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A fireball caused by the explosion of two oxygen bottles and an incendiary grenade initiated by Thorn's team's plasma weapons fire rocked the bridge and its immediate surroundings. The lights went into emergency mode for a few seconds, the fire alarm went off, and all the windows on the bridge were automatically covered with heavy armor shutters to prevent possible decompression.
The sheet metal on the bulkheads was heavily distorted at the site of the explosion, revealing all sorts of pipes and cables running through the walls, some of them damaged and sparking before they were automatically shut down seconds later.
Enemies who had been near the explosive ceased to exist and those who had been lucky enough to be a little further away scattered - shaken and deafened to regroup and rearm at nearby armory. The officers on the command bridge, along with Captain Belle, had no protection from the sudden change in pressure, and so they lost consciousness for a few seconds before their bodies recovered - disoriented, with temporarily damaged hearing, struggling to breathe, but alive.
Virginia was still crouched in her hiding place, clutching a small laser pistol in her bloodied hands, and peeking out of her cover just slightly to see what had actually happened. "Who's there - friend or foe?", Virginia called out questioningly towards the bridge exit, "This is the Captain and her officers.".
As fast and ruthless as the Insurgency's followers were in the lower decks, it appeared that they were not as numerous as they needed to be. Belle's men and Grant's men maintained a comfortable initiative, and after initial ambushes on their opponents, they began to gain the upper hand. The other crew members were already getting their bearings and dropping their weapons or putting their hands up so that no one could mistake them for the enemy. "Engineering is ours, remnants of resistance in the engine section.", Sergeant Mark Robin announced over the radio.
For Grant and his men, however, the situation was not so simple - the enemy were gradually being driven into the bow living quarters, where their resistance was becoming tougher and stiffer. After all, they had no way of retreating either - the hangar was on the other side and they had no news of the bridge takeover as yet.
The fact was also complicated by the crew members who were trying to distance themselves from their more radical colleagues and, with their hands above their heads, trying to get through the hardliners and Grant's men to the rest of the ship - to help with steering, defending or simply repairing the ship.
The battlecruiser Roanoke continued to plow through the ice belt without any control, the pre-set course was already beginning to need further corrections and the crew was beginning to be reminded of this fact more frequently and significantly as larger and larger chunks of ice and rock chipped and scraped against the armored hull.
Although more and more gunners were getting to their stations to help with the eventual repulsion of the pirate vessels the 'Cobra' was now single-handedly facing, they were now forced to turn their guns against the flying chunks of ice to protect the ship from further damage.
The situation had improved, only to revert back to being an uphill battle. This was more applicable to Morreti than to Grant. The latter of whom found himself covered in someone else's blood. While the former had lost his only semblance of fire support.
The pack had been cut down to size, but three still remained. Two heavy fighters and a bomber, the latter peeling off to go after the Roanoke. The Prosecutor banked hard in protest to this, on a full burn after the lumbering craft. This left it entirely and utterly exposed to the enemy fighters and they were more than happy to take free shots. It must have been quite a thing to watch. The Barghest was rapidly being ripped apart, a hail of bullets and lasers showering it. But there were two large streams of red constantly washing over the Prosecutor. It was a race to see which ship buckled and broke first.
Shields had been foregone long ago. Pieces of metal visibly fell off and nearly collided with the pursuing fighters. The Prosecutor was stripped of its blade, chunks of the wings and its engines were trailing plumes of fiery smoke. The fact whoever was flying it was still gunning the engines was insanity, and the Barghest it was pursuing had come within lock range. But the hail of machinegun and laser fire continued unabated. The bomber's pilot grinned when he saw his flickering computer screen alert him of a torpedo lock. It was something that the Roanoke would be aware of, much to the horror of Belle's crew that had only just seized the bridge. The tubes for the ordnance slipped open at the exact moment the left engine was torn off. This put the large, jagged hulk of crudely welded steel into an uncontrollable spin. Panicking under the circumstances, the bomber pilot squeezed his controls, firing both torpedoes as a result and in the direction of the three other craft.
A bright flash engulfed the trio, one ship careening out of the blast zone, producing a barely audible thud as it smashed across the Roanoke's upper bow. A trail of parts left in its wake, having fortunately not directly impacted with the ship, for it would have certainly detonated otherwise. The Prosecutor minus the entirety of its nose and lower engine was a bizarre thing to behold, a mutilated wedge currently adrift after having lost all of its momentum on contact.
Three armor-clad figures stepped through the slowly dissipating smoke onto the bridge. Thorn, Cowell, and Ibeh quickly swept the deck for signs of further hostiles, then lowered their weapons.
"We're with Cobra," Thorn answered the captain's inquiry. The trio stood silently for a moment, then Cowell and Ibeh stepped off to the side, the former helping the latter limp to an unmanned station and sit. They both nodded their heads at an order only they could hear from Thorn, then got to work tending Ibeh's leg injury.
Thorn, his helmet and armor scarred and soot-stained, strode towards Belle's improvised hiding place. Finding her still crouched behind a blasted console, he reached up and slipped off his helmet, revealing a hard, grizzled face, as scarred as the armor he was clad in.
"Captain Virginia Belle?" He asked, his voice coarse. "We have orders to keep you safe." Not waiting for a response, Thorn donned his helmet again and spun about, surveying the remains of the bridge. Wordlessly, Cowell stood from where he had crouched beside Ibeh and took up a position by the entrance, carbine trained down the corridor beyond. Ibeh, his injury now sprayed with a thick medical foam to ward off infection and stop the bleeding, limped over to Belle, kneeling down beside her. Thorn moved to what remained of the navigation station, pulled a small data stick out of a pouch on his right arm, and inserted it into the console. Immediately, the ship shuddered as the engines strained to change the battered hull's course towards a jump hole to the Ontario system.
* * *
Elsewhere on the ship, the battle for control over the Roanoke continued fiercely. Sergeant Robin and his marines methodically eliminated what resistance remained in the engine compartment, forcing the few loyalists who valued their lives over the Insurgency to surrender. Grant and his militiamen struggled to make any advances into the crew quarters, combat quickly devolving into a brutal melee from room to room. Each side fought fiercely for every inch of deck space. By the end of it, bodies littered the floors and bunks, casualties shared evenly between those with armbands and those without. The Xenos, however, were victorious.
A final assault on the command deck resulted in a final round of bloodshed, as Thorn, Cowell, and Ibeh expended what remained of their munitions on the desperate crew. Finally, their hopes shattered and realizing there was no way out, the last of the loyalists admitted defeat and laid down their arms
As the surviving bridge crew apprehended the surrendered foes and Cowell and Ibeh surveyed the bodies of the dead, Thorn - several new scorch marks decorating his chest plate - stepped up beside Captain Belle. For a moment, they stood in silence, his thoughts unreadable through the mirrored visor of his helmet. Perhaps he was communicating with his men, perhaps he was simply looking over the aftermath of battle. Finally, however, he slid his carbine into the magnetic slot on his back and removed his helmet.
"I have confirmation from Grant," he stated matter-of-factly. "The ship is ours."
Posts: 894
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The battle cruiser Roanoke was slowly approaching the wormhole to Ontario. The communications antenna was still out of service, there were several places on the armoured hull where armour panels had been punctured or torn off by ice and rock fragments, and the main battery on the bow was damaged by debris from the fighter battle around the battlecruiser.
Grant's men began preparing the hangar for the Cobra's assisted landing - the tractor beams and beacons were fortunately undamaged and still operational.
Virginia nodded slowly to Thorn, "Tell Cobra or whoever is your superior my thanks.", and turned to her remaining officers - well, it was better than she had expected after all - all but the hardliners had survived, though some now needed medical attention, and possibly surgery. Carefully sweeping the shards off her chair herself, she sat up, nodding to the NCO who had come in with the first aid kit and began treating the cuts caused by the falling glass.
Virginia picked up the intercom receiver and decided to speak to the crew, "Crew, this is your Captain speaking - the ship is under our control. Emergency medical facilities will be set up in the officers and crew messes - if you need treatment, head there. We are free...", she paused for a moment and sighed with relief, "We are free and the ship is ours. We won.".
She imagined taking control of the ship simpler, much simpler. In the end, more of the crew had turned against her than she had originally included in her plans. Without their new allies, neither she nor anyone on the bridge would survive, that much was clear beyond the sun.
Virginia reached for an aromatic cigarette and lit it, "Wormhole ahead, prepare the ship for wormhole passage, close all bulkheads. Ops - lower the Liberty Insurgency flag and try to get the emergency antenna operational, we'll need to make hails.".
The crew on the Roanoke began closing and securing the large bulkheads, obviously taking into account the flow of wounded towards the field medics, and as soon as the last bulkheads were locked, the ship entered the wormhole.
The hull of the ship began to creak and groan as the gravitational forces of the wormhole strained it. The ice-damaged outer bulkheads even reported a loss of pressure as the hull plating loosened somewhere and energy flickered through the lightly shielded secondary systems.
The ship left wormhole in Georgian Ice Field and the navigation systems showed a vector to their destination - Fort Ramsey, their new home.
