needed to. Most Dracos had adapted to living in dark conditions over the last three centuries anyway, hence why their skin had become so pale and grey.
He cycled it again to thermal imaging mode, and did a quick sweep around the area, the flames of the shuttle lit up as brilliant whites and yellows on his display, however there was no sign of any form of body heat for a quarter of a mile in any direction, which was the limit of the onboard thermal imaging processor.
“Let the hunt begin,” he said into the comm. link.
Rachthausen and the other guards used the pryzors to help seal the top hatch shut, and also make it more difficult for whoever those aliens were to access the facility, he could feel the gentle thrumming of the base begin to increase, it was about to release another gigantic blast of energy, he hoped it would immolate those aliens on the surface as well.
“It won’t hold them for long; we need to get as far away from here as possible.”
“I agree, let’s all form up on the third floor,” Kathryn said to the group.
They all hurried inside the elevator, pressed the button for that floor, and the contraption shot them to the lowest point on the facility. The group jogged along to the briefing hall they passed earlier, dropped their supplies, and rested the badly injured Jankov.
Everyone was panting considerably; Kathryn turned the re-breathers back on within her suit. “Hey I’m getting clean air through, it’s no longer stale.”
“Some sort of automated environmental system must have kicked in when the facility was activated,” Kalschacht replied, gradually removing his helmet, “that’s better, it was getting rather stuffy inside.”
Everyone else followed suit, laying their helmets on the ground, Kathryn’s long dark hair flowed out over her shoulders, “okay, so now what do we do?”
Rachthausen turned to face her, “we hold out for as long as we can, Laveaux, how much food and water do we have?”
Private Laveaux, a slightly thin, lanky soldier came forward, “we have enough food to last four days. We might have enough water, and we managed to gather a couple of filtration kits from the shuttle also.”
“What about weapons?”
“We have the weapons we carry, and we also managed to gather a few pistols from the shuttle.”
“Okay,” Rachthausen said pausing in thought, then turned to his troops, “everyone give your sidearm to the scientists, they’ll need a weapon.”
The guards unclipped the holsters housing their pulse laser pistols and handed them over to the scientists, together with the weapons they had gathered. Each scientist was now armed.
“Here, take this, you’ll need it,” the sergeant said gently as he handed her his own sidearm, accidentally brushing her hand in the process, and smiling down at her. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.”
Kathryn took the weapon, and smiled back up at him tenderly, “thanks.” She felt something stir slightly within her, something she did not expect, Kathryn buried the thought as quickly as it emerged; it was inappropriate to be thinking of subordinates in that way.
“Gather around for a demonstration,” he said to the arrayed scientists, who began to make their way over to the big, burly sergeant.
He held a pistol out in front of them, pointing to a circular indent in the underside of the barrel, about an inch ahead of the trigger. “This is the laser pod attachment port. To place a new laser pod, insert the top of the pod inside the port and twist anti-clockwise. You’ll feel a click, that means it is housed properly. Each pod is good for thirty shots; we use the new high yield pods now instead of the older ones, which were only good for ten.”
The sergeant pointed to a set of two buttons on the side of the weapon, just above the trigger. “The first one, is the priming button, press this once when you click in a new laser pod, the other is the safety switch.”
He then proceeded to point to a series of four rather scorched looking holes either side of the outer wall of the weapon, just below the barrel. “Do no touch these at all, they are heat dispersion holes, used to vent off excess heat from the barrel after firing.”
The surrounding scientists all nodded their understanding.
“I’ve lost count of the number of cadets who have had their finger ends melted by playing with these holes.” He proceeded to show the assembled group the top and underside of the weapon, “this is a laser sight, it automatically comes on whenever the weapon is ready for firing,” he said pointing to a bulbous protrusion from just under the muzzle of the weapon, “and this is an accessory rail, normally used for attaching a flashlight, any questions?”
There were none, the sergeant had given a pretty thorough demonstration of how to use the gun. All the scientist had managed to clip in the laser pods with little difficulty, and pressed the priming button.
Thank God for small mercies at least, Rachthausen thought as he watched the assembled scientists all ready their weapons successfully.
“Okay, we don’t know how many of them there are out there, and we have no idea what they are capable of. So everyone needs to be extra careful, myself and the guards will try to draw most of their fire. If you do have to use your weapon, try to make your shots count, once these are used up we only have five spare laser pods for the pistols.”
Drax and his Kallan warriors approached the main hatch. As they looked upon it, they saw a small illuminated panel. They keyed in the control to enter the facility, and were greeted with a loud scraping of metal and some small jerking movements. The doors wanted to open, but something on the other side was blocking them.
Locked themselves in, Drax thought. A shame really, they are only delaying the inevitable. He took a few steps back from the hatch and pressed a tiny control, secretly embedded on a unit around his right wrist.
“Drax to the Flame of Celthris.”
“Kaeleth here, sir.”
“I want a full layout of this facility, search the ships main database, and then transmit it to my suits augmented reality uplink.”
“Understood, I’ll do the search now.”
The communication ended, Drax could feel the ground shaking from beneath him, it wasn’t violent, just a gentle rhythmic thrumming, although increasing in its intensity. The wind was blowing but not to this degree.
He eventually realised what it was, and screamed with all the urgency he could muster, “Everyone down, now!”
No sooner had the Kallan flattened to the ground, than the station released a second massive burst of energy through the atmosphere, the whole facility briefly turned a bright shade of orange, as the intensely bright stream of pure power, shot skywards and out into space once again.
“Recover!” Drax shouted out to his men.
The immense beam of energy shot passed the Flame of Celthris, briefly silhouetting the dark shape of the ship in its intense orange light, before hurtling onward into the depths of space once again.
After several minutes of searching for Dracos structures built on Auriga III, the ships computer finally found something that matched. A layout of a giant energy installation known simply as the eye of the Dracos, Kaeleth was fascinated. Although Dracos technology had evolved over the three hundred years the base was abandoned, nothing they built today even approached the scale of the eye.
He contacted Drax, “I have the plans, transmitting now.”
From inside Drax’s helmet a tiny lens displayed the layout of the station over his left eye, he studied it intently, and after a few seconds of silently searching, smiled. The facility did indeed have another way in after all.
“Follow me,” Drax called out to his men.
5. The nightmare begins
Rachthausen turned towards Kalschacht and Gomez, “when you saw the layout of the station, did you see any other means of access, an escape hatch, emergency exit or anything?”
