He hit the ground hard; face first, his weapon skittered away across the floor. The thunderous footsteps came closer. Vargev, now winded was breathing hard desperately searching for some kind of weapon, anything he could use.
“ Move! Get out of there!” a desperate Michael shouted over to him.
It was too late; Alax had him. With one enormous hand hefted Vargev high into the air, and held him close to the aliens face, the colonel could feel his hot breath on his face, as those evil crimson eyes bored into his own, “you have troubled me enough, and now I will crush you like the bug you are.” Then flung him like a rag doll into the corrugated steel wall behind. The Russians body smashed against the hard cladding with such force his body went limp.
“ Bastard!” a desperate Michael shouted, as he let rip with his weapon. Blood and sweat trickled down the Liberty captains face.
A returned shot from Alax’s weapon made him dive for cover to his left as the shot barely missed him. He hid amongst the burning wreckage of the raider.
“ Face it Terran, you cannot defeat me, surrender and I’ll end this quickly.”
Michael was fast running out of options, there had to be something, anything he could use against this thing.
Then he spotted it; the damaged dominator. Its cockpit glass was shattered and the pilot was dead, but it looked reasonably operable. It was the only thing even capable of hurting this monstrosity.
The thump, thump of heavy footfalls were slowly getting nearer, he needed a distraction.
Vargev gradually came to, and quietly got back woozily to his feet, he was in agony, his ribs felt busted, he blinked as his vision slowly cleared and looked over to Michael, Alax was almost on top of him and he was keeping cover amongst the wreckage of the raider. He noticed he was pointing towards something, as though trying to tell him something, Nikolai looked to where he was pointing; the damaged dominator, and instantly knew what Michael was thinking.
“ Keep him busy,” he whispered hoping Michael could read his lips.
“ Easy for you to say,” the reply came.
Michael continued to play cat and mouse amongst the burning raider, Alax was slow and easily evaded. He was desperately tired though and wondered just how long he could keep it going.
Vargev removed the bloodied remains of the pilot from the dominator and strapped himself in, wiping the gore from the instruments. The machine was in fairly good condition, a status panel was showing damage to the frontal armour plates, and that the glass was indeed shattered making it open to the elements. Nevertheless, other than that it was okay. The weapons and hydraulic systems worked fine anyway.
He had never piloted a dominator in action before, and had only trained on one a handful of times. Slotting his arms into the weapon mounts, and his legs into the leg mounts. As he moved the machine accentuated his movements via the hydraulics. He managed to get the thing to roll onto its front so it could right itself, no mean feat considering this thing weighed nearly four tonnes.
With a noticeable whine, the machine managed to get back onto its legs again. Alax immediately turned towards this new threat.
“ Hey asshole, time to pick on someone your own size!” Vargev shouted through the smashed glass with an evil grin.
He clicked a trigger with his left hand, and the assault cannon unleashed a hail of rounds into the Krenaran, its energy field glowed brightly as it deflected the furious salvo, bullet holes riddled the roof and walls from the deflected rounds. The rapidly spinning barrels of the dominator’s assault cannon glowed red hot as Vargev pumped round after round in a hailstorm of bullets. The status display flashed a warning at him as it registered a danger of overheat on the weapon, Alax staggered backwards under the fusillade, digging in his metal claws on the hard concrete.
One of the bullets must have found its mark as the Krenarans shield generator crackled and sparked, its energy field shut down. However Vargevs weapon had overheated and jammed, damn it, he thought.
Alax looked at him and smiled an evil smile, calmly levelled his own weapon and fired. The shot tore into the assault cannon, blasting it apart in a hail of razor sharp shrapnel. The machine staggered backwards, and almost toppled over. Nikolai screamed in pain as his left hand burned, barely managing to keep the thing from falling.
He moved his legs, coaxing the machine into a clumsy parody of a jog. The dominator bore down on the equally huge Alax, the massive machine and the Krenaran overlord slammed into each other, rolling end over end, grappling and wrestling with one another.
Alax tried to shove his weapon through the cockpit glass in an effort to blast Vargev apart at point blank range, however with the hydraulic ram attached to the hard point on the other arm, Vargev repeatedly smashed aside the blow.
The Krenaran gripped and tore at the frontal armour, rending steel with his bare hand in a furious effort to get to Vargev, Alax became crazed, frothing at the mouth, his reptilian features contorting in pure fury. He roared his rage.
Ultimately, the dominator unable to withstand the furious assault fell backwards in a deafening crash, the Krenaran heaved itself on top of the machine, pounding down upon it with its fist, blow after blow smashing into it.
Lying face up and being violently thrown about by Alax’s assault, Vargev clicked another trigger in his right hand; Alax froze. Where a mere split second ago there was an enormous tussle raging, now there was serene calm.
Vargev had activated the hydraulic ram in the right hand weapon mount, when he pressed that trigger he released four thousand pounds per square inch of pressure, forcing the solid titanium tipped ram forward with such a force that it tore right through the Krenarans body.
The Russian simply laid there, totally exhausted and in extreme pain from his badly burned hand and broken ribs. The dominator torn and mangled from the machinations of Alax, damaged now beyond repair.
Michael hurried over to his position, and gently helped Vargev out of the battered machine, the Russian winced as his broken ribs sent shooting pains across his right side.
“ Well I guess we are even now.”
“ Even, about what?”
“ Well, I killed Axus and now you finished off Alax.”
“ The hell we are.” The big Russian coughed.
Michael pushed a button on his wrist comm. “Alexander to Med-bay we need a medic down here pronto.”
“ Received, we’ll get one to you now.” The voice of Kathryn replied.
As the two of them waited for the medic to arrive, Vargev spluttered, “listen.”
“ What for?” Michael replied, his brows furrowed, trying to decipher anything out of the ordinary.
“ The weapons fire has stopped,” Vargev replied as he favoured his ribs. “The battle must be over.”
“ Or all your men are dead, and those Krenaran bastards will come marching in here any moment.”
There was a faint buzzing sound coming from behind them, Michael looked around trying to locate the source of the strange sound. It slowly increased in its intensity, finally he realised it was coming from the fallen body of Alax. Small arcs of energy were discharging from his body in vivid flashes.
“ It’s some sort of self destruct, it must have activated when his heart stopped, we’ve got to get out here now!”
Michael supported the injured Vargev, as they tried to make a break for it, the Russian tried to run, however, whenever he did agonizing pains shot across his mid-section.
Michael pressed his wrist comm. again. “Michael to Liberty, transfer any power you have left to the gravitic engines, and get the hell out of here; fast!”
“ Copy, gotcha cap’n,” Kinraid replied.
The crippled Liberty slowly began to power up. On the battered bridge, Kinraid asked. “How much power do we actually have?”
“ We have ten percent reserve power remaining, nowhere near enough to break orbit, even if we were in any
