“Any chance we can land in there?”
“Possibly, however there will be very little room for error,” Televis replied.
Michael looked at the Solarian navigator, who in turn looked back towards him with a slightly nervous look on his face.
“Don’t worry, I trust you.”
“Contact the fleet, tell them to form defensive formation, and that we are going to attempt to land on the facility.”
Again hands flew across control panels. “Fleet confirms,” Televis said.
The other Solarian Vessels spread out and began taking up strategic positions around Delta base; covering each others fire arcs.
Michael leaned forward in his seat pensively. “Okay take us in, engines at ten percent sub-light, thrusters at users discretion,” he said almost whispering.
The Liberty slowly and silently glided toward the pock marked and pitted surface of the station until it was directly adjacent to the breach. With barely enough room for the small ship to enter, it slowly advanced.
The shredded outer hull of the station cast a steadily increasing shadow over the matt black and silver hull of the Liberty as it slowly made its way further inside. The viewer fell completely into darkness.
“Forward landing lights.”
The landing lights came on; brightly illuminating the bay, broken girders partially concealed the frozen bodies of Naval personnel trapped underneath, they looked for all the world like tiny frozen mannequins looking up at the comparatively huge ship approaching them. Debris littered the bay floor casting shadows as the landing lights from the Liberty played along the detritus as it advanced.
Half smashed gantries hung limply from the walls, casting further shadows onto the scorched walls themselves. Slowly the Liberty drifted further inside the bay.
“Cut all power to the engines, let her drift in.”
The Solarian pilot cut the power to the engines. Ever so slowly the Liberty crept further and further inside the bay. Its lights continued to play across the scorched, debris ridden interior.
“Lower landing legs.”
Three large hydraulic landing legs slowly lowered from the underside of the ship. Shoots of gas escaped from the struts as they vented excess gas used as a shock absorber to cushion the vast weight of the Liberty.
“Gravitic engines at five percent, reverse thrust.”
The engines whined into life almost imperceptibly as they killed the small amount of forward momentum of the ship.
“And, set us down,” Michael whispered with finality.
The gravitic engines gave a slight whine and the ship gradually came to a rest upon its landing legs. Which only gave a small jet of gas, as the remaining excess was vented off again to equalise the weight of the ship.
“Okay, cut all power to the engines,” Michael said.
He nodded his appreciation at the pilot’s ability, and smiled. Turning to the form of Vargev sitting in his chair at his console, he said. “You fancy a space walk Nikolai.”
“I’m game.”
“Televis you’re with us,” Michael said to the Solarian.
All three of them headed to the lower airlock on deck 9 of the Liberty. Once they were there Televis pressed a button on a metal floor length cabinet just near to the airlock and a rack of environment suits slowly slid out. They each donned one; surprisingly they were an exceptional fit. Together they donned their helmets and clicked them into position, the hermetic seals locked into place keeping the suit air tight.
“Everyone give me a seal check,” Michael announced.
They all pressed a control on the environment suits’ cuff, a small light shone green on each suit.
“Seals are okay,” the other two said in response.
“Okay I want constant radio contact; we don’t know what we are going to face in there.” They each pressed a small black button on the sides of their helmets, and inside a small microphone extended.
Michael and Vargev hefted their huge Armschlagers, which they had retrieved earlier. “Okay, depressurize the airlock,” Michael said into his mic.
Televis touched a small control panel on the wall, and a huge whoosh could be heard, as the air vented out into the vacuum that was the fighter bay.
“Release the hatch.”
A second control was pressed, and with a deep metallic sound the hatch slowly opened in the side of the Liberty.
The three of them gradually drifted out from the hatch and into the frozen, barren fighter bay, pushing off from the Liberty’s hull. Gradually they drifted across the tight confines of the bay, as though a flock of gulls gliding through a thermal.
Looking below them, they could all too clearly see the wreckage of twisted girders and smashed gantries littering the floor, intermingled with the frozen bodies of the fallen. There was what looked like the frozen body of a pilot, he was just ten feet from his peregrine fighter when he was decapitated; his head could just be seen a few feet ahead of him.
Gradually they made it over to the wall of the fighter bay. And scrabbled down it, careful to avoid the razor sharp edges of twisted metal that jutted out from the broken gantries still affixed to the wall; any one of which could tear a hole through their suits, and they would be done for; finally they made it down to a door.
Shouldering their weapons; and with a huge strain, both Michael and Vargev managed to force open the door enough to venture inside.
The long corridor was dark, dank and eerily quiet, some emergency lights blinked, but most barely worked; giving a strange almost strobe light effect to the place.
Several bodies lay still on the floor, also frozen due to their exposure to the vacuum of space.
As they proceeded down this dark oppressive corridor, they felt slightly nauseous as they could feel the slight crunch of them walking on small frozen pools of crimson human blood.
Michael could feel his heartbeat slowly quicken in his chest as the menacing atmosphere began to take hold. All three of them continued to take slow, deliberate, almost nervous steps.
Their breathing became shallower as they continued, straining to hear every sound, no matter how small. In case something should creep up on them.
In a flash Vargev spun around, levelling his weapon. There was a dull, metallic crash behind them. As they looked they could find nothing.
“Probably just a bulkhead,” Michael said nervously. “Let’s keep our eyes open anyway.”
Slowly they carried on through the gloom. Under the pressure of the oppressive atmosphere Vargevs commando training began to kick in; constantly looking all around the corridor for signs of danger.
“I don’t like this comrade.”
“Neither do I, but we still need to know what happened.”
They pressed on; albeit slowly, the whole place was deathly quiet. The faint ghostly scream of twisted metal in the background set their nerves jangling again.
Televis pulled out a scanner as they approached a bulkhead door, he passed his scanner over it; the lights twinkled in the gloom. “There is power in the next corridor.”
They approached the door tentatively. There was a faintly red glowing panel next to it. Michael pressed it and it changed to green; the door rapidly slid open, something flailed against his helmet, Michael involuntarily gasped and fell backwards he levelled his weapon; his heart pounding madly, what the hell was it?
Looking up he saw that it was the form of an E.D. F crewman; slowly swaying, suspended by a bunch of cabling.
“Hung himself, rather than be captured,” Vargev said studying the body.
They shuffled past the rapidly freezing corpse, still gently swaying, and closed the bulkhead behind them.
Here there was light, and they could see much better. Vargev keyed in a control to re-pressurize this part of the corridor. And slowly the corridor re-filled with air.
“Environmental facilities must be working in this part of the station.”