“Open the port hatch.”
Kinraid pressed the port hatch release control on his console. The hatch depressurised, and then gradually opened.
“Go! Go! Go!” Nikolai shouted to his men, all of which had donned their breathing apparatus ready for the assault.
The twenty commandoes surged out from the port side of the Liberty, sprinting across the narrow stretch of open ground towards the smouldering wreckage.
The ground near to the landed ship erupted with a deafening explosion as a torpedo fired from orbit, ripped into it.
“Close the hatch, and get us airborne again, quickly!” Michael shouted his urgency, if they stayed too long on the ground they were a sitting duck for those shooting from orbit, and he didn’t feel like dying today.
The Liberty quickly picked up speed as it took off once again, kicking up another great cloud of dirt, dead foliage and various detritus, before climbing and racing through the atmosphere.
Weapons fire from the three ships orbiting above poured down towards it. Eldathar constantly jinked the ship in a zig-zag fashion to avoid the fusillade of laser lance fire and torpedoes streaking down toward the tiny ship.
“Eldathar, give it everything you’ve got!” Michael shouted as the viewscreen became littered with violet slashes of weapons fire, and the occasional blinding flash of a torpedo explosion.
“Logan, how are the shields?”
“Just about finished recharging after venting off the excess energy of that last pounding we took.”
“Shunt everything you can get your hands on to the shields, take it from non-essential systems, even environmental support if you have to!”
“Gotcha, captain” Logan worked furiously at his console, as he tried to divert every last scrap of energy he could muster into the shields.
The Liberty continued on its race through the atmosphere, scything towards its assailants, who were still busily pouring fire towards the small, but nimble warship.
“Is the main fusion cannon charged?”
“We’ll have full power back in fifteen seconds, captain.” Logan replied as he studied the power readout for the weapon from his console.
That should give us just enough time to get a single shot away, before we exit the atmosphere, Michael thought. The Dracos were about to get a very nasty surprise, the thought made his lips curl into an evil grin.
Several laser lance shots slammed into the ship, the rippling transparent graviton field deflected the worst of the energy, still the impacts themselves violently shook the vessel, it felt like the ship was being pitched about amid stormy seas. Michael held on as the vessel buffeted and shuddered under the withering barrage of fire from the three Dracos ships, slowly beginning to come into view ahead of it.
“Fusion cannon ready,” Logan announced.
“Target the closest ship; fire!”
The weapon roared its fury and an incandescent bright blue beam of utter destruction shot through what remained of the upper atmosphere, tearing into the Dracos ship beyond with such force, it spun the ship almost ninety degrees. Its shields flared violently under the sheer power of the impact; however it could not withstand the awesome fury of the Liberties fusion cannon for long. The shields withered and died as the beam ripped through the Vengeance of Kelmarroth’s command section, blasting it completely clear of its main hull. The ship listed, almost inverted, as though it were a boxer taking a knockout uppercut. Explosions ripped through the vessel's outer hull as gravity dragged it awkwardly down toward the atmosphere itself. Caught helplessly in the pull of the planet, several escape pods were visible jettisoning from the ship. Within the planet's upper atmosphere, its hull began to heat up to an intense fiery glow, before the entire vessel tore itself apart in a gigantic fireball.
Senergid watched the destruction of the Vengeance in stunned silence, as the tiny Liberty shot past once again.
“Head for one of the moons,” Michael said.
“They’ll only chase us again, so t’ey will.” Kinraid replied.
“This time, I’m counting on it,” Michael replied with a wide smile.
“Slingshot manoeuvre?”
“Exactly.”
10. The storming of the eye
The chattering sounds of the commandoes weapons fire rang out in the darkening dusk sky. Bravo team were taking cover around the wreckage of the destroyed Dracos shuttles.
“Keep your fire trained on them!” Razor shouted over the comm. link to his men as he took aim and opened fire again with his Armschlager, the heavy machine gun bucked and swayed in his hands as the high calibre rounds peppered the onrushing Dracos Kallan warriors, their reputation for being nimble fighters was well deserved, in fact, it was hard enough just to get a bead on them.
Nikolai’s team was pinned down by Dracos positions firing flurries of eviscerator discs at them.
“Tomahawk, Rapier, use you slingshots, see if you can get some fire on those Dracos pinning down alpha team.”
“You got it sarge!” came the response.
The rest of the team gave covering fire as the two heavy weapons specialists hefted their rocket launchers and lined up their shots. Tracer fire lit up the whole area as the two men fired their slingshot missile launchers almost simultaneously, the rockets roared through the air far faster than the eye could see, all that was visible was the briefest of faint white contrails from the dead aim missiles, as they shot past the closest Dracos warriors and detonated in two loud, powerful explosions that for an instant lit up the entire battlefield. A plume of smoke and earth was thrown up, and three Kallan were blasted high into the air, landing heavily in bloodied heaps nearby. Sensibly, the other Dracos kept their heads down.
“That’s the signal! Move it!” Vargev shouted as he, and the rest of alpha team broke cover and sprinted headlong toward the giant blade-like pylons of the facility itself.
Three eviscerator rounds sliced into Santiago, sending him toppling to the ground. Though not dead, his screams as the acid tipped discs began to dissolve his flesh was horrifying to hear.
“Keep moving!” the colonel shouted to his men, there was no time to go back for him and risk more men ending up the same way.
A Dracos warrior leapt from behind a small boulder as the commandoes sprinted past, performed a perfect overhead somersault in mid-air, and brought his wrist blades hard down, slicing straight through the neck of one of the sprinting commandoes, who flopped motionless to the ground. Nikolai returned the favour as he gunned down the Kallan warrior with a burst from his Armschlager, the muzzle flash lit up the Russians breathing mask in a fiery glow.
“Jesus Christ! They’re quick!” another commando said to Nikolai.
“Yeah, and we’re all dead unless we get into cover, and fast, so keep moving!”
The battle was proving to be a tightly contested affair, between the most highly trained troops the E.D. F possessed, and the lethal Dracos elite guard. The bright red glow emanating from the eye lenses of the Dracos battlehelms was deeply unnerving to the E.D. F troops, as all they could see were red eyes looking at them in the darkness.
The sun had all but set over the horizon, and nightfall was fast approaching, the E.D. F troops grew nervous, as they knew from the intelligence they had received, that these Dracos were exceptional fighters at night, and nigh on impossible to spot.
Razor’s bravo team was taking heavy fire ensconced in the smouldering ruins of the alien shuttles, two of his men were already dead, riddled with the incredibly sharp disc like ammunition, the stench of the acid consuming their flesh was nauseating, even through the filters of his breathing gear.
Another missile smashed into the Dracos positions, briefly lighting up the kill zone once again, a cloud of white smoke from Tomahawk’s position betrayed the firer. Razor himself, and his remaining men continued to pour fire into the Dracos, spent casings clattered to the ground from their Armschlagers, multiple muzzle flashes lit up in an almost strobe like effect in the gloom, though with their forms barely visible in the darkness, the commandoes were having a hard time finding actual targets.