Jump 97
The final battle with the Flagship is coming up, and we want to make sure we're prepared. This is no time to save resources, so while we're getting a safe distance from the beacon (and then a bit more, just to be sure), we deploy our Hull Repair drone to make sure that the ship's completely spotless.
When we arrive after the jump, we discover that the Rebel Flagship is sitting within an Energy Shield. Iconeum's fully focused on getting through it, because until we do, we aren't going to be able to do anything to the Flagship. All we can do at our side of things is to deploy another Defence Drone, and hope to survive the Rebels' early attacks. Their first move is to mind-control Elizabeth (and give her a bit of a power boost at the same time), so the worst goes next door to the door control room to distract her. That said, he can't stay there long; two Rebels immediately teleport over, one joining Elizabeth in sabotaging the door controls, one perhaps unwisely attacking Varsoon. The door controls are probably a lost cause at this point – Iconeum's too slow to go over to save them, the worst is too weak, Varsoon can't fight one versus three, and we can't exactly send Gammagooey the pilot over – so we have to abandon them and focus on protecting the rest of the ship.
As the door controls fall, the Flagship launches its first weapon barrages. (So do we, but all we can do is chip away at the Energy Shield.) The lasers can't get through our shields, and unlike in previous rounds, they have nothing to follow the laser barrage up with. The missiles, however, can, and a drone power relay comes loose. the worst isn't busy, and thus runs over there to repair it, but it might take a while. Meanwhile, the invading Rebels, together with the mind-controlled Elizabeth, go to the shield room. We were somewhat prepared for this possibility, and drained half the oxygen from the room in advance, so that turning the oxygen pumps off will force people out of that room before it affects the rest of the ship.
The Rebel teleporter activates again, and now there are four people attacking the shield generators. Varsoon holds them off as long as possible, but it's only a few seconds. We badly need more crew at the back of the ship, so Iconeum programs some simple rules into the weapon systems and starts making the long trek over; he'll take over from the worst in repairing the drone power relays (the room's been breached and is out of oxygen, and Iconeum's more resilient against that). the worst goes to the now-empty door control room; we're badly going to need working doors if the Rebels are going to send still more crew.
Our oxygen micromanagement pays off, though, forcing the invading Rebels out of the shields room with only one shield generator down. That's a good thing too, as the core of the Rebel ship lights up, firing a huge number of laser shots at us all at once. It's a testament to Gamagooey's piloting that only two of them get through the shields. Unfortunately, one of them hit the oxygen pumps; we're going to have to repair those as soon as we get the opportunity, but there's nobody around to repair them but the injured Varsoon, who wouldn't get the repairs done nearly quickly enough. Far better to let him heal up so that he can fight off the Rebel infantry once Elizabeth comes to.
Luckily, Elizabeth snaps to her senses almost immediately. All four Rebels attacking our ship are in the engine room; one of them was badly damaged by Varsoon earlier, and Elizabeth finishes him as soon as she's aware of what she's doing. 3 healthy Rebels versus our 2 injured Federation combatants is still insurmountable odds, but the worst has just managed to fix the door controls, so we quickly reconfigure the doors to force the Rebels into the infirmary. Elizabeth goes over to the oxygen pumps and starts to fix them.
The good news is that our weapons have finally worn down the enemy Energy Shield. The bad news is that the Rebels have had yet more time; they teleport over one additional crew member to try to stop our Artillery Beam, and their weapons set our own weapons room on fire, in addition to taking out a second shield generator. Luckily, we not only make use of the gap in the Energy Shield to send over a Hacking Drone, but it manages to land while the Rebel pilot temporarily went over to their Shields room to fix Artillery Beam damage; we've locked them out from their own navigation controls.
Varsoon was fighting 1 versus 3 in the Infirmary. That's a losing battle even with help from injections of adrenaline and similar basic combat drugs – we don't have anything advanced in there to help out more. However, it's not losing all that fast, and although Varsoon is badly damaged, Elizabeth finishes repairing the Oxygen pumps before he dies, and goes over to help just as he finishes off one of the Rebels. 2 versus 2 is a much better fight. The Rebels respond to that by mind-controlling the worst and sending him to join the fight on their side; they also use their missiles to take out our door controls (again), and the last shield generator.
The oxygen has returned to the shields room, so we can send Elizabeth over to help get the shields back up. It rather feels like it's too late, though; the secondary weapons have burned out, so we have no way to shut down anything on the Flagship, much of the ship is breached or on fire, all the crew are busy with essential jobs, and another Rebel has just teleported on top of Gammagooey, making navigation hard. It feels like there's nothing we can do; not even the hack on the enemy navigation is helpful when we have nothing to attack the enemy with.
Luckily, Gammagooey, despite being in the middle of a shoot-out, is still conscious. We were hoping to end this here and now, but if we can at least survive this fight, we may have a chance to beat the Flagship later; and it only takes one finger to hit the FTL Jump button. The beacon we just jumped from is still under Federation control, and it'll be much easier to kill the remaining Rebels and repair the damage to the ship when we aren't being shot at. Running away from your goal is always a sad moment, but what else can you do?