While his other unit were busily engaging the interlopers, Drax had found a new way to access the other floors. The lift shaft may have been destroyed, but the air circulation system wasn’t. Studying the plans once again, he found that the air circulation system was an elaborate network of tunnels to keep those underground breathing clean air, without the need to fill oxygen tanks from the surface.
It was remarkable how it worked, two giant vacuum pumps sucked in vast quantities of carbon dioxide from the planets atmosphere, and then chemically separated the carbon molecules from the oxygen ones, then pumped the oxygen into two gigantic storage vessels, located deep inside the facility. One provided oxygen for the science wing and the other provided it for the military wing. There was also a built in failsafe; that, in the event of one of the vacuum pumps failing for any reason, a series of valves could be opened along an emergency re-supply line, so that a single pump could supply oxygen to both tanks. The beauty of the system was that it was entirely computer controlled, it would have been revolutionary for its time, Drax thought.
However, if all else failed, and he could not eliminate the interlopers, he could simply shut down the air supply and let them all suffocate to death. He was not above this as a last resort, even if it denied him his ‘fun’.
He crawled up the wall and along the ceiling of the security check-in station for the floor, every level had one. Security was tight here; no wonder considering what the base produced, how important this place once was, and all the military resources contained within.
There was a notice etched into the wall, it informed the occupants that anyone arriving from the surface must first submit to a series of security checks. He shuddered to think what those ‘security checks’ might entail. The Dracos of three hundred years ago were a violent, angry race. Hunted throughout the galaxy and forced to live in underground cities like this one, hunted to damn near extinction. The ancestors built facilities like these on remote worlds, hoping to one day empower the Dracos race once again. These became known as the Halo worlds, and finding them was of the utmost importance to his people.
It was a shame the ancestors never quite realised their grand plan, Drax thought. Things would have been different. The Dracos were still a violent angry race, although now this violence and anger had been tempered into a love of torture, a delight in hearing the screams of any who dared to oppose us. We still lived in subterranean cities, and still longed for the glory days when we would burst forth into the galaxy once more, and dance to the screams of our enemies.
Drax had to admit though, that in reality the Dracos had become a tiny scared little people, so afraid of repeating the catastrophic events of the past that they rarely even stepped out from the safety of their under-cities. The ships of the Dracos fleet, while few in number were mainly concentrated in a region of space known only as ‘the veil’, a giant nebula full of gas and dust and strange cosmic interference that disrupted the strongest of navigational sensor systems, so that ships crossing the veil were effectively flying blind. They were easy prey for the Dracos ships, although Dracos vessels themselves almost never left the veil, for fear they would be detected and attacked.
The only reason his own ship had left, was to investigate the Aurigan system for potential halo worlds and then head straight back to the safety of the veil again. However, upon encountering that energy release, and realising it was Dracos in origin, as well as finding the strange alien vessel in orbit. His mission had suddenly changed, now here he was, hunting down these interlopers, these E.D. F whoever they were. He was confident that the planet would come under Dracos control once again. After all, this planet was now too important to ignore, the Dracos in the past had used concealment as their weapon of choice, and become so good at it that the galaxy had forgotten about them. Perhaps it was time to remind the galaxy the Dracos do still exist.
With a warm smile, he pushed his thoughts to the back of his mind and motioned for the rest of his unit to follow him into the air duct, situated in the centre of the security station’s ceiling.
Rachthausen, and the E.D. F troops with him raced down the corridor, the lights suddenly went out, pitching them all into pitch blackness once again. “Shit!” he cursed again, before re-lighting the flashlight still attached to the underside of his pulse rifle. Then he realised the scientists might not have flashlights attached to their weapons. He knew Kathryn did, but he wasn’t so sure about the others.
The four of them reached the raging firefight at the blast doors. It was obvious as Rachthausen cast his torch over the immediate area, the corridor walls were scorched with the impacts of pulse rifle fire.
The sergeant inadvertently kicked something, it squelched as his foot made contact with whatever it was. Casting his torch down to look at it, the sight made him sick to his stomach. It was the gore soaked, shredded body of private Silvain Laveaux, Laveaux was the youngest in his squad, barely eighteen years of age, he had been a private only three months after enlisting at a recruitment post on the colony world of Eidolon II, such a waste.
He heard movement close by, sweeping his weapon around to locate the source, he could see nothing, yet he could definitely hear something. A skittering noise, like that which rats made along the floor, but bigger, and heavier.
His heart rate began to quicken, pounding in his chest, where the hell were they. He heard another sound, “psst!”
The whistle of something shooting past his ear alarmed him, he swung his weapon around for a closer look. Just as three metallic discs slammed home into one of his men, one jutted out of his chest, the other sliced open his upper leg, and the third and final shot tore open the front of the man’s skull.
The trooper staggered back apace, the metal disc jutting out from his forehead, blood pouring down his ruined face. His eyes glazed over. A reactionary impulse made the dead on his feet trooper, depress the trigger on his weapon, which promptly opened fire. Bright blue flashes of light, illuminated their surroundings. Silhouetting the dark shapes that moved silently, unseen amongst them.
One of the Dracos warriors slumped to the floor with a dull thud, as the trooper miraculously managed to hit him, the flash of laser energy tore through his carbon fibre environment suit, and blasted open the aliens chest. The dead on his feet trooper also collapsed as his legs finally gave way from under him. He fell to the floor at the same time as the alien. His forehead and deep lacerations hissing and bubbling as the powerful acid went to work.
“Bastards!” Rachthausen roared as he opened fire upon the dark moving shapes, the other troopers did likewise, and suddenly the whole corridor was ablaze with the vivid flashes of weapons fire.
Three of the Dracos warriors fell, their bodies crumpled to the ground.
“Over here!” Thorsson yelled over the whirling firefight going on just ahead of him, he levelled his weapon and blasted apart the head of a Dracos just about to pounce on the sergeant.
With a swiftness that belied his size, Rachthausen scooped up the weapon from the fallen Dracos in front of him and dived into the auxiliary control room.
The other troopers though were caught out in the open, both Thorsson and Anderson were giving covering fire, one of the exposed men managed to dive inside the room to join them. Rachthausen was fighting like a man possessed, his pulse rifle in one hand, and a Dracos eviscerator rifle in the other. He had no idea how the thing worked, he simply pointed it and kept on shooting. Two more of the brutal aliens fell to the withering hail of weapons fire.
Thorsson screamed out in agony, as one of the scalpel like discs, ripped into his knee, slicing apart the kneecap, and causing him to topple over onto the hard floor.
The last two remaining Dracos slinked away out of sight, their scuttling slowly died away. Rachthausen and the other two troopers risked a glance around the badly damaged doorway. The other trooper hadn’t made it. His body lay convulsing on the floor, choking blood, and riddled with eviscerator rounds, before it stopped shaking and was still.
They had drove the Dracos back, but at a heavy price. Three of Rachthausen’s men lay dead upon the ground, and Thorsson was injured. Eight alien bodies lay in bloodied heaps, strewn across the corridor outside. The floor was almost slick with both human and alien blood; the only sound that remained was the faint hissing and bubbling of the slowly dissolving human corpses.
Thorsson screamed in pain once more as the acid went to work on his already badly injured knee, snapping Rachthausen out of his post battle reverie, the sickly stench from his burning flesh was horrible, and the sergeant had to refrain from the reflex to gag, as he tore off a strip of cloth from his fatigues.
“I need to do this quickly,” he said examining his fellow troopers wound by torchlight.
He folded over the fabric, so as to give him a little more time before it too disintegrated, and, using it as a makeshift glove gripped the metal disc, the fabric immediately began to sizzle and melt. Rachthausen pulled with all of his prodigious might, as Thorsson clenched his teeth so hard blood seeped out from his mouth. The sergeant’s arm yanked backwards, ripping the alien ammunition from Thorssons knee in the process.
The trooper screamed aloud in absolute agony, and very nearly collapsed unconscious from the pain.
Rachthausen flung the ammunition back out into the corridor in distain, although Thorsson’s knee was still coated in acid and was still burning badly. The stench of dissolving flesh, was almost more than those around him could bear, not just from Thorsson’s knee, but from the slowly dissolving corpses outside too.
The sergeant pulled out a small canteen of water from his webbing, “it will help to dilute the acid.”
Thorsson simply nodded a weak affirmative, beads of perspiration trickled down the wounded soldier’s face in his immense fight to stay conscious, and to ignore the searing agony he was in.
Gradually Rachthausen poured the contents of his water bottle over the soldiers torn, blood soaked knee, Thorsson screamed out again, it took the efforts of Anderson and another guard to restrain him, gradually the pain subsided to less agonizing levels.
“I can’t do any more here, we need to get you to Kathryn, she’ll be able to do something.”
Thorsson nodded, the other guard helped him slowly to his feet, and leaning heavily on both Rachthausen and the other soldier for support, the Dane painfully limped his way back down to the briefing hall.
Anderson closed the blast doors once again, with his free hand Rachthausen passed him the laser welder, and the lone soldier took great pains to make sure those doors were thoroughly sealed. Before picking up a clutch of fallen alien weapons and heading back to the briefing hall himself.
Rachthausen carried the injured form of Thorsson into the wide room, where Kathryn immediately came to tend to him.
Although the sergeant had succeeded in helping to dilute the acid, it was nowhere near enough and still continued to burn through the injured soldier’s now almost half collapsed knee. Kathryn fumbled around in the dark for the medical supplies brought down from the shuttle.
Private Anderson entered a short while later, the light from his flashlight played across the forms of those hunkered down within the hall, some were desperately tired and trying to get some sleep, unaware of the danger still approaching. Others, like Kathryn were awake and trying as best they could to keep going.
He dropped the small cache of weapons he was carrying, and made his way over to where Kathryn and Rachthausen were tending to the stricken Eric Thorsson.
Thorsson was a big Dane, he and Rachthausen had served together since just after the Krenaran war, although like the others in the sergeants squad, this was their first taste of real action, and what a taste it had been so far, a baptism of fire.
Thorsson was normally the heavy weapons specialist in the squad, and typically carried either an Armschlager forty-four calibre heavy machine gun, or a steiger industries grenade launcher, which he lovingly referred to as ‘the bucking Betty’. On this mission, no-one had expected to encounter serious resistance, so the whole squad was only lightly equipped with pulse rifles, a move that Rachthausen was now ruing.
All they had to do was to protect the scientists while they did their bit, and checked over the structure. The planet was uninhabited, so there was no threat to themselves or the scientists. Funny how in the blink of an eye all that can change, Rachthausen thought.
“Okay, I’ve managed to neutralise the acid with a saline based alkaline solution,” Kathryn said looking up at him, “but his knee is useless, the scapula has been completely melted away, the fluid sac within his knee joint has burst, and the ligaments are totally shredded, he will not be able to walk on that leg again. We’re looking at an amputation.”
With all the advances in medical science over the past decade, they were still unable to replace a simple knee joint, they could replace the entire leg easily, but not the joint itself.
Rachthausen looked down at Kathryn with a look of concern, whispering. “Things are beginning to get desperate, I’ve lost six of my men, two others are wounded and now unable to fight. That just leaves me and Andersson here left.”
At this news Kathryn could say nothing, except. “I am sorry, sorry I ever got us into this.”
“I just hope that help comes soon, otherwise there won’t be anyone left to rescue,” Rachthausen said.
“The scientists are all armed, we can fight,” Kathryn tried to reassure him. The sergeant looked around at the other scientists in the room, all huddled together in a group, talking amongst themselves with a torch in the centre.
“I hope that it will not be the case, though I fear it will. These aliens are not like anything the E.D. F has encountered before Kathryn. They are vicious, brutal, but not like the Krenarans were, who relied on brute strength. These guys attack from anywhere, from out of the shadows, they are damned near impossible to spot in the dark, and so far that appears to be their favourite method of attack. We are fighting on their terms at the moment.” He showed Kathryn one of the captured alien weapons, “this is what caused Thorsson’s injury, and the majority of the deaths out there. These aliens fight as if they are a living weapon, their wrists have blades attached, have weapons that can rip men’s throats to shreds in seconds, and they have these weapons that fire metal discs. They can crawl on walls and ceilings, and are some of the best night fighters I have ever seen. We are fully trained soldiers, and we are getting slaughtered by these guys, if they attack the scientists, it will be a very short fight.”
Kathryn looked into Rachthausens eyes, sensing his fear, but also sensing his stoic resolve to protect the scientists, and to protect her from harm at all costs, it felt comforting.
“I will protect you and the scientists Kathryn with my dying breath, that is my job.”
“Thank you,” she said earnestly, and tenderly embraced the sergeant, she was scared and feeling those giant arms wrap around her, she felt protected, like nothing on earth could hurt her. They gently parted from the embrace, her eyes searched the sergeant’s features, he smiled warmly.
“Wait a second,” Kalschacht exclaimed, sitting bolt upright as though hit with a cattle prod.
“What is it?” Kathryn asked.
“I’ve got it!” He shouted in elation as he walked towards them, “they have blinded us right? by shutting off the lights.”
“Yes,” Rachthausen replied, wondering just what the physicist was getting at.
“So why don’t we blind them. ”
“With what?” the sergeant replied, intrigued, but not quite understanding how it could be done.
“With the flares we brought down from the shuttle, we have a box of 6 here.”
“Show me,” Rachthausen said, now he knew the physicist was onto something.
“Even when the lights are on, they only ever give off a twilight glow, right?”
“Correct.”
“So they must be sensitive to bright light, they have shut the lights off specifically because it benefits them. They can see us easily, but we struggle to see them. When we let off a flare, the reverse happens, suddenly we are much more tolerant to bright light than they are, it will be they who are blinded.”
“Kalschacht, you are a genius.”
He let out a loud chuckle, “just Newton’s law in action, every action must have an equal and opposite reaction. “
Rachthausen took the box, quickly stuffing three of the flares into a pouch on his webbing. “Anderson, take these, if you hear the slightest hint of movement. Let one off.” He passed the box to him.
“Gotcha.”
The sergeant then turned to the small haul of weapons captured during the fighting, these things had been butchering his men, he studied them closely, observing their shape, the short barrel ended in an almost slit like opening. It had a small magazine, which appeared to look like a pronounced bump on the top of the weapon about three quarters the way toward the stock. With an effort he managed to unclip it by locating a securing latch just below.
The magazine itself stank of acid, he had to hold his nose away from the pungent fumes, the acid despite being devastating to organic tissue, was not eating into the ammunition, or any part of the weapon.
He figured that the weapon itself must be constructed of some unknown acid resistant metal, he found that the weapon was actually very simple compared to the ubiquitous E.D. F pulse rifle. The magazine was a simple gravity feed, although the ammunition was barely thicker than a human hair, how it didn’t just shatter upon hitting something, the sergeant had no idea.
The ammunition itself seemed to be dropped into a kind of guide rail within the firing chamber. A locating pin poked through a tiny hole in the centre of the lethally sharp, disc shaped projectile.
When Rachthausen pressed the trigger, he noticed that this pin spun incredibly fast, and then shot forward along a central groove in the chamber, the groove itself was deeper at the end that the beginning, allowing the locating pin, to disappear within it. The pin shot forward so fast, and spun so quickly, that Rachthausen barely even saw it once it fired.
He could only applaud the engineering of this thing, the guide rails were so smooth, and so slippery, it was as if they were Teflon coated, it offered no resistance to the ammunition travelling along it at all. The tolerances were so exact that it offered very little extraneous movement for the disc, so that it flew perfectly straight, and perfectly true, every time.
What’s more, that little ammunition pod could carry hundreds of these metal slivers inside, due to their hair like width. The only sound it made was the gentle click of the trigger, followed by a slight hum of the pin spinning inside, and then the whistle of the disc as it cut through the air.
It truly was a marvel of engineering simplicity, there were very few moving parts to go wrong, used very little power, and could carry a massive amount of ammunition, and hardly ever jammed to boot. Fortunately for them, it could be used against their enemies just as easily. He immediately called for Anderson to use this weapon against them, rather than their own.
Drax and his remaining men continued to scurry through the ventilation system, a gentle breeze flowed unceasingly through the cramped pipework, from the series of vacuum pumps above them through to the giant oxygen storage tanks located far below, and out through the rest of the complex.
A silent communication was coming through, audible only to him.
The A.R. uplink came to life again over his left eye, it was Raleon, one of the more inexperienced members of squad two.
“Commander,” Raleon said nervously, “we are falling back, we have taken eighty percent casualties, and have encountered heavy resistance on the third floor.”
“Calm yourself, Raleon. Your men have no doubt fought bravely, worthy of the Kallan name.”
“Err….yes, sir.”
Drax had already lost three of his own men so far, but to lose eight like that was inexcusable, he made a mental note to have them both executed for gross incompetence, once the hunt was over.
“Join up with us, we are on the second floor, science wing.”
“Yes sir,” Raleon said with renewed vigour.
With that the communication ceased, “young bloods,” Drax murmured to himself with distain as he continued to creep forward through the narrow pitch black tunnels, using his helmets nightvision mode to see.
He briefly switched to thermal view, there was nothing showing up within range, however they would have to search the floor anyway. These interlopers were cunning, as he had already found out.
Two more Dracos warcruisers had dropped out of plasma drive on the fringes of the Auriga system, they had picked up on the communication the Flame of Celthris had sent earlier. Their sleek, black, crescent shaped forms powered up as they inexorably ventured further into the system. Past the tiny, barren, frozen ice world of Auriga VII, the enormous gas giants of Auriga V and VI, Auriga VI being a grey-white in colour due to the vast amounts of dry ice that swirled amongst its kilometres thick gaseous soup.
Auriga IV was a runaway greenhouse world, its thick carbon dioxide atmosphere trapped heat given off by the Aurigan sun over millennia down on the surface, where over millions of years, the planet steadily increased in temperature. Today it had a mean surface temperature of one thousand, five hundred degrees Fahrenheit, volcanoes are constantly active on its surface, throwing out great clouds of dust and debris, and the incredibly hot searing winds can reach up to three hundred kilometres per hour. The whole planet was a hot house, a death trap to life.
Eventually as they explored further into the system, they found the orbiting form of the Flame of Celthris.
“Two ships approaching, sir, they are Dracos, identified as the Blade of Rhovanion, and the Vengeance of Kelmarroth.”
“Understood Halloth,” Kaelleth nodded toward his junior sensory officer, working at the sensory station within a recessed pulpit to his right.
So they brought the Blade of Rhovanion herself, this must be big news to attract the flagship of the Dracos fleet.
Another massive blast of bright orange energy shot past the two approaching warcruisers, bathing their dark, brooding forms in a gentle orange glow as they neared the Flame of Celthris. Their dark crescent shaped silhouettes and bladed fins along their flanks, almost made it look like some meeting between giant black spiders was taking place.
“Incoming communication,” Halloth announced.
“Let’s hear it.”
The features of a slightly aged Dracos filled the screen, his eyes black as jet, his skin pale, yet the figure possessed an aura of power, and a strict sternness that belied his withered appearance. It was Calvaris Senergid, the commander of the Blade of Rhovanion, and commander of the entire Dracos fleet.
Kaelleth visibly stiffened, it wasn’t every day he got to speak to a man with as legendary a name as Senergid. He was one of the very few, who could still remember the great betrayal three centuries ago, and travelling across the stars to a new future, eventually settling on the Dracos homeworld, Corvandris.
“Where is Drax?” Senergid asked.
“He has travelled to the surface with an assault team to clear out some interlopers that had infested the purity of the station, lord.” Kaeleth replied with considerable deference to the man who far outranked him.
“You are to be congratulated, the eye of the Dracos is one of the highest prized of all the halo worlds, it was this world that supplied the majority of the power needs for the fledgling Dracos empire three hundred years ago.”
“Thank you, sir.” Kaeleth replied, nodding respectfully once again, “If I may sir, why did our people abandon it?”
“At the time, we were reeling from the great betrayal, and were being hunted down and driven from planet-to-planet. The enemy were merciless, they would capture and destroy our fleets, blast our planets from orbit. We teetered on the edge of being wiped from the face of the galaxy.” Senergid’s face gave the expression that he relived those horrible times from when he was a child, whenever he spoke of the betrayal. “It was during one of these attacks when we were forced to abandon the planet. The facility was shut down, and the few remaining Dracos ships passed through the veil and found Corvandris. Wherever since, we have been quietly biding our time and rebuilding our strength.” Senergid paused to inhale a raspy, wheezing breath. “Until now myself, and the few Dracos still living who can remember back to those days had simply forgotten the planet, lost in the fog of everyday survival. We did not wish to reclaim a new world so soon anyway, as we were a badly depleted people, and if we left the safety of the veil to re-occupy the planet, we might alert our enemies to our presence. It was deemed too great a risk, until it violently reactivated two days ago.”
“Do you think that we are strong enough to occupy the planet now?” Kaeleth asked.
“I believe that the time has come upon us to re-claim the halo worlds, yes.”
That reply sent a shudder of excitement through Kaeleth.