In that brief instant however, he felt no pain, perhaps he was well beyond pain. He looked up at the black figures crawling their way along the corridor walls to either side and above him with a sense of incredulity, his mind could not comprehend what he was witnessing.
He could hear the muffled shouts of his fellow guardsmen calling out to him in desperation, they were muted as though he had cotton wool in his ears as he grew weaker. Then his head jerked sharply to the side as it was pierced by what felt like a bullet. The spike pierced straight through his neck and lodged through the other side, the wickedly sharp barbs pierced his skin.
He tried to breath, yet couldn’t for some strange reason, gasping and spluttering for breath, trying to look at who had done this to him. On the wall a single alien warrior remained, the scarlet glow from the vision slits in his battlehelm regarded him with what he could only describe as an evil delight. His arm was outstretched revealing the tiny line attached to the device, the wire extended out through Laveaux’s neck.
Gurgling, coughing, spluttering for breath and bleeding profusely, the private nevertheless made one last vain attempt to bring his weapon to bear, to summon the strength to kill his adversary. The strength was gone, the pulse rifle clattered noisily to the ground.
The black alien, its knees and lower legs still attached to the wall made a single, silent gesture as it watched the slowly dying human. He put his finger to his lips and whispered a “shhh…..” then retracted the silencer. The spike ripped back through Laveaux’s throat with such speed and such force it tore his ruined trachea clean away in a spray of crimson froth, the French private silently collapsed into a pool of his own blood.
Thorsson and Andersson were putting up an immense fight themselves, having taken cover either side of the doors to the auxiliary control room, they were outnumbered, outgunned, and couldn’t get to Laveaux. Flashes of bright blue pulse rifle fire lit up the end of the corridor, another alien was blasted off the wall from the main corridor opposite them.
Sparks sprayed out as the Dracos returned fire, their lethally sharp discs lodging themselves into the door surrounds, already two dozen were jutting out from the small expanse of metallic wall.
“Thorsson to Rachthausen, we are in deep shit here sarge, the aliens have breached the doors, we are pinned down, taking heavy fire, Laveaux is already dead, we need reinforcing right now!” He shouted into his comm. unit over the din of the battle raging ahead of him.
“Shit!” Rachthausen shouted as he heard the message, “we’re on our way.” He immediately readied his weapon and sprinted towards the other end of the floor, at least there was some good fortune in this, his men had stayed alive this time; though if they got to Kathryn and the scientists before he did, he would never forgive himself.
6. Darkness descending.
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 c
ould 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.”
E.D.F Chronicles : Eye of the Dracos Page 7
