the Dracos enjoyed it. They fucking enjoyed it! Hacking my friends down like dogs!”
“I know, it must have been horrible.” Michael tried his best to comfort her, although he was growing more worried by the second.
“No you don’t know! You weren’t there! You weren’t there…you… bastard!” She sobbed uncontrollably as she thumped Michael weakly on the chest. Collapsing into him, as all the raw emotion came pouring out of her.
“I’m here now Kathryn, I’m here.” Michael replied as he consoled her.
The four Dracos warriors continued their silent creeping throughout the air circulation ducting of the Eisenhower, they spied a room that piqued their interest, and using the nearest vent, dropped down into it.
They quickly sealed the door shut from the inside, and consulted a computerised layout of the whole ship, they found they were located on deck twenty four of the thirty four deck cruiser.
“We need to retrieve our weapons,” one of the escapees said.
They consulted the deck plan further, “the weapons storage facility is on deck twenty one, three decks above us.”
“How will we get there?” A third Dracos asked.
“These ships have an elevator system that runs throughout the ship, we can ride it until we reach that deck, retrieve our weapons and then capture the bridge.”
“We’ll be seen as soon as we exit the elevator.”
“Calm yourself Taneth, we are Dracos, the undisputed masters of moving unseen remember. We can do this.”
“We all die if you fail Kallos, remember that.” Taneth retorted.
The four Kallan all climbed back into the ducting, quietly replacing the vent as they found it, they continued on their silent creeping towards the elevator stop. Checking to see the corridor below leading up to it was clear, one by one, they slowly dropped down into the corridor itself and sprinted into the elevator, lest anyone should see them.
The doors slowly closed around them, sealing them off from anyone who may chance upon them.
“Deck twenty one,” Kallos spoke into the elevator speaker.
“Destination confirmed,” came the reply from the elevators onboard speaker system, as it whisked them onto the next phase of their plan.
Once it arrived, the four Kallan warriors quickly exited and dove into a side room, it appeared to be some form of laundry area. There were strange uniforms and camouflaged clothing piled high on racks of shelves. An attendant whirled around quickly; startled, to face the four intruders. Before the woman even had time to react, two pulse rifle blasts tore a large bloodied hole straight through her chest and flung her into a row of shelving, before she collapsed, motionless.
“Go!” Taneth shouted, as they climbed up through the air circulation ducting again, and began to make their way across this new deck.
A klaxon began to wail loudly, easily audible through the thin aluminium ducting of the ventilation system. As they passed by another grille, they saw red flashing lights coat the rooms below in dark crimson, enemy soldiers and naval officers were running hither and thither. The four hidden Dracos all thought the same thing; they must have found the body of the guard.
They refrained from quickening their pace however, to the Dracos this was inconsequential, it would not affect their ability to hide, or creep around the ship.
“What the hell is going on! Who ordered a red alert?” Commander Fontain barked.
“The Dracos prisoners have escaped, there are reports that one guard is dead, two stab wounds to the chest. He has also been relieved of his weapons,” Maddox replied.
“Damn it! I want a full deck-by-deck search; find them, prepare to seal off the bridge.”
“Aye commander,” Maddox replied as he relayed Commander Fontain’s orders to the search teams fanning out through the other decks.
Despite the constant hurrying back and forth of the Eisenhower’s crew below, the Dracos continued on their inexorable, silent creep toward the weapons storage facility. Two guards were stationed at the door to the weapons room. Predictable, Kallos thought, these aliens whom he had come to learn were called the E.D. F from the deck plans he had studied, almost always prepared for a frontal assault.
The problem with that was, the Dracos almost never attacked from the front, not if it wasn’t advantageous to do so. He crawled onwards through the ducting, and sure enough there was another vent that provided access to the inside of the armoury, and their weapons.
The four of them gradually climbed down into this rather cramped room, the interior looked like a maze of weapon racks, ammunition cases, and dusty old grenade boxes.
Taneth switched his helmet to thermal imaging mode in an effort to see if the guards on the other side of the door had noticed anything untoward, they were stood still guarding the entrance as if nothing had happened, blissfully unaware that their staunch guard had utterly failed, he breathed a sigh of relief.
After a short period of searching, Kallos and the others found their confiscated weapons, there was a crate containing three eviscerator rifles, an eviscerator pistol, two silencers and their wristblades.
Kallos kitted himself with the eviscerator pistol and silencer option he had used on the surface, while the others all held eviscerator rifles. They attached the weapons to the backs of their suits and fixed their blades and silencers into position on their wrists. Kallos smiled, the second phase of their plan had been successful, now they were fully armed again, and ready. “The hunt must continue,” he said to the others.
“I’m okay,” Kathryn said as she struggled onward through the gloomy corridor, past the awful sight of the briefing room massacre. Just the gentle tap, tap, of her walking stick kept her company now, as they ventured onward through the dark confines.
They passed Dracos corpses that had fallen, looking like bizarre black mannequins in their environment suits, the red glow of their eye slits, so terrible in the darkness, now long since faded away.
She led them to a small room, its doors once again crumpled and full of blast marks, this was the auxiliary energy monitoring station, the place where they had first activated the station. “This is where it all began, perhaps it can be shut down from here too?”
Logameier was first into the room, eager to get to grips with the alien machinery, what he found dismayed him. Much of the delicate electronics and terminals were smashed in the fighting. He glanced over the various controls, studying them intently.
“I’ve had enough experience working on Solarian technology on the Liberty, this is crude, but not too dissimilar, in-fact I recognise many of the controls.”
Kathryn’s heart leapt with joy, “so you can shut it down, right?”
“Not by the looks of it; not from here anyway, Kathryn this is just an auxiliary control station you see, used to monitor the collider, and the flow of energy from the planets surface through it. In an emergency it can be used to re-initialise the base, which is likely what has happened. But it cannot be shut down from here; that can only be done from the primary control station, elsewhere.”
“I know where it is, I’ve been there, follow me,” Kathryn replied a little deflated, but anxious to get this all over with.
The team all filed out of the room, the crunch of broken glass from the various smashed displays echoing loudly underfoot.
Eventually they came to a set of giant blast doors, “I shut these behind me, I guess that alien scum must have opened them again,” Kathryn pointed out rather acidly.
The deep thrumming grew steadily louder once again, as the facility prepared to hurl another blast of energy far out into space.
The group continued onward, “see how this corridor is semi-circular, it must be following the walls of the aperture, we’re not far from the collider itself.” Logameier pointed out excitedly to Michael, to him, this was a voyage of discovery, learning about new and alien technology, the secrets it unlocked was all very fascinating.
“We don’t need a running commentary lieutenant,” Michael whispered, as he pointed to the forlorn figure of Kathryn trudging ever onward, reliving her own personal torture step-by-step.
Logameier looked at the sad figure, and a profound sense of embarrassment came over him, “sorry, sir.” Was
