moved up to the UFO, while squad three had rounded up the casualties from the earlier team.
Two soldiers had retrieved a piece of equipment from the Ranger that had landed to allow the wounded and dead to be loaded. It consisted of what looked like a police riot shield, except was on wheels, and took two men to lift. It was obviously armored. They began pushing it towards the door. When they reached it, they began searching for a way to open it. One of the soldiers, Matthew recognized him as Hopkirk, one of the troops he usually sparred with in the gym, passed his hand over the hull. At one point, the hull glowed under his touch, causing the door to slide backwards, then move sideways, like the doors on many planes.
As soon as the door had opened, the inside of the UFO lit up. The blast shield that had been in he way of the door rocked back with a smoking pit dead center. Leaning round the side, Hopkirk filled the interior of the UFO with bullets, and a high pitched scream pierced the night.
At that point, two more troopers rushed forwards and past the blast shield into the UFO. The sound of an AR-15 firing, then silence.
Moments later one of the troopers leaned out the door and signaled the all clear.
The commander moved up, closely followed by Matthew. Pausing at the door, he stepped over the threshold of the door.
The lack of an airlock surprised Matthew, and the resemblance to an aircraft increased. However, looking past the doorway to the interior, the resemblance ended there.
There was only one chamber to the UFO. It was dimly lit by some blue tinged overhead lights, that made the interior seem colder than it really was. Four chairs sat at the opposite end of the craft. Two in the middle faced what appeared to be a viewport, but after the soldiers had scouted around the whole craft, he knew that if it was a viewport, it was made of some one way transparency, or it was a screen displaying an outside image. A bank of controls sat on a small angled bench below the ‘viewport’, some occasionally flashing in muted tones of blue and green.
The two flanking chairs faced away from the sides of the UFO towards the middle. Neither appeared to have any controls nearby, and so gave the impression of passenger seats.
Dominating the center of the room though was drew the attention most. A rounded charcoal gray dome four feet across sat embedded in the floor. Rising out of the dome was a four foot cylinder, glowing from the inside with what looked like very orange fire. Matthew watched some of the lighter lines of orange move around the cylinder, up the outside towards the top, before appearing to curve down in on itself. It was this unit that gave off the heat in the room, leading Matthew to assume it was the power source for the propulsion unit underneath the floor.
The commander, standing next to the power unit in the middle of the room, turned a full circle, smiling. "We have them now!"
Matthew knew that to say that was to be overly optimistic, but he too could not help smiling. With one of the UFO’s intact and in their possession, they could begin to dissect the aliens technology, and reverse engineer it. This would in turn, allow the engineers to hybridize Earth and alien technology to use against them.
Shouting outside drew the attention of the crew inside the UFO. Moving quickly, they soon saw what the other soldiers were shouting about. Dropping fast from above was another UFO. And it was bigger. Ten times the size of the UFO they now had in their possession. Or at least, in their possession for now. With the number of aliens that UFO could probably land, they could easily be outnumbered three to one.
Clutching his rifle closer to his chest, Matthew hunkered down in the doorway. Just outside, staring up at the descending UFO, the commander used his radio headset to order the Ranger, still circling overhead, to retreat with the wounded. Matthew could hear Dimitry’s protests over that order, but he knew as well as the rest of the soldiers, that by the time the Ranger had landed, the UFO would be on top of them.
It was at that point, that the sound of thunder reverberated around the clearing. Wondering if he was hearing the drive, or some weapon powering up about to vaporize them, four explosions blossomed angry fire from the side of the UFO.
Two airplanes streaked across either side of the UFO, banking away to either side and setting up for another run. The UFO slowed its descent, and re-oirientated towards one of the jets. A green light stabbed out the front of the UFO, lancing towards the Euro Fighter speeding in at it. But the inherent maneuverability of the fighter mean that it just skimmed above the blast.
However, it was enough to spark off a fire on the bottom of the fuselage. Firing another pair of missiles, the fighter banked away from the engagement, smoke trailing from melted hull metal.
The missiles hit dead center again, causing the UFO to list down, and having the pair of missiles fired by the other fighter coming in at the other side strike the engine assemble under the ship.
More fire blossomed over the hull. Much more than two missiles should have produced. It was then that the realization of what had happened struck Matthew, just a second before the UFO dropped like a stone. The soldiers around him all ran towards the ditch just past the trees and the hedgerow barely visible in the fading light from the flares that had been dropped earlier.
The UFO impacted just off the clearing, side on. Metal shrieked as it buckled and twisted into shapes it was not designed to hold. Cracks appeared, spiderwebbing over the hull. Some cracks erupted fire, other just split wide open.
Hen, the UFO lit up the night, making it seem as though day had come. The shockwave from the explosion grabbed hold of the UFO Matthew was in, and flipped it end over end into the trees. Falling back from the door, which began to close automatically, Matthew’s shoulder blades encountered the power unit in the middle of the room. The impact twisted him around, and he fell towards the ceiling as the UFO came to rest upside down
Striking his head on the metal, he fell into a heap, and the world swam before his eyes before he blacked out.

NOW OUT:- CHAPTER 5