Birds of Prey - Bisexual Edition

"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.

What was it going to do next? Its complement of fighters had been shot down, and it didn't seem to have any ranged weapons with which to fend off the Beewolfs and the colorful aliens. Jaeger and Baker kept up their railgun fire, peppering the thing's armored shell, the aliens pulling back into a formation of five as they drew burning trails across its hull with their lasers. Nothing was getting through, that shell could be meters thick, they would have to count on the frigate to deal the killing blow.

"Shit," he exclaimed, "the frigate!" He switched channels, trying to contact the incoming vessel before it arrived, it must be right on top of them by now. "Baskeyfield, come in Baskeyfield, this is Bullseye." No reply, fuck. "Baskeyfield, come in!"

"This is the Baskeyfield," a distorted voice said, Jaeger exhaling the breath that he had been holding in.

"Baskeyfield, we have friendly aliens on the field, do not target them. Repeat, we have friendly aliens on the field. Target only the...the big fucker. Do you copy?"

"We copy you Bullseye, big fucker is on our radar. Repeat, eyes on big fucker. Suggest you get clear of the engagement zone."

Jaeger turned his head this way and that, searching for the incoming frigate. There, a massive heat signature on his scanner, closing fast. He got a visual on it, zooming in to see the frigate's massive engines flaring at full burn, four nozzles arranged in a diamond shape that were spewing superheated gas as bright as a sun. It was coming at them ass-first, decelerating using its main engines, probably already locking torpedoes on the Bug carrier.

"Get clear," he warned, "the torp boat is on station."

Baker didn't need to be told twice, spinning and putting his engine towards the carrier, burning away from it. The aliens were still doing passes, Jaeger had to find a way to get their attention. His mind raced, he couldn't just leave them here to potentially be caught in the crossfire, not after they had saved his ass. Think Jaeger, think!

He thumbed a button on his control panel, turning his nose towards the formation of arrowhead fighters, flashing his floodlight at them. They seemed to like light, maybe they would respond to it. He could practically feel the bulk of the Baskeyfield bearing down on them, he couldn't linger here for long, shining his beam and wiggling his wings as he let momentum carry him.

To his relief, they noticed him, turning towards him as he began to burn away. The giant Bug made to pursue them, but it had a lot of mass to move around, and it struggled to shed its forward momentum. It slid like it was on ice, its lines of thrusters moving independently as they tried to steer its bulk in a new direction.

The alien fighters took up formation beside Jaeger, giving him a closer look at their sleek hulls. Their aerodynamic chassis were lined with what almost looked like heat tiles, painted over with their ocean camouflage, the silver gleam of exposed machinery visible beneath it here and there. The color panels seemed to be made up of individual cells, like rows of computer monitors, and he could even make out what looked like scorch marks on the noses of the craft. Residue from atmospheric flight maybe? Were these vessels also spaceplanes? They couldn't be long-range, where had they been launched from?

He could see something moving around beneath the raised canopy of the nearest fighter, but he couldn't make out much detail, it was blurry and indistinct. These weren't drone ships, there was something piloting them...

Jaeger looked back over his shoulder at the pursuing Bug carrier, the glare of the frigate's engines reflecting off its iridescent carapace. The UNN vessel was still hundreds of miles away, but that was more than close enough for it to fire. As he zoomed in on the approaching ship, he saw a speck rise from its hull on a plume of flame. He couldn't see it at this range, but he knew from experience that one of the many torpedo hatches that were spaced out along the top of the roughly two hundred meter long vessel had opened, a missile the length of a city bus shooting out of the tube.

He tracked it as it sped towards the carrier, gaining velocity as its targeting systems made minute adjustments, crossing the distance alarming quickly. His visor darkened automatically to protect his eyes from the glare as the torpedo slammed into the Bug's midsection, a massive explosion tearing through the giant creature. The shockwave rocked it, the beast seeming to lurch, and then it was blasted into two clean halves. It resembled a lobster that had just been smashed with a hammer, fragments of its colorful shell spreading outwards in an expanding cloud along with charred flesh and torn metal, its many legs twitching and its engines petering out. The midship, if you could call it that, was partially vaporized where the torpedo had struck it. Gore and fluids leaked from its ruined body, the two halves drifting apart to expose what looked like organs and flesh on the inside, wrapped around metal structural beams like vines choking a tree.