The problem with that was, the Dracos almost never attacked from the front, not if it wasn’t advantageous to do so. He crawled onwards through the ducting, and sure enough there was another vent that provided access to the inside of the armoury, and their weapons.
The four of them gradually climbed down into this rather cramped room, the interior looked like a maze of weapon racks, ammunition cases, and dusty old grenade boxes.
Taneth switched his helmet to thermal imaging mode in an effort to see if the guards on the other side of the door had noticed anything untoward, they were stood still guarding the entrance as if nothing had happened, blissfully unaware that their staunch guard had utterly failed, he breathed a sigh of relief.
After a short period of searching, Kallos and the others found their confiscated weapons, there was a crate containing three eviscerator rifles, an eviscerator pistol, two silencers and their wristblades.
Kallos kitted himself with the eviscerator pistol and silencer option he had used on the surface, while the others all held eviscerator rifles. They attached the weapons to the backs of their suits and fixed their blades and silencers into position on their wrists. Kallos smiled, the second phase of their plan had been successful, now they were fully armed again, and ready. “The hunt must continue,” he said to the others.
“I’m okay,” Kathryn said as she struggled onward through the gloomy corridor, past the awful sight of the briefing room massacre. Just the gentle tap, tap, of her walking stick kept her company now, as they ventured onward through the dark confines.
They passed Dracos corpses that had fallen, looking like bizarre black mannequins in their environment suits, the red glow of their eye slits, so terrible in the darkness, now long since faded away.
She led them to a small room, its doors once again crumpled and full of blast marks, this was the auxiliary energy monitoring station, the place where they had first activated the station. “This is where it all began, perhaps it can be shut down from here too?”
Logameier was first into the room, eager to get to grips with the alien machinery, what he found dismayed him. Much of the delicate electronics and terminals were smashed in the fighting. He glanced over the various controls, studying them intently.
“I’ve had enough experience working on Solarian technology on the Liberty, this is crude, but not too dissimilar, in-fact I recognise many of the controls.”
Kathryn’s heart leapt with joy, “so you can shut it down, right?”
“Not by the looks of it; not from here anyway, Kathryn this is just an auxiliary control station you see, used to monitor the collider, and the flow of energy from the planets surface through it. In an emergency it can be used to re-initialise the base, which is likely what has happened. But it cannot be shut down from here; that can only be done from the primary control station, elsewhere.”
“I know where it is, I’ve been there, follow me,” Kathryn replied a little deflated, but anxious to get this all over with.
The team all filed out of the room, the crunch of broken glass from the various smashed displays echoing loudly underfoot.
Eventually they came to a set of giant blast doors, “I shut these behind me, I guess that alien scum must have opened them again,” Kathryn pointed out rather acidly.
The deep thrumming grew steadily louder once again, as the facility prepared to hurl another blast of energy far out into space.
The group continued onward, “see how this corridor is semi-circular, it must be following the walls of the aperture, we’re not far from the collider itself.” Logameier pointed out excitedly to Michael, to him, this was a voyage of discovery, learning about new and alien technology, the secrets it unlocked was all very fascinating.
“We don’t need a running commentary lieutenant,” Michael whispered, as he pointed to the forlorn figure of Kathryn trudging ever onward, reliving her own personal torture step-by-step.
Logameier looked at the sad figure, and a profound sense of embarrassment came over him, “sorry, sir.” Was all he could think to offer.
Michael nodded silently to him as they walked.
After a slow walk of perhaps half an hour, they had reached the second set of blast doors, this place is incredibly well built, Michael thought, they can section off parts of the base in the event one part is damaged, much like starships can.
Eventually the small group came to a gigantic control centre, the lights from dozens of consoles flickered off the dark walls. This room at least gave Kathryn a warm feeling, this was where she and Rachthausen had shared that tender moment, when he had kissed her. It was then that she knew the sergeant loved her, and, even though she had been fighting it, loved him too.
The accompanying commandoes took up a guarding position at the doors as Logameier peered over the controls, studying them much as he had done in the smaller auxiliary control station. He watched the power levels build up in the spinning collider. Incredible, he mused; that collider is spinning at over twenty thousand revolutions per second. It is spinning so fast, that anything a similar size made by the E.D. F would have spun itself to pieces virtually instantly.
After spending a few moments hopping from console to console, looking over all the controls, he announced. “Right! I think I have it, with the occasional difference here and there; it is similar to the process used to shut down the Solarian power core on the Liberty.”
He eyed one of the consoles intently, the language was based upon Solarian script, he had come to recognise many of the flowing, delicate symbols in his time aboard the Liberty, and was able to equate many of them to their English language counterparts. This was somehow different, altered slightly, the symbols instead of depicting peaceful iconography, like the Talula leaf, which symbolised life or beginning in the Solarian language, were replaced with harsher, jagged, aggressive counterparts.
His finger hovered over one of the controls; doubt began to cloud his mind.
Finally, Lieutenant Johnson Logameier bit the bullet, pressed the button, and held his breath.
The station let forth one final, almighty blast of intense energy, far in excess of any other, bright enough to be seen for miles around. It was so bright and so intense, that it set nearby plant life alight, creating a number of fierce, yet short-lived wild fires.
This last, furious release tore its way through the planets atmosphere with all the force of a high power sniper round tearing through its targets body. This was the eye’s swansong, its final farewell to the galaxy that had created it, and what a swansong it was. It shot past the E.D. F fleet, illuminating every single ship in an intense fiery glow.
“Holy mother of crap!” Kinraid replied from the captain’s chair of the Liberty, as he had to turn away from the viewer to avoid being blinded by the massive flash of light.
The beam continued past the five ships in close orbit, and shot forth through the Auriga system, then out into deep space on an endless journey into the vast starlit void beyond.
Logameier breathed a sigh of relief, he had chosen correctly. The remaining energy stored inside the collider read zero, it had completely discharged all the energy contained within, and could now be shut down safely.
He made his way over to another complex looking console, discharging the built up energy was just the first part, now he had to shut down the collider itself, if he guessed wrong, that enormous spinning structure could very well spin itself into oblivion.
Slowly he traced his finger over a rectangular touch sensitive control, it was lit up in increments, figuring this was the speed setting for the revolutions the collider was spinning at, he traced his finger along it, the green increments slowly winked out as he did so. Johnson had to do this slowly and carefully, too fast or too jerky a movement could seize the entire thing, tearing it to pieces within seconds, and Michael had told him the E.D. F wanted this thing intact, so future scientists could study it and perhaps find a way of using it.