pilot, although he couldn’t imagine how difficult this must be for him.
The Solarian quietly took his place in the Liberties pilot’s chair, while Michael took up the centre seat.
“Kinraid, contact engineering, tell them to bring main power online.”
There was a pause of a few seconds while commander Kinraid transmitted the order down to the Liberties engineering section from his console. “Engineering confirms, Solarian power core’s charging up and is stable, we’ll ‘ave full power in two minutes for ‘ya cap’n.”
“Excellent, contact Charlie Gamma base control, and request permission to get under way.”
Kinraid worked the controls again, after another brief pause the response came, “clearance’s been granted.”
The holographic viewscreen shimmered into life once again, before becoming crystal clear, the face of Commodore Valente and the rest of the command team in the background became visible. “Good luck Liberty, and god speed.” The viewscreen shimmered out of existence, leaving just the bare bridge wall.
Lights flickered into action and consoles came to life throughout the ship, the half-orb that housed the ships plasma drive system beneath the vessel, covered in a lattice work of delicate conduits, began to power up. Navigation lights fitted to the widest part of the Liberties sloping, angular hull began to blink their respective green and red. The primary negative Ion propulsion drive lit up into its brilliant electric blue, as did the ships Ionic turning thrusters nestled within wide indents halfway along the ships hull.
Everywhere onboard people were glued to their stations, checking over the readouts of status displays flashing across a plethora of terminals.
The elongated barrel of the ships most deadly weapon, that Solarian designed fusion cannon lit up; being the most energy intensive system on the ship it was always last to fully power up, although the weapon itself wasn’t active, that would only happen once the Liberty entered into a combat situation.
Finally, Michael gave the command, “blow docking hatch, release all moorings, reverse thrust one quarter power, manoeuvring thrusters at users discretion.”
Keeping his eyes glued to the sensor readouts in front of his chair, Eldathar gently pulled on a small throttle control nestled within the palm of his hand just a fraction. The one hundred and forty metre long vessel gradually began to reverse. The confines of the small dockyard were tight, and the Solarian had to guide the ship skilfully around the hull of the Lincoln class supply ship that had docked earlier.
The Liberties port turning thruster flared a brilliant electric blue as power was shunted to it, lighting up a section of the transports hull as it gently glided around it, slowly edging its way out of the dockyard and into the star filled blackness of deep space. The only object to impose upon that universal blackness was the bright blue- green atmosphere of Malthus IV below them, the site of the Malthus colony, and the dull grey hull of Charlie Gamma base itself ahead, festooned with its numerous shining portholes, and lit sections.
From a distance, the station resembled a giant oblong, with a tall cylindrical main structure at one end, it was in this cylindrical section where the stations crew lived and worked. The large oblong structure extending outwards from it was the dockyard itself, providing shelter for the ships huddled within, and wherefrom the Liberty had just emerged.
“Okay, now that we are clear, set a new course, bearing zero-six-seven degrees, elevation twenty one.”
“Aye captain,” Eldathar replied as he raised one arm of his pilot’s chair, while simultaneously lowering the other. The ship instantly responded to the pilot’s movements and rapidly spun around to face this new direction. The fore section and fusion cannon was pointed away from the station, as the ship raised itself as though on a gentle incline to match the co-ordinates given for elevation.
Michael had to hold onto his seat as the ship manoeuvred into position, unlike a big, bulky E.D. F ship that took a veritable age to turn, the Liberty was almost instant. At times Michael wondered whether the Ionic thrusters were too good, though he rarely complained as they had proven to be such a boon when in battle.
“Full power to main engines, then initiate maximum plasma drive once we are clear.”
“Understood captain,” Eldathar replied, as he pushed sharply down on the same throttle control, the Liberty rapidly accelerated, soon leaving the colony world and its small orbital facility far behind.
After about ten minutes of sub-light cruising, the planet was little more than a tiny speck, barely visible in the surrounding vastness of space. In-fact the only thing that was visible was the bright yellow-orange of the Malthus sun.
The star of the Malthus system was a very old one, almost twice as old as the sun the Earth orbited, and had all but used up the hydrogen contained within its corona. As such it was beginning its expansion, slowly transforming from a yellow star into a red giant. Scientists had predicted that unless no unusual phenomena interfered with the stars natural metamorphosis, the colony wouldn’t need to be evacuated for at least the next five hundred years.
The Liberty reached a safe distance and then engaged its plasma drive, the half-orb beneath the warship glowed with barely contained power, as plasma energy filled the myriad conduits adorning the sphere. The plasma built up, and then shot forward along a wide slightly raised channel, running from the plasma drive itself along the length of the Liberties hull, to a sharp frontal emitter, where an intensely bright blue beam of raw plasma energy lanced out from the front of the ship. Exploding into the swirling multi-hued plasma wake, fringed with its distinctive halo of bright white light. The Liberty itself, still hurtling along at full sub-light speed, dove headlong into the plasma wake and entered plasma drive.
Now travelling at plasma factor seven, seven times the speed of light, the small yet deadly warship shot through the swirling tunnel of colours that was the plasma wake, racing towards its destination just outside the Auriga system to pick up the commando assault team, before venturing into the system itself.
Michael prayed for the scientist’s sake, that they would make it in time.
8. Extreme measures
The Liberty continued to race through plasma drive, though the Auriga system was relatively near Malthus, it was still a journey of several hours.
Drax however, was enjoying hunting down the interlopers, he found them resourceful, worthy, but ultimately easily killed. Although his own men had taken severe casualties, his other team virtually wiped out, and his own team reduced to seven out of the original ten men. Now they were bolstered by the arrival of the two survivors from the second team. Even better news was on the cards however, as word had reached him of two more Dracos ships that had come to join in the fun, and would likely be despatching their own assault teams shortly.
He and his men had checked every room on the second floor, quietly creeping through ventilation ducts and service passages, never along the main corridor itself. Now they were heading down toward the third and lowest floor, he knew they had to be here, there was simply nowhere else they could hide. The thought of the slaughter to come excited him greatly.
Further they crept, through the narrow square shaped metallic interior of the ventilation ducting. Following precisely the outline of the map displayed on the A.R. uplink over his left eye.
Finally, when he switched his view onto thermal imaging mode, he was rewarded with what he was looking for; thermal signatures given off by his enemy’s body heat. Drax waved for his men to follow cautiously.
The Dracos Kallan warriors crept forward slowly, and with such skill that barely a sound was made, just metres away from their prey now, some were sleeping while others kept watch, a few others were acting as sentries out in the corridor beyond the large room being watched by the arrayed men.
Drax quietly ordered his team to split up, there wasn’t much point in keeping all his men together as had been proven by the ill-fated second team, he ordered two Kallan to drop into the next room, come around and eliminate the sentries, thereby creating a diversion allowing himself and the four other Kallan to swoop in and wreak havoc.
Drax and his guards silently waited as the two other Dracos peeled off down the narrow ducting.
The two scientists Matthew Broadhurst and Pablo Gomez were guarding the entrance to the briefing hall. They were tired, heck everyone was tired, though they didn’t know just how long they had been down here. Everyone had lost complete track of time after the chaos of the initial attacks, together with the business of staying alive. For all they knew it could have been weeks, Broadhurst however doubted it was any more than a couple of
