Leaving behind three of his men and several converts to hold a ship far too large to control, he took his loyal followers plus new additions to another nearby ship…and another, and another…growing his troops faster than he lost them, for the enemy was out to kill rather than disable, and as well as this boarding action was going, it was not bloodless.
The remaining intact warships were fighting it out during this time, with the final one loyal to Truven backing off before it could be disabled, but a team from one of the other ships managed to sneak a small team onboard through a gap in the shields when they weren’t looking…who then sabotaged the shields and called out to Plausious’s team with one of the portals on the fleeing ship.
Portal to portal transfers had far more range, and even as the ship ran along the inner edge of the curved landscape at decent speed, the movements were not only calculated, but one portal was able to steer the ‘package’ towards destination to insure it didn’t miss.
Plausious didn’t go with them, as his men feared it might be a trap and begged him to let them go alone. He agreed, staying behind with his captured fleet as some of his original ships needed help fending off the enemy boarders there, and split his troops. Some went to the fleeing ship, others were divided into strike teams with at least one grafted individual on each of them and dispatched to the fighting that remained.
Plausious went to Yuer’s ship, and got into some heavy fighting as his loyal commander was pinned down into one of the critical areas in the ship. The last scrap he got into didn’t have the element of surprise, and his team of 18 Neofan came up on a sealed area that was leading to Yuer’s holdout position, with the fighting happening within.
The Reignor didn’t even bother trying to cut through the doors, and jumped right through them, dipping into the Essence realm temporarily and popping back out on the other side. If his grapple fields hadn’t been able to scan through he wouldn’t have done so, but the risky maneuver was standard today with everyone fighting at higher levels than normal given the gravity of the situation. Plausious’s own Essence reserves were low, but the troops ahead had to be even lower, including the ships’ crew who had already telepathically reported to him they were about to break.
When the Reignor emerged on the other side his team came through behind him, popping individually into view as he ran forward single staff in hand and dove into three enemies that had turned to face him, not even bothering to try and stun them with the weapon, but using it to parry their blows so he could step in and punch them with his free hand.
One he grabbed and threw across the room by muscle alone, and with everyone’s Essence levels so low his muscular advantage held supreme. He broke bones, tore limbs part way off their bodies, and otherwise disrupted and disabled them enough for his troops to come up and stun them as they cleared out the last threat in the ship as Yuer and 6 others were ahead, hidden behind a partial blast door that had been rendered by several Essence attacks and stood contorted and punctured with numerous holes.
“I wish I had told you to come earlier,” Yuer said, his right arm mangled beyond recognition and shrunk by half its usual mass.
“What did they hit you with?” Plausious asked.
“Somebody used a Breinar Strand,” he said, spitting some blood from a small gash on his face that was leaking into his mouth. “These traitors have no honor left.”
“Shall I remove it for you?” Plausious offered, referring to the dead arm that hung at his side.
“Save your Essence. I can deal with it later. There are still more ships out there.”
“Not anymore. We have them all.”
Yuer’s eyes widened. “How?”
“We boarded them from the ground, and significant portions of their crews did not want to fight us. The two ships that did not engage were apparently fighting onboard, and our loyalists won out. There’s significant damage and moderate loss of life, but the fleet is ours.”
“Yours,” Yuer said with great relief and gratitude. “What about the cities?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ve been fighting almost nonstop since I left the surface.”
“They need to know we control the fleet. It might stop a lot of the fighting.”
“Do you have a transmitter still working?”
“Use junction 4 auxiliary command node. Everything else is offline from the damage or our sabotage. We had to reduce access points or they would have claimed them. They sent most of their crews over,” Yuer said with a mixture of disgust and disbelief.
“We exploited that miscalculation,” he said, placing a hand on the Commander’s good shoulder as he passed him by and ran with a few of his troops following him all the way to the command node where he accessed one of two intact transmitters on the outer hull from which he broadcast into the Temple comm network.
“Installation 0193, this is Reignor Plausious. I have secured control over the entire Gjardan fleet within the Temple. We now hold the high ground, and I urge those loyal to the illegitimate Reignor Truven to stand down. I promise there will be no executions for those who surrender, nor imprisonment. You will be sent outside this galaxy and may travel to Yenoiv if you wish. I want you gone, not dead,
