Blood and Profit: Chapter 34

Things outside the battleship had gone about as poorly as expected. Toll’s team was outnumbered five to one but they were using any and every trick they could think of to survive. They played dead to surprise enemies, they used the battleship’s immense size to hide and lay ambushes and boobie traps. They flew the kind of dangerous stunts that only rookie pilots who didn’t know any better could fly. Things like skimming the edge of the battleships shields at incredible speeds and letting their pursuers own insecurities make mistakes that ran them into the shields and either bounce them off with dead systems or cause them to explode from the force of the impact. They had lost five of their own but Laborite had spent a full fifteen to taken them down.

Toll wasn’t concerned with killing or disabling the enemy. He started no fights, he just flew coverage, in an attempt to be anywhere and everywhere he needed to be to save the lives of his pilots. The countdown timer on his H.U.D showed him he didn’t have much longer to go, the odds would be shifting in their favor in less than half a minute. He reoriented to line of sight on what was left of four three man squads. They reformed into a deep striking V formation and came around for another pass. Toll noticed that Smart Guy was too far out from the ship and sitting at the wrong angle to see the new threat. Toll didn’t know why he was so far out from the ship but his scanners didn’t showed life signs and no damage. He opened a channel and moved to intercept the attacking V. “Smart Guy, V formation at your five o’clock!” Toll’s first shots winged the fighter at the end of the closest arm of the V. The fighter spun wildly out of the formation with no engines to maneuver with he would be spinning for a while.

Smart Guy flipped quickly and thanks to computer assisted targeting was able to get two shots off before his ship was completed disabled. His two shots were direct hits and stopped the two lead ships of the V dead in the sky, no power, no weapons, and emergency systems only. Which is more than what Smart guy was left with. “Sorry Boss.” He said as the safety systems on his fighter automatically ejected him before the electrical system in the cockpit fried completed in a brilliant light show.

“Nothing to be sorry for Smart Guy, just get to the landing bay.” Toll instructed as he easily picked off the last two fighters from the V. As the jets on Smart Guy’s ejection pod lit up so to did all four transit rings around Mars. Three Baceten ships emerged from each ring one after the other. As they hit cruising speeds they launched their own fighters, some headed for the contested battleship but most headed to grief the Laborite battle cruisers. Laborite's channels lit up as what was left of their fighters were called back to their ships and the retreat command was given. With the Baceten presence the contested battleship was no longer contested, at least in space. On board was a different story.

Toll opened a channel to Conner “The Laborite are bugging out, you on the bridge yet?” He asked. The not too distant sizzling echo of blaster fire getting louder answered his question pretty clearly.

“Very nearly there, which is to say, no not yet.” Conner snarked as a response.

Toll continued his sweeps around the ship for his crew, perfectly content to let the Baceten settle scores and clean up the rest of the actively retreating mess. “Just tell them their side lost and is currently leaving them behind. They might wanna get some distance between them and the Baceten before its too late.” He commented while chasing off a lone fighter that was on the far side of the ship and most likely had lost his communications and had not seen the arrival of the Baceten. When he came within view of their ships he pushed the fighter to max speed in an attempt to catch up with the retreating Laborite forces. Toll realized there was silence on the channel. “Conner.” He asked suddenly worried.

“I’m here, came his crackling voice. You’re probably not going to believe this but I think they got something along the lines of your message.” He sounded slightly confused.

Toll smiled. “They just surrendered?” He asked.

“That they did.” Conner confirmed. “The ship is ours. Jobs well done all around.” He said.

One of the Mars rings lit up, surprising Toll “Don’t celebrate just yet, this is far from over. It looks like Rusty failed to shut down the ring system.”

Toll opened a channel to Rusty. “We’re about to be a in a world of hurt, what happened to shutting down the ring system?” He almost shouted.

“It’s taking longer for the entire system to shut down than I estimated. I had to manually override the command cancel in the case of active rings.” Rusty shouted back.

Toll typed an order for his surviving fighters to dock in the battleship landing bay. “Are you shutting the system down or not!” Toll started to panic.

“It’s already shutting down, big systems take time Toll!” Rusty yelled back.

And then as if proving Rusty’s point the Ring the Arbitration Guild Hall was emerging from shut off instantly. The massive spherical ship appeared to violently drift apart as the slip stream faded leaving debris scattered across hundreds of thousands of miles of empty space.

“Oh my God.” Toll uttered watching the devastation of the destroyed ship get worse with each passing second.

“Toll what happened?” Rusty asked.

Toll turned his ship to avoid watching any more of the accidental horror. “Nothing man, the system was shut down. Nice work.” He knew he couldn’t hide this from Rusty for long but every moment he didn’t know what he had accidentally done was a moment Toll would give him.