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.
