executing even his own people if they dared challenge him. In fact he had done so once, several years ago, a young second officer began to conjure up thoughts above his station. As commander of his ship Drax could not tolerate that, and so tore open the throat of the upstart on his own bridge, before tossing the body out of the nearest access hatch. It took quite some time to clean the gore afterwards, he recalled.
Drax and his people all shared the same mottled white and grey skin tone, an incredibly pale complexion. They looked remarkably like a shortened version of a Solarian, in that they were tall, and yet dainty, slim and awkward looking.
Although Drax was indeed not as tall as a typical Solarian, being seven feet in height. He was by no means short either, standing over six feet himself. He had large almond shaped eyes similar to Solarians, and predominantly black irises. Solarian eyes tended to give away a hint of calm serenity, his eyes were tinged with a kind of dark malevolence, a wickedness that despite his best efforts, he could not hide.
Making his way over to a small, yet wide hangar bay lined with two rows of assault landers facing each other two to a row, there was a wide aisle in the centre. The dark craft were tiny in comparison to his ship, but looked immense and powerful here. The ship was equipped with four of these in total, together with half a dozen attack shuttles, which he used from time to time to hunt down weaker prey. Seeing as he didn’t really know who this new enemy were, it was more prudent to use the landers.
Twenty of his finest Kallan warriors were stood in two perfectly formed rows ten men to a lander. They held their weapons silently aloft, their barrels pointing to the roof in a traditional Kallan salute as he neared. They were already wearing their black environment suits, and dark battlehelms, only ever reflecting the bright scarlet of their eye lenses. The Kallan were his races finest fighting men, feared across the galaxy for their ability to go unseen, and strike when least expected. They were famed for their brutality, savagery, and above all else for their love of torturing their prey.
Drax addressed the assembled men in his native tongue, “tonight will be a glorious hunt, against a new and unknown prey. We have never encountered this race before, and that makes them dangerous. Below us lies Auriga III, until recently a forgotten world. On this small isolated planet lies the remains of one of our people’s greatest achievements; the mythical eye of the Dracos, a facility capable of producing virtually unlimited energy.”
He paced up and down his men; each warrior’s stare fixed upon him in rapt attention. “A facility built when our people were at the peak of their power, and we, the chosen few shall re-claim it and restore the Dracos to their rightful place once again!”
The Kallan voiced their approval in a loud roar; thrusting their weapons forward in salute.
“Tonight the screams of the dying will fill our ears again!”
There was another wild roar before the men fell out, striding up inclined ramps attached to the underside of the landers. They had no need to strap themselves in for the flight to the surface, all Dracos environment suits were moderately magnetic, allowing them to cling to walls and ceilings in order to launch lethal surprise attacks. Thus in the lander, they sat perfectly still, securely clamped to the metallic seating and walls as the two craft powered up their primary Ion engines, coating the interior of the hangar bay in a bright green light. The hangar bay doors opened revealing a stunning vista of the starlit backdrop of deep space. The two craft gently arose from the floor of the hangar bay, their delicate landing gear slowly retracting inside their elongated bullet shaped fuselages. The ailerons on their angular, sickle like wings pitched the craft anti-clockwise so that they now faced the hangar bay doors themselves. With a deep ‘thoom’ the Ion engine of the craft increased power, and they quickly accelerated out of the hangar bay.
The two craft were not large, although they did share some features with old Earth military jet aircraft. Most notably the bullet shaped fuselages, and small winglets below the fully enclosed cockpit. That and the two huge tail fins which jutted out from the twin bulbous secondary engine pods mounted atop the main fuselage. There the similarity ended, as halfway along the fuselage, it widened noticeably, forming a type of bulge on its underside. This was where the Kallan were gathered, ready to burst forward from the boarding ramp at the front, and attack their prey.
The crafts main Ion engine was lit an intensely bright emerald green as it maneuvered toward the planet, the engine itself was nestled in-between the two giant engine pods. The most curious thing about these craft were their strange, forward swept sickle shaped wings, giving it the appearance of some kind of giant mechanized bat, made all the more appropriate by its dull black coating designed to make it all but invisible during night attacks, the Dracos’s favourite form of attack. At each wingtip, a vicious laser lance was mounted, often used by the pilot to clear a bloody path through the enemy, before offloading the troops contained within. The two small craft dove into the beige coloured atmosphere of Auriga III.
Kathryn looked up at Kalschacht with a hint of sadness on her normally gentle features, “we have to assume the Copernicus has been destroyed. Night is closing in, and our best shot is back inside the base.”
They carried the prone form of corporal Jankov in a portable stretcher with them.
It was the second night, Kathyn had barely slept all day, the mission should have been wrapped up hours ago, however despite how tired she was, she knew she had to keep going for the sake of the others.
Kalschacht turned to the other scientists, “Quickly, grab whatever we can use from the shuttle, we may only have a matter of a few minutes, if the Copernicus has been destroyed, they may know we are here also.”
The assembled group all began looting the craft, taking food supplies, water purification kits, anything of any use.
Kalschacht worked the communications console one last time, so that it would emit a continuous distress beacon, before the entire science team exited the shuttle and made their way as quickly as they could, toward the main hatch of the facility, carrying the wounded Jankov with them.
As they neared the hatch, on the horizon they could just about make out the faint forms of two black shapes descending towards them.
Rachthausen looked back to see them also, “everyone inside now!”
They barely made it inside the hatch, as the two craft swooped down over their position, intensely bright flashes of violet laser energy shot forth from the Dracos craft’s twin wingtip mounted laser lances, lighting up the whole area, and tore the grounded shuttle apart in a gigantic explosion, debris rained down around the immediate area.
Rachthausen was the last to make it inside, after making sure everyone else was safely within the structure. Then he himself dived underneath and closed the hatch, all he saw as he slammed the hatch shut were the fiery remains of the shuttle, billowing out into the night sky, he cursed to himself silently.
The assault landers both gently touched down nearby the flaming wreckage of the small craft, the boarding ramps quickly opened, their heavy ends slamming into the ground as the Kallan poured out of the craft, all donning their advanced black environment suits. Even Drax had changed into his own suit during the flight to the surface. Rarely did he get the chance to wear one, yet when he did, he savoured every moment.
The Dracos environment suits were a marvel of his peoples technology, constructed of a lightweight, yet immensely strong carbon fibre weave, it was wearable and also extremely tough. In addition to the advanced construction of the suit, it could be configured with additional accessories for each individual mission, Drax had opted for a set of razor sharp blades jutting outward from his left lower arm, so that he could make slashing attacks by simply swinging it. On his right wrist he had concealed a weapon favoured by many of the Dracos. A devastating weapon, known only as ‘the silencer’, it consisted of a tiny steel monofilament line attached to a spool that shot the line out at several thousand revolutions per minute through a small barrel. At the end of this line was a viciously sharp weighted metal spike, barely larger than his thumb, within the spike nestled four tiny barbs that flicked open once it passed through its target. Then all he had to do was press a small switch to retract the line, thereby tearing the barbs straight through the victim, causing immense pain and in many cases death, hence its macabre moniker, it was one of Drax’s favourite weapons.
In-case things got a little ugly, which he doubted they would, he carried a typical Dracos eviscerator pistol as a sidearm.
His men mainly carried eviscerator rifles, some wore wrist blades, others had equipped silencers like his. For now, they kept their main weapons attached to their suits via magnetic strips on the weapon casing, allowing it to be stored on the body. Many had them attached vertically across their backs for easy retrieval.
Drax switched his helmet to infra-red night-vision mode, so he could see better in the dark, not that he
