How it becomes like this 8

Before they switch their shield on their engine and fully charged their shield backup energy, the enemy's rail gun fired on spacecraft that cover the enemy's pursuing fighter spacecraft. In that few seconds, half of their remaining jets already gone blowing up like lit up a firecracker.

*BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOOM!!* Exploding space fighter sounds behind them. It gives them terror in their heart. They haven't recovered from the shock and yet another thing terrified them, they are already surrounded by their enemy's stealth frigates.

"Captain, we are surrounded. We need further instructions," the operator reminds LTC Harrington.

"This is going to do or die battle. We can only brace ourselves to break through the enemy's barricade on our front and try our best to reach our base as soon as we can," LTC Harrington commands.

They all look desperate after they know that they in fact are the ones who fell into the enemy's trap unlike what they thought before. They can only pray and do as best as they can so they may survive at the end of the day. Every person's expression looks dreadful, including their commander, LTC Harrington. He thought that he may get extra military credit for destroying the enemy's spacecraft.

Then he orders his troops to split into 2 forces one keeping enemy's on their tail in check while the other is trying their hardest to infiltrate opposing party encirclement. They only have less than 100 fighter jets left, approximately 50-70 units, with that number and technology gap it's going to be close to impossible to escape.

"Refill our ECM and anti-missiles turrets. Don't slack off or we have to give up our lives. That's our situation now," LTC Harrington yells on commanding comm.

Every soldier inside the HRA mother ship immediately starts to increase their working speed to support their captain to retain their lives. Every single time passes by, there's their fighter's ship getting destroyed or cornered by enemy's fighter spacecraft.

"How long does it take until we can fire another round of main cannon and secondary gun?" LTC Harrington inquires.

"It's going to be ready in 30 seconds if we don't need to cool it down first," the cannon's operator explains.

"I need you to focus fire on this side of their barricade. It seems we have a chance to break their arrangement on this part because it's quite thin around here," LTC Harrington orders while pointing into the enemy's encirclement formation weak point.

- The HSU side -

"They're trying to escape through the furthest point from our position. Move our barricade to fortify that point. Remaining standby unit deploys yourself immediately," CAPT Lavard directs his subordinate and shares mentioned location to all battleships so they can distribute their fighting interceptor between defending their post and blocking their enemy's destination based on their current position on radar.

"Shoot their battleship except for their mother ship. Stop their movement or you can blow them off if you don't mind losing some potential money. Well at least it worth something on the black market as well," CAPT Lavard sarcastically assigns his aide another task.

In just a minute passes by after CAPT Lavard has given his order their assigned battleship which is located on each side of their main pack fires their cannon on fleeing battleship located near their site other than a commanding battleship located in the center. Few seconds after the volley of railgun they bombard those 2 battleships with another volley of plasma cannon. Both of them get heavily damaged and it doesn't stop there either. About tens of fighters land their interceptor on it and start to kill surviving crews who haven't given up their stance on this battle.

- One of the heavily damaged battleship -

"Four of you go and scout ahead of us and find out the shortest route to the control room immediately. Let us know as soon as you find it and share your route while we're cleaning the main hall," one of the squad leaders states.

"We better not divide our remaining fighters here. We will have a lack of manpower if we do that," says another squad leader next to the previous speaking leader

"We need to volunteers to guard our front, so does our back as well too," says the first squad leader. It just takes several seconds for them to get volunteers out of the remaining 6 people onboard.

"Let's slowly proceed through this corridor. Let's try to eliminate threats we find on our way to the control room," the other leader adds. They look at each other faces and then reply with a simple nod and start advancing inside that nearly unfunctional battleship.

They sweep each room they pass by to ensure their safety when they have to move back to retrieve their fighter ship. Otherwise, it makes them wasting their stamina on focusing themselves on preventing the enemy's surprise attack. Since they have to go on the same way back it makes it easier to secure their retreat path now than after they take their loot from the enemy's ruined ship. It may add the more unstable factors that they need to focus on defending when they have to go back to their assigned carrier.

They don't face a lot of challenges on their way into the enemy's control room. They try to contact the commanding ship where CAPT Lavard stays to get approval on bringing the whole battleship back to their hideout later on. Even though it doesn't give them that much fortune but it still gives them some money for their entertainment. As usual, they get their approval and proceed to go and install connecting wires to drag the battleship body back using their spacecraft.

- HRA LTC Harrington ship -

LTC Harrington stares blankly at the faraway deep sea. He lost his will to fight back against the HSU army. They have almost no hope to survive if they continue to retaliate further. It's faster for them to die there than escaping from the enemy's force.

"Fire out surrendering signal. Mission aborted. All units surrender immediately," LTC Harrington orders.