From the air Zachary witnessed Nekros' dark ritual, the rending of the earth, the pouring forth of the undead and the relentless melee down below. Zachary was quite glad that he was not down there, for he was in no way equipped or trained for such a fight. What he did have was the biggest guns the Mercenaries had, and he knew he had to use them. Into the rift he fired a stream of plasma pulses, and while that seemed to strike some of the undead as they were forming it did nothing to dent their numbers.

"That's not working," he muttered to himself. But then, as lightning-infused rods arced into the fray of Mercenaries, he knew what would. Arming the smokescreen, Zachary launched a veil of smoke between the Mercenaries and the base, inhibiting the ability of the ballistae to target the Mercenaries. As soldiers poured out, it would also serve as cover for the Mercenaries when they go for the charge.

With the zombies now intertwined with the Mercenaries, Zachary turned his attention and his fire to the base. At around the same time, with the Mercenaries blocked from their view, the ballistae also turned their attention to Zachary. He deftly piloted the shuttle to strafe a couple of lightning bolts as he charged the splinter cannons. Once charged, he unleashed both at a single ballista, and the projectiles tore through it and turned it into a mangled heap of metal. Zachary shouted a victorious cry as he saw his target destroyed.

Zachary continued strafing but one bolt hit its mark as Zachary heard rending metal and an explosion behind him and the lights of the shuttle flickered. He was able to identify that the bolt had torn a hole in the bottom of the hold, and while the shuttle acted as a Faraday cage protecting him from the electric shock the circuitry of the shuttle was still susceptible to damage from electromagnetic induction as the current flowed through the hull for those milliseconds. He had lost his speedometer and the left gravity core current regulator in that blow. The shuttle shuddered and lurched and threatened the fall until Zachary quickly bypassed the regulator, so the gravity core received power directly. To compensate he pushed the right gravity core to full. The situation was less than ideal, with greatly reduced freedom in vertical motion, but at least he could still strafe.

He fired another pair of splinter shots at another ballista, mangling it too beyond recognition, when the Vanguard and soldiers lined up outside the base with Nekros. [b][i]Easy pickings,[/i][/b] Kaa'is said. Still high on his kill of the second ballista, Zachary did not question it and released a relentless barrage of plasma, interspersed with a few splinter shots. Soldiers were burned and vaporised by the plasma and mutilated by the fragmenting splinter shots. Those who hadn't been hit ran for cover as the barrage continued. While the armour protected the Vanguard from the indirect damage of the splinter shots, it did nothing to save them from the plasma. Although their armour held firm, it simply conducted the heat and melted their skin onto the inside of their armour, condemning them to a slow and torturous death. But Zachary did not care, for he was laughing maniacally as he rained death from the heavens. He even overlooked the disappearance of Nekros into a flock of crows, sparing him from the barrage. But before he could kill all the soldiers he was torn prematurely from his ecstatic frenzy by a lightning rod tearing into the left of the shuttle.

The bolt had critically damaged the left kinetic focus, which directs the power of the kinetic core into useful thrust. Without that, the shuttle listed dangerously. Zachary scrambled to fix it, and he put the remainder of the excess spirit he had received from Yugeto earlier into bending the sheared metal back into place. This restored minimum thrust to that side of the shuttle, but any more would just tear the focus apart again.

"I don't think I can keep it in the air much longer," Zachary said over the comms.

Hector, who had begun his charge towards Nekros, barely had time to look back, noticing the shuttle's state. "GET BACK TO BASE," he yelled, still yelling to overcome the sounds of battle. "HELP EVACUATE ANYONE LEFT THERE! GO NOW!" Hector had been too busy to notice the damage that Zachary was dealing up ahead, but it was without a doubt crucial to the plan, as were it not for the shuttle fire, his men would have been picked off easily.

Zachary made no hesitation in fulfilling that order to retreat. Before he parted ways he fired the smokescreen again, refreshing the Mercenaries' cover from the ballistae and also covering the area between them and the soldiers, so that when the Mercs emerged at the soldiers they would have the element of surprise, critical for their close-quarters combat. He also fired a parting shot from the two splinter cannons at a third ballista, although this time his aim was too high and the splinter shots sailed over the ballista and burst on the ground somewhere behind it with minimal effect. Then, arming the smokescreen one last time, he covered the shuttle in smoke, causing another lightning rod to miss, and by the time the smoke had cleared he had managed to get the shuttle turned around and flying back towards Sector Zero.