There! Got something," Scratcher announced. "Feeding you video."
......….
Scratcher's ship was out of view, but he must have a clear line of sight, because Jaeger began to receive a video feed that appeared in a window in the top right of his HUD. It showed a grainy image of a rocky outcrop, what little light that actually made it from the system's star casting it into stark shadow. It was hard to get an idea of the size with no point of reference and no atmospheric haze, it could have been the size of a snowdrift or a mountain.
"I'm gonna shine my floodlight on it," Scratcher said, and then the feed was lit up by a bright light. It looked like there was ice beneath the outcrop, reflecting in the camera, but there was something else there too. Lodged beneath the lip of rock like an insect hiding beneath a log was ... a thing. It had a long, segmented body like a mantis shrimp or a lobster, tapering into a kind of thick tail. The armor was shiny and iridescent, hues of red and orange illuminated by the beam. Beneath it were dozens of insectoid legs of varying lengths, anchoring it to the dusty surface of the asteroid, the ones towards the bulbous front of its body longer and covered in what looked like large hooks. Each segment of its long tail had strange bulges protruding from it, two on each one for a total of maybe ten, a glint of metal reflecting off them. It didn't really have a defined head, but there was a bundle of what looked like wiry antennae and compound eyes hidden beneath the lip of its shell, twitching and shifting as Scratcher's floodlight disturbed it.
They didn't need to scan the thing to know that it was of Bug origin, and the video feed showed Scratcher's guns firing as he began to pull back. Jaeger was already checking his position on the map, spinning his Beewolf's nose towards his friend and gunning the engine. Acceleration crushed him against the padding of his seat as he opened his gun port and armed his missiles.
The flashes of gunfire and the orange bloom of explosions appeared in the distance, Jaeger decelerating so as not to overshoot, the G-forces buffeting him in his cockpit like he was riding a mechanical bull. Slowing down went against his every instinct, but in space, you didn't shed velocity once you eased off the throttle, you just kept going. He gritted his teeth, swinging his vessel to face the enemy as he drifted sideways, the computer doing its best to compensate with bursts from the thrusters.
The thing was huge, far larger than it had appeared on the video. Compared to Scratcher's tiny fighter, it looked to be about as big as a frigate, at least a hundred and fifty meters long. The little speck was retreating as the monster rose from its hiding place like a Kraken, spraying it with lines of glowing tracer fire that ricocheted off its armored hull and peppering it with missiles. Jaeger joined the fight, locking on with his railgun and unloading into the massive target, relying on the computer to handle targeting as he focused on positioning. The two other fighters soon came into range, but it was immediately apparent that they lacked the firepower to take this monster on.
"Don't waste your missiles!" Scratcher said, "it's too big. We need to call in backup!"
"What do we have that can kill this thing?" Baker asked. "Torpedo boat?"
"I'm calling it in," Jaeger said, switching channels hurriedly. "Mayday, mayday. This is Bullseye, come in control."
"This is control," a woman's voice crackled in his ear, "report."
"Have encountered a large Bug vessel hiding in the belt, too big for us to deal with. We need immediate support, this thing is the size of a frigate."
"Roger that, Bullseye, please hold."
Please hold? Easier said than done, he thought, watching as one of the creature's long forelimbs swiped at Scratcher. The Beewolf dodged out of the way, lines of thrusters flaring along the sides of the Bug vessel's segmented body like green candles as it rose higher from the surface of the asteroid, its many legs tucking beneath its body.
"Come in Bullseye," control said.
"Bullseye here, go ahead."
"Redirecting the UNN Baskeyfield to your position, stand by."
The Baskeyfield, that was one of their torpedo frigates, it should be able to get the job done. They just had to hold out long enough for backup to arrive. Its engines were far larger and more powerful than those of the Beewolfs, resulting in a much higher top speed, but it had a lot more tonnage to move around. It would take longer to both accelerate and decelerate.
"Can I get an ETA on that, control?"
"Ten or fifteen minutes, Bullseye."
"Frigate is on the way in fifteen, guys," he said as he switched channels. "Let's try and draw it out of the asteroids so that the torpedoes can get a lock on it."
"Watch the reach on its arms," Scratcher said, grunting as he accelerated away from the biological spaceship. It flicked out one of its massive forelimbs again like a praying mantis, the barbs that lined it as long as a person was tall. It looked slow, but that was an illusion due to its size, Scratcher only just getting out of range of it as the limb missed him by a hair. Its spindly antennae twitched, its wet, glistening eyes shifting independently of one another as it tracked the different fighters. Didn't it have missiles, plasma guns, projectile weapons of any kind? What was its purpose? Did it fill some kind of non-combat role, like harvesting ice or other raw materials to take back to the hive ship?
Everyone kept their distance, backing off as the thing chased them, moving sluggishly through the asteroids due to its immense size. It was large enough that it could just knock any rock smaller than itself out of the way, pushing them aside with its limbs and letting them bounce off its tough shell. Unlike the hull of a traditional spaceship, the Bug's body was organic and flexible, which gave it an advantage in this kind of environment.
"The cannons ain't doing shit, keep hittin' it with the railguns," Baker said. The carapace might be too thick for the conventional ammo to penetrate, but the tungsten slugs from the railguns were definitely getting through. They might get lucky and hit the pilot, or an internal organ, or whatever the hell was lurking beneath that shiny shell.
One would expect shouting and panic in the heat of battle, but everyone stayed remarkably calm. There was something impersonal about space combat, the distances involved, the relative tranquility of the sealed cockpit in which the only sound to be heard was that of your own instruments.
"Keep pulling back," Scratcher said. "If we can lure him into open space, then he'll be vulnerable."
The fleshy humps along its segmented back and tail began to wriggle, the movements immediately drawing Jaeger's eye.
"Somethin' weird is happening," Baker exclaimed, "look at it's back!"
He watched in horror as something living crawled out of one of the humps. Segmented legs gripped the shell of the creature, pulling its bulbous body out from beneath a fleshy hood, like a maggot emerging from a wound. It was one of the fighters that they had encountered the day before, its carapace lined with metal armor, its compound eyes reflecting the light. It looked like it had been living inside the hump on the larger vessel's back, like some kind of parasite.
"It's some sort of carrier!" Jaeger exclaimed, "there must be ten of them on its back! Break off!"
More of the insectoid fighters pulled themselves from their organic hangars. Each one had a differently colored hull, birthed into space along with gas and fluids that froze into sparkling, crystalline clouds. Had they been refueling? Feeding on the larger vessel in the same way that a ship might siphon chemical fuel from a tanker?
Flashes of green light reflected on the curved carapace of the carrier as they blasted off, angling themselves towards the Beewolfs, their spindly legs tucking beneath their bellies and their glittering eyes fixed on their targets.
Chaos ensued, the Bug fighters scattering in all directions as they made for the Beewolfs, the human vessels scrambling as bursts of glowing plasma fire and tracer rounds lit up the darkness. Missiles left chemical trails in the sky as they burned towards their targets, impacting on rocks or exploding the Bugs into clouds of shattered carapace and organic mush, bright flares shooting out in mesmerizing patterns as the UNN ships took evasive action.
Jaeger veered off, disabling his safety limits as he burned away from the melee. His railgun continued to the track the enemy vessels, rotating and twisting on its arm as the Beewolf dodged and rolled.
Three of the Bugs had taken an interest in him, their plasma fire splashing against the rocks nearby like globs of acid, the not-quite-gas and not-quite-liquid melting into the stone like hot magma. One of them released a torpedo that sought him out like a bloodhound, perhaps attracted to heat or the smell of his engines, tiny eyes and protruding antennae clumped around the front of the metallic tube where the guidance system would have been on a human-made missile.
Jaeger flipped his vessel so that the nose was pointing upwards and slightly back, his engine flaring as he changed direction, the violent G-forces making his vision go grey as his flight suit constricted around his legs to prevent his blood from pooling there. His fighter rose in an upward arc, panels opening on the rear of his chassis to release a payload of glowing flares that spewed forth in a wing-like pattern. The Bug torpedo seemed drawn to them, veering off-course and slamming into a nearby asteroid, the rock crumbling and breaking apart as the missile exploded in a plume of green plasma.
Eight Gs, nine Gs, his HUD blinked a red warning symbol as it counted up and up. He had to ride that infinitely fine line between two deaths, blacking out and slamming into an asteroid, or burning up at the hands of the Bugs. It was like walking a tightrope over a bottomless chasm, as thin as a hair, the limitations of both his spacecraft and his own body guiding him.