And die with dignity it appears to have very well done. Again.

Somehow, between university life swallowing my very soul, and GTA:SA and UT2K4 stealing all of my precious procrastination hours, I managed to get chapter 31 finished. Like last time, I had a burst of inspiration over the last week, and wrote roughly two thirds of the chapter on a veritable wordage spree.

Anyway. That's all I have to say for now. Read the following series of words; a near full year of effort, compressed into just more than three days, went into them. So if you don't like it, then (content deleted due to tactlessness).

Chapter 31: No Rest for the Weary

Wizard watched over Phish’s shoulder as the last few pages of damage reports flicked by on the screen before them. Despite its impressive durability and seemingly redundant layers of defense, the Hybrid Corsair had only barely survived an unimaginable beating. It was a wonder that the main hull was still in one piece; as it was, there were countless numbers of dents, holes, scars, and in many cases components that had been shorn off, blown away, or incinerated by the relentless onslaught. The defenseless and nearly crippled destroyer was lucky to be limping its way home.
Phish sighed, rubbing his temples with thumb and middle finger. “Whoof. Acid is not going to be pleased with this. His baby’s maiden voyage, and we’re barely able to bring it back in one chunk.”
Wizard smirked mirthlessly. “Well, that tends to be what happens when you pit a destroyer against a fleet of interceptors. It’s like trying to attack a swarm of flies with a jackhammer. Besides, we did what we came up here to do, and that’s really all that’s going to matter in the long run.”
“I really hope you’re right,” Phish replied, flicking the screen in front of him off. He turned around, and leaned against the control panel, loosing a quiet sigh. “Carrotus has had more than its fair share of villainy and evil plots to contend with.”
“No argument here,” Wizard agreed. “I think I speak for the entire population of our bruised and battered homeworld when I say I wish the war would just be over.”
Phish nodded once, and stared off into space for a few moments, lost in his own thoughts. It was only Firefox sticking his head through the door some feet away that brought him back to reality.
“We’re entering the atmosphere. Electrik says we’ll be on the ground within the hour,” the Captain stated calmly. His eyes shifted from Phish, to Wizard, and back again. “We’re going to… y’know… survive re-entry, right?”
“Yeah, we’ll hold together,” Phish responded. “It’ll be a rough ride, but we’ll make it all the way down. Whether or not Acid’s going to be able to get it flying again is a whole different story altogether.”
“I figured as such, unfortunately,” Firefox mused. “A shame, too… this is a good ship. A real shame.”
“Is there anything else we can do here, Phish?” Wizard inquired, looking at the control panel behind the orange rabbit.
“Not unless you can perform a bit of your wizardry and get us a new shield generator, no. For the moment, all we can do is to wait until we’re on land again; Acid will have to put his ship back together again then.”
Wizard frowned, scratching absently at his incisors for a few moments. He inhaled slightly, as if he was about to say something, but fell silent again, his eyes wandering as he tried to find something to occupy his mind. Firefox departed quietly, and after a few moments the purple rabbit followed suit.
Phish took one more look at the control panel in front of him, and sighed to himself. A real shame, indeed.

At first, the loud, rumbling boom emanating from the back of the ship was ignored by the great majority of its occupants; the damage reports had already told them of a hundred points where the Corsair was critically wounded, and the sounds of explosions had almost become common fare to its passengers. The exception, as in many cases, was Foo, who took the noise as an opportunity to slam himself headfirst into the ceiling. However, Electrik’s attention was drawn to a light flashing between his feet, that, even among all of the other lights glaring for his attention, he hadn’t expected even to be active.
The shield warning light.
Electrik raised an eyebrow slightly, and grunted as he pulled his feet off of the control panel, sitting up again to look in puzzlement at the glowing light. It only lit up to alert the pilot of damage taken to the shields from the outside. And yet, he could swear that the shields had been effectively reduced to nothing by the onslaught that the Corsair had sustained at the hands of two fleets of fighters.
Electrik thought back for a moment. He remembered Phish relating to Acid the toll of the brutal assault upon the latter’s precious masterwork. Among the first things Phish mentioned was the shield generator system, dispatched at the first opportunity by a well-placed blast on the part of one of the satellite’s fighters. There was only the thick hull of the destroyer left to keep the ship in one piece; realistically, though, that would be like trying to stop a bullet with a turtle shell, and the Jackrabbit family’s impressive kill count proved that such a defense was somewhat less than effective.
As Electrik pondered this, a second light sparked to life not far away from the one that had originally caught his notice. He only had to glance at it, and his eyes went wide in horror. The combination of the shield damage indicator and the proximity alarm could only mean one thing: the Corsair was once again under attack. With the state the ship was in, it was lucky to have gotten this far; it was no longer going to withstand any sort of aggression.
Electrik almost fell over himself in his rush to get up, and he tore out of the cockpit at full speed.
“Aciiiiiiiiiiiiid!”