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Garrett couldn't help but smirk. Quietly, he responded, "Very well, Jack. I like your thinking. Once we're out of here, we blow the joint. And if we can't get out of here, well we can take the sorry bastards with us. A safety, just in case we fail. I don't have any, so your team will have to handle all the planting. See you on-- Wagh!" He interrupted himself with a hushed grunt of exertion. A few moments passed then he said, "Sorry. Apparently these bastards have never heard of latrines." While speaking, a Drathonian had approached the compound's border to take a piss. Distracted with the conversation, Garrett had almost noticed him too late. The Drathonian wasn't expecting trouble, though, and preoccupied with emptying his bladder. Hendlow took a knife to the lizard's throat and the situation was defused. Now the demolitions expert was trying to calm his nerves, trying to keep himself levelheaded after such a close call.

"Okay, Greens Three through Eight are going that way, then I could move Green Two and I over to that side and have Nine and Ten follow as auxiliary fighters. That leaves Greens Eleven and Twelve to sweep up those that get past us." Steven thought as he took out his second bogey of the day.
"Greens Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, and Eight, proceed as you are. Greens Nine and Ten, you two will follow behind Green Two and I as auxiliaries. Green Eleven and Green Twelve, you will run clean up behind us as well as watching or tails. Hop to it, pilots." Steven said into the comm as Green Two finished up as well. Pulling back on the controls, he swung his fighter around, and with the other pilots following on his wing flew off towards the bow of the Hymn.
"Bogeys incoming, Sir." Green Two said in an almost bored tone.
"Ya'll know the drill, break off and engage at your disgretion." Steven responded. He banked a little down and to the right and open fire on a scourge fighter that was in pursuit of an unfamiliar scimitar, the shots caught the scourge on the left side and blew up in a spectacular light show as the rounds punched through the shielding.

"The fleet will have to make a Microjump, a standard retreat would be suicide" Evelyn noted, still perfectly still except her mouth moving to speak. her eyes began glowing a bit more brightly, the amount of information she was processing was suddenly so Immense; she was planning jumps for every ship in the fleet. "Cibo, I need you to begin an attack plan starting from our exit vector" the Avatar asked, pertinent information suddenly being displayed on-screen. She contacted the Comms officer, attaching a packet to send out coordinates and jump courses to all the ships in the fleet, as well as inform them of the plan on encrypted channels.

*****

Kai snooped around to the backside of the compound, Sehene in tow, and he quietly approached the fence, whipping his bag around to grab some wire cutters, and making a small hole in the fence. Replacing his bag, the Lieutennant signaled for Still to follow him in, while brandishing his combat knife, wary of the shadows which may or may not contain Drathonian guards. so far, everything looked normal, however.

*****

Emma Idly watched the sensor blips of another Scimitar squadron flying nearby, taking refuge beneath the hulking figure of the Hymn, before jetting off towards a grouping of enemies that had come too close to the hymn, right in front of Arcadia. she fed sensor data to her wingmate, and began lining up shots with her laser cannons, prepping the mini-missile pods to fire when in range.

*****

A dozen brazen Raptor-class ships took advantage of the damaged Mars at the edge of the formation, boosting forward to cut them off from help, the rest of the ships seemd to be more busy with the Drakes. From close range, the Raptors poured fire into the four beleagered Mars, hoping to make short work of them.

"Yes, Ma'am!" Cibo replied with renewed vigor. "Seems the Raptors 'll get sent into hell first after all." she thought. This had to happen fast. Very fast, if they were to win. Her hands blurred as she brought up the exit vectors, and looked over the Drathonians' positions; she quickly rotated the display as to see the battle from their perspective. Personally, and from prior experience, she firmly believed Drathonians were only unpredictable when fighting in person, and not so when more distant, like say, sitting in a ship's bridge. It was time to put it to the test. From this, Cibo could already tell what a good bit of the enemy fleet would do in response to the sudden micro jump, dead on. "Well, at least in theory." She admitted to herself. Cibo plotted in the appropriate firing solutions for the Mars class ships to handle, plus a program designed to work out minor changes, made from other, partially cannibalized programs. Next, there were the one's which she couldn't predict very well, but were important enough to ensure death upon. She'd have to lord over the fates of those ships personally, after the micro-jump. If Cibo had her way, the targeted Raptors would hopefully turn and accelerate towards the formation, and the Hymn in specific; the Battle Hymn's Solaris Cannons would deliver several glancing blows instead of dead eye shots; the beams would leak, and also diffract slightly. The initial shots would decimate the shields of said Raptors. More importantly, the extra diffraction and beam leakage caused by the glancing hits would hopefully wipe out a vast number of the enemy support craft, making way for the plethora of Glaive Corvettes, all of which had better live up to the title of 'Ship Killers.' Something came up on a screen to her left, her eyes briefly flickered to them and back to her own master plan. "Sh**." she thought. "Admiral, four hurt Mars, cut off by Raptors. Need guns bad. Kill Raptors, save Mars, for me?" she slowly, half mindfully pleaded. All her focus went into getting ready for the micro-jump, constantly changing and revising the plan; she could barely pay attention to anything else. Another distraction turned her eyes away from the main screen for a split second. "Red Squadron Scimitar dead in water, please send retrieval." her voice suddenly dry. Cibo was just starting to sound like a zombie.

"This is Captain Kerning, Green Lead. I copy that Corporal, we would love the company, command your squad as you see fit. See ya at the party." Steven replied almost casually to the leader of the other squadron. "Hm, get to fly co-op now. This should be fun."
With Red Squadron on its way, Steven took a brief moment to re-check the status of his wingmen. His group was fairing well, having taken out six enemies between the six pilots, and the other half of Green Squadron was doing well as well, having taken out a good number of enemies themselves. But then something caught his attention, Raji was at it again, but given the circumstances of the issue, he figured he would not reprimend her about not consulting him first.
***

"Right away, ma'am." Alphonse mumbled dryly to himself as he received new data. At once he set to work transfering it to the rests of the fleet. "Busy work. Busy work. Busy work. That is all this is. I suppose I shouldn't really complain since I did get a good position just out of the academy..." Alphonse thought to himself as his fingers flew over the keys entering commands.
"Information is away, Admiral." he stated as he hit the last key.
"And I don't put myself directly in harm's way, unlike those other under acheivers I went to school with."

Watching the dull flashes as the Green Squadron Pilot and his Wingman fought off the Drathonian pilots. Jimmy grimaced; the battle was just out of his range. He pushed his glare goggles up onto his forhead, looking around the cockpit he contemplated his situation.
He couldn’t go forward, he had tried that already when the Squadron advanced, so what could he do? Checking his systems a third time, he found out the obvious, he could shoot and breathe. With a sudden thought he let out a bark of laughter and he couldn’t wipe a wide spread grin from his face. He had tested most the thrusters and most of them didn’t work. As he let out another barking laugh, he tested the front and ventral thrusters, both gave him a little nudge in their respective directions.
“Hey, Ruze, I think I’m about to do something very amusing. I may not have tested my horse, but that Moonie did poor work.” Sending the message to his wingman Jimmy pulled his glare goggles back down.
Using the Scimitars small front thrusters, Ukraine turned his ship, the back of it acting as an axis, until his ventral engine was now his rear engine.
Looking at his controls he chuckled, “Well, this is certainly a different way of flying.” Muttering to himself lightly he turned off his distress beacon.
Activating the ventral engine Jimmy began to move forward, closing in on the battle, he shook his head; he could only use his missiles in this position but they would have to be enough.


Corporal Jan finished off a Drathonian pilot, Ukraine’s distress beacon had cut out and he seemed to be moving forward now, even though the computers where telling him that the boy was in a strange position.
Flipping onto the Squadron channel the Corporal spoke, “Albania, peel off and go help Uzbekistan and the Green Pilot save Ukraine. Use the jammer if you have to.”
Albania’s acknowledgement chimed in, he was level headed and would do the job well, that was one of the reasons he flew with the Squadron’s only special weapon. His jamming pods had pulled them out of more situations then he wanted to count.
He heard Albania announce over the Hymn’s common fighter channel, “Red and Green Squadrons prepare your systems to ignore frequency zero-six-five-nine-zero-eight Delta Foxtrot Charlie; jamming pods will be released if necessary.”
Quickly punching the code in, Red Siberia closed in on one of the Drathonian ships in a dog fight with the Green Squadron lead.

Emma simply nodded, concentrating too much on the fight to speak much, Her display windows were constantly shifting around and changing as pertinent information changed while her ship traveled at speeds that would have killed her without an intertial compensator, even in the gravity-less vacuum of space. She followed behind the more experienced Arcadia, making a run at the gunship. She swerved at the last few moments, putting her ship into a controlled spin and slipping sideways past the nose. As the ship's small flak guns tried vainly to track her ship, Emma unleashed a volley of Mini-missiles on the bridge, punching holes through the windows and exploding inside. Almost as soon as the Azure Phantom was out of the way, the Drathonian gunship went wild and began firing every rocket, booster, and maneuvering thruster it had in random sequence, bucking like a bronco. Due to the odd combination, the hull started showing cracks and bulges as stress fractured frame parts punched holes into bulkheads. Although Emma was gone and following Arcadia, unable to see her target, it would soon rip itself to pieces. "I highly doubt a second run will be needed, three" Emma piped over the comms, after reading the other ship's intentions from its movements.

****

As the fleet ships moved into position around the rotating Hymn, the Solaris cannons finished their charge cycle, and the Turbolasers on the dorsal surface began finding firing solutions. The beleagured Mars quickly moved out of the effective radius of the Hymn's main cannons, but the Raptors followed, taking the time to point their main guns at the Mars destroyers, which turned out to be a bad move, As almost immediately, the Solaris cannons lanced forth, dissolving everything but the bridges of the raptors who were now pointed "down" compared to the hymn. The bright beams of energy continued forth, actually managing to fry a drake and seriously damage the shields of another. The Aformentioned Turbolasers began quickly mopping up what little bits were left of the dozen raptors.
****

As soon as they Hymn's shields went down, the Drathonians capitalized on their momentary advantage, throwing everything they had at the defending battlegroup; It looked as if the whole formation of Rust and crimson ships had exploded in one direction, Sending at least as much power as one Solaris cannon (counting the energy in explosive Kinetic weapons, as well as the kinetic energy of solid slug weapons) To the dismay of the Terran fleet, it began to easily punch through shields, showing instantaneous damage to the ships between the Hymn and the Drathonian fleet. And then there was a flash of light, and most of the Terran ships were gone, save for a few unlucky Mars that had been hit in the warp drives.

****

Those Terran ships that had disappeared came back into existance immediately, almost an AU away, on the other side of Ovid. They had brought with them Most of the fighters whom had been dogfighting, as well as a few of the small gunships. Somehow, All of the Terran fighters had managed to warp over (any that weren't within a warp bubble had been slave circuted and forced to warp.) The Terrans, whom had all been forewarned, had braced for the change, but many Drathonians had been taken unawares by this, their computers also caught off guard, a few of the Scourges stopped dead as their navicomps overloaded and fried the electronics of their ships. The more Sophisticated Rex fighters, however, seemed to be unphazed by the sudden jump.

****

After the Confusion of a Jump, Raji would realize something: Her port wing held the shield Generator.