seeing the badly damaged carrier, converged upon it, and mercilessly cut it to pieces with several more fusion cannon hits.
Michael looked upon his debris scattered, smashed bridge, taking in the forms of several mangled E.D. F and Solarian crew members lying motionless on the floor; his heart weighed heavy in his chest as he grieved for them immensely, his head felt fuzzy from the heat and the pain of being thrown around from the torpedo impact.
Since the crew of the Liberty was such a small one, it was like everyone was a friend, and everyone knew everybody else onboard. Michael didn’t have the luxury of letting his grief show however, he was in command. And right now they were in desperate trouble, the grief would have to come later.
Logan slowly picked himself up, dusting off his blackened, soot stained uniform. Kinraid slowly regained consciousness and woozily got to his feet as well, his forehead sported a nasty gash from slamming into the console earlier, which bled down the side of his face and onto his uniform.
Michael looked down at the prone form of Eldathar, lying motionless just a few feet from his position at the pilot’s chair. Kinraid gradually managed to pick his way through the debris to check over the Solarian, he had been taught basic first aid at the E.D. F officer training centre on Delta base, although he hadn’t the faintest idea of Solarian physiology.
He was breathing, but only very shallow, his Solarian officers uniform was torn in several places revealing his blue tinged skin; a viscous blue-ish green blood seeped out of deep cuts and scrapes on the exposed parts of his body.
An emergency damage control team managed to scrabble their way onto the damaged bridge, and began to put out the electrical fires and secured some of the damaged, sparking conduits. The lingering smoke slowly managed to clear as the emergency environmental controls began to take over again, much to Michael’s relief.
“ What’s our status?” He asked rubbing his throbbing head.
Logan made his way over to one of the still functioning internal diagnostic terminals. “Reactive hull armour is down, starboard torpedo launcher is completely destroyed which has left a large breach on decks 2 and 3. We also have some structural damage on deck 4, heavy casualties have been reported; we’re lucky it’s not worse sir.”
Michael pressed his wrist comm. “Alexander to sickbay, we have wounded on the bridge.”
“ Received, we have a medic team on its way to you now,” the familiar voice of Ensign Kathryn Jacobs, the chief medical officer onboard replied.
The small, rather limited sickbay was littered with the wounded, dead and dying. She had been working frenetically to help those most in need. Her long dark locks were bedraggled and knotted, sweat trickled down her gentle youthful features, her bloodstained uniform testament to her work. She quickly tended to a man who had been working in engineering when a backup conduit supplying ionic energy to the starboard turning thruster ruptured and exploded next to where he was standing. His body had received eighty percent burns and most likely would not survive, despite her best efforts.
Passing a hand held E.E. G machine over the body, Kathryn read the readout. It was not good, heart rate was dropping and breathing was getting shallower. She gave the man some adrenaline, to bring his heart rate back up, and his breathing slowly returned to normal.
She had no choice but to use the as yet experimental dermal regeneration booth, or risk losing him again. Asking an orderly to help her with the man’s stretcher so she could lay him down inside the booth, which closely resembled that of an old earth C.A. T scanner. She removed his clothes, so that he was now completely naked, which was required for the regeneration effect.
A large scanner passed slowly over the injured man’s body and took detailed readings of where the burns were located and how severe. Then another oval shaped device made a pass, barely millimetres from the body itself, coating it with thousands of microscopic stem cells, once this device had made its sweep, a third larger device made a slow pass across the body repeatedly firing very low power electrical impulses at these stem cells. Slowly they began to take on the form of new skin cells; literally growing new skin over the burnt, damaged tissue. The man would need to stay in the booth for several hours yet to encourage the stem cells to grow.
Two medical interns, Crewmen Booth and Mason arrived on the bridge, other than Jacobs they were some of the most experienced medical staff on the ship. Although the medical staff was only five strong fully manned, the other three were inundated in sickbay.
They shook their heads when they came upon the unconscious form of Eldathar, pulled out a foldout stretcher they were carrying, and carried him off to sickbay. A quiet sadness welled up inside Michael as the Solarian was carried away, Eldathar was far and away the best pilot he had, and one of the best in the fleet, his cheery personality was infectious and he dearly hoped he would recover, he considered the Solarian one of his closest friends. A few minutes later the medic team returned, checked over the other bodies and finally turned to Kinraid’s head wound.
Mason placed a synth flesh bandage on it and said, “you should be fine now commander.”
“ Thanks.”
“ Ensign Hawkins to the bridge,” Michael spoke into the internal comm.
Several minutes later, Ensign Jeffrey Hawkins arrived on the bridge, he was the relief pilot onboard, and took the place of the injured Eldathar. Michael had nothing against the guy, but he didn’t really trust him, probably due to the fact that he was absolutely green, a raw recruit, straight out of the pilot training centre on Delta alpha base. And in these circumstances you could do with an experienced pilot you could trust to fly you out of a tight spot. He just hoped Mr. Hawkins was up to the task.
“ We’ve got another problem cap’n,” Kinraid announced turning back to his flickering screen.
Why is nothing ever easy anymore, Michael thought with a depressed sigh.
Kinraid brought it up on the viewer, the shape of two stealth ships were rapidly closing down on their position. The Liberty had managed to drift away from the main battle. The bright streaks of weapons fire and flashes of explosions were still clearly visible in the distance.
“ Head for the planet,” Michael commanded, he prayed the damaged Liberty would hold together through the entry into the atmosphere of Gamma IV.
“ Sir…the Hermes,” Kinraid said as he looked at the viewer, it zoomed in to depict the massive carrier.
The gigantic wedge shaped ship was ablaze, multiple torpedo impacts had smashed into its superstructure, and it was listing badly. Giant Explosions erupted, bursting apart sections of its elongated triangular hull in great gouts of flame.
“ There’s nothing we can do for her now,” Michael said sadly.
The pursuing stealth ships continued to close on the Liberty.
7. Liberty down
Nikolai Vargev was busily putting the finishing touches to his newly reformed defences. Dusk was beginning to set in, and he knew the Krenarans would resume their attacks soon.
The engineers were already busily repairing the multitude of vehicles damaged over the course of the fighting. Everyone was blissfully unaware however of the huge battle still raging high above the planet.
There were a couple of things Vargev needed to attend to before the inevitable attacks resumed. Heading over to one of the temporary repair bays the engineers had rigged up in one of the vast tank factories. Nikolai wanted to meet the man who piloted that dominator which defended the breach so bravely the night before. He asked one of the guards, who pointed to one of the assault walkers which was awaiting repairs at the far end of the repair bay.
Two engineers were busily welding together some of the frontal armour plating damaged in the attacks. Its cracked cockpit glass had been replaced with one from another unsalvageable dominator.
Standing next to the battered walker, overseeing the repairs with his back towards Nikolai, a lone man was stood. Vargev made his way over to the man who was a little startled by the colonel’s presence.
Quickly turning on his heel, he saluted, which Vargev dutifully returned. The man was only young, perhaps in his early twenties and possessing of a thick mane of dark brown hair.
“ Are you the man who piloted that dominator defending the breach last night?” He said pointing towards the mammoth war machine.
