They Used the Black Box as Bait for Us | Military Sci-Fi Infantry Story for Sleep

A troop carrier has crashed into a bone-colored dust basin on a hostile colony world, its three-kilometer hull split open and half-buried in saltstone.Inside the wreck is a navigational core holding the last clean vector to a hidden human fleet tender — and the enemy wants it before orbital sterilization erases the site.A combat engineer team enters the tilted hulk to reach the forward bridge vault, but the ship is no longer just wreckage. The Groutbacks — alien centipedes armored like tanks and almost as long as two men — have turned its decks into a breathing brood nest, undermining floors, carving kill pits, sealing corridors with resin, and packing load-bearing walls with eggs.By the time the team reaches the vault, the core is no longer just an objective.This is "The Living Wreck" by Sascha Schmidt