Chapter 22: An Unlikely Comrade

“Phish, I’m going to need a scan of that satellite PDQ. Find us a nice place to break and enter, preferably as discreetly as possible, please.” Acid spoke through the intercom as the others left the gunners’ chamber. “How much time?”
“Scan’s running. I’d give it three, five minutes before we reach.”
“Good. I don’t want to give this egomaniacal freak any more time than we need.”
“Egomaniacal freak? You sound like—”
“I have to use all of my self-constraint to keep myself from screaming a good succession of expletives at the top of my lungs about this… this…”
“Egomaniacal freak will do.”
“Thank you.” Acid left the mic on its hook, and headed off after the others, who were already a distance down the corridor.
Lori turned as Acid padded up behind her. “So what’s up?”
“About five minutes until we reach the satellite. Phish is scanning for somewhere to start. Have your blaster ready?”
Lori grinned, and flipped the weapon about her finger nonchalantly. “Always do.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
It wasn’t long before most of the crew were in the control room. Acid had disappeared from the group unnoticed; Phish was keeping an eye on the scan, elsewhere; and Jazz, Jack, and Firefox were on their way up from the ‘bot hangar.
The visage of the massive satellite grew larger by the second as the Hybrid Corsair continued to approach. They could easily identify its single, immensely powerful weapon, perched on the end of the main body of the satellite and poised in a deadly position facing Carrotus, and the five arms, still rotating discomfortingly rapidly. Jazz, Jack, and Firefox entered quietly, following the trail of lights that had been lit up for them, like before. They remained silent, and watched as the distance between them and the satellite drew nearer to zero with every passing second.
There was a sound of metallic scraping from behind the cockpit door, and before they could react the door slid open. Acid limped through, lugging a large, metal case behind him.
Firefox cast a puzzled glance at the green-furred rabbit as he entered.. “What’s in the… that?”
Acid looked at Firefox, with a smirk on his face. “See for yourself.”
With that, he flipped the latch on the case, springing its cover wide open on its hinges. Inside, resting in black foam padding, were several large weapons, guns just more than half as long as the rabbits were tall.
Firefox whistled admirably as he studied the large weapons, but Jazz blinked a few times, slightly puzzled. “What do we need these guns for? Won’t the blasters we already have suffice?”
Acid shot a glance at Jazz. “Have you ever tried to take on Devan’s generators? They’re not exactly easy pickings, if you’ll recall.”
Jazz returned the glance. “Of course I’ve had to destroy generators for Devan’s stuff in the past. I mean, I destroyed the Twin Mega Battleships, didn’t I? There were two generators, one for each ship.”
“That was a long time ago. Things have changed.”
“A year isn’t that long, Acid. Besides, how do you know that Buster’s using better generators than the ones I had to deal with on the Battleships?”
“Because I’ve been hunted down by what’s left of Devan’s robot troops for the last year, probably because of my ‘dealings’ with the CSA Weapons Division?”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. It’s okay, ‘cause the robots are pansies, but their generators are a pain to take apart. So… there.”
“I’m going to take a wild guess, and assume that the generators in these guns are the same ones from the robot troops?”
“But of course. I’m not going to just destroy a good energy-producing device like these when I can actually use them for stuff, like these guns.”
At that point, they heard Phish’s voice over the intercom, and he didn’t sound pleased. “Durnit, Acid, where the smark are you?!”
Leaving the others to the weapons he had brought in, Acid strode over to the mic, picking it up and leaning onto the control console casually. “Nyes?”
“Scan’s been done for a while now. I’ve set the ship to connect to a vent of some sort, near the axial hub. About twenty seconds ‘til we dock. Be ready.”
Roughly twenty seconds later, the Corsair came to rest against the indicated vent. Something beeped loudly from Acid’s direction, and there was a low hum for a few seconds. He stood still, listening to the deep hum, and nodding in satisfaction when it ended.
Acid grinned as he reached up to his ear studs. “Hey, Jack, remember what you were saying earlier, about cracking some skulls?”
“Yeah.”
He gestured to the door as it opened with a quiet hiss, revealing the reflective tunnel of a venting duct on its other side. “Now’s your chance, bud.”
Jack said nothing, but simply smiled wickedly as he exited the ship. The others, each now armed with one of Acid’s monstrous mega-blasters, were not far behind.
Acid picked up the mic one last time. “You okay with staying, Phish?”
“Yeah, I’m cool. I’ll be waiting for you when you get back. Now get gone, and kill something for me.”
“Will do.”
Then Acid was gone, and the door closed behind him.

A few dozen meters away from the Corsair, Jack found an exit from the venting duct. It was only a fan, blowing hot air from a machine room into the duct, but it was a way in. He pointed one of his two cannons at the rotating blades, and with one blast the fan was blown off its moorings, and sent spinning into the room. Jack quickly dropped through.
He was immediately faced with a throng of lizards and turtles, apparently having been lying in wait for him to enter through the duct. Being the first one out of the Corsair and into the satellite, the others were still behind him. Which meant that he was alone, facing off against a hundred or more of Tank’s henchgoons.
A smile crept across the white rabbit’s face. A crowd of reptilian minions, all to himself? He almost pitied the poor, luckless fools for being in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
Namely, on the business end of his twin blast cannons, at any time other than never.
Jack squeezed the BIAS’ trigger buttons down hard. His deadly weapons responded by immediately beginning to churn out their devastating ammunition, and before the reptilian masses could react their numbers were already thinning. However, even his massive guns couldn’t hold their own against such a monstrous mob of minions, and he came to realize that they were slowly cornering him.
Electrik and Lori, the next two to have left the relative safety of the Corsair, could hear the sound of Jack’s guns ripping through the lizards unfortunate enough to have stood in his way. They easily found the hole in the duct, where the fan had been before, and below was the swarm of goons. A small spark zapped between Electrik’s ears, and he quietly gestured to Lori to stay a short distance away. After she moved a few inches from him, the blue rabbit extended his open palm toward the hole. Two arcs circled down his arm from his shoulder, and when they hit his hand it glowed a bright yellow before loosing a powerful bolt of lightning into the reptilian masses. It struck at least three lizards, who promptly exploded like overinflated balloons. Electrik was quickly through and wreaking havoc, while Lori was death from above as the others approached.
The mass of lizards and turtles began to realize that they were even less than unsuccessful; while their numbers were rapidly decreasing, there were actually more rabbits than there had been to start with. Jack, having been rescued from the crushing weight of numbers, became a blazing death machine, loosing rounds at a group of turtles before flying headlong into another. Headcheese, Spaz, and Foo were demonic pinballs, literally bouncing off the walls and blasting away madly. Jazz paired up with Lori, as did Firefox with Wizard and Acid with Blaze, and stood back to back with her to protect her six, while she reciprocated. Electrik simply fried anything that got close.
Before long, the numbers of reptiles were cut down to nothing. As quick congratulations were given, Firefox noted one last lizard hanging around, trying to act innocuous. The crimson-furred rabbit coolly aimed his blaster and fired, but the lizard hastily dodged out of the way. “‘Ey! Don’t shoot me, I’m on your side!”
The indignant yelp got Jack’s attention, and the white rabbit examined the renegade reptile as Firefox prepared his blastgun for a second try. Jack quickly forestalled his friend from laying the lizard low, then looked him over scrutinously.
The creature in question looked around fervently, taking stock of his surroundings, before speaking again. “Before you kill me, hear me out. I want to help you guys destroy this satellite.”
Acid was skeptical. “Oh? What’s your story?”
“Name’s Gecko. High-level technician on the Eschaton. I know my way around this place better than most, and I’m willing to help you blow the whole thing to smithereens, free of charge.”
Wizard blinked. “Why? What have you got against Tank?”
Gecko sighed. “Tank treats us – his own soldiers – like air. Anything that goes wrong ends up being our fault. I’ve had enough, and I’ve decided that switching sides will probably turn out to be in my favour.”
Acid was still suspicious of the lizard. “How do we know we can trust you?”
In response, Gecko turned, whipping a blaster out of nowhere, and put a few dozen holes into a machine on the other side of the room. Sparks flew as the thin metal casing was perforated, and after a few seconds it simply exploded.
Gecko turned to them, with a smug grin on his face. “The pressure in the launch bay is going to be unpleasantly low for a while.”
Acid chuckled. “You’ve won me over. Anyone else have any objections?”
There was a general shaking of heads, and Acid nodded approvingly before turning to Gecko. “Then it’s settled. Welcome to the good team.”
“It’s a pleasure. What say we get started?”
“You’re the high-level technician. Lead the way.”