LIGHTNOVELONLINE Dealing With Locusts
We reached the place where the distress call was being broadcasted and I was greeted with a rather peculiar sight.
A C Class Freighter was currently fleeing from what looked like a white cloud chasing after it while they shot at it desperately.
When I tapped on the screen to zoom into the cloud, the screen showed monsters that looked nothing like the locusts that I was familiar with.
Each one basically looked like a cross between a beetle and a grasshopper. They had some kind of chitin on their back with six things protruding out that looked like legs and the head was just a mass of teeth with no eyes.
Honestly, I'm surprised they didn't name this after some eldritch horror or something… Because it definitely looked like one…
The ship was barely keeping itself in front of the swarm though I could see that the swarm was slowly gaining on the ship.
Even though they were firing all their guns at the swarm, any locusts they killed would be quickly replaced with two.
"Why aren't they escaping Using their Travel Drives?" I asked.
"That would require them to shut off their engines and those things would devour their entire ship before it could even have time to charge," Amber explained.
"Odd that they would even be caught in a predicament like this in the first place though…"
"Ah… Tera… Their natural colour is black and grey. They would look like floating asteroids to the naked eye and normal scanners would also mistake them as such. It's only when they are attacking would they switch to that colour."
Well… That's pretty terrifying…
Just imagine you're just hanging around in space and an asteroid floats by, only for it to suddenly change into a mass of teeth and insectoid legs to charge at you…
Space is scary…
I turned off the Travel Drives as we got into firing range and barked out orders, "Ries, signal them and tell them we're here to help. Lea, get ready to fire."
Both girls answered affirmative though Ries took a little while to do what I asked since she wasn't used to being a comms officer yet.
I don't blame her since this wasn't really the role she wanted to be in and she was definitely not experienced with it.
Under normal circumstances, she would be in the maintenance room taking care of things back there but since she doesn't have the parts yet, she would be wasted sitting there anyway. Thus, she volunteered to take this role in the meantime.
I then got out of my seat, "Shall I prepare to launch?"
Amber grimaced, "Not against Space Locusts, no… In case anything bad happens, we need to get ready to bail out at a moment's notice and if you're out there… We might end up losing this ship if the swarm turns to us and we're caught up in that swarm…"
"That… Kind of sounds like if things get too dangerous, we'd be abandoning those guys that sent out the distress call in the first place…"
Amber shrugged, "If we had to choose between saving them or ourselves, I'd pick us in a heartbeat~"
I suppose she does have a point… There's only one thing I'm worried about though…
"Would we be penalised by someone or something? Like someone or some organisation coming after us because we gave up on a distress call?"
I ask this because in the game, there were also distress call events that you could take part in but you would be faced with a penalty if you were to abandon it partway through.
Amber scratched her cheek, "Kind of I guess? It's more of a social stigma than anything though. Like others would know about it. But since we were escaping because we were facing Space Locusts trying to consume our ship, the biggest damage would come from our own guilt over it since everyone else would understand. And let me be the first to say that I won't have any feelings of guilt if I have to abandon some stranger to save us."
Ok… That got a little dark all of a sudden…
Ries turned to me, "Boss! The other party has acknowledged us! We are free to engage!"
Good.
The reason we had to contact the other party and announce ourselves first is to let them know of our presence. It's kind of an etiquette thing which was a game mechanic in the game but I guess a common sense in this universe.
"Lea, light them up," I ordered.
The Alv didn't even hesitate before all five of our main batteries fired, telling me that during the time it took for the other side to acknowledge our message, she had already aimed all five guns at specific targets to shoot at.
Three kinetic shells and two beams of light pierced through the space between us and the white cloud, the light beams taking down at least ten of them before the kinetic shells reached their target, blowing through a good dozen of them.
Damn… Just one salvo and she already took down more than twenty of them…
Obviously the guns on our ships were good but if you were to ask me to shoot them, I definitely wouldn't be able to achieve what Lea could do.
Still…
"They're pretty brittle…" I noted, watching the locusts that Lea had shot float off into space while thrashing around in their death throes.
Amber nodded, "Those things are pretty weak on their own. Their only strengths are their ability to camouflage and their numbers. If you are able to spot them from afar you could pretty much run away from them. But if they manage to catch you, you're pretty much dead."
I guess it's a good thing we invested into long range weapons like this then.
The white cloud following the ship seemed to falter a little before the swarm converged again to chase after the freighter.
Lea took another moment to take aim before firing each of the guns in quick succession.
The two lasers went first, piercing through even more of them and leaving dying husks behind which left two holes in that 'cloud'.
She then fired the three railguns just as the locusts tried to close up the holes with their numbers, only for three kinetic shells to blow through the same space again and blasting more of them into pieces.
The swarm faltered again which allowed the freighter to pull away from the swarm to reach a safe distance.
They then turned the ship to fly parallel to us as they started concentrating their fire on the locusts instead of just trying to run away.
I guess they saw how we were able to take down the locusts so easily and got confident that we could actually exterminate all of them together.
I activated the ship's thrusters and moved the ship closer towards the swarm, trying to get us within range of our autocannons.
Lea fired another shot in the meantime and knocked another chunk of them out from the white cloud, thinning it even further.
The swarm seemed to understand that we were the bigger threat and started flying towards us, which only got them within range of our medium range turrets which prompted them to start firing.
The autocannons sought out targets automatically and peppered the locusts with autocannon shells, each one blasting holes in their bodies until they were dead.
If the autocannons weren't enough, the missile turrets also joined in and fired missile after missile at the targets, the lock on systems in those missiles homing in on their targets automatically.
This was the first time that I got to see the actual firepower of our weapons so I was quite lost in my admiration of the--
"Wooooooahhh!! As expected of the Tatacon Autocannons!! They're able to accurately target and shoot down so many targets in such a short time!! And the Porcupine missile launchers!! It's just salvo after salvo of them thanks to the speed auto-loaders which gives them little down time when they're firing!"
I turned to the side to see Ries quite literally pressing her face against the side of the glass of the bridge just so that she could get a closer look at our turrets in action.
Her tail was quite literally swishing from side to side while she was doing small hops in excitement as she beheld the scene before her.
"And the SN-one railgun really lives up to its specifications! It's just blowing through an entire group of them with ease!! The Manifold High Intensity Lasers too! It's burning through the locusts so quickly that it cuts through them like they're made of nothing! This is the best!!"
Ah right… I kind of forgot that Ries was that kind of Maochatte.
The sight was really cute though so I got distracted by her before remembering that we were in the middle of an extermination here.
Right… Just gonna record this and save it for later then…
Hey! You have to understand that there is no way I was missing out on a cute scene like this!