God-hammer bombers managed to skirt around the worst of the fighting. And closed with one of the alien carriers; their deadly payload ready.
Two other stealth ships flew close to the Ulysses preparing for another run on the damaged battleship, its smaller point defence lasers blasting away in a desperate attempt to keep the Krenaran vultures from picking apart the ship.
The alien ships jinked left, right and quickly barrel rolled to avoid the incoming fusillade from the battleship. Before both unleashed their primary weapons; one shot tore into one of the primary dorsal rail-cannons, detonating it in a huge explosion that lit up the entire upper section of the ship. Flames and debris streamed out from the smashed emplacement.
The second shot sheared the command section clean off the ship, leaving a ragged hole in the hull of the battleship. The drifting; flaming wreckage of the command section became caught in the gravity well of the planet as it slowly began to burn up in orbit trailing smoke and flame.
This final punishment was ultimately too much for the Ulysses, and it listed. The beleaguered vessel caught within the gravity well of Agemman; it began to heat up, as it continued its uncontrolled descent into the atmosphere. The remains of the once proud battleship burst apart in the upper atmosphere trailing fire, debris and smoke.
The Furious, the only surviving E.D. F vessel remaining in the conflict tried to make a break for it. The huge boosters firing for all they were worth as the huge carrier desperately tried to get up some speed. It did manage to get some distance between it and the battle, under the cover of its few remaining fighters and bombers.
Its forward plasma emitters continued to power up, finally, twin streams of bright blue plasma arced out from the vessel and shot straight ahead of the ship; however as it accelerated toward the plasma wake multiple torpedoes from the approaching enemy carriers detonated the Furious’s engines and blew the carrier apart in a massive fireball, sending out a huge, bright shockwave.
Without a stable stream of energised plasma, the plasma wake disintegrated as quickly as it was formed.
The E.D. F fleet had been completely and utterly decimated.
Far below on Agemman itself, the landing party continued to carefully make their way towards the colony hub, completely unaware of the huge battle that had just taken place far above them.
Rennick held out his hand in a motion to stop. The party stopped dead. The Lieutenant Commander whispered, “can’t you hear that.”
“Hear what?” Juan Angel replied looking at Rennick.
The thud, thud, of heavy footsteps was barely audible, but was getting louder, and closer.
“Everyone into the ruins,” Clayton said quickly.
The rest of the landing party complied; and they quickly dove into the ruins. The party readied their weapons as they took up positions amongst the rubble. They were just in time as seven of the alien warriors strode into view.
The entire landing party stayed absolutely still, barely daring to breathe; Sergeant Clayton and the rest of the troops slowly trained their weapons on the aliens who thudded past them; also headed toward the colony hub.
One of the landing party troopers slowly eased into a better position to track the small alien group with his weapon, when a piece of unstable masonry gave way under his boot. The soldier fell, and tumbled down the rest of the broken pile of debris; causing a huge amount of noise and a plume of dust as he fell flat on his back onto the road just behind the alien patrol.
The Krenarans quickly spun around and let loose a guttural roar; levelling their large arm mounted weapons at the lone trooper.
The rest of the landing party hunkered down amongst the ruins and opened fire with their pulse rifles, with a fizz multiple blue flashes slammed home on the aliens.
The laser energy fired from the pulse rifles simply dissipated on the metallic armour of the alien warriors; one of the hulking brutes did go down though, as a shot slammed into its unprotected head; the ruin of its face spraying white ichor onto the cracked tarmac below.
One of the aliens returned fire, targeting the exposed trooper; a loud ‘wuu-doom’ noise came from the alien weapons as the trooper was blasted backwards into the air, completely off his feet and landing with a sickeningly wet thud on the road. His head snapped backwards with the force of the impact and smashed into the tarmac with a crack. A foot wide hole blasted through his mid-riff.
The rest of the alien force followed suit and opened fire into the ruins, their monstrously powerful cannons blasting away large chunks of masonry, and sending plumes of dust and debris high into the air.
Commander Angel took a lucky hit in the arm. The shot blasting his left arm clean off at the elbow spraying out blood from the wound. The force of the shot spun him almost completely around; he screamed in pain before a second shot blasted a hole through his back, pieces of torn intestine and gore splattered onto the rocks in front of him, as he was simultaneously catapulted face first into the debris.
Sergeant Clayton had managed to down another of the burly aliens. His pulse rifle blasting half of the aliens’ skull away; chunks of brain matter and white ichor flowed out of the half destroyed alien head. The warrior collapsed with a thud as its knees buckled.
Rennick poked his head up from his position to line up a shot; and was greeted with a cannon shot slamming into his face, exploding it like a crushed melon; spraying blood, bone, and brain matter onto the walls nearby.
Michael had seen enough of this wanton slaughter and his nerve gave out. He sprinted as fast as he could away from the slaughter; cannon shots fizzed past him as he ran, exploding into the rubble and tarmac all around him.
He never stopped running and never looked back.
Adrenaline kept him going; he ran past numerous ruined buildings, past abandoned shops with dusty smashed windows; empty of all stock.
Then as he carried on running he was rugby tackled to the ground; the bone crunching impact forcing the breath from his lungs.
Mad with panic and desperation, Michael lashed out blindly with his boot at his unseen assailant, catching nothing but fresh air. He felt the cold steel of a combat knife pressed to his throat.
“Who the hell are you!” shouted the man; holding Michael’s head so that he couldn’t make out his features.
“Lieutenant Michael Alexander. E.D. F Navy,” Michael said gasping for air; “who the hell are you!”
The man showed his face, he was a somewhat grizzled man, in his mid-thirties, with a slightly lined face and a dark brown moustache.
“My name is Major Nikolai Vargev; 1 ^ st E.D. F commandoes, troop division. Well now that the formalities are over with, get over there,” he said in a forceful Russian twang as he pointed to a small metal manhole cover; forcibly pushing Michael towards it.
Chapter 6
Inside the manhole they crawled into a large sewerage tunnel, which was tall enough for the both of them to stand up in.
It was gloomy, however some light was provided by the bulkhead lights fitted to the walls at regular intervals. The air absolutely stank. Michael had to seriously restrain himself from retching, however Vargev was barely fazed by it.
The two of them continued walking up the tunnel for what seemed about a mile. The tunnel slowly opened out into a larger, wider chamber, and on one side of it, there was a slightly raised platform. There three other soldiers were sat on upturned crates playing a game of poker.
They stopped their game as the two of them walked in, and in his customary Russian twang the commando announced, “Welcome to my new home Lieutenant,” Vargev and the rest of the soldiers laughed. Then the big Russian turned to Michael, an intense look in his eye.