The gunfire outside instantly alerted those sheltering within the briefing hall, they rushed to grab their weapons. There was shouting, screaming, and widespread panic at the horror they had witnessed at Gomez’s decapitation.
The two Kallan who had just slaughtered Gomez and Broadhurst, now took up positions either side of the doorway, effectively laying siege to the room, they released their eviscerator rifles magnetically attached to their backs.
Rachthausen hefted his own captured Dracos eviscerator in response, and quickly took cover amongst a small row of chairs.
The other scientists were all trading fire with the two Dracos looming either side of the doorway. Though not as highly trained as an E.D. F soldier they were poor shots, many simply blasting away in their fright. The energy blasts slammed into the walls surrounding the door, and the far side of the corridor beyond. Sparks showered from the small impact craters, the wall was quickly becoming pock marked as the untrained scientists blasted away.
Corporal Jankov, unable to see due to the intensely bright energy release that had scorched his eyes, attempted to shout over the din, “what’s happening!”
Anderson was also busily blasting away at the two attackers who had them pinned inside the room, completely oblivious to the small air circulation vent opening behind him, one of the Dracos warriors slowly emerged out of his hiding place and crept along the ceiling.
“Shit, there are more of them!” Thorsson shouted at the top of his voice, although he couldn’t move due to his ravaged knee, he could see perfectly well what was happening. Quickly gripping his pulse rifle next to where he was propped, he levelled it and opened fire. Several laser energy pulses blasted open the chest armour of the Dracos’s environment suit, while the last one tore away half of its head, the warrior fell from the ceiling with a dull, sickeningly wet crack next to Anderson. Who spun around to be confronted with yet more Dracos emerging from their hiding place. Just as he brought his weapon up to bear, an eviscerator disc fired from those still at the doors, sliced deep into the back of his head with a spray of blood and bone matter. He began frothing at the mouth, his grip slowly relaxed, and his weapon clattered to the ground, before slumping face first onto the smooth, deep grey floor himself.
“Bastards!” Thorsson screamed out at the top of his voice at the loss of his friend, opening fire again and managing to dislodge another of the black suited monstrosities from the ceiling, the laser pulses blasted its head apart in a great gout of blood, brain matter and black helmet fragments, the Dracos toppled lazily to the floor, gore oozing out from the headless corpse.
Two lethally sharp eviscerator discs sliced into the abdomen, and upper chest of the immobile Thorsson, his entire body shuddered under the impacts of the two simultaneous strikes, then laid still, a thin dribble of blood spewed forth from his mouth, and small crimson patches began to form through his ragged and torn fatigues. Cold sightless eyes looked upon the dark form of two Dracos warriors dropping from the ceiling onto their prey.
Drax and the other surviving Kallan warrior were amongst them now, and the whirlwind of bloodshed began in earnest, with acrobatic leaps and bounds wrist blades whipped and slashed out, eviscerator discs sliced through flesh and bone. The Kallan whooped and revelled in the gore fest, this was what they had been looking forward to.
“We have to get out of here!” Rachthausen shouted to a terrified Kathryn, caught up in the bloodletting.
“I can’t just leave them to die!”
There was no time to argue, the burly sergeant leapt over the chairs, barely missing a swipe from a passing Dracos wrist blade. Hefted Kathryn over his shoulder, and with his free arm lit one of the flares, bathing the room in an intensely bright red light.
Drax and the other Kallan in the room flinched and recoiled under the onslaught of the light burning at their sensitive eyes, he dived into a shadow provided by a bank of chairs further up the incline.
Holding the flare aloft Rachthausen sprinted through the room, over the torn and shredded bodies of scientists, soldiers and Dracos alike. The two at the doorway shuddered and retreated away from the intensity of the light as the sergeant forced his way through carrying Kathryn, his stolen eviscerator rifle swung loosely across his back. One of the Dracos behind him took a swipe, the blade bit deep into the flesh of the sergeant’s upper arm; he winced and flinched under the pain, almost dropping Kathryn. Whirling around, he held the flare aloft, blinding the alien warrior. Rachthausen fled down the corridor with the still protesting Kathryn, the red light illuminating his path as he went.
The briefing room had been turned into a scene from hell, a gore streaked bloodbath, bodies of dead and dying scientists lay scattered across the floor; their groans, like a sweet symphony to the Dracos commander, who stood in the centre proudly.
Severed limbs and body parts lay like bloody, grisly trophies around the smooth floor, their inferior blood tainted this place, Drax thought. One of the scientists was giving a spirited effort in trying to crawl away to safety. The primitive environment suit that he was wearing was sopping wet with blood seeping out through a long, deep slice to his back, he whimpered pitifully with each and every movement due to the excruciating pain the laceration was causing him.
The Dracos commander decided to have a little fun, and with a wide grin, deftly picked his way over the fallen corpses to where this strange creature crawled in a desperate bid to escape the slaughterhouse.
He nonchalantly kicked the scientist in the ribs, unimpressed. The body sprawled across the floor, a loud whimper made the Dracos smile, now this was entertainment, he thought. He allowed the creature to continue on its hopeless bid for safety, before viciously kicking it a second time, a weak but nevertheless audible gasp of pain, emerged from its lips, Drax laughed in delight.
“Such pitiful creatures, they are squidgy, and die easily.”
He picked up the struggling scientist by the open wound slashed across its back, causing him to scream out in intense pain, almost losing consciousness altogether. This sent waves of delight through the Dracos commander. Before he placed the barrel of his eviscerator pistol against the scientists dark haired head, and calmly pressed the trigger. A resounding crack echoed through the now silent room, as the disc sliced through Dieter Kalschacht’s skull, then flung the blood soaked body aside indifferently.
“See, easily killed.”
The other remaining Kallan warriors stood and watched appreciatively at a master at work, before Drax turned his weapon on them, and gunned all three of them down in cold blood also, their bodies gently slumped to the floor just ahead of him.
Two of the prey creatures had escaped, and he was going to be the one to finish this hunt personally.
Rachthausen and Kathryn fled toward the blast doors, once there though, they had realised their mistake. In their hurry to escape the butchery, they had forgotten that private Anderson had earlier welded the doors shut, if they could not find a way though, those alien warriors would catch them for sure.
“Shit! we’re trapped down here.” The built up desperation and frustration plainly evident in Rachthausens voice.
“There has to be something we can do?” Kathryn panted as she tried to regain her breath, she risked a look back and was reassured that nothing was following them, at least nothing she could see anyway.
There was one last thing Rachthausen could try, he pulled out the final grenade from his webbing and with some insulation tape attached it to the blast door itself, right over the scorch marks of the weld that Anderson had made. The blast of the grenade might just be enough to crack the weld and get the doors to open, it was a long shot, but the only one they had.