“All units, form a line of defense in the asteroid field! I want to see overlapping fields of fire on my screen!” The Tindrel admiral commanded. He had taken a more sober tone as he examined a giant holo simulation of the situation on the planetoid’s map table. The Planetoid itself had cleared the asteroid field again and was arcing around the entire thing to strike the enemy from behind and below.

The QV were yelling to each other as their large combined surged back towards the relative safety of the asteroid belt. An enemy ship sailed in front of them and hit them with half a broadside. The QV vessel smashed into them and the gelatinous skin wrapped the whole way around the other ship. The ships inside began firing straight into the opposing hull and otherwise trying to prise it apart. 

A blinding exchange of fire flitted to and from the Outreman vessels which had now presented their thin backsides. That was, except the battle group’s Bertha class rail cannon platform, which was hidden behind an asteroid. Though large, it was poorly armed and armoured except for a formidable rail gun which made up most of its mass. While this sort of armament had featured heavily in Humanity’s early spacefaring armoury, it had gradually been phased out as it became clear that the galaxy wasn’t empty. Whenever a ship fired a tungsten bolt at blistering speeds, it was going to ruin [i]someone’s[/i] day - that may not be who they originally thought. 

The Bertha latched onto the mammoth asteroid like a spider and fired straight through it, using small thrusters on either side to manoeuvre its field of fire from one ship to another.
[hr]
“Possible anomaly detected.” A Rothian scientist raised their hand from a workstation on the opposite side of the general area from Dr Wetherall, closer to Marae. As Freyr and Vreta walked over, Dr Lang asked him: “Why am i getting a bad feeling about this again?”