Razor knelt beside a bent, twisted, blackened panel amongst the wreckage of the Dracos landers. Several eviscerator rounds carved tiny furrows into it as they skittered off the other side, he dug deep inside a pouch on his webbing as the rest of the squad all continued to rake the Dracos with heavy calibre slugs.
He pulled out a flare gun, popped a flare canister into it, pointed the device skywards, and pulled the trigger, just as an eviscerator round whistled through the air and sliced his hand off at the wrist. His severed hand simply plummeted gently to the floor, still grasping the flare gun.
Razor, in shock simply stared at the bloody stump that had been his right hand, blood spurted out from the wound, running freely down his arm, then he screamed out in acute agony as the acid set to its work, searing its way through his flesh.
The flare had cast the Dracos into shadow, making them much easier to see, and instantly began causing immense pain to their delicate eyesight. E.D. F troops from both teams pressed their attack, a cacophony of machine gun fire rang out even louder than before, as dozens of the dark Kallan warriors were scythed down by the merciless gunfire, mixed with the occasional grenade tossed at them for good measure, blasting apart in great plumes of earth and smoke. The E.D. F troops had them in their sights now.
The Dracos themselves, now taking heavy losses, abandoned their defence of the facility and fell back towards the safety of the pylons themselves, and straight into the gun sights of Nikolai’s team; who tore through them ruthlessly. The high calibre rounds punched great holes into the Dracos’s black armour, hurling them to the floor, where they lay convulsing for a short time, before laying still.
Although the Dracos defenders were now being cut to ribbons by the commandoes rapid, unceasing heavy gunfire, they were still making a good fist of trying to fight back, despite the pain the bright light of the flare was inflicting upon them. Casualties amongst the outnumbered commandoes were mounting too. Particularly amongst Nikolai’s exposed team, six of which now lay in bloodied heaps upon the ground their bodies torn and shredded by the lethally sharp eviscerator discs, alongside dozens of Dracos corpses, riddled with fist sized bullet holes.
Nikolai and his few remaining men had finally made it to the safety of the giant pylons and took cover amongst them. Mentally the big Russian cursed, if he’d known it was going to this fierce, he’d have brought more men, he thought as another eviscerator disc rattled off the pylon he was taking cover behind.
The gunfire had gradually lessened, the remaining Dracos finally surrendered, only four remained out of forty, they had fought almost to the death to protect this place. Their comrade’s torn; bullet-ridden bodies littered the whole area. Smoke hung like a pall in the cool night air from the blast craters caused by missile impacts and grenade explosions, as well as the still smouldering wreckage of the Dracos landers.
The battle had lasted just forty minutes, a short yet bloody affair, nine of the twenty E.D. F commandoes were either wounded or killed, almost fifty percent casualties. The Dracos Kallan warriors had indeed earned their fearsome reputation in the eyes of their enemies who had fought against them that day.
“Bravo team form up on me,” Nikolai said into the mic. attachment inside his breathing gear, as he and the depleted troops of alpha team, searched the surface of the gigantic installation.
Eventually they found the main entry hatch, and studied it for a moment, Vargev managed to uncover a small dirt encrusted access panel. He pressed what looked like the hatch release control to no avail, the colonel harrumphed as he squatted near to the hatch.
“Looks like it’s sealed,” one of the younger, more junior commandoes accompanying him said.
“Thank you for pointing out the perfectly fucking obvious!”
“Sorry, sir.”
Nikolai rummaged through one of the larger pouches within his webbing, near to his hip, and eventually produced a small, cigarette box sized bar of semtex. He unwrapped the plastic explosive, before pulling off a thumb sized amount, rolled it between his fingers into a thick sausage shape, and pressed it hard against the centre of the hatch. He took out a small pen-like radio blasting cap from inside the packet and stuffed it deep inside the explosive, then held the thumb trigger detonator in his hand.
“Back up a few feet!” he said as took a few steps backward.
The rest of his squad complied and slowly backed away a short distance, just as the remainder of bravo team, complete with their wounded squad leader; Razor, joined them. His severed hand covered in bloodied bandages. Nikolai pressed the trigger, instantly a deafening explosion tore the hatch completely apart in a cloud of billowing white smoke.
Drax heard the almighty explosion from the far side of the facility as a faint ‘thud,’ he wondered if it was the other Dracos, come to storm the facility. Still he could not let things distract him from his final, ultimate kill. He would take his time with this one, have a little fun with it, before killing it slowly. He switched his battlehelm to thermal imaging mode, picking up the bright colours of his quarries body heat thirty metres away. It was time to end the hunt, he would be, at last, victorious.
The outline of her body showed her to be female, lacking the physical strength that the males of this strange species possessed; it would make for a poor finale to the hunt. Perhaps he had already experienced the great climax, in combat with that tall male earlier, he was strong and had proven to be a stern test, yet in the end, as in all things, he had overcome him.
Drax silently, carefully pursued his prey through the dark passageways of the facility, she had stopped to rest in an old barrack room, a room in which his ancestors had once slept and trained, now she defiled it with her presence. It would make a fitting place for the final kill.
Knowing full well that his enemy was still armed, Drax used the magnetics within his suit to climb up through a nearby ventilation shaft once more. Slowly, silently he stalked his prey, giving away almost no noise whatsoever as he edged closer. The sense of that final moment, the final kill, was almost upon him. The moment he had waited for so long, a sense of nervous exhilaration filled him.
Kathryn had stopped to catch her breath, desperately tired and weak after having barely slept for three days of this hellish nightmare. She knew though, that it was not over yet, that psychotic alien madman was still out there, the maniac who had killed the one person she had truly cared about besides Michael, the one person she could have loved. She allowed herself time to release the pent up emotion she was feeling, and began to cry softly to herself. It was not fair, where was the justice in this? The tears stung her eyes and began to fall down her cheeks.
Unbeknownst to Kathryn as she sat sobbing between two abandoned beds, a small vent was slowly, silently opening in the ceiling to her right. The dark figure of the Dracos commander crept silently through, inching toward his prey.
Kathryn wiped her eyes with a sleeve blotched with the dried blood of Thorsson, the man she had worked to help heal his ravaged knee. None of that mattered now, as him and all the rest were dead, she was the only one left alive.
Gradually she willed herself to get back to her feet and take a look around the room; fiddling with her torch, it was beginning to flicker, the power cells were almost drained. She played the faulty light over the arrayed beds and empty storage lockers, there was no movement, she breathed a sigh of relief.