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Thomas grinned a little, pushing against the wall and dropping to a knee. The less space he took up, the more space Garrett had to get his job done, and the less likely he was to get killed should the explosives go off. A little self-serving, but hey, if he was alive he'd be more useful. He turned his head to watch behind them, not that he expected anything behind them. Just in case.

"No he didn't!" Emma replied, having Kept Arcadia's wing, she took out the escaping fighter with an EMP blast of her own. Suddenly, warning sirens wailed in her cockpit, citing missile, lazer, and chaingun locks, all simultaneously, as five of the fighters suddenly grouped together, taking advantage of the lone pair "All power to rear Shields, Evasive actions! Arcadia, in five seconds, all stop, Let's get them" The young pilot said, Spinning her ship to avoid a chaingun that opened up. The lock tones for the Missile and Chaingun dissappeared, but the lazer tone remained constant as the fighter kept up with her fighter. When the counter her shout had initated went to zero, Emma's fighter sprouted a few flares of exhaust from the dorsal surface and bow, dropping her fighter down and stopping it's forward motion. In a flash, the thrusts reversed and she was behind the bewildered lizards, her fighter shuddering from the manuever, which was as difficult in artmosphere as it was easy in vacuum. Her guns low giving the warning tones, Emma unleashed both of her AA missiles, not getting any hits but the explosions having the nice effect of peppering all five enemy ships, some shrapnel apparently killing one of the pilots. She opened up with the nose mounted lazers, lighting up the back ends of two more.

Jack cringed his face a bit at the sudden spark that shot out of the contraption Hendlow was working on. As the captain backed away from the door, Jack took up a crouching position behind it, ready to strike. "Just say the word, Kai." he whispered loudly, listening intently to the sharp clack of claws on metal.

---

Raji grinned as the squad leader told her to proceed, her ship slowing to a glide several kilometers above the battle. "Time to call down the thunder, six. Keep our tails clean." her wingmate muttered a response, beginning to get fed up with following her orders. She grinned a bit, laughing inwardly to herself at the pathetic little man that she had to rely on. She could do fine on her own... a small part of her didn't mind if he got shot down in the fight.

Raji kicked her engines into full gear and plummeted back down towards the battle. She caught the edge of the fight, where a group of Rexs were making their turn arc mid-fight. She angled her ship out a bit to compensate for their movement as she came careening down on them. Letting loose, she and Six unleashed a hail of laser and gun fire, scoring successful hits on all four of the ships. As she passed perpendicular to her victims, she didn't even have time to notice that the cockpits of two were shattered and splattered with blood - if she had, she probably would have completely broken focus. She did, however, note that the third was spiraling downward in a trail of smoke. The fourth was saved from any critical damage, and quickly came diving furiously after them. Six began swerving about in a bit of a panic. Raji cursed to herself as it began firing at the idiot. She wasn't ready to have his blood on her hands just yet. She fired full reverse thrusters, jolting her harshly about the cockpit as the ship slowed considerably. The other two ships went whizzing past her, and Raji quickly sped up again to take some pot shots at the Drathonian. They were well below the fight at this point, and in a fraction of a second all three ships would have to even out to avoid hitting the ground.

"Okay, Jack, On my mark, kick the s**t outta that door, hop out, and start firing." Kai whispered. "The rest of you, get ready for it to be hot. We'll have about five seconds to get into the hallway and run our asses off to the control center. If my math is right, we cut 200 meters off of this hallway by using this hatch, so, as soon as you're out, start heading to what's currently our right, it should only be another twenty or thirty meters to the control center. Lock and Load!" the Captain said, checking the batteries in his Sugar rifle. All green. "Three... Two... One... Mark!" Kai said, ready to bounce as soon as Jack got the door open.

***

"Sorry, three" Emma responded, before continuing "I just figured you'd want less lizards on your tail" And with that, Emma unleased some EMP of her own, sizzling all the electronics in one of the fighters, which was soon taken off her HUD as a target. She immediately switched to lazers, turning the engine cluster of the second into metal vapor. Suddenly, Emma realized something was wrong. "s**t, Arcadia, my ship reads your shields are offline" She manuevered to the side of her wing's fighter that usually held the pod that generated shield power, only to notice that it seemed to be missing said pod. "That's why the chaingun hurt you, you're shields are gone!" Suddenly, Emma was in protective mode, keeping her fighter between Arcadia's and the nearest enemies. "I've got an Idea, Arc, I'm going to divert all shield and weapons power to the front shields, we'll go head to head. Use my telemetry, an when I get mark you pop out and fire on the lizards. Sound good?"

"Green Lead to Green Two, we have some scalies coming up quick. You split left and I go right," Steven said to his wingman. The many years of practice and teamwork between the two were evident as the two veterans swooped away into a synchronized loop, each mirroring the other. As Steven expected, three of the five Rex fighters followed him and the other two followed Two. Steven was mentally crossing his fingers for this maneuver always works well with scourges, but he was unsure as to whether it would work on a Rex. From a quick guess he figured there was a 59% chance of it working, a 33% chance of the Rex overtaking him a shooting him down, a 7% chance of the plan working perfectly, and a 1% that his engines spontaneously combust.
Sure enough two of the Rexs were cutting the curve and broadsiding him while the other one stayed on his tail. All he needed was a few more seconds. The seconds passed and some higher power must have been rooting for him because both he and Two completed their loops and were now heading straight for each other. They both altered course ever so slightly and opened fire on the weakened front shields of the Rex squadron. Three out of the five were shot down, one was critically damaged, and the last had only minor damage; Steven had taken several hits to his right side, and Two was not much better.
Passing a few quick glances at his radar he saw that the terran pilots were still out numbered 2:1. But Red squadron was going to be commencing their flanking maneuver shortly, and Green Five and Six had re-entered the fray. Steven was amazed that this was going so well, but his sigh of relief was stifled when an alert sounded on his HUD.
”Green Lead to Green Three, Three status report. What the hell happened?” Steven said into the comm with a faint hint of concern.

"Roger Green Three, good luck down there," Steven said. "Green Four, form up with me and Two."
"That makes Green squadron down to eleven pilots, Blue is down to nine, and Red has seven. Of the nine downed pilots, four of them were safely on the ground, four were KIA, and one was MIA. So that leaves us with twenty-seven pilots." Steven thought as he continued formulating his next move.

"Green Four! When I tell you to form up, I mean right that instant not 'in a minute'!" Steven almost shouted into the comm. "Don't...never mind, we will continue this when we are back on the Hymn." The worst time to lose your cool was when in the middle of a dogfight and Emma got lucky, and him scolding her would not alleviate the situation.
"Red Leader to Green Leader. Green Lead, Red Seven through Twelve are inbound on our position. ETA 30 seconds."
"Roger Red Leader. Green Lead out," Steven responded. "'Bout time."
"Green Lead to Green Squadron. We have three Reds coming from the East, and three from the West. They will be coming in hard and fast. Think drathonian BBQ. We need to keep these lizards busy until then, so form up into quad groups(groups of four) and listen for further instructions. Green Lead out."

"Yes sir, Sorry sir." Emma apologised truthlessly. she continued to fly on his wing, waiting for those further instructions. the girl was silently fuming, angry at herself for not being good enough. Even though Arcadia had survived in fairly good condition, Emma's brain still correlated it with the loss of her brother, something she would not tolerate. shaking her head to try to get a grip back on reality, Emma looked at the numbers falling, and watched which fighters attributed which kills. With the standard drathonian enemies being Scourge fighters, Terran Ace regulations were 25 fighters, not the ancient 5. in this battle, she noticed several people making it to half and quarter ace, which would have probably been full aces if they had been attacked by the larger, slower Lizard fighters. Noting her own seven kills, Emma predicted that she would have made ace in this battle under those circumstances.

***

Jack would burst out into a fairly large corridor, about five meters wide, and the same amount tall. he would find that he was about midway between to Drathonian defensive positions, which, luckily for him, weren't on full alert yet. To his left, ten lizards were facing away, completely unawares, and seven fell before even noticing something had happened, the rest scrambled about in suprise, grabbing weapons and firing the wrong way before realizing they were hit from behind. The second group was caught with just as much suprise by Kai rushing out the door just after Jack, and firing towards them. Three fell before the rest dove behind their cover, and one ran off to a small box a little farther up the hallway, pressing a button and laughing in the disturbing Drathonian way before looking shocked as nothing happened, the explosives safely in Garrett's pack.
Kai rolled to the opposite wall from their door, taking a kneeling position and firing at the lone Drathonian, felling him instantly. as the others came through, Kai yelled "The door to your right is our objective, we need to get to it as soon as possible." as if to spite him, the door opened up, spilling forth more lizards to defend the small barricade. Thinking fast, the captain hefted the busted access hatch and used it as a shield, blacing it accross his side of the hallway. It made enough cover for two or three more people to hide behind and fire from.