May 8, 2089

After making it's way back through the relay, the Neera immediately sent an emergency message to the Migrant fleet, informing them of the ambush and requesting aid, even as it burned hard away from the relay in an effort to put distance between themselves and the batarians. They were confident that batarian ships would come through the relay at any moment.

The message had thrown the fleet into a frenzy as the Admiralty hastily scraped together a wolfpack of their fastest ships and sent it to the Neera at maximum speed. Aboard the lead ship of this wolfpack Neph and Henry had found themselves brought along, more as a "just in case" than for any tangible purpose. The pair did not complain, however, as the prospect of waiting around back at the fleets for word of the Samar's fate to get back to them was not an appealing one.

"Do you think they made it?" Neph asked, immediately feeling stupid for asking the question.

"No." Henry said simply. "The math is not in their favor. If Neera's report is accurate, then they've already expended most of their munitions, in addition to taking extensive damage."

Neph didn't really have a response to that. It was simple common sense. Yet, she still hoped, foolish though it may have been.

Some time earlier

Prator was watching the human ship make its getaway after dropping its boarding pods. His two escorts opened fire on the retreating ship, but it was too fast and agile for it to be effective. The escorts didn't follow beyond a relatively short distance from the flagship, much to Prator's annoyance. I guess they've never heard of "initiative". I'll have to order them to-His ship's engines cut out suddenly, leaving the Resh'Dar'Nin adrift on its current trajectory. Damn it.

"Status report!" he ordered.

"Boarders are believed to have seized the engine room, sir. Likely they got to the emergency shutoff." a tech responded.

Prator's two escorts had flipped around and moved on the flagship, presumably in an attempt to render aid. Idiots. thought Prator.

"Order them to pursue the human ship!" Prator commanded.

"Aye sir...sir, our comms are down!" the tech replied.

Prator cursed. "The boarders are probably in our systems. Flush them out, then transmit the order! And send all security teams to the engine room." This was bad. If they could access the ship's comms like this, it wasn't impossible for them to take over other systems. If they managed to pry their way past the main reactor's security measures, they could power down the whole ship!

"I want guns in every crewman's hands, on the double!" He'd send everyone with a pulse into that engine room if that's what it took. The crew scurried around to obey, and Prator glared at the image of his escorts, still approaching him instead of pursuing the enemy like they should have been. Prator sighed. He couldn't really fault them for it. There were plenty of batarian warlords who would execute their subordinates for leaving the flagship behind disabled to chase after a fleeing enemy. If they'd used their brains, they'd realize it was the best course of action for the completion of the mission.

Unfortunately for Prator, completing the mission was a secondary objective next to covering one's ass for batarian officers. He couldn't really fault them, they were a product of their training and upbringing.

Of course, that wouldn't stop him from personally executing both of the captains when this laughable farce of a battle was over.

Aboard the Samar, Major Tim Li heard something resembling good news for the first time since the ambush had started, out of the mouth of his chief engineer, Lieutenant Fahri.

"Our propulsion wasn't knocked out sir, it was our control system. It got banged up during the maneuver, and the emergency safeties cut the engines to avoid us sending ourselves into a tailspin. " the engineer said.

"Can you get it back up?" the Major asked.

"The engine and gimbal are both fine, fortunately, so the only thing we actually need to fix is the control system itself, which we've got the parts for. What we don't have the parts for is the spinal mount. Don't worry, we can still get it up and running, but our fire rate is going to be suboptimal." Fahri said.

"How suboptimal?" Tim asked.

"We can probably still outshoot the Q-ship, but if we try to take that frigate in a straight-up fight, we'll get our ass handed to us. And I don't think I even need to mention our chances against the cruiser." Fahri said.

Tim smiled. "Actually, that cruiser might be the solution to our problems."

Prator looked on in shock as the distant light of twin nuclear explosions obliterated the Ent'shan and sent it's scattered pieces flying out through the star system. The human ship looked to be some kind of light patrol ship, probably intended to fight pirates. And they had given it nukes. Who would give strategic weapons to a light patrol skiff? Were these people insane?

Prator had a brief moment of panic that he squashed ruthlessly. Obviously, his first impression of the ship's purpose had been incorrect. It must have been some sort of long-range super-heavy bomber, which would explain the massive kinetic payload the ship had dumped on him to cover the boarding action not too long ago.

Prator found himself sighing yet again. If his escorts didn't pursue the human ship before, the definitely weren't going to now. Which was a shame, as their incentives to stick around had been dwindling. The boarding team had hacked into the weapons systems, and were seizing control of individual batteries, taking pot shots at the escorts. Every time Prator's techs managed to kick the hacker out of a weapon and lock the system down, the virus pooped up in another weapon. It was maddening. The techs were having trouble making heads or tails of the alien program. It's logic was...odd to a batarian mind, which should probably be expected, since it hadn't come from a batarian mind.

Prator cursed the Hegemony leadership and their overconfidence. It all made sense in hindsight. The humans had captured the support ship from Halmak's ill-fated flotilla, which they would have of course spent every waking moment pouring over for any scrap of information about their enemies that they could find. Meanwhile, all Prator had been able to give to the Hegemony was footage of the failed attack. So, the human hacker was likely intimately familiar with batarian computing logic, while Prator's techs had to learn human logic on the fly. It was not a recipe for success.

The human ship was burning its way towards the other ship Prator had sent after the fleeing transport, one of the Q-ships. Prator didn't have much confidence in the Q-ship's ability to fight off the humans but, assuming that the human ship had expended all of it's nuclear weapons, it wasn't impossible for the ship to get lucky.

As the human ship burned harder towards the Q-ship without any indication it was going to decelerate, Prator began to suspect that it was going to make another kinetic bombing run, similar to what had been done to his flagship. The thought that the ship still had bombs left after the sheer amount that had been unleashed against him was hard to believe, but he couldn't think of another explanation for the behavior.

When the ship passed into laser range without anything happening, Prator grew even more confused. The human ship had cut it's acceleration, and was maneuvering towards the Q-ship on secondary thruster. Suddenly, it increased it's mass dramatically, and Prator didn't have to guess its intentions any longer. Madness.

The human ship sheared through the Q-ship like a red hot knife, ripping it in half and then drifting without direction for several kilometers. Prator's horrified expression softened at the sight. The fools had disabled themselves! The improvement to Prator's mood didn't last, as he watched his escorts mindlessly fly in and out of range of his rogue weapons, oblivious to the perfect opportunity right under their noses. It was possible they were trying to get in close to dispatch their own boarding teams to aid in the fight, but Prator suspected that was giving them too much credit.

Prator fumed. "Tell those imbeciles to burn with everything they have for the human ship, before they can make repairs. I don't care if you have to use smoke signals to do it!" Even as he raged, he knew it was pointless. They weren't going to-

"Sir, our main engines are firing!" a tech shouted.

What?

The Resh'Dar'Nin suddenly and violently flipped up, burning hard in a rapid loop de loop, ending up in roughly the same spot it had started.

"Status report! What was that?" Prator roared.

Chief Paulo to give a baleful look to Rosa Kreischer, who looked more than a little sheepish as she worked at the engineering terminal.

Zeke laughed uproariously, before grinning at the woman. "Well, that's one way to signal the Major." he managed to get out, before laughing again.

Tim had indeed received his rangers' "signal", and upon hearing the good news from Lieutenant Fahri, a plan had formed in the back of his mind.

There were still some astronauts working on secondary repairs, but the Samar was still in as good a repair after her ordeal as she could be without a full work-over from a drydock. Tim took a deep breath, and gave his orders.

"Set vector for the batarian flotilla."

The crew moved to obey, and the Samar's engines fired as she faithfully answered the call of her crew once again. The interceptor burned hard towards her foes, kinetic barriers up and spinal mount at the ready. Tim's plan was delightfully simple: close in and gun them down. The success of the plan hinged on the boarding team figuring out his intentions. Tim didn't like relying on such an unreliable variable, but it was the only plan he could think of.

The Samar swerved towards the Q-ship, closing to attack range. The Q-ship opened up with it's dorsal and ventral mass driver turrets, firing shots that the Samar easily dodged. Tim guessed the captain was either panicked, inexperienced, or both, because any captain with any sense would know that firing such weapons at this range was a fruitless effort.

As the Samar closed in, she opened up with her spinal mount. The rounds came out slow, but they came out. The Q-ship frantically maneuvered to dodge, only to fly itself right into the incoming path of a mass driver round fired from the batarian cruiser. Tim smiled. The boarding team had figured it out.

Another wave of batarians assaulted the engine room, apparently undeterred by the growing mound of batarian corpses littering the perfectly-sighted killzone that was the engine room entrance. The poor dumb bastards charged in, clutching elderly pistols scavenged from various sources throughout the ship, desperately looking for cover as the hail of human gunfire butchered them. A few managed to take cover behind the corspes, but it was woefully inadequate for the amount of mass being dumped on them. Chief Paulo almost felt sorry for the poor fools. The batarians had tried human (batarian?) wave tactics, but they just ended up getting in each others' way in the narrow space of the entrance. They'd been forced to attack in smaller waves, sending in armed groups as fast as they could assemble them. It was wearing the rangers down, but the Chief was confident that they could hold a good while longer.

The movies and video games always had the waves getting harder as the battle continued, but the reality was that all the real batarian soldiers had been killed in the first attempts to dislodge the rangers from the engine room, and the quality of the fighters sent after that had continuously declined as the well of batarian manpower began to run dry. Paulo suspected that at this point they were just handing a weapon to the cooks and janitors and ordering them to go die for the Hegemony.

The last batarian in the attack fell, and Chief Paulo heard a call from Rosa.

"Chief, I think the Major is making his move!" she said.

Paulo pulled himself out of cover, trusting his rangers to gun down any surprise survivors that might take a shot at him. He moved over to Rosa.

"What's he doing." he asked.

"Samar is moving in for an attack run. I think he's going to make for the Q-ship." she replied.

Paulo didn't hesitate. "Be prepared to give the Samar fire support when you're in the position to, and use the batteries not facing the Q-ship to keep that frigate at bay. We need to help him defeat them in detail."

Rosa nodded and focused intently on her engineering console. A hail of gunfire let the Chief know that the batarians were making another assault on the engine room. He shook his head and bolted back to his position.

The Q-ship captain had apparently regained his senses, as he made his first good call of the fight and charged headlong for the Samar. It was the right move to make, as the Samar could just sit back and plink away at the Q-ship's barriers using its spinal-mount's superior range, while all the Q-ship could do was fire back ineffectually with its turrets. It also had the side benefit of getting it further away from the batarian cruiser's rogue guns.

Tim called out his orders. "Keep us facing them and shooting at them. Use lateral thrusters to move us around behind them."

"I doubt he's going to just stand around and let us flank him, sir." Tim's XO, Lisa, said.

Tim nodded. "I know. It's a feint."

Lisa nodded, recognition of what he was planning dawning on her face. The Samar moved laterally around the Q-ship, trying to get behind it, the Q-ship turned rapidly and charged once again...bringing itself right back into the range of the batarian cruiser's guns.

The Samar had never stopped firing, and as the batarian ship charged headlong into the human one it's barriers struggled to absorb the blows. As the batarian captain realized his mistake the Q-ship' s barriers buckled and the fragile hull beneath was mercilessly perforated by the rounds. As the batarian captain drew in a breath to give the order to surrender, the bridge was liquified in a kinetic explosion.

"Cease fire." Tim ordered, and the Samar instantly obeyed, the rogue guns on the cruiser soon silenced themselves as well when they noticed the Samar had stopped firing. Tim barely had to glance at the Q-ship to know that it was a mission-kill. There was no need for him to completely obliterate every target on the field.

"Bring us around for an attack run on that frigate!" Tim ordered.

The batarian captain observed the mangled corpse of the other escort. Then he watched as the alien ship, battered and battle-scarred, maneuvered in for what was clearly an attack run. He eyed his only remaining "ally" in the system, the flagship whose guns seemed to be more interested in firing at him than the enemy. The batarian took all of this in, blinking his four eyes slowly. Then, he gave the obvious order.

"Burn hard for the edge of the system. We're getting out of here."

The crew didn't need to be told twice. These weren't proper warrior caste men, who took shame in retreat. These were pirates, slavers, mercenaries. Living to fight another day sounded good to them.

As his ship fled at maximum acceleration, the captain planned his future. The Terminus systems. He'd find a new pirate flotilla to serve in. One that didn't get trounced by a single alien ship twice in the span of two months.

Prator watched the frigate leave, and he found himself to have exhausted his reserves of rage. Hell, he'd probably do the same thing in the captain's position. He keyed the intercom. "Attention human boarders." he said, "The ship is yours. Please return communications to me so that I may signal my surrender to your commander."

He waited, not making eye contact with any of his crew. No response was given from the boarders, but a nod from his communications officer told him they had comms again. Prator sent out a transmission on an open channel. "Attention human captain. This is Captain Prator. My ship is boarded, my escorts are destroyed or routed, and my weapons systems are compromised. Please give you terms for surrender."

A moment passed, and the response was heard. "Unconditional."

Tim sagged into his chair, feeling like he'd aged ten years over the course of the brief skirmish. He turned to Lisa. "Tell Senior Chief Paulo to star disarming all of the prisoners, and to select some among them to fly out in shuttles to pick up any survivors. Make Prator coordinate with him." The woman nodded and moved to follow his orders.

Tim looked up at the ceiling, marveling at the fact that he was not only still alive, but victorious. This was the sort of victory that would be talked about in the history books, taught in classrooms at the Space Force Officer Academy back on Earth. Tim wasn't worried about it going to his head, because he was confident that his own skills had little to do with it, no matter what others would say. He was no genius, it was just the perfect storm of events. The batarians almost complete lack of intel on their foes, the miraculous success of the boarding operation, the failure of the two escort captains, and the element of surprise that came from his weapons and tactics. Any competent officer could have done it, in Tim's opinion, and he wasn't too humble to admit that he was, indeed, competent.

Tim looked back down, and almost laughed at the absurdity of it all.

Hey all, this is another shorter chapter, so that we could wrap up both the cliffhanger and this particular story arc (finally). With this done, we should be able to move on to the meat and potatoes of the narrative in the next chapters. I look forward to it. Thank you very much for reading this far, and as always please share your thoughts in the reviews.