Chapter 4: Assault on the Shellnaught

It was a few minutes until they received word from Wizard. His voice crackled through static on their headsets.
“Are y-- ---re? D- --- ---y?”
“What?!” Jazz shouted back into his headset. There was silence from the other end for a few seconds, then Jazz heard a shrill BEEP. Another second of radio silence ensued, and then Wizard spoke again, this time not affected by static.
“Are you there? Everything OK?”
“We’re all right, Wizard,” Jazz heard Firefox’s voice on his earpiece. “What news do you have for us?”
“Well, you’re going in the right direction, for starters.”
“That’s usually a good thing,” mumbled Jack sarcastically. It didn’t matter anyway, since the mouthpiece picked it up, and the entire group heard it.
“I heard that. Are you trying to insult my varied navigation skills?”
“Jeez, Wizard, it was a joke.”
“Then that’s OK. Now, Tank’s airship, the Shellnaught, is about 20 clicks ahead of you. He’s armed to the teeth on that thing, so keep on your toes. Be especially careful around the sonic wave cannons; they’re devastating to the ears.”
“Gotcha,” Firefox answered. “C’mon, boys—” he saw Headcheese glaring at him “—and girls… Let’s get moving!” He grabbed the tail of his airboard, pulled it up so the jets were facing behind him, and started flying at twice his original speed. Jack rolled his eyes, and followed suit, as did the others.
Jack looked down upon the planet, and its bounty of bright orange carrots seemed to beckon him from his airboard. All of a sudden he wondered why he hadn’t brought a small snack along for the ride. His stomach rumbled in agreement.
Before long, the looming hulk of the Shellnaught was in sight. It looked like a huge, flying, metal boat, and, as Wizard said, it was bristling with artillery. As the rabbits saw more and more of that artillery, they all became visibly nervous about flying straight at a floating battleship.
Wizard came through on the headsets again. “Can you guys see the Shellnaught yet?”
Jazz responded. “We’re right behind it, Wizard. Got any points of advice for us?”
“None that I haven’t told you already. Just be careful, stay low, and don’t get dead. OK?”
“We’ll try our best.”
Blaze indicated for them to slow down. All of the rabbits promptly let go of their airboards, allowing them to float back underneath their feet, and, cruising relatively slowly, readied their respective blasters. No one spoke a word. They coasted silently towards the huge metal base, ready to fire at any signal.
Just as Firefox was ready to loose a few shots on the supposedly unsuspecting warship, one by one, the guns started to turn and fire on the advancing group of rabbits. Dodging the blasts flying at her from seemingly all directions, Lori yelled out, “So much for the stealth approach, guys! Start shooting!”
Jazz grabbed Spaz’s arm to keep him from doing a quick 180 and flying away, and started shooting at a gatling gun atop the warship that seemed particularly interested in shooting him down. Spaz suddenly had a change of heart, and returned fire with his small green blaster. Soon enough, all eight rabbits were firing at different parts of the attacking warship.
A stray bullet grazed Jazz’s arm, and as he looked down to check that he wasn’t bleeding badly, he noticed Headcheese beginning to break off from the group. The guns hadn’t noticed yet, and he was glad for that. She seemed to be flying to the underside of the armed airship. Jazz glided over towards Jack, all the while firing at a small cannon on the side of the Shellnaught.
“Um, Jack?”
“Yo.”
“Have you noticed where your sister is going?”
“Yeah, under the airship. I told her to check if there are any ways we can get in, and hack this thing apart from the inside. I doubt we’re going to get anywhere by staying behind the airship and shooting at it; it seems to be well enough protected by its armour, and we aren’t getting any healthier dodging bullets left, right, and centre.”
“OK then,” Jazz said to the white rabbit, as the latter dropped a few feet in altitude to make sure Headcheese was okay. He glanced at her, and, assured that she was fine, he turned to head back up to blow some more guns off of the ship.
Just as he was turning away, however, he caught a gatling gun extracting itself from the underside of the ship out of the corner of his eye. “Oh sh... Headcheese! Get out of there!”
Headcheese turned around, only to be shot in the waist, stomach, and ribs by the gatling gun. She stood on her airboard for a few seconds, with three red marks in the fur up her right side, apparently in shock from the bullets hitting her. Then her eyes rolled back in her head, and she toppled off of her airboard. Without a pilot, the airboard quickly began to fall to the ground alongside her.
“Oh god…” Thinking quickly, Jack put an extreme version of Firefox’s quick acceleration into use. He flipped completely upside down, so that his airboard’s jets were right above him, facing up. With gravity and the jets going in the same direction, Jack began to increase speed in a steep drop. Headcheese’s was steeper, however, as gravity did its work and she accelerated in freefall.
He was quickly faced with another problem, as the gatling gun that shot down Headcheese turned and began firing at him. If any of those bullets hit his airboard… He shuddered to think, and concentrated on his dive towards his unconscious sister. At least I’ll be shielded by my airboard, Jack thought optimistically.
There were less than a hundred metres left between Headcheese and the ground when Jack’s hand finally clasped around Headcheese’s wrist. As soon as it did, Jack flipped himself back over, but it was a fraction of a second too late: The airboard smashed into the ground, and at that speed, it obviously shattered into several blue pieces. Headcheese was unscathed, other than her previous injuries, but Jack felt a sudden, immense pain in his right leg, and fell to the ground. Getting woozier by the second, he fired two flares into the air, and fell onto his back. He tried to sit up again, and then he blacked out…

Jack regained consciousness an indeterminate time later, and it took him a few seconds to realize that he had indeed regained consciousness. As he began to get some of the feeling back in his body, he realized that the immense pain in his leg had faded to a dull throb. He opened his eyes, and found himself lying on a small bed in a hospital room. Headcheese was lying not far away, and she was still asleep. Bandages covered the three spots where the bullets hit her. A young, gold-furred female nurse sat forlornly on the bed at her feet, with her back to Jack.
Jack sat up, and the pain in his leg flared slightly. He looked at it, and saw, instead of his own white fur, a plaster cast encircling his lower leg. As he stared at his incapacitated leg, he saw Firefox sitting on a chair on the other side of the room, engrossed in a magazine. Apparently, the red-furred rabbit saw Jack sit up, as he glanced at him, put down his magazine, and strode quickly over to the bed beside Jack’s own. Jack waited until Firefox sat down on the bed before he spoke.
“Where am I? What happened?”
“You’re in the hospital at Ouistreham. You gave a good shot to your leg, and passed out, from what I know. No one filled me in otherwise.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Firefox said, “It’s tomorrow, man. You and Headcheese have been out for a full day.”
“What about Tank?”
“That doesn’t matter at the moment. How’re you doing?”
“Well, my leg still hurts, but that’ll fade. What happened, anyway?”
“We didn’t manage to catch up to Tank. After seeing your flares, I dove down to see if you were OK. You and Headcheese were both lying on the ground, unconscious. Headcheese was bleeding, and your leg looked like it was badly damaged. Your airboard was in pieces, and Headcheese’s was buried half its length into the ground.
“That was when Wizard called us. He said Tank was readying all of the remaining guns on the ship for a huge last-stand attack. He told us to break off the attack, at least for now. So I called Blaze to my location, and we carried you and Headcheese back here.”
“How’s she doing?”
Firefox asked the gold-furred nurse. “Hey, Emmi… how is she?”
Emmi turned around. “She’ll recover. Although, those were some nasty hits that she took in the first place.”
“Indeed.”
Emmi glanced at the now upright Jack. “Well, you’re awake. How are you feeling?”
Jack smiled at the nurse rabbit. He winced slightly as another stab of pain hit his leg, and said, “I’ll be fine. Thanks.”
“What in the world did you do to get your leg like that?”
“Like what?”
“Both of your fibula and tibia were dislocated from your knee and ankle. Basically, your lower leg had three unconnected sections. You must have hit hard on whatever you landed on.”
“Is it still out?”
“No, we fixed it while you were still snoozing.”
Jazz pondered over this for a second, then turned to Firefox and said, “What’s Tank’s position as of now?”
Firefox was about to tell him, but Emmi put up a hand to stop him. “You’re not going anywhere in your current state. You can’t put exertion on your legs for at least two weeks.”
“Two weeks?! But how are we going to catch up to Tank?”
“You’re not. R.O.A.R. sent me a message; they’re sending Lieutenant Indigo and Splitter in your and Headcheese’s place. I’m sorry.”