As he leveled out, his vision cleared long enough to see his upside-down railgun score a hit on one of the pursuing vessels.
The hail of slugs drilled through its forward sensor bank, as much of a head as a living spaceship could possess, the craft immediately losing coordination and beginning to drift.
Jaeger glanced across the battlefield at his comrades, just long enough to see the giant, shrimp-like carrier flick one of its arms out like a hatchet. It was aiming for Boomer's fighter, his callsign tagged on Jaeger's HUD, his vessel flying backwards as it fired its twenty-five-millimeter cannon at a pursuing Bug.
He was too focused on the fight to see it, and before Jaeger could even speak a word of warning, the fifty-foot long limb cleaved his ship in half. It came down like a woodsman's axe, the sharp barbs that lined the forelimb tearing through the metal hull like it was made of paper, splitting it into two clean pieces.
The half with the cockpit tumbled as it flew away, momentum carrying it off into the asteroid field, coolant and fuel spewing from the ruined airframe like dark blood.
"I'm hit!" Boomer's distorted voice came through on the radio, Jaeger could hear his rapid breathing in the confines of his helmet.
"I'm spinning!"
His radio transmission fizzled out, there wasn't anything that Jaeger could do for him right now.
They would have to send out a search party once the fighting was over and hope that he hadn't smashed into an asteroid. His suit would be able to keep him alive for a few hours at least, if it wasn't breached or damaged. Dwelling on it would do no good, Jaeger cleared his mind and focused on the task at hand.
"Pull back!" he ordered, "we're going to get overrun if we don't make it into open space!"
It was a fighting retreat, the vessels aiming their railguns behind them to lay down covering fire as they popped flares and pushed themselves to the limit.
The G-forces threatened to make them black out as they dodged and rolled, using the asteroids as cover to avoid the volleys of plasma fire that followed after them.
The Beewolfs were faster than the Bug fighters, but the Bugs were more maneuverable, their tolerances for the extreme Gs far higher than that of any human. They could endure harder accelerations, more sudden changes in velocity, things that would have turned a human to pulp in his suit.
The carrier lagged behind, but it was slowly accelerating, knocking the asteroids aside like bowling pins as the lines of engines along its flanks propelled it forward on jets of green flame.
The flight computer couldn't calculate a safe route through the debris with all the dodging and weaving that Jaeger had to do to shake off the Bugs that were on his tail, and so he had to trust his instincts, relying on split-second reactions and raw gut feeling to navigate.
There were still two Bugs locked onto him, bursts of plasma shooting past his wings so close that they singed his stealth coating.
They weren't able to gain ground on him, but he couldn't lose them either. In the targeting window of the railgun that was serving as his rear-view mirror, he could see the monstrous, lobster-like carrier as it smashed through obstacles and turned the massive rocks to spreading clouds of rubble.
It was relentless, its black, dead eyes fixed intently on its quarry.
They finally reached the edge of the asteroid field, bursting out into open space like they were breaching the surface of an ocean, dust and ice particles trailing from their wings like contrails.
Immediately that sense of claustrophobia vanished, the twinkling stars greeting Jaeger like old friends, and he checked his HUD to make sure that his wingmen had made it out too.
He could see Scratcher and Baker's callsigns tagged on his display, his radar mapping the wall of asteroids.
He spun on his axis to face it, letting the momentum carry him away. Out here, the maneuverability of the Bug fighters wouldn't count for much. The Bugs followed close behind, seven of them left, shooting out of the dust cloud like bullets.
To their rear, the carrier emerged, exploding out of the Oort cloud like a battering ram. It sent the asteroids scattering, still gaining momentum as it surged towards the fighters, the rocks bouncing harmlessly off its thick shell.
"Hold them off!" Scratcher said over the radio, his voice crackling with static.
"The torpedo frigate can't be more than five minutes out."