The seconds crept by.
More and more bugs clung to the surface of the T3 Blizzard-class Light Interstellar Battlecruiser, like bees that had caught the scent of honey. The close-in guns could no longer scrape them off the armor. The interstellar drones began to fall, one by one. The missiles dwindled toward empty. A few T2 Spike Serpents even started going after the gun emplacements themselves.
"Warning — a close-in gun mount destroyed!"
"Warning — star shield energy still dropping… 46%…"
"Warning — hull armor under sustained attack."
In the hangar, the teachers and students of the two academies sat steeped in dread — yet at every other post aboard, each crew member held her station. They could hear the hive-race battering against the hull, and still they did not waver.
On the bridge the crew worked each to her task. Vice-Captain Charlotte processed the streams of combat data, her face cold and set. Zhao Chen kept to his easy slouch in the captain's chair, untroubled, as though what waited outside were not a sea of tens of thousands of bugs but a rabble of ants.
On the external feed there was nothing now but a black press of bug shapes, and the wreck-"blood" they smeared across the hull where they struck.
Soon the third main-railgun volley finished its cooldown and spoke again, blasting the dense swarm open ahead of the Blizzard.
60 seconds left. Zhao Chen counted it off in his head — the recharge on the bow laser cannon. And those 60 seconds would, in no small part, decide whether the Blizzard lived through this sea of bugs. It came down to one thing now: how much punishment the ship's hull could take.
The missiles ran dry. The four 2500mm railguns slid back into cooldown.
40 seconds…
Of the 16 medium pulse-laser secondaries, three had been wrecked by T3 self-destruct beetles and T3 Corrupted Wyverns.
30 seconds…
Nearly a fifth of the 72 close-in guns were down and useless — and the number kept climbing.
Meanwhile the great laser cannon at the Blizzard's bow had begun to shed a blue glow, as though some energy were gathering within it. A few bugs blundered into that light and were turned to dust in an instant.
20 seconds…
All 50 Blizzard drones had fallen.
10 seconds…
The prey, it seemed, could no longer claw its way out of the abyss's maw.
"Report — Blizzard-class Heavy Cluster-Laser Bow Cannon ready!" The crew member's shout seemed to ring across the whole bridge.
Zhao Chen and Charlotte roared the same word in almost the same breath.
"Fire!"
Beyond the seventh planet of the Water Lily Star System
A fierce void battle was raging — a lone T3 Interstellar Battlecruiser against a fleet of bugs. To anyone watching from outside, in the span of five short minutes that warship had been swallowed by the sea of bugs. The whole swarm was like a black whirlpool, wrapping the ship within it.
And just as it all seemed about to end, a vast blue beam punched clean through the black vortex — and countless bugs were snuffed to nothing inside its light. The beam drove on toward a T3 Hive Mothership ahead.
That Hive Mothership must have sensed the danger, for unlike its ill-fated predecessor it reacted with sharp instinct: it spat out a cloud of round larval spores and threw itself into an evasive turn. Those spores were the Hive Mothership's T1 hive-race troops — the swarm's answer to a warship's chaff, meant to blunt an enemy strike and shield the mother. Under the blue beam they detonated to the last.
In the end the beam caught the side of the Hive Mothership's bio-armor as it wrenched around. Spear met shield in a collision like a comet striking a planet. The whole Hive Mothership began to keel over, its bio-armor "melting" away inch by inch. It flung its maw wide as though roaring in agony, and still more bugs came pouring from its body, hurling themselves into the beam in a reckless bid to cancel the blow.
At that same instant a blue-and-white warship burst from the black sea of bugs, riding the very lane its bow laser cannon had carved.
"Don't stop! Full speed!" Charlotte cried.
The Blizzard's beam soon guttered out. The T3 Hive Mothership it had struck was left with a gaping hole punched in its flank — the bio-armor blown wide, the revolting bugs organs within laid bare — though the beam had not bored all the way through.
Breaking free of the sea of bugs, the Blizzard swept past the crippled Hive Mothership's flank. The ship that had loomed so huge before looked small indeed beside that creature.
Hangar
The teachers and students of the two academies watched the images projected in through the viewport. They could see, clear as day, the ragged breach in the Hive Mothership's bio-armor — and through it, one of the creature's hatcheries, packed with bug-eggs crammed one against the next, tens of thousands of them at the least. The mere sight set scalps prickling.
The sudden blow had cracked some eggs early; here and there a bug could be seen struggling out. Deeper inside, still more roared out at them — though those seemed unable to fly the void, and could only watch the Blizzard sweep past, helpless to give chase.
"Gulp… this may be the closest I ever come to a T3 Hive Mothership in my life," murmured one professor who studied the interstellar hive-race, shaky with excitement.
The Blizzard did not turn its guns on the gravely wounded Hive Mothership again; it simply passed the creature by and bore on into the distance. Behind it, a great tide of swarm still gave chase — but robbed of their encircling advantage, they could no longer catch the battlecruiser. A few Hive Motherships loosed bio-plasma from the rear; only a scarce handful found the star shield, which had been shifted around to cover the stern.
"We… made it out?" The teachers and students looked at one another, scarcely able to believe it.
They were alive.