White: King's Bishop f1 > b5 *check*

"Knife Flight One, this is Talon Actual, my flight is now on station, requesting sitrep, Over," Karen called in over comms. Her three birds had been scrambled from their overwatch position to shore up the now crumbling defenses of the Regiment.

While flying the same model of gunships as Knife Flight, they had been deployed in a different configuration, giving up their passenger compartment for a specialized compartment that would shoot off sensor spikes straight down to the surface. Equipped with both ground penetrating sonar and the latest signal tracking equipment, if deployed correctly they could triangulate in on and resolve any anomalies within their range. Due to their complexity, this compartment also housed an additional 4th crew member to operate and interpret the sensor data as it came in.

"Talon Actual, Knife One, situation is deteriorating, infantry squads are being isolated and picked off, so far we've lost our Rangers, one lance of Jettes, and three... hold for traffic..." the other flight leader paused for a moment, "... make that four Infantry squads, confirmed captured. Our flight is engaging targets of opportunity, but most of the bugs are holed up in those freighters at the moment. No further orders from command, open to suggestions, Over," she finished her report.

"Acknowledged Knife One, we'll deploy sensor spikes around and onto the freighters, cover our approach, sending approach vector now, Over."

"Confirmed, flight path received, moving to cover, Out."

Karen switched over to flight comms, "Alright, I need a clean pass over those freighters, designating targets as Foxtrot 1-3, each craft take respective their target and deploy 6 spikes each, 3 surrounding target, 3 on upper surface, all craft confirm."

A chorus of responses came from the sensor operators.

"Talon 4, acknowledge."

"Talon 8, acknowledge."

"Talon 12, acknowledge."

"Talon flight, deploy," Karen gave the command, keeping calm and collected. The three heavy VTOLs broke formation, each taking a direct approach to each freighter and then rapidly raising their altitude. Underneath them, hugging the surface, Knife flight trailed their approach searching for any signs of danger, ready to pounce at a moment's notice. As Talon flight reached the zenith of their approach, a series of spiked metallic rods were shot out of a series of tubes directly down to the enormous freighters. Slight jets of gas could be seen guiding each spike precisely to a precise location, where they burrowed their way either into ground of the landing pads or the metallic surface of the outer hull of each freighter.

"Talon 4 here, solid hits, telemetry incoming... getting... something, hold on, will transmit once resolved..."

Karen waited for what felt like an eternity, but couldn't have been more than a few seconds.

"Uhhh... lead? I think we might have hit the jackpot..." Talon 4 broke protocol for a moment, her voice trembling with excitement.

Karen pulled up the display on her HUD and saw sensor pings coming from the freighter. There was an entire webway of organic hits, most small enough to be unable to distinguish between human or alien forces. However... there were three clusters that were too large to be anything but Hive... 'Hmmm... that's good...' Karen thought as she looked closer. Switching over to the signals overlay, she gasped as she saw a trail of radio and other comms signals form strands of a web... that all converged on one of those large clusters. All of the gear and equipment the Hive had stripped off the Amazons was almost like a trail of breadcrumbs... leading straight to the Nest.

"Knife One, this is Talon Actual..."

https://lichess.org/editor/r1b1kbnr/ppB1pppp/8/1B6/8/4P3/2q2PPP/3RK1NR_w_Kkq_-_0_1