Nothing really to say about this chapter, excepting that I'm mighty sorry it took me more than three months to write it. Enjoy.

Chapter 26: Consequences

There was a bright flash of light from above the Hybrid Corsair as the end of one of the reactor arms exploded, and Phish smirked, flipping a small switch on the control panel. “Quite the light show. What’s going on up there?”
Electrik’s voice came back over the surprisingly strong connection. “Two down, four to go. No… cancel last. Three down.”
“Good. What’s up with Jack? Anyone seen him?”
“Yeah,” came Wizard’s voice. “And not a moment too soon, either. Gecko decided to do a bit of triple-crossing after I called his bluff on leading me around in circles in the satellite. He was a little too close – ack! Get away from me!”
Phish winced as the sound of gunfire replaced Wizard’s voice for a few moments, then stopped.
“Sorry about that… effing lizard dropped right in front of me. Anyway, that backstabber Gecko was a little bit too close to ventilating my forehead when Jack caught up.”
“Sounds absolutely delightful,” Phish muttered sarcastically. “Any idea where he is now?”
“None,” Wizard replied. “Probably tearing this whole satellite apart looking for Tank. The most we can do for now is hope that we’ve taken out enough of the power supply for this thing in time to keep it from being able to fire at Carrotus.”
As if to emphasize Wizard’s statement, another bright flash from above the Corsair illuminated the ship’s cockpit. Phish grinned.
“Four down.”

Jack hauled the scrawny form of a yellow lizard up to its feet by its neck, and his crimson eyes shone dangerously as he glared at the reptile. “Where is he? Where is Tank?!”
The reptile couldn’t make any sound other than a strangled gurgle, and it pried weakly at the hand closed around its throat. His patience already gone, Jack threw the lizard against a wall, and there was a loud crack as the creature’s head slammed into the unyielding metal. It slowly slumped to the floor in a lifeless heap.
“Jack? Where are you?” his headset yelped from inside his unclosed backpack. He had shoved it in there after he had gotten tired of the others trying to get him to stop in one place for more than ten seconds, and hadn’t thought to close the bag afterward. “Come on, answer me!”
He ignored it. He couldn’t be bothered to answer the pleading calls from the headset. There was only one thing he could possibly think about now, and that was killing Tank once and for all.
Jack howled, his feral anger gaining more and more control over his body by the second. Clutching the twin controls for his BIAS in his hands, he riddled the control panels and computers around him with holes, and only grinned madly as they exploded into flame.
His lip was bleeding from having bit into it himself, and he wiped the blood away from his mouth with a furiously shaking hand. Pivoting on one foot, he blew the door to the room he had entered off of its hinges, and took one last look around the devastated chamber before he was back on the hunt for Tank.

“He’s still not responding,” Firefox muttered to himself as he retraced his steps on his way out of the Colossus reactor. “I can hear him, but he can’t hear me…”
“The rest of us still can, Firefox,” Wizard responded curtly. “You can stop talking to yourself now. Where are you?”
“On my way out of the Colossus arm, why?”
“Blast. Too far away from me to follow Jack. Anyone other than me somewhere near the center of the satellite?”
After a few seconds of radio silence, the sound of a loud explosion filled the rabbits’ ears, followed by the sound of screeching metal. The entire group could feel the satellite rumbling, even slightly, and then Phish was screaming.
“They’ve launched fighters! Dozens of them! I need backup! The Corsair is under attack!”

Phish sped as fast as he could to the weapons chamber, and quickly took a seat before the controls of the SSL, risking a glance at the radar. He hadn’t been exaggerating; there were indeed dozens of fighters swarming around the Corsair. As he flipped a number of switches next to him, the numerous turrets on the ship hummed and whirred to life, being controlled by the ship itself.
“S’not sentience, but it’ll have to do,” Phish muttered to himself as the guns almost immediately opened fire on the enemy fighters. “This ‘superweapon’ of Acid’s better be good…”
He took aim at one fighter in front of the Corsair, and pulled the trigger. The screen in front of him instantly lit up as the jagged bolt of energy tore out of the SSL, and the targeted fighter spun away uncontrollably upon impact, spiraling into another fighter and bursting into a ball of flame.
Phish stared in awe at the trigger under his finger, and grinned. “Man, I so need to get me one of these…”
He aimed at another fighter, and fired again.

“Knowing any villain with any given massive death-ray satellite, Tank wouldn’t have put any real defensive weapons on this thing, right?” Spaz asked. “Like, nothing we could defend the Corsair with?”
“Doubtful,” Acid replied. “I didn’t see the satellite actually firing at us while we were coming toward it. Then again, between the minefield, the fighters, and the Leviathan, I wasn’t really paying much attention to the satellite on our way in.”
“True,” Jazz said. “I don’t blame you. It’s a little distracting to have—”
At that moment, the lights flickered, then shut off completely, shrouding the satellite in darkness. None of the rabbits spoke a word for several dozen seconds, but the silence was broken by the voice of Wizard of Odds.
“Megalith reactor’s finally down… how many are there left? None, I hope?”
“Judging by the fact that I can’t see my feet, I’d say there’s none left that we have to worry about,” Lori answered. “Now what?”
“Well, I’m all for hauling tail back to the Corsair,” Electrik stated. “If she’s under attack, we need to help Phish hold off the assault until we can get the heck out of here.”
Firefox swore under his breath, muttering something about Jack being a royal pain in the neck sometimes. Foo was heard screaming nonsense in the background, Acid was desperately trying to shut him up, and Spaz and Headcheese were conferring quietly, barely loudly enough to be heard over the headsets.
Then the lights returned.
“Well, that’s helpful,” Spaz said, not yet grasping that this was actually a problem.
But Jazz was one step ahead of his brother. “What the frill are the lights doing on again? Is there another generator we have to find?”
“I hope not,” Lori replied quickly. “Do we even have time to find it?”
“We’d better,” Firefox answered.
“For the sake of Carrotus, we’d better.”

The Corsair shook as the shields finally gave out, and Phish spun the SSL turret around to pick off another few fighters behind the ship. There were now literally swarms of enemies surrounding the destroyer, and they were attacking from every direction, searching for the Corsair’s weakest spot. A violent explosion ripped off part of the ship’s wing, taking an ion cannon with it, and Phish gritted his teeth tightly as a warning light went off. He quickly flipped a switch, and cracked his knuckles in aggravation.
“Man… if there was ever a time when I needed a miracle to save my miserable butt, this would be it…” Phish bit his tongue as the ship jerked, recoiling from a missile hit, and muttered as he tasted blood. “Right now would be great…”
All at once, as if answering his plea, several dots on the radar screen disappeared. Phish blinked in surprise, and squinted at the radar in disbelief. “What the…?”
Another set of dots went out, and Phish raised an eyebrow, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. It was only when a large shape appeared on the screen that he was able to piece it together.
He looked upward, and grinned. “Somebody up there likes me.”
Quickly taking up the controls of the SSL, he picked off one last fighter before the turret was blown off of the ship by a precise shot on the part of one of the fighters. He wasted no time in getting back to the cockpit of the Corsair as quickly as possible.
Despite the fact that he was safe for the moment, time was still a factor, and Phish could not waste any factors now.

“It worked, sir,” Tokivi said to Buster’s back, staring at a point a few inches above the back of the turtle’s head. “The rabbits are on the run. They think we have a seventh generator powering the Eschaton.”
“Well, that’s all well and good, but the matter at hand is how the frick do we get out of the Eschaton? It’s useless without the generators, and the MEW isn’t anywhere near fully charged, so we can’t use it either.”
“There are escape ships attached to the satellite, sir, so it shouldn’t be too hard to escape if and when it is needed. It will be harder for the rabbits, though; I did a scan of the destroyer that they used to enter the Eschaton, and by the looks of it the fighters won’t be long in relieving the rabbits of their method of escape.”
“Excellent. Ready one of the escape ships. If the Eschaton is of no further use to me, then I don’t want to be on it when it detonates,” Buster said gruffly, opening the door to leave.
There, standing in the doorway, was the berserk Jack Flash. His eyes were practically radiating crimson, and his lips were flecked with blood and spittle, but he was still leering madly, his mouth twisted into a maniacal grin.
“Well, well, well. Buster Tank.” Jack sneered. “We meet at last.”