Chapter 15: Innovations and Strategies

True to their word, Wizard and the others were at Aevias’ Ground Point in a few seconds shy of twenty minutes. Jazz, Spaz, and Lori were waiting at the Ground Point for them, and they watched as the sleek superbike slowed to a halt in front of the small building. Jack, with Blaze still on his back, was not too far behind the bike, and he was closing fast. He stopped as an ice-skater would, turning sideways and firing his BIAS’ jets once, causing him to stop abruptly beside the bike.
Blaze hopped off of Jack’s back. Jack bent backwards, and a painful series of cracks sounded from his spine as he forced his vertebrae back into place.
“Holy toast, that’s the last time I carry a passenger on my back.” Standing straight up again, a few more cracks were audible from Jack’s back. “Ow. I think I’m getting too old for this kind of stuff.”
The top of the bike slid open, and Firefox hopped out. “What’s this? The greatest marksrabbit on this side of Carrotus is getting too old for his trade?”
Jack laughed. “You shut up. You’re still older than I am.”
“And I’m going to hold that against you for the rest of your life, I am,” Firefox shot back, grinning.
While Jack and Firefox bantered back and forth, Jazz couldn’t help but admire the blue bike. Wizard noticed him ogling the set of wheels, and smiled to himself. After Acid and Headcheese had exited the bike, Jazz asked Wizard, “Is this yours?”
Wizard shook his head. “I only wish. This is one of R.O.A.R.’s prized speed vehicles, the XG Neon. Personally, my weapon of choice.”
“Not a bad choice, if I do say so myself.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“Do I dare to ask if this Neon packs any armament?”
Wizard glanced at Jazz as if the answer was obvious. He smiled knowingly. “I would never go anywhere in a vehicle without any armament.”
With that, he pushed a small, yellow button on the front panel in the cockpit. Jazz jumped backwards, as a pair of wing-like protrusions extended themselves from the sides of the bike. A small pod-like object appeared on each wingtip, with the same sleek blue appearance as the rest of the bike. Finally, two small sections of each pod, one on the front and another on the further side, opened to reveal a six-barreled minigun.
With another push of a button, Wizard opened the cockpit of the pod nearer to Jazz. “Hop in.”
Jazz did so, and the top closed again. He immediately faced a single control stick with a button atop it. He hesitantly wrapped his hand around the stick; then, assured that nothing had exploded, he slowly moved the stick left to right. The minigun responded by moving right to left in front of the pod.
“As you probably may have guessed, the button fires the minigun,” Wizard said over the intercom. “Don’t press it unless you have something to aim at.”
“I figured that much,” Jazz replied drolly. “Are the rear guns automated, or what?”
“No, someone else would be sitting behind you to pilot the rear guns.”
“Ah. And to pop the top so I can get out...?”
“There’s a small handle on your right. Pull it.”
The top of the pod opened again, and Jazz got out. He examined the miniguns from the outside, nodding in awe. “Can you use the miniguns from inside the main bike?”
“I could, but I rarely need to. I don’t often venture into battle with the Neon, so I’ve gotten used to piloting it without the side pods. Besides, with the pods I can’t do that stylin’ sideways skid I just did a few minutes ago.”
“Of course,” Jazz replied with a grin.
Lori and Spaz were discussing plans with Acid, Indigo, Splitter, and Blaze. Acid had just told them of a spacecraft he had constructed a while ago, but had never required, which was stored in an underground hangar not far from where he had been abducted in the middle of his field-testing. His ship, the Hybrid Corsair, was specially built for a perfect intermediation of speed, armour, and weaponry; in addition, the Corsair sported a ventrally mounted ‘bot hangar with three ‘bots inside. Considering Blaze, Jack, and the others had rescued him from the rank cells of the airship Shellnaught, Acid said he would be more than happy to lend his services to them. The underground hangar in which the Corsair rested was relatively close to Aevias’ Ground Point; it was maybe a fifteen-minute run to the south.
Just as they were about to say their thank-yous to Acid for his generosity, a high-powered energy blast ripped into the Ground Point, struck Indigo in the torso, and sent him flying across the small building, where he smashed painfully into the back wall. Every rabbit inside the Ground Point building turned around to face the entrance, weapons ready.
Outside, and closing fast, was a horde of yellow lizards, just like the one Jack, Jazz, and the others had defeated before splitting up earlier. However, there were two differences between this mob and the last: there were some Tuf Turtles interspersed with the throngs of lizards, and each and every one of them was armed with some kind of weapon. Every weapon was poised to fire. Some, generally the ones at the forefront of the advancing pack of lizards and turtles, already were.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jack muttered, as another blast narrowly missed Firefox’s ear. “Haven’t we already gone through this?”
“Probably, but whatever, blowing stuff up is great fun!” Firefox exclaimed, cocking his blastgun. He let a few shots loose into the crowd of lizards and turtles, then ducked as yet another energy blast narrowly missed his head and took out the wall behind him.
Wizard opened both pods on either side of the Neon, and yelled out, “Get in!” before closing the sliding panel on the main bike. Four bullets pinged off of the panel just after it closed. Spaz and Lori jumped into the pod on the left wing; Headcheese and Blaze were already in the pod on the right side. Acid, Jazz, Jack, and Firefox quickly ducked behind the bike as both pods closed, and all four miniguns blazed away at the advancing lizards and turtles.
Splitter was tending to Indigo at the far side of the Ground Point. After being hit by a burning energy blast on the left side of his chest and stomach, Indigo’s normally well-groomed tan fur was not surprisingly charred to black and brown, and there were severe burn marks on the skin underneath. Blood issued from one side of Indigo’s mouth, creating a red line in his tawny fur, and he was only half-conscious. Splitter frantically tried his best to remember what he had learned in the medical aid course he had taken before he came to R.O.A.R.; then, finally giving up, he helped Indigo up by his right arm, and, using himself as a crutch, supported Indigo back to the portal to Aevias. Before they entered the iridescent portal, Splitter made sure to pound a large red button near the portal’s rim, setting off an emergency alarm at the floating city. Jack watched them go into the shimmering portal, then turned around and kept firing at the slowly thinning horde.
Jazz had switched his main weapon to RF rockets, and now was taking out three lizards at a time as the rockets exploded in the reptilian ranks; Jack was blasting away at everything that moved with this twin BIAS blasters, roasting several lizards every second; Firefox took short, quick shots with his blastgun, and managed to weaken the lizards’ forces well enough; and Acid, after loading a nuke into his rocket launcher, popped up, fired the nuke, and ducked back down again, guiding the nuke from a small screen on the side of the launcher. When a nuke exploded, it left a considerably large hole in the offensive ranks of the turtles and lizards.
After the crowd had been dispelled, which took a good ten to twelve minutes of non-stop, rapid-fire blasting (and three or four nukes from Acid’s launcher), Jazz was the only one who had taken any sort of injury; a bullet had grazed his shoulder, but it had not drawn blood, nor fazed him at all. Jack sniped off one hastily retreating lizard as Firefox looked around the room for the other two rabbits. “Hey, where did Indigo and Splitter go?”
Considering Jack was the only one who had witnessed Splitter aiding Indigo to the portal, he was the only one of them who knew where they were. After quickly scanning the horizon, he answered Firefox’s question. “Splitter took care of Indigo. He hit the panic button, and then they went back up to Aevias to get to a hospital. I can only hope the Lieutenant will be okay.”
Firefox nodded approvingly, the lowered his head. “It’s a shame, a real shame. Those two were some good fighters… I did underestimate them before, back at HQ, didn’t I?”
Without warning, Firefox stamped once, venting his spleen on no one in particular. “Random expletive! We can’t let Tank and his goons make casualties out of any more rabbits! We have to act now!”
Acid piped up first. “Well then, what are we waiting for? Like I said, it will probably only take about fifteen minutes to get to the Corsair’s hangar. We could be off the planet within half an hour, if we go now.”
“Thank you!” Firefox was breathing heavily, as if he had just finished doing something very stressful. “At least someone around here knows the value of time!”
Jack was going to follow with a stinging comeback, but kept it to himself.
“Well then, let’s be off.” Wizard slid back the main panel of the Neon. “Firefox, Acid, and Jazz, get in. Jack, do you still have enough fuel in that BIAS of yours to get to the Corsair?”
Quickly checking a gauge on one of the shoulder straps, Jack grinned. “I’ve hardly used any yet, Wizard. I could get there and back a hundred times if I wanted.”
“Well, we only need you to make the trip once,” Wizard replied, as Jazz, Firefox, and Acid hopped into the three seats behind him. “We need to get up to that satellite ASAP, and, like Firefox said, kill Tank before he kills us. And the planet.”
“Alright. Lead the way.”