11 Chapter 11 :
Low Orbit, EX-5429 III, 3rd of March 2119.
Mosquito Class Boarding Craft.
Time, 9:48
Commander Elysium Knight
Elysium held on to his harness as the vessel bumped and swerved. Without artificial gravity, the only thing stopping him from being bouned black and blue against the walls was that harness.
A few tense minutes went by. Elysium kept a close eye on his men during that time. Each one was professionally calm, which is what he expected of them, and what they knew he expected of them.
He watched through one of the portholes another transport get blown out of the sky by enemy defences, thinking of the 24 soldiers on board that would not be going home. Then he dismissed it from his mind, chiding himself. Thinking of the dead was a sure way to join them. Concentrate on what was happening here and now.
The Mosquito approached, flanked by two of it's brethren. It pulled up to the walls of the space fortress, activating it's magnetic landing gear.
It's drill, from which it earned it's name, bored through the armour, giving a man sized opening through which they could pass.
All twenty four soldiers crammed into it, waiting.
The drill opened, revealing the beginning of a corridor.
The soldiers dropped their face masks, and pushed out, quickly clearing the room, and covering each other's advance. They were soon joined by the other 4 squads from the other two transports.
As they moved forwards, they saw a short, bearded soldier run around the corridor corner. He wore an oviously steel, but incredibly intricate, suit of armour.
The SAS quickly put a few rounds into him, stopping his advance as he fell back, dead and bleeding.
"Sir, what is this?" asked one of the soldiers, SAS Lucy, approaching the dead alien.
"I don't know." answered Elysium, his own rifle covering the soldier.
"We've come here to kill the flippin' Space Dwarves." laughed one of the soldiers, SAS Ethan.
"Yeah," agreed another, Joel, "what are they gonna do, stab us with spears?"
Elysium turned towards them slowly, they fell quiet immediatly.
"They made it to space and built this." he whispered, "I think they have more than spears."
He silently motioned to move forwards with his two right forfingers.
He followed his men up to a T junction. There they stopped and poked their fiber-optic cables around the corner. Pulling up the feed on his helmet, Elysium saw whatever the camera attached to the cables saw.
And what he saw surprised him. Two dwarves, running towards him, a long spear in each of their hands, and an octogonal shield in the other. Both were made of steel and decorated with many gems. They were speaking to each other, harsh, guttural words leaving their hairy mouths.
That's wierd, he though, mabye they do only have spears?
He held up his hand, three fingers outstreched. His men looked at him and readied themselves.
One finger went down.
The dwarves continued running their metal boots clanging against the metal floor.
The second finger went down.
The left dwarf looked surprised and held out a stubby arm to halt his companion, his eyes locked onto Elysium's.
The final finger dropped.
Elysium left his camera view and returned to his own vision.
The SAS rounded the corner, unloading shots into the two figures. The dwarf on the right dropped quickly, but his companion dropped to one knee and covered himself with his shield, his spear leveled at the enemy. The shots pinged against the metal, hardly scratching it.
Elysium was surprised, their bullets were magnetically accelerated munitions that, on impact, fired a secondary round out of the chamber that was the original slug at many times the speed of sound. This secondary round carried a micro-explosive, that would have penetrated through most any armour and detonated inside the individual. But they seemed to have no effect against the alien's shield.
It must not be steel, thought Elysium, but some tough alien compound resistant to their rounds.
The Humans approached the cowering dwarf, continually putting rounds into him to make sure he stayed where he was. But they couldn't see any adequate target location. They could not even see his head past the shield, so they were confident he didn't know what was happening. But then, a particular gem took Elysium's notice. It was large and centred in the shield. Quite a beautiful centrepiece.
They approached even farther, until barely 3 meters away from the crouching fellow, two of the SAS, Alan and Nathan, worked around him, hopefully to peg him in his exposed back.
Then Elysium saw the centrepiece gem in a different light. Not a gem, he realised, a lens.
He opened his mouth to yell a warning but the dwarf had already reacted. He stood, deflecting rounds off his shield as he thrust his spear through SAS Ethan's neck.
Blood spurted from the wound as the dwarf yanked back his weapon and swung it at SAS Alan's weapon, knocking it out of his hands. Covering himself with his shield to avoid retaliation, he moved to maintain blockage of the passageway. All the while speaking in his wierd guttural language.
"Ka sork durnghrinst, sorneragh krak!"
He must be calling for reinforcements, thought Elysium, they had to end this fight as soon as possible, lest they face a hundred more of these dwarves.
He surged forwards, running at the dwarf, tossing aside his rifle and drawing his sidearm. The dwarf struck out with his spear, straight, as Elysium was expecting, at his exposed throat. But he spun to the side and collided with the dwarf's shield. The dwarf, with practiced ease, kneeled and tossed Elysium over him with his shield. The veteran commander landed heavily on his back, pistol still in hand. As he'd expected, he was behind the dwarf's guard. And as the dwarf spun to stab him, his gun ended up against his stocky chest.
He discharged the weapon. The dwarf's lifeless corpse fell back, blood oozing out between his armor plates.
Elysium stood and retrieved his rifle. The other SAS lowered their weapons and stood stairing at their fallen comrade and the two dead dwarves. Some of them took off their breath masks to honor their dead.
A few moments passed in silence.
"Come on." he said, "Let's keep moving."
They nodded. Donning their headgear again and hefting up their weapons.
They continued to advance, more and more quickly, a sense of urgency filled their actions.
Elysium kept his eye on his Tactical Display, mainly the distance to his target, the tracking device on Captain Alex Wells's uniform.
500m...
They were getting much closer. They ran into a few more dwarf soldiers on the way. Taking casualties.
400m...
Half the team was dead or dying. SAS Martin had to be left behind, with his left leg gone he would only slow down the rest of the team.
300m...
Elysium rounded the before last corner at breakneck pace. Followed swiftly by the rest of his team.
200m...
He saw in the distance a couple of his other teams. The sound of gunshots filled the air as they shot down the final corridor. He could hear them panicking through his comms.
"Commander! Are you there?!!!"
"Sir they won't die!"
"Damn where is it?!!!"
"Arghhh!"
He saw one on them drop as a figure materialised on him, sword sinking deep into his chest. Before his squadmates could avenge him, his killer dissapeared in a flash of blue light and reapeared behind another soldier, stabbing him in the back before ducking under several gunshots and gracefully slicing through another two SAS.
In five seconds, everyone was dead. Standing in the centre of the pile of corpses was a tall haughty figure, so different from the Space Dwarves they had met beforehand. His blade was held off to one side as he observed the carnage at his feet. Slowly he turned towards the remains of Elysium's teams.
Gunfire sounded right beside the Commander, Joel was unloading on the alien as he moved forwards.
The distant figure dissapeared only to reappear several meters closer and farther to the left, clear of the bullets.
He proceded to run forwards for a couple of seconds, unnaturally fast.
Elysium's team, still advancing, lined up their shots and sent a volley of death tearing it's way towards the alien.
The alien began to blink again, every time about than two or three meters in different directions, seemingly random, while still charging towards them.
Mere seconds before he was on them, Elysium drew a grenade from his belt and pulled the pin.
"Flash out!" he yelled, dropping to the ground and sliding on his back to avoid the alien's scything blade.
The other members of his team also dropped away from the alien and covered their faces. An agonising scream told Elysium that SAS Joel had been gutted.
Then the grenade went off.
Despite having his hands over his eyes and those tightly shut, it still left bright spots as he saw it through his eyelids and hands. His skeleton stark in contrast to the blinding light emitted.
He rolled up in time to see the alien drop to one knee covering his face.
"Aldaria, yëné e rèston!"
In yet another flash of blue light, the figure dissapeared. Exept this time, he didn't come back.
"Come on! He's gone, let's go!" yelled Elysium.
The scrambled back to their feet and continued to sprint towards the final corner.
100m...
