Thorsson screamed out in agony, as one of the scalpel like discs, ripped into his knee, slicing apart the kneecap, and causing him to topple over onto the hard floor.
The last two remaining Dracos slinked away out of sight, their scuttling slowly died away. Rachthausen and the other two troopers risked a glance around the badly damaged doorway. The other trooper hadn’t made it. His body lay convulsing on the floor, choking blood, and riddled with eviscerator rounds, before it stopped shaking and was still.
They had drove the Dracos back, but at a heavy price. Three of Rachthausen’s men lay dead upon the ground, and Thorsson was injured. Eight alien bodies lay in bloodied heaps, strewn across the corridor outside. The floor was almost slick with both human and alien blood; the only sound that remained was the faint hissing and bubbling of the slowly dissolving human corpses.
Thorsson screamed in pain once more as the acid went to work on his already badly injured knee, snapping Rachthausen out of his post battle reverie, the sickly stench from his burning flesh was horrible, and the sergeant had to refrain from the reflex to gag, as he tore off a strip of cloth from his fatigues.
“I need to do this quickly,” he said examining his fellow troopers wound by torchlight.
He folded over the fabric, so as to give him a little more time before it too disintegrated, and, using it as a makeshift glove gripped the metal disc, the fabric immediately began to sizzle and melt. Rachthausen pulled with all of his prodigious might, as Thorsson clenched his teeth so hard blood seeped out from his mouth. The sergeant’s arm yanked backwards, ripping the alien ammunition from Thorssons knee in the process.
The trooper screamed aloud in absolute agony, and very nearly collapsed unconscious from the pain.
Rachthausen flung the ammunition back out into the corridor in distain, although Thorsson’s knee was still coated in acid and was still burning badly. The stench of dissolving flesh, was almost more than those around him could bear, not just from Thorsson’s knee, but from the slowly dissolving corpses outside too.
The sergeant pulled out a small canteen of water from his webbing, “it will help to dilute the acid.”
Thorsson simply nodded a weak affirmative, beads of perspiration trickled down the wounded soldier’s face in his immense fight to stay conscious, and to ignore the searing agony he was in.
Gradually Rachthausen poured the contents of his water bottle over the soldiers torn, blood soaked knee, Thorsson screamed out again, it took the efforts of Anderson and another guard to restrain him, gradually the pain subsided to less agonizing levels.
“I can’t do any more here, we need to get you to Kathryn, she’ll be able to do something.”
Thorsson nodded, the other guard helped him slowly to his feet, and leaning heavily on both Rachthausen and the other soldier for support, the Dane painfully limped his way back down to the briefing hall.
Anderson closed the blast doors once again, with his free hand Rachthausen passed him the laser welder, and the lone soldier took great pains to make sure those doors were thoroughly sealed. Before picking up a clutch of fallen alien weapons and heading back to the briefing hall himself.
Rachthausen carried the injured form of Thorsson into the wide room, where Kathryn immediately came to tend to him.
Although the sergeant had succeeded in helping to dilute the acid, it was nowhere near enough and still continued to burn through the injured soldier’s now almost half collapsed knee. Kathryn fumbled around in the dark for the medical supplies brought down from the shuttle.
Private Anderson entered a short while later, the light from his flashlight played across the forms of those hunkered down within the hall, some were desperately tired and trying to get some sleep, unaware of the danger still approaching. Others, like Kathryn were awake and trying as best they could to keep going.
He dropped the small cache of weapons he was carrying, and made his way over to where Kathryn and Rachthausen were tending to the stricken Eric Thorsson.
Thorsson was a big Dane, he and Rachthausen had served together since just after the Krenaran war, although like the others in the sergeants squad, this was their first taste of real action, and what a taste it had been so far, a baptism of fire.
Thorsson was normally the heavy weapons specialist in the squad, and typically carried either an Armschlager forty-four calibre heavy machine gun, or a steiger industries grenade launcher, which he lovingly referred to as ‘the bucking Betty’. On this mission, no-one had expected to encounter serious resistance, so the whole squad was only lightly equipped with pulse rifles, a move that Rachthausen was now ruing.
All they had to do was to protect the scientists while they did their bit, and checked over the structure. The planet was uninhabited, so there was no threat to themselves or the scientists. Funny how in the blink of an eye all that can change, Rachthausen thought.
“Okay, I’ve managed to neutralise the acid with a saline based alkaline solution,” Kathryn said looking up at him, “but his knee is useless, the scapula has been completely melted away, the fluid sac within his knee joint has burst, and the ligaments are totally shredded, he will not be able to walk on that leg again. We’re looking at an amputation.”
With all the advances in medical science over the past decade, they were still unable to replace a simple knee joint, they could replace the entire leg easily, but not the joint itself.
Rachthausen looked down at Kathryn with a look of concern, whispering. “Things are beginning to get desperate, I’ve lost six of my men, two others are wounded and now unable to fight. That just leaves me and Andersson here left.”
At this news Kathryn could say nothing, except. “I am sorry, sorry I ever got us into this.”
“I just hope that help comes soon, otherwise there won’t be anyone left to rescue,” Rachthausen said.
“The scientists are all armed, we can fight,” Kathryn tried to reassure him. The sergeant looked around at the other scientists in the room, all huddled together in a group, talking amongst themselves with a torch in the centre.
“I hope that it will not be the case, though I fear it will. These aliens are not like anything the E.D. F has encountered before Kathryn. They are vicious, brutal, but not like the Krenarans were, who relied on brute strength. These guys attack from anywhere, from out of the shadows, they are damned near impossible to spot in the dark, and so far that appears to be their favourite method of attack. We are fighting on their terms at the moment.” He showed Kathryn one of the captured alien weapons, “this is what caused Thorsson’s injury, and the majority of the deaths out there. These aliens fight as if they are a living weapon, their wrists have blades attached, have weapons that can rip men’s throats to shreds in seconds, and they have these weapons that fire metal discs. They can crawl on walls and ceilings, and are some of the best night fighters I have ever seen. We are fully trained soldiers, and we are getting slaughtered by these guys, if they attack the scientists, it will be a very short fight.”
Kathryn looked into Rachthausens eyes, sensing his fear, but also sensing his stoic resolve to protect the scientists, and to protect her from harm at all costs, it felt comforting.
“I will protect you and the scientists Kathryn with my dying breath, that is my job.”
“Thank you,” she said earnestly, and tenderly embraced the sergeant, she was scared and feeling those giant arms wrap around her, she felt protected, like nothing on earth could hurt her. They gently parted from the embrace, her eyes searched the sergeant’s features, he smiled warmly.
“Wait a second,” Kalschacht exclaimed, sitting bolt upright as though hit with a cattle prod.
“What is it?” Kathryn asked.
“I’ve got it!” He shouted in elation as he walked towards them, “they have blinded us right? by shutting off the lights.”
“Yes,” Rachthausen replied, wondering just what the physicist was getting at.
“So why don’t we blind them. ”
“With what?” the sergeant replied, intrigued, but not quite understanding how it could be done.
“With the flares we brought down from the shuttle, we have a box of 6 here.”
“Show me,” Rachthausen said, now he knew the physicist was onto something.
“Even when the lights are on, they only ever give off a twilight glow, right?”
“Correct.”
“So they must be sensitive to bright light, they have shut the lights off specifically because it benefits them. They can see us easily, but we struggle to see them. When we let off a flare, the reverse happens, suddenly we are much more tolerant to bright light than they are, it will be they who are blinded.”
“Kalschacht, you are a genius.”
He let out a loud chuckle, “just Newton’s law in action, every action must have an equal and opposite
