“Bad idea!”
Tooley’s sudden acceleration had triggered both fleets into action -an action that mostly consisted of walls of laser fire barreling in either direction. Tooley swerved downward and ducked below the volleys of destruction, then swung wide to the sidelines of the battle. The first volley was mostly negated by shielding, chaff, and other defensive measures, but a second soon followed, and Tooley watched as a few of the smaller vessels on either side were consumed by violent explosions.
“Off to a great start,” Tooley said. Their makeshift “alliance” outnumbered the Horuk by a moderate margin, so as long as losses were kept fairly equivalent, they’d come out on top. She kept to the outskirts of the fighting, close enough that Farsus could take potshots at the enemy without putting them in too much danger. “Fars, you’re the chaos expert, what’s your take?”
“On a personal level, I am delighted! On a tactical level, give me more than a few ticks to think,” Farsus said. The battle had only just begun, and it was far too early to call for either side. Farsus took a few shots at one of the smaller circular Horuk vessels and watched as it matched up against a patchwork Doccan cruiser and a flock of smaller bounty hunter ships. What should’ve been a one-sided slaughter turned into a protracted battle as the makeshift allies failed to coordinate. The disorganized skirmish lasted long enough that the lone Horuk vessel called in reinforcements and turned the tide. Farsus watched with great concern as the fighters were picked off, and the damaged Doccan hulk began to take on heavy fire.
“It would appear our fears were not entirely unfounded,” Farsus said. “We have the advantage of numbers, but not coordination.”
The disparate factions were killing in the same direction, but not truly working together. The Horuk vessels were running circles around their scattered foes, picking apart stragglers and encircling isolated factions.
“We always knew this was a possibility,” Kamak said. Luring in a half dozen different factions under false pretenses didn’t exactly engender good teamwork. Especially seeing as at least two of the factions very specifically hated each other. “We don’t need a decisive victory, we just needed to make sure the Horuk didn’t get a surprise attack. Mission accomplished, universe saved. Probably.”
Some of the smaller ships that had arrived on the scene had already fled, and Kamak had no doubt that a lot of distress signals and warnings were being sent. Even in the worst case scenario, the Horuk and Morrakesh had been deprived of the element of surprise, giving Centerpoint, and the rest of the universe, time to muster a defense.
“On that note, should we get the fuck out of here?”
Tooley watched as one of the three Galactic Council warships got bombarded with enough firepower to destroy one of its engines. It was still firing, but with no ability to maneuver, it was as good as dead.
“I feel like we’ve got to at least stick around for most of it,” Kamak said. “If we run away a few ticks in we still look bad.”
Tooley swerved hard to avoid a potshot from one of the Horuk ships. She swung the ship wide and took cover behind the massive frame of a Doccan cruiser for a moment.
“Longer we stick around, bigger chance we end up dead,” Tooley said. “I’m fine looking like an asshole if I’m a living asshole.”
“We’re not leaving until we shoot that purple bastard out of the sky,” Corey said. Morrakesh’s flagship was still weaving through the battlefield with ease, occasionally joining in combat on the side of the Horuk. “If Morrakesh gets out of here, we’ll never find it again. It’s smarter than anyone here and it’ll outlive us all.”
“Good point, Corvash, I have decided I also want vengeance,” Tooley said.
“And I don’t want it trying to take revenge, either,” Kamak said. “Corey’s right, we don’t get out of here until that bitch is dead.”
To Vo had been prepared to make a plea on behalf of all the innocent people aboard the ships they had lured here, but she was pleasantly surprised to see the crew had found their own motivation. Very bitter, spiteful motivation, but it at least overlapped with a good cause.
“That said, anyone got any ideas on how to do that?”
“We just need to get the people rallied behind a single guiding authority,” To Vo said. “Kamak, you’re captain, you could-”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” Kamak snapped. To Vo shut up.
“I think our specialty lies on the other end of the spectrum,” Doprel noted. “Causing chaos, not creating order.”
“Indeed! We must wreak havoc on the enemy,” Farsus said, his voice filled with thunderous enthusiasm. “But how?”
Even the expert on chaos struggled to come up with any ideas, given the resources available to them. Tooley kept her mind focused on flying, as the Doccan vessel she was sheltering behind started to take heavy fire. Half a dozen of the Horuk ships were focusing fire on it, blowing massive holes in the patchwork hull. As Tooley flew away, the Doccan aboard apparently assessed their situation and discovered that they were doomed. Then they did the logical thing: accelerate and use the doomed ship itself as a weapon. The lumbering space hulk burst forward and slammed into the spokes of one of the Great Wheel ships, snapping the circular war machine in half in a massive explosion.
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Tooley bared sharp teeth in a worrying grin.
“I have an idea!”
“I hate the way you sound right now,” Corey said.
“You should!”
With a quick flick of her wrist and a sharp pull on a lever, Tooley sent them careening away from the battlefield. Taking advantage of the fact that she’d never bothered to repair the cut wire that bypassed their light-speed safety systems, Tooley made a quick jump into the void, barely more than a drop long. From this far out, the battlefield wasn’t even visible. She bared her teeth and reactivated their communication channel -this time focused solely on the frequencies used by Morrakesh and the Horuk.
“Howdy there, you fucking oversized houseplant,” Tooley said. “If you’re so smart, can you guess what I’m about to do?”
“Continue running?”
“Close but not quite, Morry,” Tooley said. She swung the Hermit around to face directly at the Bang Gate in the distance. “I am going to take a page out of our Doccan friend’s book and ram your Bang Gate at full speed.”
“Tooley, that’s not supposed to-”
“Shut up and let me do my thing, captain,” Tooley snapped.
“You wouldn’t,” Morrakesh said. “You’d obliterate your own allies and yourself.”
“In case you haven’t been keeping track, Morrakesh, everyone within a hundred lightyears came here specifically to try and kill me,” Tooley said. “And, as you might remember from my time aboard your ship, I barely want to be alive to begin with.”
Something that had hopefully changed since Tooley had been aboard Morrakesh’s ship, but the brief silence that followed said Morrakesh didn’t know that. The brief silence from her crewmates said they weren’t sure they knew that either. Tooley ignored them all -though she did take a brief glance at Corey. For some reason, that steadied her nerves.
“Your confidence is remarkable,” Morrakesh taunted. “But I know a bluff when I see one, Tooley Keeber Obeltas.”
“Apparently not.”
Tooley gripped her controls, lined up to the Bang Gate, and jumped into FTL.
The torrent of obscenities flowing from Kamak’s mouth was something for the history books. In what he firmly believed to be his last few ticks of existence, Kamak fully intended to call Tooley every possible negative adjective in the dictionary. While he screamed and raged, Doprel and To Vo held on for dear life, Farsus laughed like a madman, and Corey sat in stunned silence. Tooley sat at her controls and counted down the ticks.
It would be easy to just stop counting. Let go of the controls, let herself slam right into the Bang Gate. She’d be disintegrated so fast she wouldn’t even feel it, and suddenly all her problems would be evaporated in the blink of an eye. It’d be easy.
Too easy. She wanted a challenge.
Tooley slammed a fist down on the controls so hard the Hermit shuddered as it abruptly decelerated from faster-than-light speeds. The trademark wall of beige light that came with FTL suddenly melted into a wall of solid gray metal: the Bang Gate, rushing towards them at several thousand miles an hour. Kamak’s torrent of screaming curses turned into regular screaming. Tooley joined him, though her scream was one of enthusiastic, utterly unrestrained delight.
“Fuck this!”
Tooley slammed the controls hard to the side, and the ship rolled with them. The Hard Luck Hermit went into a diving roll, narrowly avoiding the massive Bang Gate’s metal ring. At speeds like this it should’ve been impossible to maneuver at all, much less maneuver with precision through an active warzone. Tooley did it anyway.
“Fuck you!”
The absurd speed the ship still traveled at allowed them to traverse the battlefield in the blink of an eye, bypassing dozens of scattered Horuk ships. As Tooley had hoped, they had fallen for the bluff. As soon as Tooley had accelerated, they had scattered, hoping to flee the battlefield before the Bang Gate detonated. She dodged and weaved through the scattered enemy fleet, hurtling around warships and spinning through the spokes of a Great Wheel ship at speeds that would’ve had a lesser pilot crashing and burning instantly.
“Fuck everything!”
Processing all the input from her navigational readouts at speeds almost as fast as the ship itself was traveling, Tooley found her target and swung the ship around, making use of their momentum to close the distance faster than anyone could flee. She only started to decelerate when she saw her target on the outskirts of the battlefield: the tail end of the Empyrean Absolutist, engines flaring as it too tried to flee from the destruction Morrakesh had assumed was coming. Morrakesh’s flagship had made it further from the scene of the battle than any other, and might’ve even escaped the hypothetical destruction. But there was no escaping Tooley, or her ego. She made sure her next taunt was broadcasted across all channels.
“I am Tooley Keeber Obertas, and I am the best pilot in the fucking universe!”
Still laughing like a lunatic, Farsus got himself back on track. Having Morrakesh’s ship flanked was an opportunity to be seized. The insane acceleration made it hard to aim, but even so, Farsus managed to fire off three clean shots at the Empyrean Absolutist. The tracking systems in the missiles did the rest, striking the purple vessel and disabling most of its propulsion systems.
“And that is everybody’s least favorite tree served up on a silver platter,” Tooley said, tensed muscles relaxing as the ship started to slow to normal speeds. “You’re welcome.”
Kamak turned in her direction, teeth bared in a horrified grimace that seemed to be frozen on his face.
“Thank you.”
All around them, the tide of the battle started to turn as the makeshift alliance seized on the sudden scattering of the enemy fleet. The Horuk’s defensive formation around the Bang Gate had broken, and their opponents flowed into the empty space, circling the wagons and putting their backs to the Bang Gate to avoid being flanked. Though their coordination went no further than taking up a defensive formation, that alone was enough to shift the tides of battle in favor of the odd allies.
“Your gambit appears to have worked, Tooley,” Farsus said. “I offer my sincere congratulations and my sincere hopes you will never do that again.”
“Yeah I don’t plan on it,” Tooley said breathlessly. The adrenaline high was wearing off, but she could still feel her heartbeat in her eyeballs. That couldn’t possibly be healthy. She decelerated them into a slow drift as they surveyed the battlefield -and the disabled Empyrean Absolutist. Kamak glared daggers at the crippled purple vessel.
“I think it’s our turn to do something stupid,” he said. “Tooley, take us in.”
Kamak unbuckled his seatbelt and put a hand on the pistol strapped to his hip.
“And prepare to board.”