Kathryn was sat on one of the dark chairs in the briefing room, a forlorn sense of sadness had come over her.
“Are you okay?” Mira asked.
“Not really,” Kathryn replied flatly, brushing an errant strand of hair from her worn and tired face, “this was my mission, and look at the mess I’ve gotten us all into.”
“It’s not your fault,” she placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
“Isn’t it? If I hadn’t requested a landing party to explore this place, we wouldn’t have accidentally activated it. The Copernicus wouldn’t be in a million pieces, and we wouldn’t be down here fighting for our lives, and all for the cause of science.”
“We’ll get out of this, and when we do, you’ll be credited with the most important discovery in the history of E.O.C.A.”
Kathryn smiled wanly at this, “or we’ll all die, and all this will amount to is a forgotten chapter in history.”
“We won’t die, Rachthausen will see to that.”
Rachthausen, Kathryn thought; that gentle giant of a sergeant, at first she had hardly known him. He was just another block head soldier from the troop division. However, he had a gentleness to him, a kindness that she had to admit was enticing. When he was showing her how to use her sidearm, and their hands accidentally touched, she knew a spark had passed between them, was she attracted to the sergeant? Kathryn banished the thought as soon as it had emerged, she was a senior officer and had to set an example.
Rachthausen and the other scientists eventually made it to the blast doors, Broadhurst began to weld the giant doors together with his small handheld device, sparks lit up the poorly lit corridor. He was unsure it would work given the size of the doors, but it might just buy the others some more time, so he kept at it anyway.
Drax had reached the bottom of the escape hatch and came upon a metal panel barring his way. With a forceful kick the offending panel slowly gave way, a second kick saw it collapse to the floor with a loud ‘clang.’ He and his men quickly filtered out, their weapons trained on anything that might surprise them.
He found the corridor was sufficiently lit, and therefore reverted back to normal vision mode. To his left lay an elevator tube, to his right the remainder of the corridor continued on into the distance.
The Dracos commander, split his men up into two groups, one would take the elevator to the floor below, while his own group would continue on through this floor. A silent nod saw the two groups part ways.
Drax’s team continued down their appointed corridor, carefully searching for any signs of traps or hidden explosives, there were none. He passed a sumptuous looking office with plush comfortable chairs and black granite desk. How his ancestors must have lived, he thought with pride. For him, it was like walking through history, he hoped his people could recreate those heady days when they were in their prime.
His men passed by a giant mess area, an armoury, and a military barracks, he wondered what the Kallan must have been like three hundred years ago, and how they had changed in that time.
Eventually he came upon a giant set of blast doors, he quickly reverted back to his thermal imaging mode in order to see if there was anyone waiting on the other side. To his chagrin, there wasn’t.
He signalled to one of his men to open the door, the warrior keyed in a series of controls that unlocked the giant metal barrier. Another key press and it swung open slowly with a dull whine as heavy duty motors hummed into life, revealing a long curved tunnel illuminated by dull strip lights positioned about a foot from the ceiling, and situated in even spaces.
This was one of two main corridors to the other side of the facility, which skirted the 5 metre thick Toralinium wall of the central aperture. Toralinium was their own private wonder metal, only slightly heavier than titanium, yet stronger, and it had a special property that dissipated any known form of scan across its surface, meaning that enemy ships would know that a ship made of this substance was there, but not what it was comprised of, weapons, crew complement, power systems, shield generators, or any internal system. It acted as a kind of shroud, making it a very useful material to build ships and bases from.
Drax and his men ventured forth down this long curved corridor for well over half an hour, making occasional thermal scans with their helmets as they went, still there was nothing. Then as they continued walking, the first colours of body heat began to appear, starting as a faint, deep green highlighting the shape of bipedal aliens like themselves. Then as they neared the colours started changing, cycling through to red, and then yellow highlights. There were three distinct shapes, roughly the same size as a typical Dracos, except slightly bulkier in body and shorter in the leg, the shapes weren’t moving, it looked as if they were standing guard. They were armed, and lightly armoured, things like helmets and strange clothing were made apparent to them as they approach the other side of the blast door.
Drax ordered two of his men to cover either side of the door. He, using the magnetic qualities of his suit, crawled up along the wall. A few others did likewise, more crawled up onto the ceiling. His men were eager, excited at the battle to come, at the blood they would shed.
Private Samuel Johnson, Johnathan Maxwell, and Lance Corporal Anthony Lindberg, gave their customary all clear report to sergeant Rachthausen on deck three. They were beginning to tire of this waiting around, were the enemy even going to attack? Spineless wannabees.
Then the blast doors opened of their own accord, someone had opened them, but it wasn’t any of the soldiers stood there. In the twilight gloom it looked as though the walls had suddenly come alive with shifting black forms, it took a split second to realise what they were seeing, which was all the time the Dracos needed.
Eviscerator rifles opened fire with razor sharp discs of metal, they emitted a high pitch whistling sound as they shot through the air. These lethal projectiles whipped through the air as fast as any bullet, slicing deep into Maxwell’s legs and arm. He screamed in pain as the incredibly powerful flouro-antimonic acid the disc was coated with burned its way into his flesh, the Dracos were in ecstasy.
Drax himself fired his silencer, the tiny, yet deadly metal spike pierced Lindberg’s neck, and jutted out the opposite side in a welter of blood, the vicious barbs contained within the bullet flicked out a split-second later, embedding in the man’s flesh. Lindberg choked and coughed up a fountain of blood from his pierced trachea. Yet he still managed to open fire, his pulse rifle lit up the gloomy corridor and caught one of the Kallan in the chest. The shots slammed into the chest plate of the Dracos warrior, tearing apart the carbon fibre protection of the aliens environment suit and blasting several bloody, ragged holes in the aliens body, it collapsed convulsing on the floor of the corridor.
Lindberg staggered back also, just as Drax pressed a control to retract the barb lodged through the lance corporal’s throat, which the device duly did, at an incredibly fast rate. Ripping the small projectile back through the mans neck, the outstretched barbs tore the front of the man’s throat open in a spray of deep crimson. Lindberg collapsed onto the floor, suffocating on his own blood, and slowly, painfully, bleeding to death.
Samuel Johnson, the last man to survive tried to make a break for it, discs of razor sharp metal skittered off the ground all around him as he ran, he frantically pressed his wrist comm. “sergeant, they’ve broken thr…”
One of the Kallan crawling overhead had swung his wrist blades and decapitated the dark skinned American in one swift flowing sweep. His headless body collapsed onto the floor, the neatly severed head came rolling to a standstill a few feet away from his body.
The badly wounded private Maxwell was trying to shuffle into a small store room containing scientific laboratory equipment. The slices in his leg from the lethally sharp metal discs, and the intense burning from their acidic coating was excruciating. The acid slowly burned deep into the flesh of his thigh, the cotton of his fatigues slowly breaking down and searing into his leg.
One of the black suited horrors moved to finish him off, and he silently wished he would, wished he would rid him of the agony of his wounds. The alien warrior levelled his weapon, he stared down the horizontal slit of the barrel as he pressed it towards his face.
Another took hold of the weapon, and thrust it aside, denying the warrior his kill. Maxwell was scrabbling around on the floor, the pain from his burning flesh was unbearable.
The alien gradually removed his helmet, revealing his pale, mottled complexion, his dark malevolent almond shaped eyes. He regarded him with a kind of sickening amusement, as though the agony he was going through was a source of entertainment; sick bastard.
“I am Drax, the commander of these people, do you understand?”
