Chet Gilcut, bearing critical data containing the location of an
illegal Red Shoulder base on planet Melkia, makes contact with the
Balarant forces. Unfortunately, although they believe him and
have every intention of destroying the Red Shoulder base, they also
lock Chet in a holding cell.
Pent and Quey have no choice but to pursue Chet and save him from an
uncertain fate. Throwing away a chance to escape the war for
good, they board their ATs and blast their way into the Balarant
cruiser...
Pent makes a direct assault, hoping to cut right to the brig and
rescue Chet before the Balarant know what is happening. Mowing
through some foot soldiers with ease, he runs up against some
tougher resistance as Balarant ATs are deployed- and deadly defense
turrets are deployed too, doing some serious damage to Pent's
Scopedog.
Meanwhile, Quey hammers the Balarant from the other side of the
ship, blasting away with rockets and mortars. Unfortunately,
the ship can't take that kind of pounding. The hull is
ruptured, sending Balarant forces into deep space and making the
rescue operation even riskier as the ship begins to break apart from
the inside!
Although Balarant Fatty ATs patrol the corridor in front of the
brig, Pent's relentless assault creates a diversion, and Chet makes
a break for it! One Fatty is blasted through the door into the
brig, while the other one pursues the escaping prisoner.
Quey arrives on the scene, and using his hacking skills, manages to
seal one Fatty inside the brig!
As precious oxygen bleeds into space from all the damage, Chet
realizes his only chance of staying alive is to get sealed up inside
an AT. Running from the fight in the corridor, he stumbles
across an AT hangar, and commandeers a Fatty just in time.
Although Pent's Scopedog is badly damaged, he covers Chet's borrowed
Fatty as it tries to pound a hole through a wall and create a
shortcut to their exit. Time is running out as more Balarant
troops close in and the ship slowly tears itself apart...
Where is Quey? Hopefully he found another route out...
Chet manages to board the waiting shuttle, but Pent's Scopedog is
ambushed by a defense turret. Moving quickly, he manages to
bail out before it explodes, barely making it onto the shuttle in
time to flee the crumbling Cruiser. They spot Quey's
Barking Turtle drifting in space, having managed to get out of the
Cruiser before it was too late.
Now on the run from both the Melkian military and the Balarant army,
the AT pilots are running out of resources and time. Where can
they go now? And what will the Balarant do with the
information they got from Chet?
