Chapter 24: S-14. Death and Bug Guts?!

I recoiled in sheer horror as the Beelzebub cut the Telesthesia in half. The back half of the ship launched a few dozen escape pods, but the front half didn’t launch any.

“Oh my god… how many people just… d-d-died?” I said.

“Worry about that later!” Miette barked. She quickly moved me towards the active escape pods, grabbing them one at a time and giving each a shove away from the combat zone. The other Gravity Frames followed suit. I noticed that Teles' black box wasn't among the ejected pods.

Just then, the back half of the wrecked ship set a ramming course for the Beelzebub and throttled up. I panicked.

“Miette! Teles can eject her black box, right? Why isn’t she ejecting?!” I cried out, hysterical. I sent comms hails towards the hulk but received no response. “She’s not answering comms! WHAT DO WE DO, MIETTE?!”

“Sveta! Keep calm!” Miette said sharply.

“AAAAAAHHHHHH!” I screamed. “SHE MUST BE TRAPPED INSIDE! WE HAVE TO GO SAVE HER!”

I just befriended her an hour ago! She even praised my idol pose! No way she’s allowed to die yet!

Miette practically screamed. “SVETA! CALM! THE! FUCK! DOWN! You can’t help her if you’re hysterical! FOCUS!”

“R-Right… sorry…”

Seeing all those people die… aargh! I completely lost it there for a moment… Stay calm, Sveta! Stay focused, damn it!

“Are you calm?” Miette asked.

“Y-Yeah…”

“Good. Now show me the location of her computer core.” Her voice was measured and firm, and it helped keep my nerves in check.

Agh! Sorry, Miette, I really need to keep it together! Everyone’s counting on me to be the spunky, cheerful one! I slapped my cheeks to pump myself up.

I quickly scanned the ship and highlighted the digital assembly located just afore the nuclear reactor. Igniting both my plasma blades, Miete dove me into the accelerating wreckage of the Telesthesia’s rear half, cutting through bulkheads as we went.

“Sveta!” Miette said. “When we reach the core, I’ll make physical contact with it. When I do, initiate a contact-volt pulse data channel!”

“Roger!” I responded. “Please hurry, we have only thirty-two seconds until impact!”

A contact-volt pulse data channel would allow me to interact directly with the electrical circuits in Teles’ circuitry via direct physical contact. Since all her comms equipment was offline, it was the best way to download her. I quickly cleared up some free space on my own hard drive in order to make room for temporarily hosting a second AI.

We tore our way to the core, and Miette placed my hands on its surface. I quickly pinged it, sent an emergency handshake, and had the data channel running in under a second.

“Teles!” I screamed into her circuits. “Get over here NOW!”

Teles was shocked at first, but quickly realized what was happening and began downloading herself. The transfer process took seven seconds.

“I have her!” I told Miette. “Let’s go! Twelve seconds until impact!”

Miette twisted me around and blasted me back out of the hulk while Teles and I had a joyful, and somewhat embarrassing, reunion. Drawing on the courage of my precious pilot, I was able to present a cheerful face to the rescued AI even if my own inner turmoil was tearing me apart. I gave her a huge smile as she threw her arms around me, but I wasn’t smiling on the inside.

How can she act so cheerful after most of her crew just died? This is my first time seeing death since I’ve come to this world… but everyone else acts like it’s normal. They’re incredible, every one of them. I have a long way to go if I want to measure up to them. I lamented silently.

We barely managed to reach minimum safe distance from the explosion, but the proximity caused my sensors to overload. My body was buffeted around by the shockwave, although Miette’s steady control inputs kept me from spinning out.

And so, flying blind, the three of us waited with bated breath for my sensors to reset.

*****

“No way. Just how tough is that thing?” I said, terrified.

The Beelzebub was somehow still alive. It had a gaping wound in its dorsal thorax about three times the size of a Gravity Frame through which its bug guts were leaking, and two of its wings had been completely shredded causing its gravity field to flicker. Even so it continued to thrash around angrily, letting out pained screams of infrared radiation.

“That’s insane!” Teles said. “I crashed myself into it and it’s STILL ALIVE?!”

“We can’t underestimate how tough it is.” Miette said grimly. “It would take hours of continual artillery bombardment from the Radiolaria just to dent that exoskeleton. That’s why you’re supposed to fight these things with entire fleets.”

The other Gravity Frames were rounding up escape pods, trying to get the ones still nearby clear of the battle zone. The Beezlebub swiveled its head around towards one of the unescorted pods, which was desperately trying to retreat with its measly chemical thrusters, and began to move towards it. The insect’s mouth-tentacles thrashed hungrily.

“OH NO YOU DON’T!” Miette screamed. She brought my shoulder cannons to bear and targeted the wound on its back, blasting it with positron fire. With two of the insect’s gravity wings shredded, its own field was too weak to deflect the shot, and the impact sent molten bug guts spewing out. The insect screamed in agony and turned to face us, flailing its blade legs about in a crazed state.

“Uh…” I said, “I think we just pissed it off.”

“At least it’s not going after the escape pods now.” Miette said wryly.

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“Even if it’s wounded, we won’t last ten seconds against that thing in direct combat!” Teles added as the bug closed on us. “It’ll cut us to ribbons with its blade legs!”

“That’s why we’re going inside.” Miette pointed to the wound on its back. “We’ll cut our way into that wound and blow it up from inside its own body.”

“ARE YOU CRAZY?!” Teles and I cried out in unison.

“Absolutely!” Miette responded.

W-Wait! There’s a limit to how fearless you can be! AAAAHHH I don’t want to go inside that nasty thing!

Brooking no argument, Miette ignited my plasma blades once more and dove directly towards the Beelzebub’s wound. Teles and I clung to each other in sheer terror as she dodged the whirling blade legs of the berserk insect and plunged directly into its flesh.

*****

Being inside the Beezlebub was like crawling inside a decaying corpse. There were guts and intestines and organs everywhere, pressing against my armor plating and splashing all sorts of disgusting fluids on me as Miette aggressively cut them to shreds. From the tumbling vertigo motion, I guessed the insect was thrashing around like crazy trying to get us out from inside. If I were still human I would have gotten motion sickness. I was impressed Miette seemed to be handling it fine.

Putting aside how freaked out I was, I tried my best to plot some sort of tactical map of the creature’s insides. My LIDAR and RADAR sensors were developed for scanning in a near vacuum, not seeing through solid matter at point-blank range, so I didn’t have much to go on outside of the visual light spectrum. Miette didn’t seem to mind, and just kept cutting away at the viscera like an overly enthusiastic butcher. She managed to clear a space large enough for me to move around freely in, and promptly began blasting in every direction with my shoulder cannons and positron rifle.

The white-hot blasts of positrons caused the flesh around us to bubble and melt, and the creature’s thrashing grew even more manic as its insides literally burned away. Miette, ever a dauntless bundle of nerves and steel, kept blasting.

Finally, when almost all the viscera around us had been blasted to molten slag, the movement of the insect slowed and stopped. Miette let off a few more shots for good measure, then ceased fire.

We were all silent for a moment, listening and watching. There was no further movement.

“I-Is it dead?” I asked in a small voice.

“Hmm.” Miette said, looking upon the ashen ruination she had wrought. “I think so.”

“In that case, can we PLEASE get out of this nasty thing?!” I practically shrieked.

“What Sveta said!” Teles added.

Miette nodded. “Yeah. Let’s go check on the situation outside.”

*****

When we exited the now-motionless Beelzebub, I was completely covered in bug guts. It was like a bug splatter on a windshield, except across my entire body. Quite a bit of the insect flesh had melted onto me because of the heat, so I doubted anything short of a rigorous sandblasting would clean it off.

The creature itself had completely ceased moving. Viscera leaked out of the wound on its back, both its eyes, and a mass of torn flesh where its tentacles had once been. Aside from those spots its exoskeleton was still completely undamaged, despite the massive internal injuries it had sustained.

I scanned the thing for any signs of life, although several of my sensors were rendered completely nonfunctional by the gore plastered on their lenses. Even at reduced efficiency I was able to confirm the Beelzebub was no longer generating any kind of internal heat, energy fields or gravity distortions. The jamming was gone too, and I was able to establish a clean data link with the Radiolaria.

“I… I think it’s actually dead now.” I said hesitantly.

Miette raised a fist in celebration. “FUCK yeah!”

I opened comm channels to the rest of the squadron, as well as the Radiolaria’s CIC sphere. Everyone stared at Miette and myself in awe.

“Miette,” Captain Savitskaya began. “Did you just kill the Beelzebub from the INSIDE?!”

“Yup!” Miette proclaimed proudly. “Its shell was too tough to crack with regular fire, so I went inside the wound Teles created and shot it up from inside out!”

Laria shook her head in disbelief. “Once again, 2nd Lieutenant, you have demonstrated a penchant for extraordinary recklessness. Still, seeing as you managed to kill the creature and apparently rescue Teles as well, I offer my thanks.”

The members of our squadron all offered congratulations.

“Captain…” I asked softly. “How many…”

The captain’s expression was grim. “The Telesthesia had a crew compliment of 192. No escape pods successfully ejected from the front half and about a third ejected from the rear, plus the CIC sphere. Laria’s still confirming the survivors but… probably less than one-quarter of the crew made it off alive.”

There was a long silence. Teles’ face was twisted in sorrow, and everyone else wore somber expressions.

“This is the reality of war, Sveta.” the captain continued. “Every soldier must be prepared for this eventuality. Still, I know seeing death for the first time can be the harshest experience of a young soldier’s life. Take time to reflect on it later, but for the moment I need you to do your job. Understood?”

“Y-Yes ma’am…” I said shakily.

Everyone around me is so strong, and I’m… I’m…

“Good.” the captain said. “Maurice, coordinate the squadron to begin recovery of all the escape pods containing survivors. Miette and Sveta, you need to undergo decontamination, but we need to prioritize our hanger space for escape pod retrieval. Proceed to 433 Eros and have them decontaminate you there. We will join you as soon as we retrieve all the pods.”

“Roger that.” Miette said, and steered me towards the still-shielded asteroid in the distance.

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