Chapter 3: Hive and Go Seek

“So how do we find a needle in a haystack?” Boomer asked, Jaeger glancing out of his canopy at the formation of three fighters that were lined up beside him. The dim glow from the nearby star reflected off their angular, stealthy hulls, like black glass when they caught the light. Only their canopies were illuminated, the glow of control panels and readouts lighting up the tiny pilots like someone holding a torch beneath their face while telling ghost stories around a campfire.

They had been tasked with scouring the Oort cloud for more Bugs, the Beewolf fighters small and light enough to cover a decent amount of ground. Pretty much every bird was in the air, split into groups of four and tasked with searching for contacts amongst the asteroids. They were skirting the wall of ice and rock right now, running long-range scans to pick up thermal radiation or any strange emissions.

“We got lucky last time,” Jaeger said, “we have a vague idea of where they might be hiding. Those fighters that we encountered were short-range, which means there’s a hive ship somewhere nearby. Find the hive ship, kill it, and we kill the Bug fleet. They can’t operate without it.”

When Bug fleets took to the stars to colonize a new planet, as was part of their life cycle, they did so in one or more hive ships that were roughly equivalent to a carrier. The massive organic ships were not only used to transport other vessels and personnel, but also the crucial supplies necessary for founding a new colony. A hive fleet was both dangerous and vulnerable at the same time. It was the stage of their life cycle when the Bugs were at their most aggressive, but at the same time, they were at their most exposed. Kill enough of the hive ships, and you would negate their ability to found a successful colony.

“Unless they’ve already colonized the inner planets and there are a billion of ‘em further in-system,” Baker muttered.

“Not likely,” Jaeger said, “there’d be a lot more activity if that were the case. Besides, I heard that there aren’t any habitable planets in this system, only a couple of gas giants.”

“Doesn’t mean they can’t colonize the moons.”

“That isn’t our problem right now,” Scratcher chimed in, “just keep your eyes on your sensors. If we pick up anything bigger than a fighter, we’re supposed to call in backup. And make sure you get a positive ID on it before you call in the whole fleet.”

“Yeah, y’all remember your three Ds,” Baker scoffed. “Be nice to the aliens.”

“I prefer double-Ds,” Boomer added.

“That’s Scratcher’s line,” Baker chuckled. “Remember the cans on that Borealan he got caught with? Bigger’n his head, they were.”

Scratcher’s voice came through on the radio, attempting to talk over their laughter.

“Alright, alright. Keep your heads in the game, guys.”

The chatter quietened down for a while, but there wasn’t much to do or see out here, the sky was pitch black save for the twinkling of the far off stars. Contrary to popular belief, many of the beautiful nebulae and clouds of colorful gas that people imagined when they thought of space weren’t in the visible spectrum. They might be seen through telescopes and other such devices, but not with the naked eye. To their left, the infinite wall of rocks passed them by. They were traveling at immense speed, and it was hard to get a frame of reference without checking the counter on the console.

After maybe an hour of cruising, Jaeger picked something up on his scope, a heat blip somewhere in the asteroids.

“Eyes up people,” he called out, alerting his companions. “Picking something up on the infrared band. Something out there is kicking out a lot of heat.”

“I got it,” Baker added, “it’s hotter than the fighter we found yesterday.”

“Peel off and spread out,” Jaeger said, “we’re going in for a closer look.”

He gripped the stick, hitting the forward thrusters to shed velocity, straining against the straps that kept him secured to his seat. His squadron did the same, the thrusters on their bellies flaring and their engines burning brightly as they banked towards the asteroids one by one. They maintained formation, but they put some distance between the fighters, making themselves more difficult targets. Jaeger joined them, every change in velocity causing G-forces to tear at his body. He watched the small map in the bottom left of his visor that showed the locations of the other fighters relative to him, along with the red blip that they were now racing towards. The amount of heat either meant that whatever it was had been burning hard, or it was larger than what they had encountered the last time...

“Remember, don’t take any hostile actions until you can confirm that it’s a Bug ship,” Scratcher said. His voice sounded strained, they were still shedding velocity as they neared the cloud. “Or if it starts fucking shooting at you, either way.”

“They aren’t going to give us the same courtesy,” Jaeger warned, “be careful.”

The loose formation of fighters slowed enough that the asteroids were navigable, each vessel making tiny adjustments with bursts of gas from their thrusters as they avoided the debris, perpetually rolling and dodging as they advanced deeper. It was enough of a challenge to keep from crashing without having to keep their eyes out for the enemy too.

“Can we extend our railguns?” Boomer asked, “is that considered aggressive?”

“Fuck that,” Baker replied, “I’m goin’ hot.”

“Alright, but don’t point it at anything until we get a positive ID,” Jaeger said as he flipped the guard on his trigger. There was a rumbling sensation that reverberated through his boots as the hatch on the back of his ship opened, and the railgun arm extended, the targeting reticle appearing on his HUD.

“Fuck!” Baker exclaimed, Jaeger’s heart racing as he looked around for where the attack was coming from. “Fucking rock bounced off my wing,” he added.

“You asshole, Baker,” Jaeger complained. “Maintain radio silence unless you see something.”

This time the heat signature wasn’t fading, and the four fighters slowly maneuvered through the asteroids as they neared the source. One of the larger rocks slowly rotated amidst the cloud of debris, it must have been a few kilometers wide, jagged and pockmarked from a millennia of collisions. Jaeger pointed his scanners at it, watching as his computer drew a wireframe image of the object and overlaid it on top. The desire to target his railgun was strong, instinctual, he had to make a conscious effort to keep his finger away from the trigger as he scoured the surface of the rock for activity.

“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.

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.”

Now that the odds had been evened out, Jaeger felt a surge of excitement welling up inside him. This was he had trained for, what he lived for, six degrees of freedom and enough firepower at his fingertips to reduce a whole squadron of Bugs to worm food.

“Keep drifting out, let them follow us, we’ll lead them straight into range of the frigate. Focus fire on the fighters, ignore the carrier!”

The three Beewolf fighters opened up in unison, even the railguns having to lead their targets at such extreme range and velocity. The Bugs scattering to make themselves harder to hit as the distance between them was bridged by lines of tracer fire and missile trails. Jaeger watched as one of the missiles found its target, the Bug erupting into an explosion of viscera and tangled metal, another succumbing to a well-placed railgun salvo that must have hit some kind of critical system or organ. It spewed yellow goo from its wounds, the liquid turning to glittering crystals as it froze.

The fight was not entirely one-sided, however. The Bugs still outnumbered them, the Beewolfs forced to dodge a hail of glowing projectiles. One of the organic vessels loosed another torpedo, the weapon locking onto Scratcher and hurtling towards him.

“Out of flares!” Scratcher shouted, breathing heavily into his helmet as he tried to evade. The missile was agile, Jaeger tearing his eyes away from his target for a moment to watch as his friend’s ship burned away in a dangerously tight arc. It was risky, Jaeger could see that he was pulling too many Gs, the torpedo shooting bursts of gas from its nose and tail as it turned to chase him down.

“Eject Scratcher, eject!” Jaeger shouted as he watched the torpedo close. There was no way that he could outrun it, the Bug weapon leaving a sparkling trail of propellant in space as if marking its path.

“I got it!” Scratcher replied, his voice straining as he endured the acceleration. In a few seconds, he wouldn’t be able to eject. He’d be unconscious, and his drifting vessel would be destroyed anyway. “I got it ... I got ... fuck!”

Jaeger breathed a sigh of relief as he watched the canopy pop off with a burst of gas, the oxygen contained within turning into a cloud of frozen crystals, the ejector seat propelling Scratcher clear of his doomed vessel on a plume of flame. Not a second later, the Bug torpedo hit the Beewolf. A billowing cloud of green energy engulfed it, the black chassis slagging like a plastic toy being melted under a magnifying glass before the fuel tanks exploded. The wreckage continued on, sparkling metal and molten hull material spraying into the void.

“I think we’re in trouble here, Bullseye,” Baker muttered. “Where the hell is the Baskeyfield?”

“New contacts on radar,” Jaeger said, failing to conceal the alarm in his voice. “I’m picking up four, no, five contacts heading towards us at high speed.”

“I see them,” Baker confirmed, “they’re not coming from inside the asteroid field. They’re skirting the edge of it. That formation is tighter than anything I’ve ever seen...”

“Try and get a lock on them,” Jaeger said as he rolled his vessel upside-down, narrowly avoiding a trail of plasma rounds. Baker was right, they were in trouble. With two fighters down, they had to contend with three or four Bug fighters each. That was a tall order, even for him. “Fuck, watch out! Another missile!”

One of the remaining fighters released a projectile that had been clutched against its belly with its spindly legs, another plasma torpedo speeding towards Jaeger. His HUD flashed a warning symbol, alerting him that it was locked on, an ominous red blip appearing on his map. He gunned the main engine, veering away as he popped his flares, the bright beacons reflecting off his glassy hull as they spread out in their wing pattern. The corners of his vision began to darken once again, his suit tightening like he was being vacuum-packed, his every muscle straining as he pulled the flight stick back.

The missile was only temporarily distracted by the flares this time, quickly finding his scent again and barreling towards him as they faded.

“It’s on me,” he hissed through gritted teeth, using his thrusters to corkscrew his ship in an attempt to throw off his pursuer. It was smaller than him, faster and more agile, without an organic pilot to limit its maneuvers. His finger hovered over the emergency eject button, his mind fogging from the lack of blood, his railgun taking potshots at the closing missile and failing to hit the slim target.

A green beam of light was projected from the darkness, his video feed pixelating and corrupting, holding on the missile with perfect accuracy. It melted through the housing, a burst of escaping propellant sending the torpedo spinning off course. Jaeger struggled to turn his head, his bleary eyes widening as he located the source of the laser.

There was a formation of ships speeding towards the fight, his visor zooming in on the distant objects. It wasn’t Bug reinforcements, it was the aliens that had come to Baker’s aid the day before. Their ships looked like rounded, aerodynamic arrowheads, the hulls sleek and the points of their stubby wings upturned. There was a canopy towards the pointed nose, but he couldn’t make out anything inside at this resolution.

The vessels were painted with speckled grey-blue camouflage, as if designed to make them harder to spot in an atmosphere, and along their flanks were the colored panels that Jaeger had spotted during their last encounter. They almost looked like LCD panels, running from the nose to the tail. As he watched, the lead vessel sent a wave of flashing light along its body like a cuttlefish. The other ships in the formation reciprocated, waves of indigo and deep purple flashing in the darkness. Could they be communicating with one another?

They were flying in such close formation, they couldn’t have been more than a few meters apart. In space, that was close enough to be in spitting distance, and the coordination required could only have been matched by a trained aerobatics team.

As he watched, each of the five vessels produced a beam, the green lasers focusing on a single Bug ship. The target vessel immediately slagged and burst into flames, the heat igniting the gasses and fuels contained within it like pouring gasoline on a fire. The formation shot past like a bullet, more flashes emitted by their strange color panels as they banked in perfect sync, coming around for a second pass.

“Hold your fire, they’re friendly!” Jaeger warned.

“You think I can’t figure that out for myself?” Baker shot back, “keep firing!”

The tables had turned, and Jaeger engaged the nearest Bug ship with renewed confidence as the mysterious aliens targeted another with concentrated laser fire. The Betelgeusians seemed confused by the sudden appearance of the aliens, breaking off and splitting their attention between both targets. It took some of the heat off Baker and Jaeger, the pair firing their engines as they moved to support the strange fighters.

“Look how they’re flying!” Baker marveled, “it’s like an airshow.”

The alien formation split into two groups, veering off in opposite directions to take on different targets, it was like watching a carefully choreographed dance. Jaeger fired his cannon at one of the distracted Bug ships, the rounds hammering it, drawing a long and bloody trail across the length of its hull. He swooped in to finish it off with a few railgun shots, zipping past the drifting carcass with only a few feet of clearance.

“Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about!”

The battle was turning in their favor now, the Bug squadron was in disarray, but Jaeger’s excitement was soon marred by the looming shadow of the carrier. The giant lobster came into range, blocking out the light from the nearby star and casting him into darkness, Jaeger twisting his stick as he avoided its bulky body by a hair. He watched through his canopy as the segments of its long tail whipped past overhead, looking over his shoulder as the thing barreled forward.

Baker and their new allies mopped up the remaining fighters, the last one succumbing to a well-placed missile, the fragments of its ruined hull tumbling end over end as they hammered into the side of the giant carrier. The behemoth was unfazed, its long antennae twitching and its glittering eyes pivoting as it tracked the enemy vessels.