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“Steven?” Steven said sounding very puzzled, “I never gave out my name. How did she...”
Steven stopped mid sentence as he saw the woman's fighter pull up along side his own, and then she took off her helmet. In stunned silence he watched as she flew off leaving his were he was.
“Rhiannon?” Steven asked himself.
“Hey Captain, do you know that pilot?” Fred asked as he watched from off to the side.
“Remember when I told you about my girlfriend from back at the Academy?”
“That was her?”
“That was her.”
“Well, how's that for a coincidence. You gonna see about hooking back up with her? 'Cause didn't you say that you and her left on good terms?”
“Yeah, we left on good terms, but it has been more than seven years since we have even spoke. Hell, she might even be married for all I know, so I wont go jumping to conclusions.”
“Ah, have some confidence, Sir. What girl would pass you up for some second rate schmuck? Besides, you could use a girl in your life, you are overdue. If you know what I mean.”
“Thanks for that, Fred,” Steven said with a restrained laugh.
Steven checked his on board systems and everything showed that Steven a good to go. His shields were back up, his engines were cool and showing green, and power output from his capacitor were optimal. He put his scimitar into gear, so to speak, and shot forward.
“Rhiannon,” Steven commed his former flame, “After this battle, let's have some coffee.”

The series of images were simple, almost cartoonishly cute. A strange, docile creature of alien origins grazed cheerfully in a meadow. It was obviously some sort of small cattle most likely slaughtered for meat and perhaps at one point hide, but here, they were at peace. Despite their alien-ness, they looked rather cute, like a bleary eyed sheep. But with feathers and teary, black beady eyes. Slowly, gently, this one and it's herd began to jump over a fence, one at a time and at a slow, steady rhythm. Suddenly, the fence turned into a flaming hoop, and a scantly clad Terran female stood there, whip in hand, and begun to crack it over the gentle herd! She started shouting; "Jump! Jump, you xeno bitches! Jump!" The Alien-Sheep-Killy thing hesitated, quivering with fear all the while as he looked at the flaming hoop. Cibo cracked her whip at him, yelling at him. "Jump! Jump through the flames! Jump!"
"Bleee!" he fearfully cried out.

****

"Bleee!" Killy bleeped. He slowly woke up from his nap and shook his head, not betraying any of that terrible turmoil in his head to the two Terrans with him. The male, Marcus, was making fun of the same female he saw in his nightmare, Cibo, for overdosing on medication.
"Ha! I told you it was too much, but you never listened to me, nope."
"Pft! And who's the cheating-ex here? Huh?" Cibo sniped back. She was clutching her waist, and looked to be in some pain. Neither noticed Yotruyan had woken up. As though nothing were amiss, he simply reached out for the bottle of pills Cibo had and carefully read it's label. It was the kind of medication that absorbed through the stomach lining for immediate action, and not through the intestines. He walked over to the two humans.
"Cibo, I learned something from the SeFlaurinds that will help. Hold still."
"Wait, wha-" The Ottyo took a pen from her pocket, bent her over, and stuck it deep into her mouth. She threw up.
"Damage control. You're welcome."
"Aww! My boots!" Marcus cried out. Cibo looked between Killy, who had manhandled her, and Marcus, who's boots she made a mess of. She spat onto the grated floors before laughing.
"Yeah, thanks." Inwardly, Yotruyan knew it was these kinds of things he saw from the disgusting Terrans and Terran-like peoples that kept him up at times. So unclean with their sweating and their funny smells. But then again, they were ok as people. He watched Cibo laughing at Marcus' displeasure.

Javier Feyete had been busy since his squadron, Blue Squadron, had been almost completely exterminated. After landing on Saratar Station, that lovely voice that had chided him while in his scimitar had relayed to him his new orders: Javier was being given command over the remnants of various other decimated squadrons, enough scimitars and pilots to form an entirely new squadron, and was transfered to the newly refitted Hymn. After 30 or so minutes, the 12 pilots and scimitars had been gathered together in one of the starship's hangars, and the squadron had already been named in Javier's native french: "Escadron de rapiéçage", or, in plain and simple terran, Patchwork Squadron. Feyete had already taken care of the armament package for his squadrons, as technicians scurried over the dozen fighters, making sure they were fueled up and ready to fly. Each fighter carried two cruise missiles, with the remaining weapon spaces taken up by loads of standard missiles.

Javier himself stood infront of his gathered squadron, who were all waiting for the order to launch. The Rhean blushed, and smiled as he looked over his command. "Well, to be honest, when I woke up today, I didn't expect to have most of Blue Squadron to be wiped out. I doubt many of you expected to have most of your squadrons wiped out. And, well, it kinda sucks, to be honest, but now we get payback! Each of you has two cruise missiles on your fighter. We're going to go in, and shove all 24 of those cruise missiles right up the skirts of the skirts of those Lézards foutus, and we'll make sure to send 20 Drath to the afterlife for every one of our departed squadmates! Escadron de rapiéçage, décollage ! "

As Javier finished his speech with gratuitous french and yelling, the pilots of the patchwork squadron boarded their scimitars, and began to launch in closely knit pairs. Javier, as he strapped down in his Scimitar, messed around with the radio a bit, hoping to reach a certain someone as he and his wingmate, now Rapiéçage 2, launched from the hangar bay.

"Bonjour, belle voix Merkur! Serez-vous ma voix de la bonne chance pour ce duel?"

The flight controller laughed at Javier's strange ramblkings in french as he took off, but was kind enough to send him some battlefield reports. The Terrans now outnumbered the Drathonians, and so it was a sort of free-for all out there. "Keep your head on, and don't get killed!" she warned the cobbled-together squadron.

******

The Terran ships, after the initial surprise, began to use their speed and maneuverability to keep away from the large Drake-classes, a push was made, and anything with Turbolasers concentrated every single cannon on the lead Drake, to take it out, while the Urtanis calls ships began using their Mini-nova cannons on the remaining three.

The Uranis class caught in a pincer move was soon aided by a Pluto-class missile boat which began spamming missile fire at the nearer Firebrand, allowing the Uranis to go after the farther one.

All of the mars class and most of the remaing Pluto classes began pouring fire at their Drathonian contemporaries, trying to keep the surge back at the cost of possible battlefield longevity; it was already beginning to get evident that the sudden surge of fire from the Terran ships was having Negative effects on their systems.

******

It was useless, even with the few squadrons of reserve ships from the Drathonian carriers, there were very obviously more Terrans than Drathonians out there now, and the only successful tactic seemed to be ramming, which was just as difficult as trying to hit a Scimitar with Weapons, and much more costly.

Arcadia did as she was told, despite the fact that the orders came from one of those thickheaded men from before. She saw the logic in the command and his skill with the crafts- both his own and the opponent- and knew it was a strong plan. In the coming minutes, Pilot Langdon's disdain for him would slowly ebb away as her larger armaments began to eat away at the corvette. "Emma, get back in here. Looks like they're aiming for a suicide rush; we're not their focus."

Ruze grimaced at the thought of the two Drathonians on his tail. "I'm just leading this lizards on. Take the shots so we can get back to business." He swept into a wide-radius spiral that eventually twisted toward galactic south and back again as he prepared to engage some more enemies, putting faith in his squad mates.

The ramming tactic was a simplistic ruse, and the Tyrant was quite proud of it's nature. The Terrans were, obviously, backing off faster than most of his ships could close. Despite that, they were still at close proximity with one another, and nobody could miss. Nobody. No excuses. The Terrans watched as the Red Fleet suddenly started to concentrate fire on just a handful of ships at a time, quickly destroying those in short order, and the close proximity prohibited the Terra class ships from using their main guns and quickly ending the battle. The Tyrant quickly assigned sub leaders to coordinate the fleet into a few groups, each focusing on one target; whatever was easiest to hit, and had the most Terrans on board. "Concentrate firepower on these newer ships the Terrans have made! Waste their efforts and make them watch their hard work go down in flames! Our numbers may dwindle here today, but we are legion! We shall charge upon their weakened walls once again with renewed numbers, strength and vigor! Forward for the Empire!" Chaos ensued.

****

As the Firebrand exploded like a hamster put into a microwave, several solid shells the size of minivans slammed into the Pluto class nearby Kai, Emma and Arcadia. The massive projectiles collapsed the shields, and tore the ship into large chunks when a nuclear tipped shell was delivered as an unnecessary coup de grace. Giant fragments spun out with great speed, one of which collided with the Uranus, weakening a portion of it's sectioned shields and bringing them down further. The remaining Firebrand, under harassment from the Terran fighters pushed forward and fired it's main guns at the frigate, finally creating an opening in the Uranus' shield. It's defensive guns swiveled about and followed the fighters, nearly hitting the two pilots, but instead landing a small smattering on Kai, the Marine. His shields dropped to one third strength as the red ship's cannons dug into the side of the Uranus Class. The Drakes' shifted fire onto the weakened shield section, beating on the hull below. The Firebrand, knowing the end was near, made a balls to the wall rush; it was going to do a kamikaze on the frigate.

****

The two backup pilots had terrible aim, but kept shooting and shooting at Ruze despite the backup from friends and spiraling course. They followed closely and the two Scourges moved about to try and dodge the incoming fire while trying to put it on Ruze; they were too slow to avoid the majority of the fire. The left most Scourge took the worse of the beating, it's shields down and hull coming apart. Atmosphere began to vent, and eventually, something important was hit, and it exploded, showering the four rescuers in bits of debris. The second Scourge had it's shields pummeled down to nothing and had lost part of it's forward boom; Ruze was in a similar situation, as his shields were finally taken down, and a single shot bit off a wingtip.

****

Any fighting that occurred between the Drathonians and the Moonies was vicious. The Drathonians had fewer numbers and slower ships, but had shields and firepower that counted. The Moonies, on the other hand, were fast and nimble, outnumbering any Drathonian pilot who went up against them. However, their Delta Daggers were old ships, and a tad frail like other fighters of Terran make. A Scourge promptly fell in behind the Green Elite, it's guns blazing in a fiery red fury.

****

The Tyrant's damaged Drake slowly came to loom over Steven and his squad, as it fired it's cannons on Terran Frigates and Destroyers. it's point defense weapons automatically tracking and firing on the Squadron of Scimitars, but was substantially less than what it would have been due to the ramming attacks it participated in earlier, sheering off several of it's smaller turrets. A single Firebrand hovered over the Drake's exposed engineering section like vulture. It fired at Green Squadron.

Steven was already irked enough at the onset of being targeted, and fired upon, by the Drake and Firebrand, so as soon as his comm started to chirp with a French accent about some fish the Green CO was less than amused. “Something about fish and a rape cage?” a random thought passed through Steven's mind as he focused on doing maneuvers in a dilapidated scimitar.
“I copy, uh, Lead. You just, um, keep those...Ugh, damn it!” Steven started but then broke off as he narrowly avoided some incoming enemy fire from the Drake's point defense systems, “Just do what you gotta do, and I'll do what I can. Green Lead, out.”
After almost an hour of combat, Steven's already frayed nerves were causing him even greater annoyance as he began to wonder why nobody was throwing him a bone today. “Just get over a debilitating illness less than three hours ago, run into a drathonian in the hallway, and now almost get shot down several time in the same amount of time it takes to make an omelet. I need some coffee,” another random thought said as it waited in line to get to Steven's mouth; it was preceded in line by several crude looking characters that were spewing profanities.
“This is Green Leader to Green Leader. Rhiannon, you hear me? If at all possible, do ya think now would be a good time for me to cash in one of those favors you still owe me? Me and the boys are currently playing tag with lots of bullets, and we are running low on, well, everything really. Think you could swing by in that fancy new fighter of yours?” Steven asked with an odd mix of emotions that included 'I am rather unhappy right now' and 'why didn't I go into law school instead'.

As the Tyrant's Drake succumbed to the large amount of anti-ship torpedos landing inside of it unimpeded, The Terran fleet took the opening made by it, and coordinated their fire on the remaining Drathonian ships. It seemed as if the Terrans had been holding back before, keeping everything together in case the Draths had backup, but at this point it was obvious they did not.

First was the Pluto and Mars classes, which fired their Missiles, Torpedos, and Turbolasers in an enormous barrage of light and projectiles, an act which ate away at the Corvette screen and the shields of the larger ships. This was followed by the Terra II and Uranus classes opening up with their own turbolasers. The bright shiney death blossomed from the guns, flinging superheated beams of coherent light and a few other things blowing their way through space to impact upon, and melt, the hulls of the enemy ships.

As a Coup De Grace, The Terras and Uranus classes opened up with their Solaris, and Mini-nova cannons, respectively, blowing huge holes in the enemy ships, completely decimating them and causing masses of rapid decompressions, secondary explosions, and all around Havok on their Drathonian foes.

The fighters, as well, Were by this time so depleted in numbers that it was a matter of who shot them down first, rather than wether they would be shot down or not. The Battle itslef raged on for another Half hour, mostly the Terrans mopping up the last bits of Drathonian fighters, But before that could happen the Hymn's active squadrons were recalled, to finally Set down in their home ship for the first time in months.