I'm not going to say anything about the four months this thing has been idle. Other than the fact that it has been exactly four months. February 1 to June 1. Funny how that works.

Chapter 28: T-Minus

It wasn’t long before Firefox found Jack’s trail; several dozen bullet holes dotting the metal walls, accompanied by what appeared to be the remains of a squad of reptiles sprawled lifelessly on the floor, made it obvious. Quickly making sure he was going the right way by scanning the corridor in both directions, he took off after Jack, only able to hope that he would be able to find his friend before time ran out.

Buster veered around another corner, wincing slightly as a section of his hole-riddled, dented metal shell dug into his neck. A fuel canister exploded into flame almost right behind him, covering the metal walls and floor with burning fluid and instantly giving the silvery surfaces around him a somewhat eerie, orange glow, flickering and dancing wildly. A loud, though somewhat suppressed ping followed the explosion as a shard of the canister’s casing embedded itself into the metal ceiling, severing an overhead cable and sending a cascade of sparks falling to the floor, igniting whatever fuel had not been ignited. Buster allowed a grin to cross his face at his outright luck, but he didn’t make the mistake of stopping again to leer at his enemy. He sprinted onward, as fast as his small legs could take him.
However, Jack reacted to the sudden inferno ahead of him with supernatural quickness, and sprung sideways, in an attempt to propel himself off the wall and around the corner that Buster had just hidden himself behind. However, one of his feet did not land on flat metal wall, and his ankle was painfully twisted as his foot was caught between two pipes. The rabbit let out an agonized howl as the pain shot up his leg, and there was a noise like a mix of a crack and a metallic ping as his foot came loose from the pipes. His uncontrolled, flailing dive barely carried him over the flames, and he crashed heavily to the floor, sliding at an angle into the far wall.
Getting up slowly, tentatively holding the shoulder that had been crushed between the wall and his body, he looked forth along the corridor to find his enemy. He pounded his fist against the floor in his rage as he realized that his foe had once again managed to make good his escape, before propping himself up on his feet again to continue his frenzied pursuit.

Firefox’s ears twitched as Jack’s cry of pain echoed back to him, as he came to the destroyed failsafe door. The hole through the thick metal was easily large enough for him to fit through, but he was still compelled to slide through it sideways, partially due to the razor-sharp protrusions jutting out at random angles from what remained of the door. Once through, he spent only a moment surveying the impressive amount of damage that Jack had inflicted with the bomber lizard’s armament, before he was off again.
“Turn around, Jack,” he prayed silently as he ran. “Please, for your own sake, turn around…”

Buster looked back quickly to ensure that he still had enough lead over his adversary; while Jack was still a generous distance behind him, the distance was rapidly shrinking, as the rabbit was obviously much faster than he was. Fortunately, his pursuer was not visible, hopefully owing to the fact that he was too far behind to see, rather than to the choking grey smoke that was slowly beginning to fill the corridor, if not the whole satellite.
Looking forward again, he had to stop quickly in order to keep from running head-on into a door. He coughed a few times as a cloud of airborne ash suddenly filled his lungs, and squinted through the burning smoke to read the blood-red lettering across the door: Escape Shuttle 4.
Without a word, though with a victorious grin on his face, Buster turned, and ripped the cover off of the keypad next to the door, sending the useless plastic flying away down the corridor. It took him only a second to punch in the required code, and the large, metal door opened slowly, a loud whirring noise coming from above and below him as they pulled out of the way. Buster leapt into the pod as soon as the gap was wide enough to allow him through, and the shuttle door closed behind him with a quiet hiss, sealing him off from the satellite.
Less than a second after the door slid shut, Jack slammed into it. Though the turtle couldn’t hear it, he could see the rabbit roaring furiously, pounding on the firm door with his fists. Buster only laughed triumphantly, and impudently wagged his finger at the bloodthirsty rabbit on the other side of the thin, but sturdy and airtight door. He recoiled once as Jack smashed his fist into the viewport before him, but the single, vicious strike wasn’t powerful enough even to leave a crack in the tempered glass of the small window.
As the pod hummed to life, indicated by the lights around the turtle glowing their individual colours, Jack seemed to finally remember the pair of cannons over his shoulders, and took the two control sticks in his hands, aiming the deadly weapons directly at Buster’s face through the viewport. Buster hurriedly pulled the release handle, throwing his half-activated shuttle out into space as Jack’s guns blazed, spewing white-hot blasts at the tiny pod.
The propulsion that shot Buster’s craft outward seemed to set off an explosion nearby, which in turn shook the floor beneath Jack’s feet, and that was enough to throw off the rabbit’s aim. Bullets ricocheted wildly off of the metal exterior as he rained ammunition upon the turtle’s shuttle. A single blast suddenly cracked the viewport, giving Buster a start, but the glass proved strong enough to halt the bullet before it broke through into the pod. The projectile slowly dulled to a smoky black ember, sitting at the center of the spiderlike web of cracks it had suddenly created in the viewport.
Jack began to find it extremely hard to breathe as the air in the corridor was sucked out into the vacuum of space, and struggled to keep his footing as he was pulled along with it. There was a screech as the metal of the BIAS’ heels were dragged along the metal of the floor of the corridor, though it was barely audible in the lack of air, and even the high-powered thrusters built into its feet couldn’t hold him in place. He spun around, into a sprinting position, and put as much fuel into the boosters as he could; however, even at full power, it was only barely enough to keep him from slowly being pulled outward into the void. Coupled with the fact that the air around him was now too thin to breathe, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to last very long.
Suddenly, the single airlock door slammed shut. Jack was only able to let out a surprised yelp before crashing into the opposite wall with near enough force to drive him right through it. There was a sickening crunch as his nose, which was the first point of contact, immediately shattered, ejecting a spray of blood from his nostrils and marking the metal wall with scarlet spatters. He fell to the ground weakly, like a beached fish, as the BIAS’ boosters flickered out with little more than a hiss.
“Ffff…” Firefox, who had arrived just in time to close the door, quickly knelt beside the fallen Jack, whose hands were clamped over his nose in a futile attempt to stifle the river of blood. The white rabbit’s frantic gasps for air were strangled by the viscous fluid flooding his destroyed nose, and a fit of agonized coughing escaped him as he struggled to fill his lungs with precious air. For a split second, Jack’s hands left his nose, revealing a hideously bloodied mess at the end of his muzzle.
“Well, my first question is pretty much moot,” Firefox muttered, as he witnessed what was once his friend’s nose. Without any hesitation, he grabbed the younger rabbit by the forearm, and hauled him to his feet. Jack glanced at his comrade once as he stood wearily, and then turned his head, sneezing once. A large, crimson stain suddenly marked the wall as Jack screamed in pain, his maimed nose freshly antagonized by the sudden outburst. Firefox could only watch, his long incisors digging a hole into his lower lip.
“Jack, we have to get moving,” he spoke quietly, as the rabbit in question covered his nose again with blood-soaked hands. “The whole satellite is critical. It could blow—”
“I know, I know!” Jack snarled, sounding understandably congested, as a few droplets of red essence fell onto his feet. He looked down at the scarlet spots on his white fur, and sighed.
“How much time do we have, Captain?” Jack asked quietly.
Firefox looked back down the tunnel he had come from, and tried to mentally retrace his steps. “At this point…? To put it bluntly, we’d be lucky to get back at all.”
“Bull,” Jack retorted. “I’m not going to die here.”
“I hate to say it, but we can’t move fast enough to get back to the Corsair, and get away from this ticking timebomb fast enough to keep from being incinerated,” Firefox said. “I’m going to tell the others to vamoose, while they still have the chance. As for us… I think this is it, Jack.”
“The heck it is,” Jack growled to himself, as he stood to his full height. His reddened hands grasped the twin control sticks as Firefox slipped the headset microphone onto his ears.
“Cors— aack!” Firefox yelled in surprise as Jack plowed into him, snatching the Captain by the arm and spinning him sideways to lay prone atop the BIAS’ backpack-like main portion. The headset flew off of Firefox’s ears as he was suddenly yanked away, and fell to the ground as the pair of rabbits dashed away down the corridor, leaving only a pair of blackened trails in their wake.
“Firefox?” Acid’s voice came through on the earpiece as it hit the floor. “Is that you? Where are you? Hello?”