“Get ready to run,” he said as he pulled the pin from the affixed grenade.
“Run!” he shouted as he sprinted away from the door, Kathryn ran with him, they had just four seconds before the grenade went off. There was an almighty explosion as the explosive detonated. Echoing down the entire length of the dark corridor, Drax heard the faint blast even from where he was standing.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he whispered maniacally, as he clambered back inside the air ducting, he was much smarter than to risk the wide open corridor.
Sergeant Rachthausen checked over the weld line in the light given off by the flare, luckily for them Anderson was a far better soldier than a welder, and it had cracked under the immense pressure of the exploding grenade.
Kathryn desperately pressed at the door control, just wanting to get out of there, get out of this nightmare, although she felt guilty about leaving the others behind. She had understood Rachthausen’s decision in the end, if they stayed, they would have wound up dead too. Finally the door opened, and the two of them made their way through, pressing the control to close the giant doors behind them. They were free from Drax’s clutches for now.
Michael was studying a computer enhanced representation of the ship that attacked the Copernicus, it definitely bore more than a passing resemblance to a Solarian ship, although the Solarian ships looked sleeker, modern, and ultra-sophisticated. This too looked sleek and sophisticated, but not quite as modern, almost as if it was a throwback to an outdated design, a precursor to what the Solarians now have. He supposed that being constantly attacked, always on the move, then effectively disappearing for three hundred years. The Dracos no longer had the resources or the access to technology that the Solarians enjoy. He also wondered whether just plain jealousy was a part of the enmity the Dracos showed toward the Solarians. He contemplated just how old the Dracos ships really were, and how they had managed to survive for so long, alone, isolated from the rest of the galaxy.
Saying that; humanity was the same up until five years ago, blissful in ignorance, not knowing who or what surrounded them; the Krenaran war had changed all that. Changed humanities view of themselves, instead of being this one race carving out a small part of the galaxy to call their own, master of all they surveyed. They learned that they were, in fact, just one of many doing the exact same thing, a small backwater people just trying to get along. This more than anything finally broke through mankind’s arrogance, and as a people, they had come to appreciate just how humble they really were.
“One weird lookin’ ship eh, cap’n.” Commander Quinn Kinraid said as he stood over him.
“It has some design similarities with conventional Solarian shipping, but that’s about it.”
“You’ve bin’ staring at’ tat picture fur’ five minutes, is everythin’ alright?” Kinraid asked with a hint of concern to his voice.
“Everything is fine, commander, I’ve just been thinking, that’s all.”
“Well don’t you go givin’ yerself a hernia now Michael,” the Irishman said with a mischievous smile.
“I wonder Quinn, if E.O.C. A ever had a civil war, and the E.D. F was forced to fight itself, would we be able to survive it like the Solarians did?”
“Pray it’ll never happen, sir.”
“I hope so Quinn.”
“Asteroid field coming up ahead, captain.” Eldathar announced from his position.
Michael returned to his chair, “drop us out of plasma drive, slow to sub-light speed.”
“Slow to sub-light, aye.” The Solarian pilot confirmed.
A gigantic bright white flash of light opened up in the darkness of space, heralding the Liberties exit from plasma drive, the ship slowly glided at sub-light velocity.
“We’re approachin’ the outer dust clouds,” Kinraid announced.
“Slow to one half sub-light speed, and put it up on the viewer.”
The viewscreen shimmered into life, displaying the wide asteroid field ahead of them. It was some three light years across and two wide, one of the biggest in the sector.
“This is the Van Aiken belt,” Michael knew without even looking, the Krenarans famously used it as a hidden staging post, before going on to devastate the Malthus colony during the war.
“Can’t we go around it?” Logan Jones asked.
“If we do, we’ll have to detour another seven light years to skirt it, the scientists may not have that long,” Michael replied.
They had no choice but to go through it, the thing is, Michael thought. There were rumours that the Krenarans had mined this field.
“Cut all power, except for minimal power to the thrusters and main engine, activate the graviton shields, and take us in; slowly.”
Eldathar gently leaned forward on the throttle arm as consoles all around the bridge faded slowly to black, all except the emergency running lights winked out, the fusion cannon was powered down, even the ships main engine died down to a shadow of its normal brightness.
Michael prayed that the old re-programmed Krenaran IFF codes, the Solarians changed when they upgraded the Liberty might still be enough to fool the mines into thinking she was on the same side. Although all the extra upgrades she was carrying might prove otherwise, it would be touch and go.
The ship slowly crept forward through the thin veil of dust clouds, it was like a fog made up of all the tiny chips and slivers of rock broken free from the larger asteroids colliding with one another, constantly pulverised over millions of years into a fine dust. Gravity held the cloud in place, so that it formed a kind of long meandering fringe around the edge of the field. The Liberty gradually emerged through the dust cloud blocking the view of the larger and infinitely more dangerous obstacles beyond.
Gigantic asteroids were floating haphazardly with smaller ones, making it difficult for Eldathar to plot a steady course through; still the Solarian persevered.
He deftly guided the ship around a particularly large, crater strewn space rock, it was large enough to be classified as a planetoid. Michael witnessed several scorch marks, and what resembled metallic hull fragments clustered around a small impact area, he guessed the pirates who tried to gain a foothold after the Krenaran war ended, didn’t figure on the mines strewn amongst the asteroids.
The Liberty glided ever deeper inside the field, flying in-between two other space rocks, it was an incredibly tight squeeze, the audio warning of the collision detector blared from Eldathars console in alarm. The Solarian ignored the klaxon wailing at him, knowing the exact dimensions of the ship he was flying to the millimetre. He knew better than anyone else, which places the Liberty could go, and which ones it couldn’t. The experience he had accumulated over the past five years of flying the vessel, and several hundred years of flying other craft, had told him the ship would get through.
What he hadn’t counted on however, was the two mines, heading straight for them.
The Liberty had been lucky so far, it had already glided past half a dozen of them, no doubt fooled by the old Krenaran IFF signature, however these two were not so easily shaken off. The mines had detected the Liberty and were now picking up speed.
“Incoming mines, we ‘ave two of the buggers coming in fast, impact in twenny seconds!” Kinraid shouted out in alarm.
“Ready a salvo of torpedoes, lock onto the mines and fire!” Michael gnashed his teeth, it would be close, Lieutenant Logan Jones mashed the button on his gunnery console.
“Torpedoes away.”
A bright flash erupted from the Liberties twin upper launchers, heralding the launch of the two high energy torpedoes, tracking and now hurtling straight for the incoming mines, their sophisticated targeting systems quickly locked on to the targets, and they raced headlong toward it.