NationStates Jolt Archive

Ground War Against The Buggers:

The Planet Muse lay before them. From orbit you could see a massive smoking radioactive crater where the military base of the Commonalitarianism had once been. Less than half a day before a heavy Warlock space destroyer (Babylon 5) had blown up as it tried to land in the infested base.

The main pyramid arcology of the Commonii, New Shimizu, lay shattered below, its sides split open crawling with buggers of all types and sizes. Everything from poisonous arachnids, giant spined worms, foot and a half long soldier ants, swarms of giant wasps, and others crawled, slithered, and flew through the arcology.

Ground communications had all but halted. The disposition of most of the Commonalitarianism citizens was unknown.

Three nights before, a surprise attack had been launched by a partially known enemy. Before the local giant arthropod, insectile, and arachnid wildlife only attacked in swarms trying to get into the bases and eat the inhabitants. Occassionally, some would get inside, but they would be quickly killed by the sentries posted behind the forceshields.

Now, there seemed to be a guiding hand or intelligence behind the attacks. In the most densely populated pharmaceutical prison farms, the main military base, and New Shimizu Pyramid, the buggers had attacked in an englobing pattern. First they had dug through the rockcrete flooring with tunneling wyrms (not worms) at multiple locations, allowing swarms of giant soldier ants and arachnid climbers into the bases. The arachnids had climbed into any opening available, either smashing their way through or finding open windows and doors.

Then the shields went out. They had been swarmed by glowing flying insects which drained the power until they shut down. Then the true attacked commenced. Swarms of ground creatures poisonous scorpion things, acid spitting millipedes, and more soldier ants followed by flying wasps and giant glow flies. They came by the millions pouring into the cities. Not just to kill but to carry off anything portable including people and visiting aliens.

Most of the smaller pharmaceutical prison farms, labs, and a few outposts had been left untouched... But their time would come.

The two patrolling heavy warlock destroyers (Babylon 5) acted quickly, they called in the asteroid guard to help them. The first one attempted a landing at the main military base to reinforce the foot soldiers. When it lowered its shields to release the powered armor troops onto the ground, it was hit repeatedly by plasma artillery. It blew up taking the military base with it.

The second heavy destroyer pounded area around New Shimizu turning the land into a burning hell. It sent out starfury bombers to clear the landing areas. They were able to land backed up with some of the asteroid guard and partially evacuate the most important members of the cities. However this did not last. They were swarmed once again. The insectoids seemed to fight with abandon swarming without regards to their safety. They had distance weapons of a sort, spines, acid, poisonous spores, and incendiary insects. The asteroid legions retreated from the city taking as many people as they could on a forced march to Spartacus mountain. Most died on the way to the secondary military base.

The second heavy destroyer made it to orbit, but it was hit repeatedly by plasma artillery, revealed to be giant bugs, shorting out its main shields and taking damage on the way out.

A message was sent out from an incoming carrier command ship. Strategos Sharp of the Commonalitarianism spoke, "Today is a dark hour. We are in need of outside help. Our forces have suffered several brutal defeats. We need help finding the disposition of our people, identifying our unseen enemy, and hunting down those things which would destroy our people. We are willing to pay mercenary forces to carry out these goals as well as accept specialists from different worlds to prepare for a major ground offensive."

The planet waited below ominously for the new arrivals.

More transports began to assemble in orbit over Muse. Some were licensed privateers, others were assault boats recently filled with men, women, and neo-dogs fresh called to service.

The Bitch as it was called by its crew or the Black Cat as it was registered and christened entered the system containing the planet Muse. Elegant and beautiful it had been when launched from the shipyards, it now had the look of a street-tom who'd gotten into a few too many fights and had its injuries attended to by a mad vetrinarian.

Of greater importance than the vessel was its crew, a more assorted and unusual crew you'd be hard-pressed to find. From the pointed teethed leader who was almost feral to the diminuative heavy weapons gunner to the hulking sniper and any number of others who where highly dangerous.

We've recieved your message requesting aid and once we hash out payment, we'd be happy to get to work on your pest problem.

"Acknowledging Black Cat, our command carrier is ready to receive docking. We look forward to receiving negotiations. Our current standard Contract is available, it was written by the senate. This is of course negotiable."

The Commonalitarianism registers all privateers and mercenaries to act against the buggers under space law Section 35, special circumstances acknowledged by the Peoples Assembly on March 5, Paradisian Year, 365.

Under this registered offering:

An initial signon bonus based on personnel of 20,000 real time credits per person under command of the commanding offer.

An ammunition and weaponry allowance of 10,000 real time credits per crew members to buy all necessary equipment and weapons.

Real time pay at a flat rate of 500 time credits per person per day.

Special dispensation for returned bugs or buggers killed in combat.
1000 time credits per confirmed killed body returned.
10000 time credits for live capture of buggers.
100,000 time credits for capture of plasma bugs


For pinpointing the exact location of bugger bases and queen bugs.
1,000,000 time credits.

Additional pay will be made available for special missions. Capture of specialized equipment will be rewarded on the basis of patent evaluation.

By order of the Commonarch, Amara Cruon under special dispensation.

Appendage Print, Organ Scan,


Noted On:

IC: On the back of the contract is a bunch of legalese written in High Eternal, a language magnitudes more complex than Sanskrit, it makes the standard translator turn off in about three seconds after the first two words.

Commander Ralf Chow, waited in the docking bay of the massive command carrier, his pointed ears stood up at attention as Strategos Sharp passed him.
They had moved a slightly farther distance from the planet. What looked like bright blue fireworks of plasma burst in low Muse orbit. Some of the giant seven kilometer tall phosphorescent "trees" had flowered at the top, spitting hard meter to two meter seedpods into space.

It started off as a spec in the distance. Another star being born or a comet passing perhaps.

Then it started to get bigger. After one dec it was clear that it was not a comet, meteor or a birthing star but in fact a vessel. A vessel moving considerably fast considering its size. As it approched the planet Muse it slowed down considarably, coming to a speed more expected of a craft five Kilometeres long. It kept its distance from the planet itself observing for a few moments to get its bearings and to make sure it had arrived at the right location, the source of a call for help, a planet in distress.

A smaller ship detached from the Large ship and started to fly slowly towards the apparant Command craft in orbit arount the Planet. The Large ship, a Lar'shi class cruiser, promptly turned around and quickly accelerated away its mission complete.

The small ship, a Skether'Qan class escort not being so small itself at one and a half kilometers long opened a channel directed at the Command ship

......Confirming..clearence..........confirmed.........opening..subspace..channel..187/xct........channel..open.....

"This is Por'O Vior'la Kais speaking for Kor'O Vior'la Kais Mont'yr on behalf of the Vior'la Enclaves.
We have come in response to your call for aid, how can we be off assistance?"

..............Awaiting..response......channel..on..standby.......

Strategos Sharp, " We welcome you as you say for the "Greater Good", currently we are in need of special assistance. We have lost communication with the planet below, our main military base is destroyed. One of our heavy destroyers is finished along with the 80,000 men aboard. We have some footage of the "buggers", but it does not match with previous bugger incursions, there are new kinds of bugs present, as well as the presence of unforseen plant based biomechanical weapons. There is a new threat here. We have initially outlined some goals. We need to prepare the way for a large scale ground invasion of the world below."

Strategos Sharp turns to a large holodisplay. One his assistants a large neo-wolf wearing a bandolier turns on the display.

Our initial goals:

1) Capture or kill and bring back specimens of the different buggers for examination and interrogation. Captured buggers are more valuable to us.

A) We need to capture at least one of the large plasma bugs which is spraying balls of plasma into orbit.

B) We need to capture at least one of the tunneling wyrms which bore through the rockcrete into our cities.

C) We need to get samples of some of the biomechanical weapons which were used in the initial attack.

2) Reconnaisance-- Find out what is happening on the ground.

A) We are currently out of contact with the colonists, pharmaceutical prison farms, and research outposts. Our communication equipment is not working. Reestablish contact.

B) Find out where the bugger hives are. Our satellite equipment has been swept from orbit by surprisingly accurate plasma bursts.

Strategos Sharp, " We welcome you as you say for the "Greater Good", currently we are in need of special assistance. We have lost communication with the planet below, our main military base is destroyed. One of our heavy destroyers is finished along with the 80,000 men aboard. We have some footage of the "buggers", but it does not match with previous bugger incursions, there are new kinds of bugs present, as well as the presence of unforseen plant based biomechanical weapons. There is a new threat here. We have initially outlined some goals. We need to prepare the way for a large scale ground invasion of the world below."

Strategos Sharp turns to a large holodisplay. One his assistants a large neo-wolf wearing a bandolier turns on the display.

Our initial goals:

1) Capture or kill and bring back specimens of the different buggers for examination and interrogation. Captured buggers are more valuable to us.

A) We need to capture at least one of the large plasma bugs which is spraying balls of plasma into orbit.

B) We need to capture at least one of the tunneling wyrms which bore through the rockcrete into our cities.

C) We need to get samples of some of the biomechanical weapons which were used in the initial attack.

2) Reconnaisance-- Find out what is happening on the ground.

A) We are currently out of contact with the colonists, pharmaceutical prison farms, and research outposts. Our communication equipment is not working. Reestablish contact.

B) Find out where the bugger hives are. Our satellite equipment has been swept from orbit by surprisingly accurate plasma bursts.

The Bitch moved to dock with the carrier. The first to emerge was a large woman with pointed teeth, slitted eyes and a cresent shaped tattoo from the outer edge of her left eye to the base of her mouth. She was followed by a thin bald man tattooed from head to toe in highly intricate designs and a girl with blood-red hair, night black eyes and skin the colour of marble.

Each was armed with a single visible weapon, a large bore gun, a tiny gun and a oversized sword and from bearing likely more.

The lead looked about before bearing down on Ralk. Getting into his personal space she asked, "You in charge here?"

Ralk, showing his paws, "That would be Supreme Strategos Sharp," pointing a clawed finger at a medium height man standing in the bay. The Strategos bowed slightly, holding a fist close to his chest, He had silver hair, and piercing purple eyes. Holographic color tabs on his shoulders projected his rank. His uniform was immaculate, a deep blue silk jacket, pantaloons, black boots, and a tricorn hat. Sharp said, simply, "Welcome".

.........message..recived.........trasmitting..reply.......

"It seems as if you have quite a problem, we are glad that we can help you in your plight. Now, may we come abord and disscus tactics with you in achiving these goals? My Fire Caste commander is anxious to study this video of yours and to study maps of the landscape. We await your response"

..............Awaiting..response......channel..on..standby.......

From Subcommander Alex Ohyes, "Supreme Strategos Sharp and Commander Ralk are meeting with the crew of the Black Bitch, he is in the left middle hangar. You should meet with him there."

_________________________________________________________________



While one of the crew in the Black Bitch is taking a short break, and watching the holo-d, he sees something. It is a reporter interviewing with a man just returned from the Death March to Spartacus Mountain.

The man has a black bandanna across his face, silvered glasses and a shaved head. He has a large odd shaped rifle sitting next to him, it looks like a coil rifle, but the rings on the barrel are different, and there is a much larger power pack.

"Hello this is Wally Newberg from INN-- Interspace News Network, we are interviewing one of the survivors of the "Spartacus Death March.", we have one of the survivors here. He has a tale to tell. We are withholding his name for privacy purposes."

Wally Newbergy, "You were at the initial attack against New Shimizu Megapyramid."

Unknown Soldier, "Yes, I was, I was serving my mandatory service in the Citizens Police Brigades, I was on patrol when the attack came. I remember hearing a loud boom and watching the glass shatter on the outer face of the megapyramid. The buggers came pouring in. They were everywhere, huge insectoids grabbing and carrying screaming people off, they didn't initally attack you unless you resisted. I remember retreating to the central police bunker where we had arms for protection against the Vodais Plague Zombies and Vampires. There hadn't been an attack of VODAIS plague zombies for over a hundred years, but we still maintained an arsenal. We formed a cordon around the bunker and began passing out weapons."

Wally Newberg, "What was it like being in the center of the city?"

Unknown Soldier, "It was crazy, people were pushing in to get weapons and running to get away from the buggers at the same time. We didn't have enough weapons to arm everyone. We protected who we could, then we began fighting the buggers as they poured into the center of the city. I can tell you the old .10 gauge coil gun semiautomatic shotguns used to kill plague zombies worked better than what the soldiers had."

Unknown Soldier, " When we were retreating from city, the 6.8 mm standard issue soldiers coilguns couldn't effectively do enough damage to stop the warrior bugs or hoppers. It worked against the smaller bugs like the glowbugs and flyers, but not very well against the bigger bugs. We were lucky that most of the soldiers units included marksmen, heavy weapons specialists, and had plenty of plasma grenades. "

Wally Newberg sits quietly taking it in. He says, "Go on."

Unknown Soldier, "We literally formed a wall of fire, putting snipers in the windows and on the roofs. The buggers had us completely surrounded. People were dying from poisoned barbs being spit by bugs as well as from incendiary bugs exploding into the armed men. Then sky literally turned red. Sonic booms ripped from the outside and glass steel from the windows in the pyramid began raining down. We thought we were rescued by the cavalry."

Wally Newberg, "So the colonial space marines had arrived?"

Unknown Soldier, "Yes, they did, for a while it looked like we would prevail, for about six hours we began clearing the city, going house to house and driving the bugs back. Then the underpinnings of the city began to collapse. The tunneling wyrms had destroyed the foundations of New Shimizu. It was total chaos. The pyramids base began to collapse. People were crushed by falling rockcrete and collapsing buildings. We were forced to evacuate. The bugs never stopped attacking. The people who made it out were lucky. The others were bugger fodder."

Wally Newberg, "How many made it out?"

Unknown Soldier, "We were lucky if two in 10 made it out. The marines in powered armor fared better about half made it out, and the police in body armor had it better as well." The man holds his head in his hands for a while not speaking. Then he takes a deep breath. "I need to take a break," his hands are shaking.

Wally Newberg sits quietly, "We can continue the interview later." "This is Wally Newberg signing out."

.............message..recived..........channel..shutting..down..........

Por'O Vior'la Kais turned away from the message console and looked towards the Ethereal standing next to the ships captain. Aun'O Vior'la Ayaca nodded and looked towards the large figure at the back of the bridge.

"Shas'O you have permission to board the Commonalitarianism command ship. Take Pathfinder teams one, four and six and Stealthsuit team Mont'yr."

"Yes Ethereal." Shas'O Vior'la Vaus bowed his head as a salute then turned and left the bridge. Standing at twice the size of any human, O'Vaus cut an imposing figure in his XV8 Crisis Battlesuit. Painted the rotten flesh and dark green colours of the Vior'la Fire Caste with his helmet and chest panel painted red to signify the Vior'la Fire Caste's legendary hot bloodedness.

O'Vaus stepped into the docking bay which was full of activity. Air caste maitinence teams moved around checking equipment, weapons, ammunition and other such stuff. O'Vaus moved across to his waiting Orca seeing Air Caste crewmen loading Pathfinder Team four's Light scout Tetras.

"Hurry up with those we should be there now"

"yes Shas'O"

"Pilot, once there finished launch and steer us towards the left-middle docking bay"

Once the loading was complete and all teams were on board the Orca lifted off and flew into the void of space. As they passed the planet O'Vaus lokked down and saw multiple plasma fire headed skywards, seemingly fired by some sort of bio-artillary.

"Pilot keep us away from those plasma discharges, we dont want to get shot down now do we"

The Orca set down in the Commonalitarianism command ship's docking bay and opened its rear hatch. Out stepped O'Vaus along with the team leaders of the three pathfinder teams and the stealthsuit team. O'Vaus himself had a Burst Cannon, a rapid firing plasma chain-gun, on his left arm and a Fusion Blaster, a very high powered tank killing weapon, on his right. On his sholder was a Shield Generator wich provides a protective energy shield around the battlesuit. The Pathfinder team leaders were armed with a pulse carbine and a pulse pistol each. The Stealthsuit team leader, standing just slightly higher than a man in his XV 25 Stealthsuit had a burst cannon attached to his right arm. The five Fire Caste warriors walked over to a group of people standing around a holo-desk. Seeing the man in the Dark-blue uniform, O'vaus stepps over and introduces himself.

"I am Shas'O Vior'la Vaus of the Vior'la Enclaves and these are my team leaders. You are Supreme Strategos Sharp i belive?"

Strategos Sharp says, "Greetings, Shas'O Vior'la Vaus of the Vior'la Enclaves, welcome to our ship." He bows slightly bringing his fist to the midlevel of his chest.

There is a large holographic globe of Muse floating from a holoprojector. Three armed humanoids are standing next to a large neowolf. The Neowolf is pointing at Strategos Sharp. There are several of Strategos Sharp's aides with datapads next to a map table. The thin maps use high resolution electronic ink and can be adjusted smoothly to show different landscapes, resolutions and locations.

A dozen of power armored guards are watching the proceedings, standing quietly.

"Yo." She replied with a grin that would send shivers up the spine of most people. "It seems we have a bit of a problem, your standard contract isn't that standard, or useful. Got a better one?"

ooc: Black Cat, not Black Bitch. Bitch is the pet name for the ship by its crew.

Strategos Sharp, "We just received an update on our contract, it is written after the War Powers Act of the Citizens Assembly, originally, it was intended to help license privateers against our piracy problem."

Letter of Warrant
(Warrant of Extermination for Buggers)

This letter is issued by the Commonarch, Amara Cruon, Elected Supreme Minister of the United Arcologies of Commonalitarianism, Paradisian Year 345, S.C.-- Second Commonality.

To the Honorable Supreme Strategos, William Sharp, Elected Field General, Commander of Ships and Men

A) Whereas by order of the High Citizens Assembly, Act House Rules 3076, under the Great Seal of the Commonalitarianism "All joined in common bonds," bearing the date 345 S.C.( Second Commonalitarianism), the Supreme Strategos of the Commonalitarianism is required to issue Letters of Warrant to any Citizen Commonii or others deemed qualified to for the capture, seizure, apprehension, and extermination of the Bugger enemy combatants or any sophont deemed to be in alliance with said Buggers.

B ) The said Letter of Warrant is issued to ________________ commander of the___________________ armed with
______________________ and carrying ______________ number of soldier sophonts.

C) Whereas it is the duty of said commander to take notice of all buggers killed, captured, and captured equipment and keep a journal and recordings of all such activity. It is the duty of the commander to approximate the value of captured equipment and turn them over to the appropriate lawful Commonalitarianism authority. It is also the duty under warrant to provide intelligence on the buggers motions, location, situation, and strength.

D) The Commonalitarianism offers $45 million real time credit chips for the equippage and maintenance of warships and privateers of less than 150 sophont strength, and $60 million real time credit chips for equippage and maintenance of warships and privateers deemed capable of engaging the buggers upon review. Special dispensation for cost equipment can be provided.
1) Bounty and Captured Equipment.
A) A head bounty of $1000 real time credits per captured bugger is offered.
B) Command bugs have a head bounty of $10,000 per captured or killed bugger.
C) Eliminating a queen bug has a bounty of $5,000,000 real time credits.
D) Captured equipment will be taken at a __ percentage of fair market value.
2) Intelligence and reconnaisance is negotiable by interested parties.
3) Further terms are negotiable by interested parties.


This document is signed in confidentiality and security. This letter of warrant shall continue until further notice. Given under the hand of Supreme Strategos Sharp, May 1, in the year 345 S.C.-- Second Commonality under the directive of the Commonarch, Amara Cruon, Under the seal of the Commonalitarianism, "All joined in common bonds."

Affirming Commander

Appendage Print:

Mercenary and Ships Registry Number:

Strategos Sharp
Thumb Print Scan of Strategos Sharp
Eye Scan of Strategos Sharp

This is a take off of early letters of Marque and Reprisal. Because it is a takeoff it will not read like a standard military contract.

OOC: Here is a link to an actual bill put forth before congress in the United States:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/sept_11/hr3076_ih.htm

After looking over the new contract she replied, "Scratch article A, B, the 'turning over of captured equipment' portion of article C, D, quadruple the values of article 1, include a hundred credit per killed bug and we have a deal."

If a merc needed to be provided funds to be equiped they were of a decidely sub-par nature in the view of the crew of the Bitch.

Pausing a moment she added, "And throw in a universal general pardon for my crew."

Strategos Sharp, "We understand the need for a General Universal Pardon, we are willing to make pardon for military and civilian actions, however, we do ask that order be maintained on your ship and you enforce discipline according to your customs, we will not give universal pardon for blatantly severe criminal actions during the campaign-- like emptying the reserve vaults of New Shimizu Megapyramid, or committing heinous actions like mass humanoid cannibalism however."

"We will provide a General Universal Pardon for any past crimes they may have committed. However, if the crimes are of such a nature that they are wanted in other jurisdictions, we may have to provide them with new short term residency identification papers to clear their past."

Letter of Warrant
(Warrant of Extermination for Buggers)

This letter is issued by the Commonarch, Amara Cruon, Elected Supreme Minister of the United Arcologies of Commonalitarianism, Paradisian Year 345, S.C.-- Second Commonality.

A) The Honorable Supreme Strategos, William Sharp, Elected Field General, Commander of Ships and Men has been given the authority to provide letters of warrant to commanders deemed capable of defeating the enemy combatant Bugger menace.

B) Whereas it is the duty of said commander to take notice of all buggers killed, captured, and captured equipment and keep a journal and recordings of all such activity. It is the duty of the commander to approximate the value of captured equipment and turn them over to the appropriate lawful Commonalitarianism authority. It is also the duty under warrant to provide intelligence on the buggers motions, location, situation, and strength.

C) The Commonalitarianism offers $135 million real time credit chips to equip and maintain warships and privateers of less than 150 sophont strength, and $180 million real time credits for ships with more 150 sophont strength. Special dispensation for unusual equipment costs can be provided.
1) Bounty:
A) A bounty of $100 real time credits per bugger killed.
A) A head bounty of $1000 real time credits per captured bugger is offered.
B) Command bugs have a head bounty of $10,000 per captured or killed bugger.
C) Eliminating a queen bug has a bounty of $5,000,000 real time credits.
D) Intelligence and reconnaisance is negotiable by interested parties.


This document is signed in confidentiality and security. This letter of warrant shall continue until further notice. Given under the hand of Supreme Strategos Sharp, May 1, in the year 345 S.C.-- Second Commonality under the directive of the Commonarch, Amara Cruon, Under the seal of the Commonalitarianism, "All joined in common bonds."

Affirming Commander

Appendage Print:

Mercenary and Ships Registry Number:

Strategos Sharp
Thumb Print Scan of Strategos Sharp
Eye Scan of Strategos Sharp

* Amended: A universal general pardon for military and civil actions on Muse has been offered to the Black Cat.

OOC: The crew of the Black Cat finds that it is fairly easy to get data haven services, private banking services, privateering contracts, identity papers, there are numerous things which wouldn't be legal in other jurisdictions advertised through the public electronic networks. Some of it is even advertised under blatant front companies which are operating in other nations. There is clearly a fair amount of crime supported partially by the government, and some corruption.

With the messy paperwork all about done, except for the mountains of the stuff needed for daily operations, Mercantile General CEO of Operations: Muse was deciding that life was, for the most part, livable. For except a few minor, dangerous, but still minor, encounters on Muse's surface nothing he hadn't seen before had cropped up.

Albert Graf von Einmal, Albert Einmal, was reknowed in corporate circle for blasting and bashing his way through the most formidable barriers of the corporate world. Inhospitable planet that even Hell itself had to work hard on being better? Heaven Yes. A planet that literally starved to death because of bureaucratic red tape whose general principles of nothing happens? Send in Albert Einmal.

He did it all; the impossible was just merely difficult.

OOC: Massive Alien bugs come to own right about now.

"After studing these maps ive formed a plan of action. Pathfinder Team One, you will proceed to the Spartacus Mountain complex. Your objectives are to find survivors, link up with local military forces and defend the mountain until a rescue ship can arrive.

Team Four, you will use your Tetras to scout out the area around the mountain. You are to find any and all 'Plasma bugs' in the area, mark them with your markerlights so one of our Barracudas can move into a low orbit and launch a seeker missile to destroy them. If you find a single plasma bug on its own with minimal gaurd, then your objective is to incapacitate the bug with your photon grenades until we can retrive it and study it.

Team six, you will proceed to this area of farms and search for survivors, if any are found then get to a safe area and call in a rescue ship. Once you have cleared the area then move on to this large industrial complex here owned by the Morrington government and asses the situation there.

Stealthsuit team Mont'yr, you have the most dangerous mission. You will proceed to the ruins of the New Shimizu Megapyramid, there you will look for survivors but that is not your main objective. You must find a way into one of the tunnels dug by the bugs and follow it back to their hive. If you make it then send the exact co-ordinates to our ship and we will bombard it from orbit with our prow ion cannon array.

I myself will return to our ship and co-ordinate our efforts with the Commonalitarianism from there. Do you agree with my plan Strategos?"

B) Whereas it is the duty of said commander to take notice of all buggers killed, captured, and captured equipment and keep a journal and recordings of all such activity. It is also the duty under warrant to provide intelligence on the buggers motions, location, situation, and strength.

1) Bounty:
A) A bounty of $100 real time credits per bugger killed.
A) A head bounty of $3000 real time credits per captured bugger is offered.
B) Command bugs have a head bounty of $30,000 per captured or killed bugger.
C) Eliminating a queen bug has a bounty of $15,000,000 real time credits.
D) Intelligence and reconnaisance is negotiable by interested parties.

* Amended: A universal general pardon for military and civil actions within Commonalitarianism space and any actions upon Muse for the duration of employment as of Paradisian Year 345 been offered to the Black Cat.

Reading the contract again she scowled. Either the commander had been a dog too long or was just an idiot. A quick re-write was in order and she handed him back the revised contract. "This is what we'll work for." She said, "And try to get it right this time when you put it in officialese."

Strategos Sharp stopped for a moment, then he handed the amended contract over to the lady commander. He had been doing for a very long time. He had just gone in for his second rejuvenation. "Here is your letter."

Letter of Warrant
(Warrant of Extermination for Buggers)

This letter is issued by the Commonarch, Amara Cruon, Elected Supreme Minister of the United Arcologies of Commonalitarianism, Paradisian Year 345, S.C.-- Second Commonality.

A) The Honorable Supreme Strategos, William Sharp, Elected Field General, Commander of Ships and Men has been given the authority to provide letters of warrant to commanders deemed capable of defeating the enemy combatant Bugger menace.

B) Whereas it is the duty of said commander to take notice of all buggers killed, captured, and captured equipment and keep a journal and recordings of all such activity. It is the duty of the commander to approximate the value of captured equipment and turn them over to the appropriate lawful Commonalitarianism authority. It is also the duty under warrant to provide intelligence on the buggers motions, location, situation, and strength.

C)
1) Bounty:
A) A bounty of $100 real time credits per bugger killed.
A) A head bounty of $3000 real time credits per captured bugger is offered.
B) Command bugs have a head bounty of $30,000 per captured or killed bugger.
C) Eliminating a queen bug has a bounty of $15,000,000 real time credits.
D) Intelligence and reconnaisance is negotiable by interested parties.



Affirming Commander

Appendage Print:

Mercenary and Ships Registry Number:

Strategos Sharp
Thumb Print Scan of Strategos Sharp
Eye Scan of Strategos Sharp

* Amended: A universal general pardon for military and civil actions within Commonalitarianism space and any actions upon Muse for the duration of employment as of Paradisian Year 345 been offered to the Black Cat.

Strategos Sharp, "Yes your plan sounds reasonable to me. Be very careful near New Shimizu, it is literally crawling with bugs."

_______________________________________________________________

Team One has no problem landing near Spartacus Mountain, there is continuous orbital bombardment around the mountain focused on the now burned off forest around the mountain from the surviving heavy destroyer.
When they reach the mountaintop, they are greeted by groups of the surviving members of the Spartacus Death March, who are checking the contents of any leaving ships for armaments, and press ganging anyone who has any military experience. The commander of the base who panicked during the attack has been put in lock down and replaced by a shadowy military figure who happened to be at the base, one Sargent Smithers, a neo-dog, and his aide Marcus Ohyes. There is a ship called the "Lady Luck" which looks like a heavily armed modified military salvage ship. Marcus Ohyes is systematically stripping the base of anything "useless" and feeding it into two large fabbers-- to produce a variety of armaments.

________________________________________________________________

Landing or coming close to the plasma bugs is difficult. There are support teams of buggers surrounding them. When the tank gets close, large clouds of giant flying buggers come out of the woods to chase after it. A few even smash into the shields exploding in either a surge of organic explosives or bioelectricity. There are centipede like things manning what look like a twenty foot tall tree, with a large flower at the top. The flower opens and begins spitting seed pods at the tank. The tank does manage to tag two of the plasma bugs by flying in low then jumping straight up, but the direct approach is difficult.

_________________________________________________________________

Landing near the pharmaceutical farms is not easy. In fact coming down directly over the farms is a death warrant. There is too much plasma and seed pod flak. It becomes necessary to fly in from the sea. Apparently the bugs don't have any kind of obvious navy. Sending in large transports is difficult in the giant trees.

When you land near one of the large pharmaceutical farms, it is deathly quiet. There are no buggers around. You can see various giant scavenging insects, the local wildlife, however, wolf spiders, bloodflies, and carrion crawlers are picking at and dragging off pieces of bugs and humans. There was obviously some kind of resistance in the farms. The shields are down and the buildings look empty or destroyed. Some of them are burning.

_________________________________________________________________

The stealth team are quite a distance from New Shimizu where they land, it will be an overland trip. As they travel towards New Shimizu the amount of buggers gets denser and denser. There are buggers in groups digging and forming trenches, something which you haven't seen before, also earth ramparts. Spread among the buggers are unarmed humans, with collars of what looks like purple thorns, naked except for a loincloth, the humans seem slightly dazed, and seem to be pointing out how to dig and build the earth ramparts.

Most of the buggers seem to not notice you. However some do seem to follow your footsteps for short distances using their antennae to follow your tracks.

As you get closer, to New Shimizu you notice what looks like several 2 meter long centipedes with six pincer arms among the bugs. They are clicking away with their pincers in the bug language directing warrior buggers and worker buggers in how to plant what look like turnip shaped objects in fields as well as what look like very thick stalked oversized sunflowers. As you are passing one of the sunflower objects starts screaming and several of the buggers start milling around clicking even louder than usual. Some of the buggers start traveling in the general direction of the stealth team in a random pattern.

OOC: The buggers are detecting footprints, snapped twigs, and other minor physical disturbances from a humanoid passing. They also are smelling or chemically detecting minor chemical and metal residues from the stealth suit as well as humanoid smells. They can neither see nor hear you. The flower is a sentry flower-- it detects the presence through nonhuman senses the aura of strange creatures.

OOC: Are you accepting new participants to this RP and if you are, where could I sign up?

This is the link to the signup:

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=524851&page=3

I think, I can handle 1-2 more players and that would be it.

"Good, now what kind of intelligence do you have on the planet, hives, bugs, that kind of crap." She replied as, to be effective, the crew of the Black Cat needed information so as to slaughter, butcher and to carve a path through the insect hordlings.

The Planet Muse was colonized about 50 years ago because of the presence of valuable pharmaceuticals and plants which could grow nowhere else.

It is used as a penal planet because the wildlife makes it very hard to live outside the confines of sheltered areas. The prisoners work for the Ming Corporation and are rehabilitated by the Department of Mental Hygiene.

There is one central city New Shimizu and several smaller cities and a few research facilities. The planet is not densely inhabited.

The Buggers have been a problem elsewhere, this has been their first appearance on New Shimizu. The local wildlife was the problem until now. The wildlife had a habit of attempting to eat anything that left the confines of protected cities.

It has been 50 years since the last incursion of Buggers. They are adaptable and can change. We have been at peace for a while. We have not been able to communicate with the bugs except for a limited number of psi sensitives.

We are not sure when the Buggers landed on Muse. Muse has not been fully explored, leaving the confines of the protected areas is not easy, and the world is 11x the size of earth. A few expeditions have been attempted, four in all, two failed completely and were eaten.

The buggers are ruled by Queen Bugs, which can lay up to 1800 eggs per day. Each queen bug on a planet has a very large territory. Generally, the buggers try to keep the queen bugs far away from the fighting. It is believed that the queen bug has psionic contact with the hive.

The eggs are tended by nurse bugs which can inject mutagenic agents into the eggs. They can also absorb the dna of the local wildlife and use it to create new bug species. There are a tremendous variety of arthropods-- insects, worms, and arachnids on Muse, so they could have created a lot of different new species given enough time.

The queen and nurses live in a central hive chamber deep underground. We do not know where these may be. We need to deploy ground penetrating radar and other equipment in orbit to detect the location of the hives. Then we need to deploy ground equipment to sound out the location of the central chamber. It is imperative we get rid of the plasma bugs soon.

The brain bugs are giant nonmobile insects with lots of brain matter. We think they have found a way to absorb human knowledge, we found dissected human brains next to the brain bugs. They are the primary thinkers of the buggers.

Some of the most standard bugs which we have run into so far are:

1) Tunneling worms which dig out the tunnels which the bugs live in. There is confirmation that there are much larger combat versions of tunneling worms on the ground right now. They ate out through rockcrete and destroyed the foundations of New Shimizu.

2) Worker bugs which perform most manual labor-- there are some subspecies of worker bugs, like aphid bugs which produce milk, and farmer bugs.

3) Warrior bugs-- giant beetles with huge pincers some as large as 3 meters tall, these bugs can chew through powered armor and heavy carapaces. Rumor on the ground is that the new warrior bugs have grown much heavier carapaces-- a 6.8 mm coilgun the standard armament of our troopers had trouble stopping them.

4) Hopper bugs-- hopping warrior bugs that can make huge leaps, these are very hard to stop. They are not very smart and incredibly hungry much like locusts. It often takes a plasma grenade to blow them to pieces.

5) Stinger bugs-- flying giant wasps, there is confirmation that there are new types of flying bugs which we have not been cataloged, they are bioelectric in nature, or explosive.

6) Plasma bugs-- giant bugs which can launch plasma into orbit. The liquid plasma is very volatile and dangerously explosive.

7) Tanker bugs-- these bugs can release a stream of a napalm like liquid capable of melting metal.

8) Ripplers-- these bugs fire darts coated with acid. They are quite dangerous when massed.

9) Giant spiders-- These are very agile, they can spit sticky webbing.

We have found a new species with the bugs, they appear to be in alliance with the bugs and are capable of manipulating plant matters. We know very little about them. They appear to be a distinctly separate race. There are only pictures none of them have been captured.

1) A large 3 meter centiped like creature with multiple pincer arms and black and red markings is shown holding a long hollow wooden tube.

The warrior bugs and hoppers are not particularly intelligent. They tend to make mindless attacks in hordes. The flying bugs are a bit more intelligent about as intelligent as a small dog.

In the earlier bugger wars, there were psychic communications from the brain bugs to the effect that the buggers wanted to totally eliminate all humanoid species. This changed in the end to total enslavement when the buggers were losing. The buggers fight in a kamikaze manner. The stupider buggers will enter clear killing fields without thought. Those considered captured or even knocked unconscious for extended periods are written off as the living dead or abominations by the buggers.

Captured buggers become docile and disoriented. It is believed they may be cut off from the psionic presence of the hive.

The knowledge which we have about the buggers is old from the last war. We think they may have changed considerably. We are starting to get reports from survivors of the New Spartacus Death March that show the buggers have changed since our last encounter.

At this point the Barracudda has successfully launched two missiles at the plasma bugs. What looks like two small mushroom clouds go up in the forest where the plasma bugs were. They don't register as nuclear. The forest starts burning around the area of the explosions.

Strategos Sharp at this point gets interrupted with his dialog, he stops for a minute, then swears, someone is broadcasting live coverage of the New Spartacus Death March.

This is the Interspace News Network, we have live footage from the New Spartacus Death March, someone posted this anonymously on the Openspace network.

It starts with a picture of a destroyed roadway, with deep open pits in it. The image looks like it is coming from the back of a truck. The image pans to a canopy overhead of jungle. The dim shadow of flying insects can be seen.

The image is jouncing slightly. There are other trucks in front of it. Ahead several civilian construction bulldozers are pushing through heavy vegetation accompanied by men in power armor who are hacking away the vegetation in front of them.

Ahead a loud explosion occurs, the jungle clears slightly and is more visible. The bulldozers and power armor move ahead.

The camera pans behind. Haggard looking soldiers are moving in slow formation. Policemen in riot gear with guns are next to the soldiers. Some of them have big black dogs with them.

Behind them in clumps are civilians in a long haggard line.

The dogs start barking and the soldiers stop unslinging their weapons.

A hole opens underneath one of the trucks, it starts to sink into the ground. People attempt to jump off the truck, some don't make it. The truck disappears into the hole in the ground. One of the soldiers takes a large cylinder twists it and drops it into the hole. There is a large boom.

Then a shrill piercing cries occur, followed by chirping, and a very loud and continuous clicking. Giant hopping insects start jumping out of the jungle. The soldiers in power armor fire particle beam rifles at the hoppers. Other people attempt to get away from the hoppers so they can use grenades on them. The hoppers tear into the people they catch killing them.

Warrior bugs start crawling out of the jungle. The person pulls his head down going into the truck. There is a loud ripping sound like chain gun fire, followed by a whooshing sizzling sound, then the crack of automatic shotguns and a popping sound. This is followed by screaming.

After a while the screaming stops. There are dead bodies both hopper, warrior bug and human lying around on the ground. Soldiers and others are trying to get the human bodies into trucks so they can wrap them in tarps.

The carrion eaters start coming out for the dead, giant bloodflys, carrion crawlers and wolf spiders. They do not go after the living mostly only the dead attempting to drag off the bodies.

The filming stops.

The Switchblade made its turnover without incident, commencing steady deceleration in order to bring the Stealth Cruiser into Geosynchronous orbit around Planet Muse. As they came steadily closer to the planet, the communications section began actively hailing the Commonalitarianism Command Carrier responsible for overall command of operations in the system.

Inside the Switchblade, most of the ground combat element had already readied their gear. By now vehicles were being readied and prepped for action all the way from assault shuttles to tanks and Infantry Fighting Vehicles. Despite not being a part of the Freehold military, the men and women of the crew went about their tasks with calm professionalism, preparing to face whatever threat they encountered under the clause of their contracts to get their money.

The briefing room for the command staff of the 3rd Independent Expeditionary Unit was filled to capacity by the Officers and senior NCO's of the 180 strong Heavy Company.

"Alright gentlemen and ladies. You have all received the initial brief on what we are going to be doing and many, no scratch that, all of you must be thinking 'what the hell is this'." Major Warren Cosforth started, seeing everyone was present.

"'This' is a bug hunt ladies and gentlemen. Its a new one for us, since for the last four years we have been fighting insurgents all over the occupied worlds. But this is a job like any other in the respect that we are being paid for killing something. Be it an Impy insurgent, Shining Dawn terrorist or a giant bug, if we are paid for it, we will kill it." He continued, watching the expressions of all those present carefully.

"From now on, I dont want to hear bullcrap about why the heck are we here. We are here to do a job and we will do it. What we will settle here is how exactly we will go about doing it."

As he finished, Cosforth handled a small remote that brought up the holographic representation of Planet Muse and its near space.

"This is our target. Planet Muse. Our initial brief suggests that this is one serious hellhole. Wildlife like you wouldnt believe, worse even than the Juno Colony. Large parts of it are as of yet unexplored by the Commonalitarianism Government. In addition, the planet is roughly eleven times the size of Terra."
He begun, as per standard doctrine outlying the target area for the operation and immediately catching the full attention of his Officers and senior NCO's.

"The planetary civilian population is, or more accurately, was mostly located in protected cities. In addition, there have been to date ongoing activities by mining and research compounds all over the planet. At the moment, communications with the Planet have been all but lost and the Commonalitarianism is pretty much clueless in regards of the whereabouts of their civilian populace down there as well as the full intent and strength of the Bugger Enemy." There were whispers over the gathering as the Major uttered the last part. None of them liked going down to a situation that would be for all intents and purposes, impossible to prepare a proper battle plan for.

"Our mission outline will be to firstly, assess the current situation down on the planet. Discovering the whereabouts of the civilian populace is also a priority as well as confirming the status of Commonalitarianism strongholds. Either after we accomplish this goal, or during it, we shall also be conducting reconnaissance of the enemy and when possible, deal damage to the enemy's strategically and tactically critical assets." As he spoke, he manipulated the remote and zones of differing colours from blue to red lighted up on the hologram, signifying known hostile areas and areas that had been part of the Commonalitarianism interests down on the ground.

"As the Switchblade enters orbit, we will conduct full spectrum passive reconnaissance scans to determine secure landing zones. Initial force drop will consist of Lieutenant Keeler's ACS Platoon and Lieutenant Foxworth's Rifle Platoon." The Major said, each of the named Lieutenants nodding as their Commander appointed them.

"Your job gentlemen, will be to conduct initial reconnaissance in force of your immediate surroundings and establish a foothold. We will be using a standard five klick perimeter, with pre-fab C-three-I compound buildings brought in via assault shuttles. Upon securing the area, the ACS and Rifle Platoons will establish defensive positions and fields of fire to cover the perimeter. After that, Lieutenant's Twoombly and Everson will come down with our two Armored Cav. platoons. Final insertion will include the Command Platoon and Fire Support. Any questions?"

Two hands were raised, Keeler and Twoombly both needed more info as it appeared.

"Lieutenant Keeler?"

"Sir. Will we have overhead cover?"

"The Switchblade will deploy two mark-seven Ramrod Kinetic kill-vehicle platforms in orbit. They will be tied into Fire Support Central, you will find the call codes for them in your comms systems. However, we will have to consult with the Commonalitarianism Command present in system and inquire how free we will be to deploy orbital kinetics. They might, and most likely will, have some certain reservations." He replied to the Lieutenant, who nodded and sat down.

"Lieutenant Twoombly?"

"Sir. What about close-air-support and will my boys be free to engage with thermobarics and area-denial munitions?"

"CAS will be provided by the Switchblade's three assault shuttles. Im well aware they are not ideal for the job, personally I would have preferred atleast half a dozen heavy vertols for the job, but we didnt have time to bring them aboard before being deployed. We will have to make do. Thermobarics most likely are ok, however Im sure the Commonalitarianism will have something to say about deploying area-denial rounds freely. Any more questions?" He replied, and inquired for anyone else to voice their worries. There were none. Good troops, Cosforth mused.

"Alright. That will be it for now. We should be receiving a detailed Intel package from the Commonalitarianism Forces in orbit shortly, which will detail the enemy in more depth as well as provide us with everything they know, or are willing to divulge. That information will be forwarded to your platoons via the datanet as soon as it arrives. Dismissed."

The personnel began to file out of the room, each of them without a doubt already contemplating how to best go about doing their jobs, avoid being killed and get the heaviest paycheck. Good mercs.

((I'll be your last player. Expect a post by midnight tonight USPST.))

Commander Ralk switched away from Strategos Sharp, he would take the incoming call from the switchblade. A grey neo-wolf (uplifted wolf humanoid) answered the comm of the Switchblade, " This is Commander Ralk of the Commonalitarianism, we are sending over a standard contract right now." The standard contract is sent over for the commanders to discuss.

Commander Ralk went over the concerns of the Switchblade point by point. He clicked at his data pad.
"Concerning the use of thermobarics. We would like you to not use thermobarics in the more dense areas of the jungles this could cause major fires. Also the Ming Commercial House has expressed an interest in keeping the pharmaceutical farms intact, they would like to be able to keep the rejuvenatives and anti-agapics from the farms coming in again sometime soon. Ralk grumbles something in neo-canine about the Mings caring more about the drugs than the prisoners on the farms."

"If you could deploy the kinetic kill vehicles and focus on the plasma bugs, it would be very helpful. We need to be able to deploy orbital satellites to help locate the bugs on the ground as well as the hives."

"The only stronghold which we control directly is the New Spartacus Mountain where the refugees. We have received news that one of our special operations branch soldiers from the Department of Economic and Special Warfare, a Sargent Smithers has taken over comand." There is a hint of reverence when his name is mentioned."

"We warn you that building permanent structures is dangerous on Muse, we believe that the bugger worms may be able to detect large structures as well as vibration from movement."

From orbit it appears that every single mining structure and underground structure has been totalled. It looks like either thermobarics or nukes were used there.

There is still a considerable amount of plasma fire coming from the ground into space. It looks like the buggers are now moving around the plasma bugs. Also the giant trees have started spitting meter - 2 meter long seeds into space. They are not fast moving but there are a lot of them.

There are a few clear landing areas, with not as much fire, a large swampy lake north of New Shimizu, New Spartacus Mountain, an area of sea shore, and where two fires have started where the Viorla Enclaves blew up two plasma bugs.

"How much of the landscape do you wish to preserve or can we do large scale orbital renovations?" She asked as she'd heard Sharp say he was fine with the use of orbital K-weapons. The Bitch had a system that was just perfect for that purpose thought it wasn't what it had been the designers had envisioned.

Strategos, "While we are alright with using orbital kinetic weapons, we would prefer that there be designated targets. We wish to preserve the pharmaceutical farms as much as possible. The jungle canopy which can be as high as three miles and in many areas is as high as a mile, makes it difficult to find specific designated targets. If you have a way of locating the plasma bugs through the canopy effectively. I believe the Switchblade may have a way of designating targets from the ground."

"We would allow low yield attacks on open ground targets in the 50 kiloton range. For larger targets where there are larger concentrations of buggers in the megaton range would be acceptable. The Nautilus the surviving heavy destroyer has been using graviphotonic impeller guns to fire kinetic darts at the area around New Spartacus Mountains."

The readings you are getting from your ship, the Black Cat show a kinetic darts striking the planet at about twice railgun speed .6c They look like plasma charges when they leave the impeller gun barrels.

"What about just blowing a hole in the 'orbital defences' so we can get in, and get to work on what you'll be paying for. Afterall, you aren't paying for us to sit here looking pretty, you're paying for us to kill and to do that and keep your farms and shit intact, we'll need to get to the surface." She replied before pausing a second and adding, "Why don't you simple use decoys and when the plasma bugs fire at them, back-track the balls and blow the hell out of them?"

Its what she'd do if confronted with the problem, thought Dogs tended to lack intelligence or innovative thinking which might explain why those of the Bitch were not in an army somewhere.

Strategos Sharp, hadn't thought of the problem in that way before. He scratched his head. "We have number of old military probes on the carrier that haven't been decommissioned. We could use those as the decoys. We also have a number of now empty drop pods on the carrier which we could let go of as well. Would you give us some fire support as we release them." A message is sent to the Nautilus and the surrounding ships, "We are sending out decoys, hopefully this will identify the plasma bugs, and we'll be clear to land." A mix of space junk, old probes, extra drop pods, and chaff is dropped towards Muse.

The sky lights up with bug plasma artillery, and seed pod flak. The plasma artillery is easy to identify, the seed pods are not as easy to locate.

From the look of it, Sharp hadn't thought of her suggestion which was really not surprising considering his chosen path, however if he'd been a member of her team rather than her nominal employer she'd have smacked him about the head a number of times by now.

"Lets deal with the defences of your bug problems then we'll go and speed up thier extinction." With that said, she and the other two headed back to the Black Cat which proceeded to send down slugs upon the heads of plasma and occasionally seedling bugs, slugs that had the equivilant destructive potential of a half-kiloton nuclear weapon but none of the side-effects inherent in fusion or fission weaponry.

When the majority of the return fire ceased, they began the decend. However they'd been keeping track of disposition of plasma bugs for the higher the concentration, the greater the likelyhood of a more viable target such as a hive.

The black cat slugs had an interesting effect, what they hit was a bug filled with with volatile liquid plasma. Each bug hit exploded in a ball of fire that went up high into the air like a small mushroom cloud. Not just the plasma bugs bugs, but many of the bugs surrounding them burst into flames. The jungle was burning in patches.

The buggers had laid out their plasma buggers in a grid pattern to cover as much area as possible. The Black Cat made some calculations. They thought they had gotten most of the plasma bugs. The one thing that stopped their complete elimination was some of the plasma bugs were moving to new locations.

The world below lay open to them.

Then something interesting happened. The crew heard a very loud scream inside their heads. Then some of the crew started feeling pressure at the center of their foreheads. It was for only a few seconds, but a few crew members had an odd feeling that their eyes were someone elses eyes.

The Switchblade by now had pulled to geosynchronous orbit, maintaining it steadily while reconnaissance drones and the ship's NEMESIS battlespace arrays began creating a picture of the immediate area of operations of the 3rd IEU. Assault Shuttles were prepped, men and war materials loaded for the initial drop. Simultaneously the Stealth Cruiser deployed its two kinetic-kill platforms. They were itty bitty things in comparison to modern warships. Massing just seventy-five tons, they each carried thirty tungsten arrow's sheathed in a carbon shell. Each of the arrow's massed one ton, and at maximum velocity setting could be used to achieve the kinetic impact energy equivalent of a 10 kiloton nuclear weapon.

In the event that the firepower of the platforms was deemed insufficient, the Switchblade itself carried a standard complement of one hundred MK. 71 ground attack missiles which could be either loaded up with a MIRV payload consisting of six two-megaton thermonuclear warheads or they could be used as pure kinetics with maximum yield of upto 50 Megatons. All in all, the orbital support fire of the 3rd IEU could be augmented for practically any situation.

Major Cosforth read the contract sent by the Commonalitarianism with care and took in the additional details they had provided. To be denied the use of thermobarics in the jungle was inconvenient, but he could understand the reasoning. Which did not make him any happier about it, for the restriction would force his Armored Cav units to utilize anti-personnel flechette canister rounds instead, which werent as effective as thermobarics.

He had also suspected that setting up a base of operations down on the planet would be risky, but it was also necessary. He had to get the Arty on the ground as well as establish a fallback point for his forces. He checked the inventory of the Switchblade for anything that might be of help against the burrowing bugs.

There, that might help he concluded and keyed his comms unit for a signal to Strategos Sharp.

"This is Major Cosforth. Your restrictions have been noted as well as your warning against setting up a base of operations. However, to achieve the most of our ground combat element, a foothold is quite necessary. I may have a way of negating the danger from these burrowing buggers, however, for my method to be effective I require some information. Do you know how deep these burrowers can go? Can they penetrate hardened materials or dense indigenous rock?"

Commander Ralk replies to the Switchblade, "The worms are capable of eating through bonded rockcrete*. They had to, to get inside New Shimizu. When Klendathu was originally invaded by the joint task force, bug tunnels streteched for miles underground. We can start releasing ground penetrating radar probes to determine whether there are heavy concentrations of tunnels in a given area. They can detect up to 100 meters down*.


*Bonded rockcrete is a very dense concrete mixed with an enzyme based polymer to make it very strong. In some cases the rockcrete is reinforced with steel rebar.

* Current ground penetrating radar works up to 50 meters. It has to be on the ground to work.

The psionist of the crew replied to the unwanted intrusion in an instantaneous fashion as it flowed at the speed of thought. Had it been an action rather than a reaction then all it would have taken significant mental shields to keep from the brain being fried, as it was it would have a wicked headache that'd make any attempt to venture out of the safety of it's own mind impractical.

As it was, the crew having located a relatively sparse location vegetatively, began the final approach to the planet.

"Understood, in that case we shall deploy our C-three-I facility in a modified Pinnace to avoid these burrowers. For your notice, my unit will begin initial deployment in thirty minutes. Our primary landing zone will be North of New Shimizu, near the large swamp lake." Major Cosforth finished.

All in all, he was none too happy about the situation. He had planned on setting up a defense in depth with an improvised minefield around the perimeter. The Switchblade carried a number of old asteroid shattering devices. Basically, they were warheads that could burrow deep into dense rock. Once triggered, the device would release a shell of smaller warheads capable of burrowing themselves for a short distance. Each of those warheads was loaded with four kilograms of C9, enough to bring down a ten story building with little trouble. As a final stage, the main body of the device would detonate as well.

He would still utilize them, but merely in order to slow the progress of detected approaching burrower bugs.

He forwarded the new information through the Datanet to all of his units. They wouldnt be happy at all, but they had a job to do and they would do it. They had taught him long ago at O'Neal Island that no battle plan survived first contact with the enemy. This situation would apply, even though none of his units had yet encountered the enemy physically, they had encountered the enemy via intel.

As the minutes passed, he gathered his gear from the armory. Donning his battlesuit and personal weapons. Once he finished, he took the inter-ship transport to the ship's primary boat bay. On the deck of the large cavernous space stood the ship's three assault shuttles, nearly four-hundred ton juggernauts capable of both atmospheric and space flight and loaded with a vast array of ground support weaponry. Near the rear bulkhead of the boat bay stood a lone pinnace, a purpose built former Navy C3I craft. Smaller than the assault shuttles at roughly two-hundred tons, it carried less weaponry but was filled to the brim with surveillance, communication and data handling systems. It would serve as a command post for the ground forces.

Cosforth visually checked the status of the number one and two assault shuttles of the Switchblade. Both were prepped and ready, waiting to enter the massive airlocks that would release them to space. Undoubtedly, the members of Lieutenant Foxworth's and Lieutenant Keeler's Platoons were eager to get down on the planet to earn their wages.

As he boarded the Command Pinnace, the signal went out to the two assault shuttles to commence their journey. Five minutes afterwards, they were dropping towards the planet.

Black Cat, you are landing not far from where the beaches meet the edge of the jungle. The beaches have little if nothing growing on them. You are not far from the tree line, here the trees are about 300 meters high and widely spaced apart. The vegetation forms a two layer canopy slowly forming into a third layer of canopy as you would move further in. The area around the ship is rocky strewn with boulders. You can see the reddish sun from here.

Clairmont, your two assault shuttles are not receiving any plasma bug fire as you land, however there are four or five airbursts of incendiary thorns from a small unit of centipede thorn gun artillery, the shells would be about the equivalent of a 100 mm explosive, a long tube filled with volatile Chakran oil. Your pilots register the location of two crews, the guns let out puffs of purplish steam as they fire.

Your two ships are heading towards a clearing to land.

You are not far from the Viorla unit sent to explore the large pharmaceutical farms.

Shas'la'vre One, Spartacus Mountain

"Sargeant Smithers is it? I am Shas'ui Kais of the Vior'la Enclaves, we are here to help you in your struggle. If you would let me id like to set up a communications area in one of your buildings so i can get in contact with the other Vre on the planet and with our Shas'O in orbit. Now we Tau are not good at defence, we see no advantage in land, it is just that land there is plenty more, we would gladly give up an area of land to better strike at the enemy elsewhere, but here we do not seem to have that luxury as this appears to be the only safe area on Muse at the moment. So with that in mind i now place my Shas'la under your command. Their are eight of us, one id like to keep on communications, three are armed with rail rifles our most advanced portable infantry weapon to date and the most powerful and I am in command of these two Gun drones." Pathfinder Shas'ui Viorla Kais guestures towards the two floting discs behind him, each armed with a pair of pulse carbines.


Shas'la'vre Four, Area around Spartacus Mountain

After marking two of the Plasma bugs, and watching them explode, Team four moves off to mark more when a call comes from the Kir'la in orbit.

"Team four break off and head for Spartacus Mountain Complex, The mercenary ship Black Cat is going to fire its weapons at the Plasma Bugs from orbit. Wait at the complex for further orders. Tau'va"

Team four immediatly broke off and moved in the direction of Spartacus Mountain. As they did the Black Cat started its firing, hitting the ground nearby throwing up giant plumes of smoke and fire.


Shas'la'vre Six, Pharmacutical Prision Farms

Team six was taken completly by suprise by the orbital fire, hitting the ground very near to the farms causing the earth to shake. The massive plumes of fire from the igniting plasma were rushing towards the farms.

"Take cover in those buildings now!" shouted Team six's leader Shas'ui Vior'la Vorta. Team six ran towards the farm buildings, firing at the local wildlife from the hip to scatter them. Those that were shot were hit by high powered bolts of plasma and burned. Which was nothing compared to the torrent of raging doom rapidly approching. Team six entered the nearest farm building, jumping in a room on the far side of the building on the ground floor.

As Shas'ui Vorta slammed the door shut he shouted "Find any doors to this room and close them fast. Drone, activate energy sheild" The Shelid Drone Hovered to the centre of the room and statred to project an energy bubble in the room. all the pathfinders moved under it.

The plasma-fire wave hit the farm building with tremendous force, the roof was imediatly ripped off by the force of the impact. The right hand side of the building collapsed, its supports shattered. Everything flammable caught fire and those materials that were not still burned in the intense heat. Protected from the initial hit, the roof of the room the pathfinders are in caught fire and collapsed, bouncing off the energy sheild. Vorta looked up and saw the raging firestorm above him, kept away only by the now straining sheild drone. After a long while from Vorta's veiwpoint the fires died down.

All of this actually occured within a few seconds, from activating the sheild to the fire burning off only took ten seconds. To the pathfinder team, staring at natures fury and thanking their advanced technology, it seemed more like ten lifetimes.

Leaving the decimated farm building Vorta looked up and saw an unrecognised ship approching for a landing not far from his location. He wondered if they knew why they were nearly killed by friendlies from orbit. Team Six moved off in the direction of the ships landing point



......Warning..Local..interference..blocking..contact..with..Stealthsuit..Team..Mont'yr......last..s een..at..the..Ruins..of..New..Shimizu......

Sargent Smithers is smoking an acrid cigar which is giving off a pale blue smoke, "Welcome, Shas'ui Kais, we need all the militarily capable beings we can get in this situation. You look capable enough. I would suggest you take your rail rifle to be refitted with a higher caliber of ammunition, at the fabber, it may take several shots to kill a bugger hopper otherwise. Marcus Ohyes, my assistant would need to inspect the railguns. Heat weapons like plasma burners are more effective against the buggers than kinetic weapons in many cases in close combat.

When you are done with the refit, we need your team to watch a small cavern that opened under New Spartacus. We are working on making some deep penetration mines so we can be prepared for a larger assault.

Marcus will show you how to activate the burrow bombs, a kind of earth penetrating device. There is ground penetrating radar and a new thumper detection unit to help determine when the bugs are coming. There are also two worm tunnel openings that need to be watched. We have people down there but we could use help."

Strategos Sharp tells the Viorla leader, "Wait, I forgot about the men near the farm. We should have warned them before dropping the hammer." Ralk is watching the Strategos carefully." Strategos Sharp seems a little disoriented, he is sweating, Strategos Sharp gasps and clutches at his chest. He fumbles at a pocket in his uniform.

At the farm you have little trouble scattering the insects. They run at the sound of the railgun fire. Very little is left of the building where the explosions occurred. Many of the plant beds are burning. As you move towards the dropping assault shuttle, you hear a piercing scream behind you, then a loud clicking and chirping.

Landing, or rather hovering a few meters from the ground, a hatch on the Bitch opened and a trio of people dropped onto the beach.

The first was a man build like a rawhide whip, lean, stringy and tough, who was wearing a mask similar to that worn by those who sought to combat snow blindness. He was armed with a tiny-bore pistol as well as an oversized bowie type mono-knife.

The second had neon-green hair, with a section on the back shaved out in the WHMIS symbol class D-3. A strange device that looked like a pair of cybernetic ears, yet elongated beyond even that of the outlandish ears of an elf. He also had a knife of the same type, while a short-barreled wide nozzled weapon made up his complimentary second.

The third was a stocky heavy worlder, bald as an egg with scars criss-crossing his face, head and much of the visible skin. Over his mouth and nose was what looked like an oxygen mask save for the fact that there was nothing for it to connect to. Armed with a knife as were the other two, he also had a rifle with a barrel that was his height, which made the weapon half again his size.

Fanning out, the three began preforming a quick recon of the beach and the outskirts of the forest.

ooc: Points to those who caught the reference.

The two assault shuttles rocked slightly at the effect of the incendiary thorns exploding near them. The two mighty vessels shook the non-contact explosions off without incident, for they had been built to survive in the face of modern anti-air defenses. The pilots of the two shuttles however reacted to the threat as they had been taught back in the Navy. Fire Control found the two targets spitting incendiary thorns and two missiles dropped away from the number one weapons bay of Assault Shuttle One.

The twin arrows of destruction found their targets, and proceeded to wipe them away from the face of Planet Muse.

The two shuttles quickly descended the remainder of their journey towards the clearing that had been designated as their Landing Zone and set down hovering at an altitude of four meters. The main boarding ramps of both shuttles opened and they began disgorging their valuable cargo. First to hit the ground was Lieutenant Keeler's Armored Combat Suit platoon. Thirty-five figures clad in half a ton of plasteel and armor, the platoon spread out to form a perimeter, railguns at the ready to defend the LZ against any possible threat. Behind them from the second shuttle came Lieutenant Foxworth's Rifle Platoon.

As the two platoons assembled, the Assault shuttles closed their boarding ramps and took off to their designated loitering positions, ready to provide on-call air support in case it was needed.

"Cougar Three-One and Whiskey Three-three on site" Lieutenant Keeler reported over the comms to the Command Pinnace.

"Roger, proceed with the mission." Came back Major Cosforth's reply.

The two platoons fanned out, taking a tactical combat formation and proceeded towards the edge of the clearing and the forest beyond with the ACS leading the way and the Rifle Platoon holding the rear.

Clairmont:

The two missiles explode tearing apart the thorn cannon and scattering pieces of the centipedes. The other centipedes scatter into the woods.

As you are landing, you can hear a loud scream in the distance, across a wide field there are several humanoid shapes in power armor. Behind them is a burning set of human buildings.

What look like a very large cloud of armored bugs with wings start rising over the buildings, they are making a scraping chirping sound and a humming sound-- hoppers. Warrior bugs with huge clacking jaws are starting to come out of the farm area as well. They are directly behind the Viorla armored humanoids.

Black Cat:

The beach is mostly silent, there are a number of huge crabs sunning themselves on top of rocks. Small clumps of green plants are near the sea. The sea has a very fresh salt smell. The water is clear and calm. Not far from the ship is a natural cave opening, you can hear clacking and snapping inside, but nothing is coming out. Occassionally you see what looks like a large scorpion with too many legs about a foot long run between the rocks near the ship. You notice a few bushes with huge steel hard thorns growing on them, each a good three inches long. There are also small patches of lichen on the rocks. Everything is very quiet. A decent ways from the ship is the beginning of shrub land. Most of the area is flat except for rocks and boulders. Right now, it is day time about noon, the sun is high in the sky and it is hot.

"Super Six-Four Six-Two, Cougar Three-One. Airborne and land targets approaching our position. Request support." Lieutenant Keeler called calmly over the Comms as his sensors began to paint the hordes of bugs on his HUD displays.

"Three-One, Super Six-Four inbound."

Only seconds later, the ear-piercing scream of twin heavy railguns echoed over the clearing as the Assault Shuttle designated Super 64 detached from its loitering position and homed in on the aerial targets. Its under-cockpit mounted twin 30mm heavy tri-barreled railguns auto-tracked targets via the FLIR pod mounted on the nose of the craft as well as its LIDAR and Radar suite.

"Super Six-Two engaging ground targets."

The second Assault Shuttle followed close behind, rocket pods mounted in its hull blazing fire, sending streams of heavy rockets downrange towards the warrior bugs on the ground while its twin heavy tri-barrels opened up, sending hundreds of tungsten arrows towards the ground in mere seconds.

Keeler had seen far too much combat to trust in the air support to handle the enemy by itself. He sent quick commands to his platoon, who responded at blazing speed, grabbing foxhole charges from their storage compartments and blowing craters in the ground to create themselves fighting positions. As the demo charges blew, the 35 ACS troopers jumped down to their new firing positions and aimed their railguns at the warrior bugs. Targeting vectors flashed across their HUD's and nearly as one, the platoon opened fire, avoiding to hit the Viorla Troopers right in their line of fire. Keeler hoped that they would have the sense to either get out of the way or hit the deck really soon.

The M-420 Railgun was the latest version of the weapon that had been designed solely for the ACS nearly eight decades before. Massing a respectable twenty-five kilos, it was considered far too heavy for a normal Light Infantryman to carry, but for the ACS it was an ideal weapon. The gun fired 3mm teardrop shaped pellets of graphite-coated depleted uranium at muzzle velocities of nearly 100km/sec, two hundred of them per second. It consumed massive amounts of ammunition and power, so much so in fact that only the ACS could ever have been able to fully utilize the weapon. It was practically impossible to repair on the field and maintenance of the thing even in a full machine shop was a bitch. But Lieutenant Keeler had always loved their firepower.

Behind the ACS, Lieutenant Foxworth's rifle platoon hunkered down on the ground and steady crackle of rifle fire began as the riflemen opened fire with their 8mm Caseless Carbines. Far less powerful than the weapons of the ACS, the Carbines were respectable Light Infantry weapons. Capable of firing any 8mm Caseless round in the Freehold arsenal, Foxworth had augmented his Platoon by having his riflemen fire alternating Flechette and HESH rounds. A burst of such firepower was normally enough to turn the upper torso of a lightly armored human being to mush, what it would do to the bugs no-one could fully predict.

As Foxworth's regular riflemen opened fire, his two fire support crews went about to do their jobs as well. Setting up two tripod mounted tri-barrel's, they began mainly targeting the vast swarm of aerial bugs.

The warrior bugs come mindlessly forward right into the fire of the railguns, they are shredded to bits from the heavy railgun fire, but they don't stop. Green blood is flying everywhere, bits and chunks of bugs. They pile on top of each other forming a living wall of bugs, natural cover as the other warrior bugs clamber over them.

Then you notice how the grass is moving, it is crawling with smaller bugs which are coming in a swarm, two foot long fire ant-like creatures are forming a column of living carpet heading directly at the foxholes.

The hoppers are flying at an incredible speed a good 400 kph at the two assault shuttles. You blow them out of the air, it sometimes takes several hits to the regular body with the railguns through the three inches of bioengineered chitin reinforced with multiple coatings of nacre and bioceramic outer plates, but then you refocus on the wings so they fall twitching from the air. The fire from the missiles causes them to be forced backward then their wings catch fire falling from the sky. Some have managed to get onto the shuttles. They are chewing at the armor on the cockpits.

Following the hoppers are smaller bee like creatures, they are heading directly at the two assault shuttles, one slams into the edge of a wing exploding in a cloud of organic explosives.

Shas'la'vre Six, Pharmacutical Prision Farms

Team six dropped down immediatly and opened fire with their Pulse Carbines. The Carbines use an induction field to propel a particle which reacts by breaking down to create a plasma pulse as it leaves the barrel, the carbines also utilise a Markerlight mounted above the barrel and an underslung photon grenade launcer. The photon grenades blind and disorient attackers with multi-spectral light and sonic burst.

The three team members armed with rail rifles used their hard-wired target lock interface to succesfuly target and start to blow apart the flying bugs. The rail rifles are a new invention of the Tau Empire. The rail rifle is an implementation of the technology utilised in the railgun that is mounted on the Hammerhead main battle tank and various Tau aircraft and XV 88 Broadside Battlesuits. The rail rifle is a linear accelerator which functions using standing wave acceleration anlong a number of cylindrical superconductive electrodes that surround the barrel. It comes pre-loaded with one hundred trillium-tipped solid darts. The energy requirements of the weapon were too great to be met solely by the integrated power cell. The cartridge cell provided enough surplus power for a single shot, although this slowed the weapons rate of fire, adequate compensation was to be found in the penetration and stopping power of the shot. In the entire Tau armoury only Broadside Battlesuit armour offers some protection against a rail rifle shot.

Shas'ui Vorta hoped that the combined power of his teams weapons and of the new humanoid arrivals behind them was enough to fight off the buggers onslaught.


Shas'la'vre One, Spartacus Mountain

"If your 'Fabber' can indeed increase the potency of our rail rifles then i will be glad to give him one to work at. The Earth Caste scientists of the Vior'la Enclaves will be most happy to study the modified rifle. It might take him sometime however as the actual ammunition is pre-loaded in an internal magazine when the weapon is produced. The magazines that we use are not actually ammunition, they are power cells for the weapon.

As for our deployment i will send two of my team members to each worm tunnel to help there. I myself and the other three shall watch your fabber at work on the three rail rifles."

"Greeeat! Just goddamn wonderful! Where's that frakin bug spray when you need it!" Flight Officer Eloise Dennings cursed as the assault shuttle rocked from the impact of the kamikaze bug. Steady banging was audible in the cockpit now as the hoppers had climbed aboard and were trying to gain entry.

"We need to get these things off us!" Her co-pilot exclaimed, while triggering the weapons station, sending a stream of short-range kinetic kill missiles towards a number of the Hoppers that hadnt yet reached the shuttle.

"Right..." Eloise answered and pulled the stick back, hard.

The assault shuttle pitched up in a steep curve, its air breathing heavy turbines and drive-field both snapping to maximum military power as Dennings slammed the throttle to full. The craft was capable of massive atmospheric velocities and now it began rising high into the sky at immense pace.

"Burton! You lazy ass bastard, be a good chap and blast those things off us!"
She yelled over the intercom.

Warrant Officer Burton climbed up to the dorsal turret, forced to abandon the primary weapons control station. No one had really expected the full crew of five to be needed for the shuttles, and as such they had gone out with only three. Luckily, the primary weapons could be set to operate on automatic for some effectiveness.

Burton switched on the dorsal gunnery station, bringing the visual feed from the outside cameras online and charging up the single multi-barreled railgun.
Depressing the weapon as low as he could, he barely got the wings and some of the upper body of one of the Hoppers in his sights and pressed the trigger.


Behind them, the second assault shuttle was doing much the same, climbing up rapidly to the sky.


Major Cosforth observed the situation dispassionately from his command station aboard the C3I Pinnace. Super 64 and Super 62 were out of the support role, atleast for now. He wagered they would survive though, but he had learned a valuable lesson on this first engagement. Close Air Support was not a viable method against this enemy. He opened up the comm.

"Super Six Three. Take up high-altitude position and commence smart bombing of the enemy."

"Super Six Three copy."

The third and last assault shuttle of the Switchblade had been prepped, and had launched moments ago and had been loitering just outside the planet's atmosphere, waiting for the call to go in. Now it descended, and began dropping loads of 300lb dedicated anti-personnel smart bombs at the horde of ground variant bugs approaching the grounded troops. Guiding them at the swarm through the use of the Switchblade's and its own sensor package, Super 63 began dealing pinpoint delivered death.


On the ground the situation was hairy. No matter how many of the enemy the ACS piled up, they still seemed to be coming. But as they closed, the fire from the rifles of Keeler's platoon became more accurate. Silver streams of lightning swept the coming tide like a broom.

"Reapers! Fire mission, final protective fire!" Keeler yelled over the comm, and the six Grim Reaper Fire Support suits of his platoon answered the call.

Automortars coughed, sending up streams of 60mm air-bursting grenades at the horde in a grid-pattern that overlapped the zones of total destruction around each detonation point of each grenade, creating a swirling hurricane of destruction consisting of shrapnell, overpressure and searing heat.

As the ACS did its best to deal with the larger warrior bugs on the ground, Foxworth's rifle platoon had taken up concentrating on the smaller bugs as well as doing all it could to thin the numbers of the flying Hoppers. Rifle fire was of limited use against them due to their speed, and Foxworth had ordered one of his squads to unpack and open up with the Short Range Man Portable Viper SAM missiles equipped with plasma warheads.

"Sir, we could use a bit of rods from the gods here!" Master Sergeant Richter yelled to the Lieutenant.

He was inclined to agree, but he was just a lieutenant, and here they had Commonalitarianism assets as well as the Viorla troops in close proximity, he would have to call on authorization for this one.

"Hammer-Actual, Whiskey Three-Three. Request clearance for Ramrod, over."
He called over his comm set, praying that the Major would get the clearance from the Commonalitarianism.


Cosforth understood, and keyed in the channel he had dedicated for keeping in touch with the Commonalitarianism Command Carrier in orbit.

"This is Major Cosforth, I have a request from my boys on the ground for a kinetic strike on the enemy. Be advised, our Ramrod platforms have a minimum kinetic energy yield of roughly point-two kilotons."

Even if he got the clearance though, dropping the bar would be tricky. In the best case scenario, the blast effects wouldnt carry over much at his troops in the ground. In the worst case... well it wasnt worth thinking about.

Shas'la'vre Six

You drop. As you drop and start firing towards the warrior bugs, you see what looks like a very large hole where a lot of the bugs are pouring out of. You notice what looks like a swarm of smaller two foot long fire ants following the bigger warrior bugs. There is what looks like a living carpet moving out of the hole. They would be right in your path coming in fast.

The pulser rifles seem to disorient the warrior bugs, as they are hit, they start staggering around not dying immediately, but taking one or two shots before they die. The heat cracks their shells open spilling out their green blooded insides.

The hoppers or flying bugs are very heavily armored. You have to shoot them several times before they fall from the sky, usually focusing on one area. The first shot cracks the shell a bit, the second goes through,and the third kills.

You see what looks like a cloud of giant bees following the hoppers.

Shas'la'vre One, Spartacus Mountain

Marcus Ohyes, takes the rifle examining them closely. We can improve the induction coils. He takes out what looks like a black ring. This is an gravitophotonic ring, it doesn't function by magnetic induction but by gravity manipulation and electromagnetic induction. It took us over a hundred years to miniaturize this thing. He shows you round wand-- this is a gravitophotonic repulsor-- it acts by inducing a gravity beam against an object in the barrel. The rate of fire is not high, but the beam continues to accelerate the object after it leaves the barrel pushing a dart faster than a railgun. If you want we could replace the barrel and pushing mechanism keeping the projectiles. We also can redesign the projectiles so they are slightly larger.

The fabber looks like a customized expensive piece of machinery, a combination of recycler, smelter, and lean production design automated machine shop. It doesn't work fast, but customizes everything it produces. Two of them could fit in the hold of a large cargo ship like the Lady Luck.

When you go down into the caves under New Spartacus Mountain, what you see is a bit different. The cave is well lighted, there are glowing beetles which provide light, The floor is covered with a soft moss, the walls are smooth with a coating much like a termites mound, there are two large pools of water in perfectly round basins.

The incongruous thing is the bug carcasses and the scorch marks on the walls. The bug carcasses are being carried out by sentients in coveralls. There are a few men and women in power armor which looks like it was recently upgraded and new weapons. In addition, there is a group of neo-wolfs in black power armor. The suits are not standard, they have stylized wolfsheads, power claws, and heavy weapons. The suits have badges on them with stylized werewolves and pictures of the Greek goddess of fortune, Tyche.




OOC Heim Theory Article on Gravity Fields.

http://www.hpcc-space.com/publications/documents/ArtificialGravity.pdf

Clairmont: The hoppers are holding as strongly as they can. They attempt to drive their barbed stingers into any openings in the cockpits they may have created before having their bug wings ripped off by turbulence and falling off. More bees are trying to catch the shuttles but aren't fast enough.

On the battlefield things are about to get truly frightening. Two holes open in front of the foxholes and two tanker bugs come out spewing a napalm like liquid at the troops.

The ants are in the foxholes by now, they have an acidic toxic bite, but it takes a lot for them to get through power armor. Many have been destroyed by plasma fire from the SAMs and automatic fire.

The troops can see another type of flying bug approaching in the distance. The mortar fire is clearing the skies. It seems to be working much better than the railgun fire. It appears that the hoppers are built like flying tanks. They are dropping from the skies, they are as big as a rhino.

The 300 lb bombs are destroying the warrior bugs and ants in large numbers clearing the battlefield. Only a few make it to the foxholes. They attempt to use their scissorslike massive jaws and forward spearlike limbs to pierce the power armor up close.

You get through to Ralk who says, "Strategos Sharp is in bad shape right now, you have my authorization to do what is necessary and I'll take the consequences." You see a medic standing over Sharp who is stuttering slightly.

Clairmont: The grid pattern of the mortar fire against the hoppers is far more effective than you thought it would be. The commanding officer gets a strange inkling, almost a feeling, that the buggers are being directed in a clear pattern more organized than most humans can be. A brief overlook of the battlefield shows the warrior bugs are attacking in spearhead formation as well.

After a somewhat more throught investigation which drew on the special equipment of the three commonly called the Monkees in reference to See, Speak and Hear, in which they examined the area with senses artificially enhanced significantly beyond level.

Once clearance was assured, the others began disembarking. The motley crew spread out weapons held at a loose ready, just in case.

"Phew... next time Im killing flies, I'll be sure to do it with a goddamn hand grenade." Eloise Dennings exclaimed as she vectored Super 64 towards the Switchblade

"I've got a couple of warning indicators going off here, light structural integrity damage. Nothing serious." Her co-pilot told her.

"Alright, lets set her down and get the wrench monkey's to fix those. The boys on the ground are going to need us."


As the Assault Shuttle set down on the boat bay, the Main Battle Tanks and Infantry Fighting Vehicles with their adjoined riflemen had already lined up and were ready to board the hulking two craft to go and support their comrades fighting for their lives. Shortly after Super 64 hit the deck, 62 followed suite. It too had received its share of damage from the flying bugs.


Lieutenant Keeler snapped the two-foot long monomolecular combat blade to full extension from its sheath in his right arm. Grabbing hold of his railgun with the left, he slashed off one of the pincers of a warrior bug attempting to use him as lunch. The blade was good against practically any armor thanks to its design, but he seriously wanted to avoid close combat with these things.

"Platoon! Fighting retreat! Reaper's, execute fire mission with previous parameters!"

As he shouted the orders, the remaining thirty of his men leaped away from their foxholes, the jumps powered by their inhumanly powerful suit artificial musculature. They immediately gained ten meters of separation to the first warrior bugs that had reached their holes, along with the smaller creatures of the incoming horde.

As they began retreating, two pairs of troopers always stayed and covered while the rest pulled back. The Grim Reaper fire support suits had pulled up the most distance to the enemy and were in the process of producing a constant hail of automortar fire. The first fire mission had proved far more effective against both the aerial and ground variant bugs than Lieutenant Keeler had expected, now he took full advantage of that knowledge.

Behind the ACS, the Rifle Platoon was firing on near full-auto, producing a near literal wall of flechette and HESH rounds to try and hold the tide of the incoming enemy.

Lieutenant Foxworth grinned viciously as he received the permission from Cosforth to engage with Ramrod, these bugs would be getting a nasty surprise. But in order for the two platoons of mercenaries avoid being pasted along with the enemy, they would need to slow that enemy down.

"Jackson, Wang, deploy bouncing barbies in the path of the advance!"

The two troopers ordered their squads to do as the Lieutenant ordered and quickly set up the three mortars their squads had brought to the battlefield. While less effective than the 60mm rapid-fire capable automortars of the Grim Reaper's, the 80mm composite-construction mortars of the rifle platoon could fire more complex payload munitions. Now they began sending such rounds downrange.

As they reached certain altitude, the payload rounds dispersed their cargo. Small things by anyone's measure, the small disks that were Bouncing Barbies hit the ground ahead of the advance of the bugs, dispersing in an arcing field of devices. As they hit the ground, they did absolutely nothing, waiting for the enemy to come on top of them. The things mimiced the ancient Claymore mines in their basic principle. However, they had certain advancements built on to them. Once the enemy would reach distance from the mines, they would propel themselves upward from the ground to height of five feet. Once that had happened, they would detonate, propelling outwards a cloud of razor sharp, quite thin projectiles at supersonic velocities. Lieutenant Foxworth had seen the Bouncing Betties turn Imperial Soldiers clad even in their quite thick Infantryman armor to hamburger.

But that would only slow down the enemy, they needed to annihilate the enemy to survive.

"Whiskey-Three Three to Central. Fire Mission over!"

"Central copies. Call for fire, over."

"Central. Request Ramrod, target data sent, set for point-four kilotons. Authorization Romeo-Oscar-Lima-Lima-Five-Eight-Niner over." Foxworth iterated calmly, while his personal computer sent the exact target data of the point he had designated to Fire Support Central.

"Central acknowledges. Ramrod authorized, point-four kilotons. Splash in fifteen seconds. Danger close." The calm, mellow baritone of Central replied back. They seriously had to change the software to yet add 'Have a nice day' to the end of these replies.

"Splash in fifteen!!" He screamed over the comms of both of the platoons.

By now the ACS had managed to pull some distance to the enemy and was behind the deployed Bouncing Betty mines. They made one final massive leap, straining everything out of their suit muscles. As they hit the deck, they once again pulled up cratering charges, creating themselves foxholes. Foxworth's platoon took the que, and jumped down to the same foxholes with their ACS comrades.

The seconds passed slowly, but then the moment came. A lone silver streak across the sky and hit the ground at nearly 90 degrees angle relative to the surface and its flight path. For one brief moment, the horizon turned white. An enormous fireball had born, and the overpressure wave was thundering towards the ACS and the Rifle Platoon like the fist of god. The ACS merely stood up and opened fire once more, to them the hurricane of blast pressure was survivable at this range, but the riflemen hunkered down for their lives.

As the kinetic munition vented its full wrath, the 300lb smart bombs still falling from Super 63 seemed almost anti-climatic.

As you are retreating the warrior and ant bugs keep coming in a mindless horde. They are incapable of much thought. The bouncing betties chew them to bits. The bombs tear them apart.

The hoppers are a bit smarter, they move off into the upper foliage of the giant trees, as well as the rippler bugs. You can hear the drone of wings high overhead in the trees, but can't see much. They are under cover of the jungle canopy.

You get back to your men and watch the massive exploding mushroom cloud. There is a shockwave and overdraft which tears apart foliage, rips aparts bugs and levels many of the remaining farm buildings.

Then you feel the ground shake hard and ripple in places. The shaking is strong enough to knock a man off his feet, it is stronger than most earthquakes.

Five of the foxholes become much deeper than they were supposed to originally be as the ten foot wide maw of the purple worms opens wide drawing men and machines into a gaping hole lined with teeth capable of chewing through reinforced rockcrete with stomach acid strong enough to melt steel.

A ripple in the earth occurs next to the landing ramp, the ramp folds into the earth with whatever was on the ramp. In the tunnel you hear a sizzling sound of flame as a tanker bug waiting in the tunnel spreads streams of napalm.

There are ridges of earth criss crossing near the landing area.

Then the bowling ball size bees come, like plummeting comets, packets of explosive heading straight down at the landing men.

Black cat:

See sees eyes watching from under the waves, the vague outline of giant octopi waiting for the unwary near the shore. He also sees numerous one foot long poisonous centiscorpions moving about the camp very quickly and hiding under rocks.

Hear, hears the clicking of several giant insects in a nearby cave with their young. Hear also hears the popping sound of seeds being thrown from a 300 meter tree in the distance.

Smell, smells several large carcasses behind some rocks and poisonous plant spores.

Shas'la'vre Six, Pharmacutical Prision Farms

"Shas'ui!, the enemy appears to be coming from there!"

One of the pathfinders shouted and gestured towards a large hole in the ground. Indeed it did seem as if all the ground bugs in the immediate area were climing up through the hole.

"Shas'la! half move up the left rest move up the right, get some markerlights on that bug hole! Action such as this wont go unoticed by the Kir'la in orbit. They will send help! If we die here today we die for our Caste, for the Aun and for the Tau'va!"

The team split in half and ran, firing from the hip. Even the Shas'la with the rail rifles could fire on the move. There were to many bugs to miss. Vorta turned his head as he ran. He saw a group of warrior bugs turn off and chase the others. One catching up, pounced, and bit a pathfinder clear in half.

Movement in his perephrial vision caused him to snap back and look infront, just as a warrior bug was about to bite his face off. Vorta jumped backwards quickly, the front pincer of the warrior bug tearing off his helmet. Vorta pushed his carbine into the creatures mouth and fired full-auto. The corpse of the bugger collapsed onto him, Vorta faded into blackness.


Onboard the Kir'la Vior'la Kir'la Or'es, In orbit of Muse

Aun'O Vior'la Acaya watched on with quiet resolve. He watches the scene below on the holo-pict being displayed directly from the Kir'la's sensors. The bugs just opened a large tunnel undermining the Clairmont forces position. The sensors were not powerful enough however to pick out the Pathfinders location. 'They could be anywere down there', he thought, 'anywere at all'.

Aun'Acaya turned and looked at O'Vaus. Even encased in his battlesuit, O'Vaus gave off a wave of dissapointment. He was angry at Stategos Sharp. Firstly, the most obvious, for not letting him warn his warriors about the orbital bombardment possibly causing the death of 'his' men. And Secondly, if there were survivors down there on the farms or even hiding in the forest they would have been oblitarated in the orbital fire. This Statagos was not seemingly concerned about his own citizens lives. If it were not for the watchful eyes of Aun'Acaya, he probably would have flown back over to the Commonalitarianism command ship, shoved his Fusion Blaster right into Sharps face and reduced him to ionized particles.

Aun'Acaya sensed his companions anger. He walked over and put his hand on the battlesuits chest.

"Calm your humors my friend, such things are to be expected in situations such as these. The Gue'la are renowned for their tactics of fast brute force, they have not the patience of we Tau. They see a chance and take it, usually damning those in the way. This Neo-dog Ralk however seems to be of a more tatical mind. It might be wise to deal with him from now on."

Aun'Acaya turned from O'Vaus and looked over at Kor'O Mont'yr

"Kor'O, Launch a Barracuda wing immediatly to support our forces on the ground. Hopefully some of the Pathfinders are still alive and can mark targets for the seeker missiles. Otherwise inform your pilots to engage all targets in the air and on the ground."

Half a dec later, Four Barracuda Superiority fighters left the Kir'la and headed for muse. Each armed with a pair of Long Barreled Burst Cannons, Seeker Missiles, A pair of Missile pods and a nose mounted Ion Cannon. The pilots hoped they were not to late.

"Holy shit!"

"Daumer!"

Exclaimed the Riflemen as the huge worms appear from beneath the foxholes. Two of the lightly armored infantrymen disappear in their maws instantly, their screams echoing over the platoon comms. The ACS fare better, unsheathing their monomolecular blades, they slash and stab at the worms as they try to grab a hold of them, railguns firing in some cases.

The rest of the ACS react instinctively, grabbing their more vulnerable comrades hunkering in the same foxholes, they catapult away from the safe havens become slaughterhouses. Chugging back plasma-yield grenades while doing so.

"Goddamnit!" Lieutenant Keeler exclaimed. These things didnt know when to give up. He gazed at the ammunition levels of his Grim Reapers which were already blinking in the yellow. Then he saw the approaching swarm of bowling ball sized bees.

"Reapers! Continuous fire! Airburst!" He called up.

The two squads had taken damage during the short but vicious battle, and the number of mortars they could bring to bear had been reduced. But each of the suits still mounted four of the things and they opened fire with airbursting grenades towards the approaching kamikaze bees.


Foxworth cursed bitterly at their predicament. These things had far more tactical flexibility than anyone could have predicted. As the landing ramp caved in, he was no longer surprised. He had half anticipated something to suddenly attack them once more. But as the tanker bug threw up steady stream of napalm through the tunnel it had created, he found himself incapable of doing nothing about it.

As if on cue, one of the ACS troopers popped up, toting a shoulder carried weapon.

Popping at the end of the tunnel, his suit allowed him to withstand the searing heat, for a moment, long enough to send a three-foot long rod of tungsten filled C9 atomic catalyst explosive, towards the waiting tanker bug.


"Cougar Three-One to Hammer-Actual. We're swinging in the goddamn breeze here sir!" Lieutenant Keeler called Major Cosforth, the man had better have a brilliant plan ready.

"Cougar Three-One, Super Six-Four and Super Six-Two will be returning in five mikes. They will be carrying Mark Eleven demolition charges and the Armor. Hang in there Lieutenant." The calm voice replied.

"Roger that Hammer. Out there." Keeler said back, he hoped they would still be here in five minutes.

"Lets keep moving! We cant give these burrowing things a target!"

Clairmont: The men who fell in the worms are gone as something unusual happens, the bottom half of the segments of the worm, split off going underground to report back to the other more intelligent buggers. They have seen and know what the enemy is like.

The top halves continue to fight trying to tear and grind at the men in the foxholes. Their monomolecular blades bite deep into the insides of the worms sometimes rending holes that allow them to pull themselves out. At the same time the blood of the worm and the stomach bile is acidic burning and destroying armor and any exposed flesh. Most fall silent after a while.

The tanker bugger dies exploding in a ball of fire which goes up and down the tunnel.

The bees fall exploding around the men a few get through trying to destroy the armored men. They buzz after them seeking them.

At last the fight dies down...

Shas'la'vre Six, Pharmacutical Prision Farms

You watch something odd happening. The horde buggers stop as if of one mind. Then the few remaining bugs start filing into the hole in the ground... You keep firing at the few fire ants and warrior bugs remaining, even if the you kill their compatriots, the bugs keep going down into the hole. There is still one of the sunflower screamers screaming away. All of the other screamers are dead.

"What the..." Lieutenant Anton Foxworth whispered as the enemy suddenly stopped. No more bugs seemed to be appearing from practically thin air.

"Looks like we beat them off sir." Master Sergeant Richter exclaimed.

"No, I dont think so. These things individually may have fought like mindless beasts, but there was co-ordination in their overall attack. They should have pressed on, but instead chose to back off, giving us a breather." Foxworth replied. This didnt feel right at all.

"Set up a perimeter, we will wait for the shuttles."


As the ACS mopped up the last few remaining bugs, the remaining troopers of the two platoons gathered up their wounded and set up a perimeter with the ACS holding the outer ring of the perimeter and the Rifle Platoon having the secondary ring.

Lieutenant Keeler popped his helmet, and gazed at the battlefield with his bare eyes. It was like nothing he had seen before. He had fought the Imperium, he had fought Insurgents, Terrorists and countless other threats. But this battlefield was so different. Piles upon piles of the dead buggers were everywhere, torn apart in most cases to color the ground with their blood, bits and pieces of the creatures all over the grassy field. The smell almost made him puke out his lunch, but decades of experience helped him to control it.

He glanced at the surviving men and women of the two platoons. They had had 70 effectives when they were dropped, 57 effectives remained. Seven dead, six wounded. He figured four of the six wounded could be brought back to action quickly enough, the Switchblade had a full medical department rivaling any Fleet med facility. Lost limbs could be regenerated, punctures to the body and acid damage fixed with a day or two of intensive nano and regen therapy. Nevertheless, for their first engagement with the enemy, the result had been unexpectedly bad.

The familiar whine of turbines filled the air as the two lumbering assault shuttles descended from the skies and set down on the field in the middle zone circled by the perimeter. Their main cargo ramps opened, and from inside the rumble of engines could be heard. Shortly afterwards the armored prow of a Knight Infantry Fighting Vehicle poked out and the forty-ton vehicle proceeded to descend the ramp and hit the ground. Its turret swiveled from side to side, scanning the horizon for any obvious threats.

One by one, the Armored vehicles began discorging from the two landed shuttles.

Ralk was angry. He called Lieutenant Sargent Smithers, now Special Operations Executve Smithers responsible for bringing irregular warfare to the Commonalitarianism's enemies. He spoke to Smithers, "What should I do in this situation?"

Sargent Smithers, "Take command that is my order, you are a good and loyal soldier to the Commonalitarianism, Sharp had his day, but he grew too old and rigid in his thinking, that is an order. No excuses soldier. Bring in help, counter Sharp's directive for only mercenaries, start by bringing in all the elements of your old command. Let the mercenaries do their job. I'll try and call in all my favors to bring in the privateering companies."

Viorla and Clairmont: (Alien biological attack)

Something horrible was about to happen. What looked like two foot round green skinned plant balls began drifting towards the jungle floor. They were filled with dangerous spoors which would grow new balloon plants lodging in the victims exposed skin and lungs and grow very fast. First it would cause the skin and lungs to bubble forming pustules feeding off the victims flesh and tissues. If liquid escaped more pustules would form, eventually, small plants would form about the size of a three inch sphere, and attempt to dislodge themselves and float away. The plants would grow to two foot size and start the cycle again.

This would either disable or kill the receiver of the spores. They began to pop releasing a fine mist of white powdery spores that drifted through the air. They would cover the whole site of the bugger attack attaching to any animal flesh including the dead buggers.

At the Pharmaceutical Farm, a survivor finds Vorta just before the white mist starts falling. He picks him up and throws him over his shoulder. The man is huge and muscular, he was born on Muse, the green sun has changed him. He gets into a house when the dust falls.

When Vorta wakes up he will be in the inner swamps in tree home, a place where escaped prisoners from the farms go.

"Should have bloody guessed..." Foxworth whispered as he saw the plant balls start dropping from the sky. He didnt know what they would do exactly, but he could guess they wouldnt be good for his troops. There was no time to seal all his exposed troops with NBC gear.

"Get to the IFV's!" He shouted and his men were all too happy to oblige. They began cramming into the Knight's at haste. As they boarded, the driver's sealed the hatches of the vehicles and switched the enviromental systems to NBC mode.

The ACS remained outside, their suits were fully sealed self-containing environments and could survive even in high-radiation, chemical or biological warfare battlefields with little trouble. As the Rifle Platoon boarded, along with the wounded, the ACS set up on a defensive perimeter around the Armored Cav, ready to react if there was another real assault by the enemy.

As they did so, they already commenced deployment of the asteroid buster munitions across the field (ooc: these are the ones I described in page 4) to prevent or deter any underground attacks. Meanwhile, the Main Battle Tanks that had disgorged from the shuttles had deployed several Big Eye high-altitude reconnaissance drones. They lifted up to an altitude of nearly sixty thousand feet. Four feet in diameter, stealthed disks, they contained a healthy array of surveillance equipment from Optical viewers to full spectrum active scanners. As they reached their designated altitude, they began circling the Area of Operations of the ground force and feeding down data to the C3I Pinnace and the individual troops on the ground.

The ground was covered with the white powder. It dusted everything with a thin coating. The infantry fighting vehicles went from their color to white. The troopers outside also were covered with a thin white film.

The wildlife screamed stampeding trying to run away and carrying the spores further outward. They didn't die instantly, but slowly. Carrion crawlers, wolf spiders, centiscorpions, plant eating bouncers, bloodflies, armored pillbugs, came crawling, hopping, and slithering to escape the spores.

The bodies of the buggers became coated with the powder slowly growing the small spheres.

Then the green balls littered the ground deflated.

The viorla missiles blow up the hole in the pharmaceutical farm taking more buggers as they escape. The hole is now collapsed.

Black Cat:

You find you are not close to the main buggers. The camp should be safe except for the local wildlife.

You spread out forming a perimeter, it is much later during the day. Nothing seems to happen until nightfall. Then, the local wildlife comes out to hunt and seek after sleeping prey. You can see the octopi like tentacle monsters wandering on the beach.

The centiscorpions are a nuisance, they attempt to sting people who get too close. They are small, but deadly and often hard to spot among the rocks.

You can hear the larger arachnids leaving the cave. They are scurrying around seeking after lone prey. Several attempt to haul off one of the night sentries. Four large wolf spiders jump from behind a rock spitting threads of webbing at one of the sentries.

There is also a beating of wings that sounds like buzzing. Two wasp like creatures drop from above attempting to sting another sentry and haul him off to use him as protein for their young.

The conqueror worm bright red in color and ancient in years looked down upon the smaller purple worm segments, it had linked some of its tendrils into the smaller worm and seen the enemy.

It inched over to the bugger queen, speaking in the bugger language of clicks, ultrasound, and pheromones it demanded, "Queen of bugs, invader of our world, my servant, what do you suggest of these outsiders?"

The queen drew back in fear, shivering and began to make suggestions. The worm roared several times, then said it shall be so.

Several chameleon bug spies, and smaller flying bugger eyes were dispatched to the camp to spy out the enemy.

"If we werent driving in some gross bug splatter, this might be a nice view." Staff Sergeant Worth muttered as the turret-mounted sensors sent a real-time visual feed to the driver's station of the Knight IFV.

"New orders lads, we'll be pushing forward, surveying the surrounding area. Including the pharmaceutical farms as well as conduct a visual scan of New Shimizu." Lieutenant Foxworth said, his voice echoing over the platoon comm-net.

"In case of hostile contact, we are to respond in force. In case we meet something we cant handle, we will pull back behind the mine perimeter on the LZ and wait for evac or support depending on the situation." He explained calmly.

Outside the IFV's, the ACS were coming in to recharge their power supplies. Attaching cables to the outlet ports on the sides of the Armored Vehicles, half a squad of troops could be recharged simultaneously by each IFV. Taking turns, the rest of the platoon kept running alongside the Armor while their comrades recharged.


Major Cosforth drew the axis of advance of the ground force on the flat-screen that was displaying the direct visual feed from the Big Eye drones, overlaid with masses of information. The computers automatically surrounded the tiny forms of the Armored Vehicles with blue triangles, pointing towards their destinations.

On another screen the status of the returning Super 64 and Super 62 were displayed. Carrying the wounded of the two platoons he had sent to the ground, they would reach the Switchblade in another eight minutes, after which they could be loaded with the Fire Support Vehicles of Fifth Platoon.

Super 63 would also be returning shortly. It had extinguished its supply of high-altitude smart bombs. For it to continue with its support role, it would have to be rearmed and sent back out. Meanwhile, Cosforth marked potential points and fire plans for the Ramrod platforms in case or in other words, when the shit hit the fan once more. But while he did that, he also proceeded to plan for the absolute worst case scenario. A scenario in which the ground force would be annihilated, and his command wiped out. If it ever came to that, he would authorize Switchblade to open up with full-yield ground assault warheads at all large scale bug detections. It would not be pretty.

But if it came to that, he wouldnt really care.

Clairmont, Vorta, and Black Cat:

From multiple sensor feeds, the Vorta, Commonii, and Clairmont satellites now launched you pick up humanoid activity in the swamp north of New Shimizu. The footage is odd, it is of three barely visible humans in primitive chitin armor covered with local vegetation and hats covered with plants. You have to look twice to detect it. At first it looks like a bug in the vegetation, then it comes across as a barely visible human sneaking into the swamp. One of them is holding a primitive rocket launcher, and another has a long spear with a very wide blade at the end.

You are also picking up what looks like an encircling formation around the area near the Clairmont. It looks to be very similar to the one used on New Shimizu Megapyramid. The buggers are preparing an attack.

You can see an inner ring of fire ants preparing to march in columns at the Clairmont position.

Behind the ants are a green striped black warrior bug with a large thorax, these bugs were the ones filmed climbing into the New Shimizu buildings.

You also see a smaller version of the plasma artillery bug about 10 meters long.

In the air in a cloud are hopper bugs and what looks like a glowing firefly with a flashing thorax. It looks like it is on fire.

Also one of the spy satellites picks up four men in uniform. The uniforms are in tatters. They have some kind of thorny purple thing on their necks. One of the men is gesturing to a strange thing that looks like a giant hovering beetle with big bumps on its back near its head. The beetle makes a slashing motion with its claw and one of the big green and black warrior bugs bites the man in half tossing the two pieces to other warrior bugs who then eat them. One of the men attempts to run and he is herded back to other three men.

"Encirclement? Great, just great." First Lieutenant Shannon Dessaix cursed as the Big Eye drones told her the tell-tales of what the enemy was planning. The three drones circling high above were painting a clear picture now, their sensors capable of even giving off accurate numbers of the enemy.

It looked like a full court press, and this time they would be coming from all sides. What the bugs wouldnt have probably expected though was the amount of firepower they would be facing this time. The two Armored Cav platoons had augmented the firepower of the Ground Force with a total of four Templar Block70 Main Battle Tanks and eight Knight IFV's.

"What did the Major say about thermobarics again?" Sergeant John Cody asked as he gazed at the developing encirclement through the sighting system of the 180mm main gun of the 150-ton tank.

"Cant remember really, but I do remember hearing something about being allowed to take whatever measures necessary." Dessaix said, smiling.

"Arrow-Six to all Arrow units. Authorized to engage with m-three-five-nine. Prepare for co-ordinated simultaneous fire." She told the tanks under her command through the comms.

The tanks suddenly stopped, their massive turret's coming to bear on target sectors assigned to each individual vehicle. Forming a half-circle to face the encirclement of the bugs, the tanks were now pointing their forward armor and guns towards the enemy. Behind the tanks, the IFV's pulled to a stop as well. Fire control radar came online, both direct-firing automortars and electromagnetic autocannons were prepped and aimed, Shrapnelling rounds for the mortars loaded, multiple-flechette anti-personnel for the autocannons. Two of the IFV's took up support posture for the tanks, while the rest aimed their guns at the skies.

The ACS had by now finished their recharging, some still grabbing ammunition from the IFV's. They formed a half-circle between the tanks and the IFV's, ready to provide a base of fire for the enemy that would reach close distance to the tanks.

All in all, to Dessaix it looked good. But so had the setup before the initial ambush down here. She was the senior officer on the ground now, both Keeler and Foxworth having less in the way of seniority than she did. She had had time to quickly study the most important points learned during the first engagement, and she would now use most of her IFV's to lay down a curtain barrage with their turret mounted automortars and autocannons, hopefully enough to stop or stem the tide of the flying bugs.

She keyed in the channel to fire control central.
"Arrow-Six to Central. Request clarification on available and authorized support."

"Central copies. Ramrod prepared and authorized for six strikes. Arrow-six has on-call Ramrod support."

"Acknowledged Central. Out." Dessaix finished. The scenery wouldnt look pretty if she had to drop those.

Almost as an afterthought, she remembered the Viorla ground forces would probably again be within range of the primary blast zones if she had to call for fire. Neither Lieutenant Keeler or Foxworth had had time to warn the poor souls of what was coming, for their lives had been hanging by a thin thread indeed. But she had time. She opened the Comm once more, typing a quick text-only warning message to the Viorla troops, notifying them of the general danger. Her teachers back at the Academy had taught her better than to transmit the exact target points of the planned fire missions on an open channel however.

Having finished typing, she stole a quick glance at her command screens. The enemy hadnt yet attacked. Initial analysis definitely suggested guiding intelligence behind the bug operations. Perhaps that intelligence would see what it faced now and either back off or make a mistake. It was worth hoping for atleast.

The crew went about setting up a variety of defences, such as automated weapons platforms, sonic disrupters* and various sensors. While a quater went about the preparations the rest remained on watch observing sky, sea, trees and earth in equal measure.

The bugs that wander near enought to the working crew began manifesting needles that had been flung from a crew member who had the name of Egar Emanuel and the nick-name of Eagle-Eye.

The springing spiders found themselved met by a shot from Hear's enjoyably wicked weapon. It utilized a sprayable form of air-ignitable napalm to do devestating short-ranged damage and the bugs would find themselves doused in it.

The target of the wasps happened to be a squat dwarf-like man made even more bulky by the heavy powered armour worn. The sound of splintering exo-skeletal stinger caused him to whirl and smashed at the two wasps with his heavy chain-gun.

ooc: Disrupts sense of direction/balance/ect.

Theao:

The needles pin many of the smaller centiscorpions in the camp but not all of them. A few of them crawl into things, boots, chests, under rocks. There are a few of them in the equipment. They are hiding in fear, ready to sting.

There are four of the spiders, two of them burn to a crisp, but one of them manages to spit a gob of sticky spider thread at the man with the napalm gun. The other one is trying to circle around him.

The wasps are shredded by the squat man in power armor.

The sentries guns pin several of the tentacle monsters wandering on the beach. The monsters seem confused. They are making bellowing noises. The ammuition seems to sink into their bodies. They begin looking like green jello filled with bullets.

The hovering overseer bug looked at the three humans now and demanded "What are those things?", she forced an image into the mind of one of the captives of a tank and an infantry fighting vehicle, "Do not lie and do not resist me, I will know." The man felt pain a pounding headache. The man, "They are tanks and fighting vehicles." The overseer bug clicked and hissed, "Ah you mean they are like these, a picture of plasma bug firing a plasma bomb appears in the mind of the man, and a picture of a worm with bugs in its belly appears." The man, "Yes." The overseer looks at him and says, "You will be well fed. Take the warm bloods away." The men are herded off into a tunnel. *

The overseer bug closes her eyes for a minute, "We must change our plans. " The voice in its mind says "No there are more of us than them, we will go ahead with the plan." The overseer bug disappears into a tunnel.

Clairmont.

Several of your men feel like they are being watched, it seems like something is trying to feel for the exact location of the men inside the tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. There is a kind of skin crawling creepiness to it, like the presence of a mosquito which you can't quite catch.

One of the men notices the outline of a cat sized bug, a chameleon bug, it is kind of hard to see, it seems to be looking at the men and moving its claws in patterns as well as checking the location of the men.




* The purple thorn collar translates bugger and human speech.

Clairmont and Viorla:

Clairmont as you are typing the commands you notice something, it looks like four yellow barracuddas with Viorla markings on them. There is a sonic boom as the attack fighters pass overhead towards the pharmaceutical farm.

Viorla:

By now your few men have regrouped at the farm. You notice Vorta is missing, then you see a man disappear behind one of the giant trees with Vorta over his shoulder into the jungle. The man is positively giant, a good seven feet tall and close to five feet wide. It is hard to fathom only one of your strongest athletes could do what the man is doing, power armor is heavy. You can see no sign of people except for the man who disappeared into the jungle with Vorta.

OOC: Some of the pharmaceutical farms people do survive. A combination of giant trees as wide as a football field at the base will block some of the fire. Also not every farm was taken over immediately, only the larger farms were attacked initially. This gave some of the people a chance to try and escape. There will be a few surviving people lost in the jungle. If you observe by satellite most of the large farms are completely burned down. However, two small farms are still intact, they don't appear to have been surrounded by the bugs. There is also an escaped colony of convicts in the swamp. The regular buggers were originally from a desert world, they don't like swamps or large bodies of open water. If you've seen both Starship Troopers movies they are set on desert worlds. This has allowed a group of convicts to survive. Anyone who escaped is being rounded up by the escaped convicts in the swamps. The bugs also have captured people. You are not sure what they are doing with the captured people, but they have them.

Specialist Nelms had had odd feelings several times in his life, but this was something different. Feeling like, an intrusion into his inner self, as if something other than him now resided within his brain. Either something really weird was going on, or he was going headcase.

"Sarge, you getting this..." He asked the older man sitting beside him.

"Odd feeling? Yeah. Feels like the same as the time I spent at the shrinks, when the bastards prodded my head." Sergeant Rhodes answered.

"Screw it, concentrate on this guys!" The sergeant said, inserting a tiny memory stick to the Comm-pack he carried. In a few seconds, loud booming heavy metal tunes began echoing in the vehicle and the men and women of the squad started concentrating on the music. Whistling the tunes as they went, or simply repeating the vocals in their heads.

For a moment, the other IFV crews wondered if the occupants of IFV callsign Arrow-Twelve had gone nuts, but as the Sergeant sent a text-only explanation to the Platoon Leaders, soon similar procedures took place aboard the other vehicles. It might be futile, they wouldnt know. But atleast it took some of the anxiousness of the men off.

(OOC: Is the cat-sized thing inside the IFV's or outside?)

OOC: The chameleon bug is outside the vehicle, it is sitting on the fender of one of the infantry fighting vehicles. I am trying to simulate the psychic rangefinding done by the brain bugs for plasma artillery mentioned in the descriptions of the cgi show. The cartoon basically says it doesn't know how it works.

Had he been alone, he'd have been in trouble deep and dire. However the insects were out-numbered for the present. While the webbing caught Herb's foot, both spiders were taken under fire from the other crew of the Bitch.

Meanwhile Ar, the blood-haired crew member that had been on the command ship during its docked period and the resident psionist began trying to coax the centies out and into a very large terrarium.

Theao:

As Ar touches the mind of the centiscorpions, he finds not a group thinking mind, but a kind of a primitive species empathy, where the members share the general emotion of other members, the centiscorpions slowly come out, moving their heads back and forth, there is a slight feeling of grief at losing other members of the group.

A dozen of them climb into the terrarium. You look more closely and see the centiscorpions crawling on the glass.

They have small suction cups at the ends of their feet, four grasping pincers, and a long sharp stinger.

Others of the centiscorpions are too afraid to stay, they run from the camp.

After thinking 'good thoughts' at the centies that decided to enter the terrarium. Putting the lid on it was transfered into the ship's hold, a large partitioned design that had been modified to serve as a cage for bugs of various sizes and requirements.

The centies found themselves in a proportionally large cage with memory plastic rocks, plants, gravel and other things that might be found in a typical terrestrial lizard's cage.

Meanwhile the techie began building robotics using the centies and wolf-spiders.

ooc: She, not he.

The wolf spiders are interesting to copy, they are designed to take more oxygen in than other spiders, allowing greater size, Their legs are designed for hopping, running, and digging not climbing, their poison sacs have a fairly powerful toxin, their spinnerets produce a very high tensile silk stronger than steel, there is an enlarged brain with a strange organ in the center which you find in the centiscorpions as well.

Examining the dead centiscorpions is fairly interesting as well. They have a very hard chitin outer shell, dozens of climbing legs with suction cups, feelers and chemical sensors in addition to clicking jaws, there are four pincers with three claws. If they were larger they might be sophonts. The centiscorpions are trying to build a burrow in the terrarium rearranging the rocks into a big pile.

"Ok, we need to blow a hole to this damn encirclement." First Lieutenant Shannon Dessaix muttered as the Big Eye drones overlaid the two small surviving pharmaceutical farms with tactical icons.

"Atleast we dont have to worry about forest fires, the damn kinetic blew most of the easily flammable foliage away." Sergeant Cody said.

"Right." Dessaix replied and opened a comm channel to the rest of the vehicles.

"Arrow-Six to all Arrow units. We will proceed to clear a path with thermobarics. After which we will take up formation four, and proceed to following waypoints." She uttered quickly.

"Ok, you got a good solution there John?"

"Yep, ready whenever."

Dessaix took one quick glance through her own sensor screens and gave the command.

"Fire."

Four 180mm linear accelerator guns belched nearly at the same time, sending four thermobaric munitions at the Bugger encirclement. As they blew, four new miniature suns instantly came into being. The fireballs vaporizing or scorching everything they touched, while the overpressure smashed targets flat while expanding at supersonic velocities.

Only moments after the rounds had blown, the armored vehicles lurched into motion with the ACS hitching a ride atop the IFV's or at the back of the tanks. They accelerated to combat speed, nearly seventy kilometers per hour even in this difficult terrain and punched into the forest proper, proceeding towards the pharmaceutical farms that had thus far remained intact.

The four thermobarics blew large holes in the bug formations directly in front of the tanks, leaving a very large opening for the tanks to pass through. The bugs were apparently swept from the field in front of them. Most of the bugger artillery directly in front of them was destroyed.

However as the tanks thundered forward, they found large ten foot wide trenches with gaps in them. The worms were attempting to close the circle but hadn't had the time to finish.

The brain bugs were distracted by the heavy metal music, it broke their concentration so that the psychic rangefinding was not as effective. They had a general idea where the tanks and infantry vehicles were, but the smaller plasma bug fire would not be as effective.

There was still some incoming plasma bug fire, but about half of the plasma bugs had been destroyed in the thermobaric explosions. 10 balls of superheated plasma fired from 15 foot long plasma bugs left trails of smoke as they attempted to hit the tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. There was also some popping sounds from the woods behind the bug encirclement as centipede thorn cannons fired 8 100 mm explosive thorn shells. But after the 2nd round of fire, the tanks were well out of range.

The firefries were attracted to the thermobaric explosion like a moth is attracted to light. Most flew directly into the fire adding to the conflagration as their heat and energy absorbing bodies popped. A few made it out glowing like miniature suns.

The only direct danger to the tanks lay ahead and behind as they drove forward. The hoppers were flying in fast at 400 kph, as well as the remaining superheated firefries. The ants and warrior bugs simply couldn't match the tanks speed.

The tanks passed through the gaps in the trenches into the forest ahead of them.

OOC: This was a difficult one for me to picture. I see the thermobarics opening holes in the formations allowing you through, then the flying bugs moving in close as well as some of the remaining artillery fire trying to hit the escaping tanks.

The Bitch sent a message up to the command ship mentioning that they had a number of bodies that were relatively intact if they wished to come collect them for study.

The poison was flushed out of one of the spider-wolves and put into a chemical analyzer while the techie, Jessu by name, had finished building a proto-model of the Centiescorps being sure to include remote controls, sensors and a pheromone generator to aid insure the survivabilty of the bot. They were then sent out to survey the landscape and test the survivabilty of the design.

Theao:

Commander Ralk authorizes a shuttle to be sent down with a technician to pick up the bodies of the spiders.

The poison is a neurotoxin, that kills quickly, it also contains a preservative agent that keeps the body intact for a long time so it can be stored in a cave or hollow to be eaten over time.

The robotic centiscorpion slowly wanders out into the surrounding area. It moves among some trees and roots. Then crawls for about half a mile. Then a large armored fly tries to get it with its proboscis damaging it slightly, before it escapes into the bushes. The robot stops next to a sticky leaf sensing it, then moves away from it crawling outward past the giant venus fly trap. It falls in a hole burrows its way out. Then it comes too close to a tentacle tree which grabs it and tries to eat it, leaving it immobile, with still functioning sensors. It is about a mile from camp.

Theao:

Commander Ralk authorizes a shuttle to be sent down with a technician to pick up the bodies of the spiders.

The poison is a neurotoxin, that kills quickly, it also contains a preservative agent that keeps the body intact for a long time so it can be stored in a cave or hollow to be eaten over time.

The robotic centiscorpion slowly wanders out into the surrounding area. It moves among some trees and roots. Then crawls for about half a mile. Then a large armored fly tries to get it with its proboscis damaging it slightly, before it crawls into the bushes. You are watching the ground when it crawls into a sticky leaf where it gets trapped as the hinge of a giant venus fly trap like plant closes on it. It is still functional just stuck in the sticky trap trying to get out. You have footage for a mile outside the camp.

Most of the robotic centiscorpions last for about a mile or two before something tries to eat it, or suck out its fluids. The metallic coloring seems to attract insects, and hungry plant/animal hybrids. You have seen a number of horrid things lurking in the woods. The local wildlife think they look tasty and edible.

"Arrow-six to all Arrow's, form columns!" Shannon Dessaix ordered as she saw the trenches that the burrowing bugs had started digging as tank traps. Luckily, the Big Eye drones warned her of them before it was too late.

As ordered, the four Main Battle Tanks took the lead of each column, each followed by two of the Knight IFV's. On top of the smaller armored vehicles, the ACS had latched on to their armor plating using magnetic fields formed beneath their feet. As they stood there, they aimed their weapons at all enemies in their fields of fire, augmenting the firepower of the IFV's. While the tanks lead the way, the IFV's poured fire with their automortars and autocannons at the flying swarms of Hopper bugs, fire control radar and lidar tracking their movements.

"Incoming plasma!" Corporal Reilly yelled over the intercom of Arrow-Six.

After numerous cases of trial & error, the Clairmontian Armed Forces had finally after the war against the Imperium succeeded in reverse-engineering the energetic battlescreen technology the Imperial Armored Vehicles had utilized. But while the Imperial version had provided full 360 degree protection and could have been kept online for hours at a time, the Clairmontian version was different. It was basically linked to the Defensive Systems Control Computer. As sensors detected an incoming threat, they would evaluate the threat in a matter of microseconds and perform one or several different counter-measures on the basis of the evaluation. In this case, the system deemed that the only effective counter-measure against the plasma coming from practically directly ahead, was to engage the forward battlescreen at full power for ten seconds.

The forward battlescreen snapped to full power in near instant, and as the plasma hit, it hit the screens and was deflected, dissipated and absorbed. Unfortunately, each round that was heavy enough to cause the DSCC to activate the battlescreen, also would reduce the effectiveness of the battlescreen, but this time, the plasma bugs wouldnt have time for another shot.

"Target, three-two-zero. Plasma artillery. Fire when ready" First Lieutenant Dessaix called, painting the target that had fired at them.

"Locked, HESH loaded. Firing!" Sergeant Cody said as he locked the target on the targeting computer and pressed the trigger.

The gun belched once, firing a single 180mm High-Explosive Squashed-Head round at the targeted plasma bug with pinpoint accuracy. The three other tanks fired as well, having acquired their own targets and letting loose with their main guns.

As the explosive thorn fire arrived, most of it missed or only came close enough to rattle the hulls of the heavily armored vehicles. Layer upon layer of the most advanced armor alloys and passive defense mechanisms built to the MBT's and IFV's alike were sufficient to withstand being in critical proximity to heavy artillery in the 200-300mm range. They had been built to survive worse hells. Which didnt mean that the crews liked taking fire, when the shooting began, there was always the chance of golden BB's.

Unfortunately ofcourse, as the four armored columns passed the main bug encirclement, there were a few seconds when the most vulnerable rear armor of the IFV's were exposed to the bug artillery fire. One good shot could have penetrated the weak rear, and have caused a catastrophic kill where the ammunition and fuel of a vehicle cooked off. But Lieutenant Dessaix had planned the breakout from the encirclement carefully, going through at best possible combat speed, their backs had been exposed for only a short while before they were out of range from the bugs and the IFV's had taken care to deploy smoke at their rears to make it more difficult to visually spot the armored vehicles.

Passing beyond the range of the enemy's main force. The four armored columns formed up into four distinct arrowheads. A Templar MBT taking the point in each arrowhead with a Knight IFV holding slightly back at both left and right flanks. They moved with purpose, crunching the foliage of the dense forest beneath their tracks and dodging only the obstacles they couldnt go through. Their course was set for the surviving pharmaceutical farms.


Major Cosforth nodded in silent approval of Lieutenant Dessaix's maneuver. He had known that deploying the armor was the correct call. It made the ground force far less vulnerable, while providing them with far greater degree of mobility and enhanced firepower. Currently the only worry he had was that the vehicles would exhaust their fuel cells within another six hours with current consumption. At that point though, he would resupply them with the Assault Shuttles. The main point was that his ground forces were now maneuvering instead of being bogged down at the landing zone under fire from the buggers, and the 3rd IEU could start working on the full extent of their mission.

He checked another screen detailing the Battlespace. Super 63 and 64 were proceeding to take up high-altitude positions. While the shuttles on board the Switchblade, Cosforth had belayed the previous order to load up the Fire Support Platoon. Judging by the haste and flexibility of the Bugger operations, sending the slow Self-Propelled Artillery Guns and MLRS launchers down would be a waste of perfectly good Fire Support vehicles. Instead, he had ordered Super 63 and 64 loaded with Smart Bombs, Anti-Ground Missiles and Combat Maces. They would shortly be ready to provide on-call high-altitude air support for the ground forces.

By the time the last of the artificial centiescorps had been attacked and rendered sufficiantly out of commission, the first of the line of robo-wolves were ready to go. These too were sent out on exploratory missions, mapping, recording and identifying.

Meanwhile Ar continued to watch the captured centiescorpions do thier thing within thier cage.

Clairmont:

The hoppers come in low swarming the shields of the tanks. They can not pierce the shields, there are many of them, they are practically on top of the tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, swarming but unable to get in. It is like the tanks are in a locust storm. Many of them ram into the fronts, back, and sides of the tanks shields sometimes knocking themselves unconscious and falling under the treads of the tanks. It is like being slammed repeatedly by flying armored rhinoceros.

Then the firefries, the glowing superheated insects land on the shields. They seem to be sucking the energy directly from the shields into themselves. It makes them glow and crackle very brightly. It is what brought down the forcefield of New Shimizu.

They are bouncing off the plasma shields much like a moth bounces off a lightbulb or lantern. Their rears are glowing brightly like a high intensity flashlight. One of them releases a powerful electrical discharge much like an arc torch at the tanks shield and stops glowing.

The variety of nasty creatures wandering through the jungles of muse is astounding, varied, and frightening. Things that, rend, tear, poison, encase, and eat other things are there in incredible profusion. You manage to get about ten miles in a wide circle before the the centiscorpions and wolf spiders break down.

You catalog a few of them, but some of the centiscorpions and wolf spiders disappear before you can figure out exactly what happened to them.

Your catalog looks like this:

Some of the nastier local wildlife in the ecology of the planet Muse:

The bombardier beetle: This beetle releases a caustic cloud of sticky acid which partially melted and made several wolf spiders nonfunctional.

The horned pill bug: This buffalo sized bug wanders around eating the local vegetation. It has three horns on the front much like a triceratops. It is armored with very heavy chitin plates. Dangerous when aroused, it moves quickly spearing its enemies.

The glow bug: This is a giant glowing bug about a foot long. It doesn't do much, but it looks interesting.

The carrion bug: This bug eats carrion, it has a paralytic bite.

The chameleon bug: This is a mantis like insect, it can naturally change its colors to its surroundings. It is the size of a small cat.


The giant fire ant: These two foot long insects build hives in the trees. They lay claim to a single tree, swarming any creature that approaches too close.

The mega cockroach: What would life be like without a giant poisonous cockroach. This thing will eat anything.

Plants:

The giant venus flytrap: Half plant, half animal, this creature has wide sticky leaves which insects land on and the leaves close.

The carnivorous popper tree: This tree throws its seeds out in a cloud. The seeds are sharp and will embed themselves in animals growing new popper trees.

The death flower: This looks like a sun flower on a fleshy stalk. It is slightly mobile. It spits poisonous seeds at creatures. The seeds embed themselves and grow new death flowers.

The screamer: This is a plant that grows near the death flowers. It looks like the death flower, but it screams. It is inedible.

The Adam Tree: This is the name for the giant trees that grow on Muse.

The underground pitcher plant: This is a plant with a sticky acidic gel which large insects can fall into. Most of it is below the surface.

The Ya-Te-Veo: The thirty foot tentacle tree. This is a tree with covered with long tentacles in profusion, it grabs its prey and pulls it into its maw.

The Audrey Plant: This is exactly what it says, a big toothy flower with whiplike tentacles that pull its prey into its maw.

The burner bush: This bush is coated with a blistering agent. It is bright red.

The giant four leaf clover: one big lucky clover.

Fungi:

Popper balls: These release clouds of spores which infect the skins and lungs growing more popper balls.

Popper mushrooms: These mushrooms grow on exposed flesh similar to the popper balls.

Worms:

The borer worm. This bores into another insect and lays eggs. It will bore into other things as well.

The spiny worm. This giant worm is covered with spines which it can use to throw at things. The spines a are very hard and chitinous capable of piercing armor. It has larger pincers like an earwig at the back.

Soft things:

The beaked tentacle ball, a floating ball with tentacles and a beak which it uses to crack open centiscorpions.

Ar watches them build a burrow with pebbles and dirt. They arrange rocks in patterns before disappearing into the burrows to lay eggs.

They search for seeds in the terrarium trying to move the seeds in front of the burrow hole and tearing up pieces of plants to hide the entrance to the burrow.

The Hoppers seemed to concentrate more on the tanks than the trailing IFV's of each arrowhead formation. Nevertheless, several of the large flying Bugs suicidally rammed the IFV's. Banging on the layered armour heavily, rattling the occupants like coins in a jar. As the majority of the flying bugs clustered on top of the battlescreens, with the firefries following suite, the ACS on top of the trailing IFV's brought their railguns to bear. Bunching heavily together on top of the shields, the bugs made excellent targets.

The railguns spat fire in continuous full auto, silver crackling lightning sweeping at the bugs on top of the tank shields like a firehose while some of the IFV's swiveled their turrets to mimic the technique, while some of the ACS the IFV's had sitting on top of them fired mortars and railguns at the fewer bugs that closed on the far smaller vehicles.

The Grim Reaper ACS suits carried 60mm automortars, the Knight IFV carried two 80mm automortars capable of direct fire. Now, one IFV of each arrowhead brought its mortars to bear, configuring the fire control systems to airburst the streams of grenades only few meters on top of the tanks. And thus the firing began, 80mm Anti-Personnel munitions flying in streams from the turrets of the IFV's to clear their tank brethren.

"Goddamnit! Those damn moth thingies are depleting the 'screens." Corporal Reilly yelped as the swarms of bugs bunched on top of the battlescreens. Which couldnt be healthy for them he quickly surmised, the screen's were running on immense power.

"Yeah, and our fuel cell's while they're at it. John, get the damn CIWS rolling."
Lieutenant Dessaix said as she gazed at the outside view from one of the optical sensors.

"Roger." Sergeant Cody said, flipping open a plastic cover and depressing a switch.

Massing as much as it did, the Templar Main Battle Tank was far too important piece of hardware for the Military to accept one of them being lost to a lucky Anti-Tank missile or single crappy airplane. As such, recognizing the volume they had available and considering the technology they had available, the designers had fitted the MBT with a honest to god Close-In-Weapons-System.

The system comprised of four 10mm Metal Storm Pods and Two Point-Defense Lasers. The entirety of the CIWS was emplaced in the huge turret of the tank, with the Metal Storm pods rolling and elevating on gimbal mounts at the sides and the PDL's on ball-shaped assemblies half-buried within the armored cocoon of the turret at the top of it. As Sergeant Cody flipped the CIWS from "Safe" to "Fire", the system began tracking all detections the DSCC considered a threat. They found plenty of targets. A moment, impossible for a human to measure, before the CIWS opened fire, the battlescreens protecting the Main Battle Tanks disappeared.

The Metal Storm pods erupted to near continuous fire, 10mm hyper-velocity tungsten penetrators going out in volleys. The lasers scythed at the bugs with scalpel thick high-energy beams of coherent light, all the while the shrapnel and explosion after-effects of the automortar fire from the supporting IFV's landed on them from above.

"Watch out for the ammo." Dessaix said to her gunner. The CIWS system expended significant amounts of power and ammunition in prolonged use. At the pace they were going, the Metal Storm pods would be empty before she could brew herself a pot of quick coffee. Or really damn fast.

"Arrow-six to Hammer-Actual. Request status update on overwatch." She to an opened comm channel.

"Arrow-Six, Overwatch in support positions in three minutes."

"Roger Hammer. Out there."

Lieutenant Dessaix hoped that the two assault shuttles coming to take on high-altitude bombing positions would be carrying anti-personnel bombs, and they had really good aim. She chuckled lightly as she realized it was the first time she was actually wishing for someone to start dropping anti-personnel munitions on her positions. What a screwed up Operation.

The ship sent the various bits of information upward to the command ship, thought every so often including a relatively minor price tag to data that would be of the more interesting nature such as on the more dangerous predators or threats.

Meanwhile Ar copied down the patterns and fed them into the computer to look for either linguistic correlation or to see if they matched patterns in various nations, languages and cultural symbology. Perhaps they would provide insight into the manner of operation, intelligence or mental out-look of the bugs.

Clairmont:

About 1/4 of the firefries explode when hit by the 10mm flechettes, it is because they got hit in the thorax, the glowing part of their body where they store the energy they absorb, it is loud, powerful and frightening. The ones hit in other parts of their bodies simply fall off the tanks. The laser fire feeds the power of the exploding firefries. The firefries are designed to absorb heat and energy, their shells function as a heat sink. Many had just came out of the thermobaric explosions pumped full of energy. The explosions tear apart many of the hoppers, leaviing a carpet of crisped buggers on the ground. One or two hoppers are left banging against the remaining tanks. There are are also a few crawling barely alive on the ground with their wings burnt off.

Theao:

Ar watches the centiscorpions carefully. Observing the centiscorpion for language is like comparing a small monkey to a human. There are a few things which you do learn. The bugs appear to communicate by a combination of clicking and chirping, pheromones which the centiscorpion use to mark things as well as use their antennae to check for, and psionics (the psionics of the centiscorptions is a shared species empathy that is limited to their own species). All three combine to make a language which is difficult to translate. The level of language the centiscorpions can understand is simple like the food, burrow, danger, baby, and rock. They might have 50-100 different words but that is it. Simple one word statements without the ability to string things together. The rock arranging is to attract a mate, the prettier the rock, the better the mate. It is like crows collecting shiny objects. The planting behavior is like many ants which grow certain kinds of funguses. The mother centiscorpion carries its babies on its back. The centiscorpions eat the young that are not doing well. The other ones they encourage to fight each other. They hide in their burrow when the person who threw the needles is around.

The heavy tank shook like a terrier as the firefries began blowing up. To those inside it felt like they were back in the war against Imperium, heavy cluster bombs falling around them. Back then though, they had been inside less armored vehicles, which didnt make this any more enjoyable.

"Secondary tracking LIDAR wasted. The hatches to VLS cell's four through seven are fused. We're going to need a damn wrench monkey to get those back on-line." Sergeant Cody said over the heavy concussions.

"Owww! Motherfu...." The defense sysop said as he banged his head hard to the hull.

"Take a note Reilly. Program the damn CIWS to use only Metal Storm on those exploding bastards. PDL on everything else." Dessaix said over the loud banging.

"Yeeaah, changing parameters now."

The tanks plowed through the smoke and pieces of burning foliage, proceeding towards their target. The MBT's had carried the brunt of the attack. Blackened and smoking from the large explosions that had gone off only a few feet off their hulls. The following IFV's had taken damage as well. Some of the ACS troops had been blown off the decks and had been forced to sprint and leap back on to avoid being left behind.

"Arrow-Six, Super Six-Three and Super Six-Four in position." Came a clipped report through Dessaix's comm and she sighed in slight relief. Atleast now they had overhead cover.

"Roger, nice to see you." She replied, honestly.

The Big Eye drones were now following the advance of the Armored Vehicles. Orbiting at high altitude, picking and prodding the areas ahead with every sensor in their disposal to determine if there were any threats there.


OOC: Commonalitarianism, could you give me some advance warning about enemies ahead or advancing on my forces that arent heavily hidden, or visible in some spectrum in such a way that the drones can see them?

The spy eyes pick up smoking pharmaceutical prison farm ruins. These are not heavily damaged. There are many dead bugs in the ruins. You don't see people. It looks like a number of the buildings caved in or were blown up. It looks odd. There are also what looks like several improvised metal towers inside the complex. They read signs of electricity. You see pits lined with sharp objects. Both farms have a kind of empty feeling to them... The forcefields are not up. You can see vehicle tracks leading into and out of the farms. It looks like the buildings have been partially stripped. Many are building are missing windows or doors.

Your spy eyes pick up people at the top of a hill with a large cave entrance. There is a column of bugs moving towards the hill. Some of the bugs look like they have been wounded. It is about half an hour from the farms. There are popper trees surrounding the entrance as well as a thick jungle of plants.

The column is a mix of green warrior bugs, what look like giant armored pill bugs with long horns, several large red beetles, overflying them are a small wing of firefries, and something odd-- wasp bugs with nets. You can see the ground rippling in several places.

You can also pick up a number of dead people where the local wildlife attacked the escaping prisoners.

OOC: This is a "scorched earth" retreat where a few people stay behind they booby trap the farm so as many bugs will die as possible and move into the woods.

The direct approach to the caves is dangerous, the people from the farms have taken a separate path to the entrance. A couple of guards from the prison were interested and crazy enough to do a little exploring and they found a cenote, cave with a deep well.

The mindless drones picked and prodded the pharmaceutical farms with care. Scanning them passively with Infra-Red and Optics. The results weren't promising. Several odd structures had been erected at the farms, structures that certainly did not fit the general layout of the farms. At the same time, the two other drones had picked up the few surviving civilians at the top of a hill, several kilometers away from the farms.

Cosforth rubbed his brow in thought as his screen showed him the civilians the drones had detected. The scans of the pharmaceutical farms provided him with enough Intel of those two objectives to scratch them away from the list of objectives, there wasn't much point to take the ground force there at this point. The hill with the survivors was another matter entirely.

"Hammer-Actual to Arrow-Six. New objectives forwarded to your system. Prioritize safe retrieval of survivors from Objective point Hotel-Oscar."


Down on the ground, the Armored Force had been closing on the pharmaceutical farms steadily. Now they changed their course, heading towards the survivors the Big Eye drones had detected with all haste.

The tanks would be moving into a bug formation headed for the hill. Near the hill the spy eyes pick up thick groves of trees with dense vegetation near them. They can see a large watering hole at the base of the hill. The water is steaming.

The bug formations and the tank would close with each other as they reached the base of the hill, by the spy eyes approximation.

The spy eyes pick up a man with binoculars looking over the hill. He disappears with several others into a cave mouth. There are several men standing at the cave entrance with volt rifles and riot shotguns used to subdue or kill prisoners. There are also what looks like a generator hooked up to three large improvised metal towers. Behind the hill there are six armored prison transport hovertrucks. They look scarred and worn but intact.

While the Scorps scurried around doing thier things, Ar made very careful notes of the landscape, design and appearence that they used to create and disguise thier burrow. She soon sent a message to the various orbital vessels asking for as complete topographical maps as possible. Once she'd gotten as much as was sent her, she began to compare it with her imagery of the centiescorpion nest looking for similarities that might indicate larger nests.

Meanwhile a number of the crew, deathworlders all, began doing recon of the nearby forests and landscapes with an eye to collection samples, specimens and other useful datums which could be later used for practical purposes.

After observing the centiscorps more she notices a change in the structure of the nest. One of the centiscorps is getting larger, its brain and abdomen are enlarging slightly, the young centiscorpions are being pushed around to gather plant seeds like workers, while the regular centiscorpions are guarding the nest like warriors.

The carrier ship sends down several canisters of a terrible smelling concoction labeled spider repellent. It is so noxious that smell passes out when it gets close to the ship.

There is a large hillock near the New Shimizu Megapyramid which looks similar to the centiscorpion mound, it is a low dome. You are not sure what is happening there, but it has to be very significant. Fortifications and reinforcements are crawling over the hill. It can be seen from orbit by now.

Spy satellites focusing on the hump see humans in loincloths with purple thorny growths on their necks. They come into and out of the ground.

Bugs are bringing back straggler humans from the woods around New Shimizu. Some of them are wrapped in what looks like spiderwebbing.

The deathworlders have learned enough from the videos and footage from the spiders to do a number of things. Look all around, up, down, sideways, and occassionally behind in case something jumps out at you. Watch where you place your feet because you could fall into a pitcher plant, step on a wolf spider lair, or place your foot near a borer worm. Stay away from the smaller trees, or giant flowering objects because they might grab you, some of the plants have blister agents so don't touch anything unless you have gloves or know what it is. Look out for popper trees and death flowers, they can kill you from a distance. Travel in pairs, a lone wolf spider robot died much quicker.

Initially, it is not hard to collect specimens, you catch a couple of giant ants, get several small borer worms, successfully bring down a buffalo sized horned pill bug-- guns bounce off its hide but a particle beam rifle works fine, find several flowering plants, pull up a screamer plant, and even manage to uproot a death flower by sneaking up on it from behind and clubbing it into unconsciousness. You also pull up a small giant venus fly trap it is only two feet tall.

Then while you are travelling you run into something particularly nasty, a small colony of six ankhegs a variety of giant armored antlions. Two of them pop up out of tunnels in the ground spitting powerful digestive acid, and another two attempt to tunnel under the deathworlders grabbing them from below pulling them underground, there are two waiting in the tunnels below.

Theao: While you are looking at the topographic maps, you find something very odd. It looks like a natural land formation of a giant beetle under a hill with trees and grass growing on it.

Ar makes notations on both the activities of the centiescorpions as they set up what seemed like a new hive within thier cage. It was potentially going to be quite useful on further dealings with the bug threats. She still sent 'happy thoughts' at the hive every so often.

She also made sure to mark the various instances of oddities in terrain and potential hive sites. An offer for the data was sent up to the command ship requesting the offered price for hive locations.

****************

Meanwhile the various specimine cages fill quite rapidly and the flora and fauna are watched and recorded for further study and practical usages. Since each cage was self-pressurized it made it quite a bit easier to ensure that there were no break outs.

****************

While one of deathworlders got hit by the acidic spray and would certainly need intensive medical treatement, what the unfortunate Ankheg had failed to factor in was that a deathworlder was a person who had been born and raised on a similar world. A world where death was but moments away which bred a people who reacted not with surprise but with violence to shock.

The two surfacing bugs found themselves struck by multiple types of weapon fire from multiple angles. Meanwhile the tunneling bugs dropped four deathworlders armed with mono-molecular blades and would quickly learn the cutting ability of an edge a single molecule thick.

ooc: Assuming you're meaning Ankheg in the D&D sense.

The two unfortunate ankhegs take multiple weapons fire. Their shells are very thick. One of them ends up busted to pieces quickly. The other one ends up spraying acid in multiple locations in its death throes.

In the bug tunnels, it is a matter of who strikes first, bug or man, the bugs are bigger and have a longer reach, but the deathworlders have quicker reactions and better aim. It is close quarters fight or die. The four bugs in the tunnels are lunging at the deathworlders. If the deathworlders do not close and kill, the bugs will spit acid on them.

There are insect shells scattered inside the tunnels, as well as the remains of two of the robot spiders, and a human skeleton with a hat on it.


OOC: These bugs are very similar to the ankhegs in D&D in many ways, but not completely. _____________________________________________________________________________________

Commander Ralk offers you the $5 million for the location of the huge bug structure-- it looks like a brain command center and another $5 million for the described bug shaped hill. Ralk tells you that the bug hill shaped structure is probably a bugger transport, or interstellar organic sleeper ship.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

The queen centiscorpion bug starts feeding a yellow jellyish substance to the baby bugs, the workers stay smaller developing an extra set of limbs and losing their stingers, the other bugs stay the same.

The Ground Force was now making all effort to avoid contact with the main mass of bug forces, instead taking roundabout paths and guided by the Big Eye drones. They were headed towards the surviving civilians they had detected. But there was something else that had now grabbed the attention of both Major Cosforth and the Ground Force local commander, First Lieutenant Dessaix. The Big Eye drones as well as the Switchblade's sensor suite had detected the dome shaped hillock near New Shimizu, as well as the way how the bugs were seeming to be building fortifications around it.

This seemed to be the first fixed bug installation they could pick up, and it warranted further investigation. The drones now directed more attention to the hillock, picking and prodding it with full EM spectrum scans and forwarding the information back to the C3I Pinnace where powerful computers picked the raw data apart and packed it into understandable form.

The site was deemed worthy of further inspection, however the defenses were heavy enough to make Major Cosforth consider his options. He decided that Stealth Recon would be a better choice than direct frontal attack in this case, he forwarded orders to the Ground Force.


One of the IFV's pulled to a halt for a few seconds. Its troop ramp lowered and six troops jumped out. As they exited the armored vehicle, the IFV immediately lurched to motion once more, leaving the six troopers alone. As they stood there in the darkness of the forest, they adjusted their personal adaptive camouflage systems to mimic their surroundings. In essence, the system modified and changed the camouflage patterns the troopers were covered in as the terrain changed. At the same time they switched on a number of deception and cover systems that would go long ways to conceal their presence. Satisfied at their concealment, the troopers moved out. Moving through the forest with haste, using their finely honed instincts and excess of combat experience to their advantage. It would be a relatively short trip to the recon objective.

Clairmont: Avoiding a direct confrontation with the bugs has an interesting effect. The bugs keep moving forward in a straight line. You watch as the popper trees start exploding. They are sending clusters of seeds into the bug formation, killing a number of the warriors. Then the forests start screaming, the screamer plants are wailing. Rapid fire needles spray out of the forests killing some of the flying bugs. The bugs run right into the front area of the cave. Some of the bugs wander into underground pitcher plants. The bugs have entered a death grove. They push through the grove tearing it to pieces.

The grove has slowed up the bugs enough for you to go around the back of the hill and reach the cave at the top of the hill. Below the patch of plants is burning. The bugs are pushing forward to the top of the hill. The improvised metal towers start throwing bolts of raw electricity at the forward line of bugs. You have the high ground.

Clairmont: The scout team moves toward the New Shimizu megapyramid. The area is crawling with buggers. There are patrols of bugs. Small teams consisting of a couple of warrior bugs, some green warrior bugs, and what looks like a cross between a large beetle and a dog are circling through the woods.

You get a short distance closer to the base of the hill. It looks like there are cultivated fields of giant flowers surrounding the base of the hill. Intermixed with the flowers are a variety of small round plants thorny bushes, there is a circular trench which you can see past the flower field.

Not far from where you are, you hear something like a cross between barking and clicking.

Theao: There is a breakout and escape from the specimen cages. The screamer plants screamed so loud that they shattered the terrarium walls. They are crawling very slowly on motile roots and screaming at other plant cages. Two deathflowers are with the screamer plants moving slowly on four motile roots, they shot up the containment field with dart shaped seeds in combination with the screamers sonics to break out. There is also a small tentacle plant crawling around with them. It appears that some of the plant/animal hybrids are a little more mobile than originally thought.

Stealthsuit Team Mont'yr, New Shimizu Megapyramid

The Stealthsuit team had been out of contact with the other Tau forces on the planet for several hours now. Shas'Vre Viorla Honsou was relived when none of the orbital fire had headed for the Megapyramid. His team had been slowly picking its way through the ruins of the city towards one of its collapsed support beams. Honsou hoped to gain entry to a bug tunnel from there.

Looking back, he noticed the same group of bugs that had been following them since the trenches outside the city. It seemed they could detect a trace of the minute EM emmisions from the XV 25 stealthsuits steath field generator, but couldnt localize it. They followed along blindly in the wake of the vetran team, never pinpointing them, never finding them but never giving up either. It was quite frustrating to say the least.

Honsou came up with a plan. Directing his team to hide in the rubble around them, he would let the bugs get close and lay into them with the arm mounted burst cannons. The Burst Cannons fired in much of the same way as the pulse rifles and carbines of the Firewarriors only at a much, much higher firerate. They could lay down over a thousand plasma rounds per minute. The Stealthsuits burst cannons are fitted with experimental silencers that will muffle the sound and make it so that all can be heard is the hissing of venting gases. Unfortinatly the silencers are only good for about ten seconds of solid fire before breaking down and becoming usless, Honsou was relying on the firepower of six burst cannons to take down this group before the silencers burn out.

The bugs approched the centre of the ambush area and stopped confused. The field had stopped moving and was strong here as if stationary and close, but they couldnt see anything. They milled about for a second before starting to pick at the rubble. As one approched near where Honsou was hiding, Honsou jumped up depressed his trigger and shouted fire down the communications collar at his team members.


(OOC - sorry for not posting in a while. My internet died)

Losing his boot to the death-acids of the bug, the man closest to the dying bug lept back to avoid more of the corrosive fluid. Unfortunately neither bug was sufficiantly salvageable.

The blades rose and fell as they were used to slice through out-reaching limbs as the men, and women, closed with the bugs. Targets were visibly sensory organs, carapace segementation and limbs. With even a little luck there'd soon be a large collection of diced Anhkeg bits lying around.

******************

Ralk would get his desired information as soon as the funds were transfered over to the account.

******************

Ar continued to chart the changes, developments and actions of the bugs.

Theao: The bugs in the tunnels do the opposite, they have huge jaws, they go for the center or the head, hoping to clamp down biting off a head, or crushing internal organs. The results are that the death worlders get to the exposed organs easier, but are in the clampdown range of the closing bug jaws possibly being wounded or dead. The ankhegs die with their bodies relatively intact.

Ralk wires over the money $10 million real time credits, the current value is $1= $1.08 nationstates dollar on the currency exchange. 10,800,000 credits.

Viorla: You have little trouble destroying the larger bugs following you, they are mostly big warrior bugs and easy to destroy being big targets. However there were also a group of smaller two foot fire ant bugs mixed in with the larger bugs, these things are both fast and small. Most die from the fire, but a few latch on to your armor close, there are ten of them and six of you. They are chewing on your armor trying to get through. Their bite is acidic and causes swelling if they do get through.

OOC: Congratulations on getting your internet back. Feel free to do a bit of noncombat background story if you want concerning the missing time.

The bugs mandibles were treated in the same way as a limb being met with blade. With the exposure of the softer underbelly, additional knives of the conventional sort were thrown with the off-hand while the mono-blades were used to fend off, and remove, parts of the Anhkeg.

"Hmm, I wonder how those things react if we just drive through..."

"You really want to try Ell-tee?"

"Nah, better safe than sorry. Load up canister, lets blow ourselves a hole."

The four arrow formations of armored vehicles lined up, targeting their guns at the plants that encircled the hill that they had taken up as their target. Tank guns barked, IFV autocannons and mortars spat in rapid fire, tearing at the suspicious plants that circled the hill that was the objective of the ground force. As a hole would begin to form up, the Armored units would put themselves to gear and accelerate through.

They were now on a straight course headed towards the last known position of the civilians the drones had picked up. All units of the ground force kept close eye on their surroundings. IFV Turrets swiveled from side to side, scanning for threats and ready to fire at any second.


Elsewhere, the team of six troopers were slowly moving through the dense foliage. Avoiding contact with any bugger's they saw, they moved slowly, inching towards their target of New Shimizu and the Bugger compound for the lack of better word.

Hand signals were the only method of communication used, no extra risks were taken as the troops continued. They kept their rifles at readiness, scanning their sides and rear as they moved for threats. As they came closer to the main bugger forces, the rear trooper pair began emplacing tiny beacons at tactically important points. They held within a passive sensor suite, including a system capable of detecting ground vibration and localizing the source. If necessary, the beacons could be used as reference points for Ramrod strikes.

Clairmont: The infantry fighting vehicles and tanks tear forward after blowing a hole through the jungle. Some of them hit deep holes filled with a sticky digestive glue, giant underground pitcher plants designed to catch giant insects. They are covered pits ranging from four feet to ten feet wide. The other plants are mostly torn up and smoking from the mortar, machine gun and other fire. There are a few bedraggled screamer plants wailing away among the ruins of the other plants. Your tanks run over the seeds from the popper plants making loud bangs but not doing much else. You can see a few of the surviving Audrey plants* rustling around behind some large boulders, occassionally peaking out.

The hidden men are very careful. A large tentacle tree attempts to send out feelers to grab one of the men snaking them along the ground, but your men see it. It seems that the hybrid half-plant/half-animals might be able to sense you. In another attempt, a giant spider tries to fall on one of the men from above dangling from a thread.






* They look kind of like the plant from Little Shop of Horrors.

The tanks plow over the holes with less difficulty, their drive train split to four separate tracks is able to adapt and cope to harsh terrain, allowing them to pull themselves off the holes without getting stuck. The IFV's however have only double set of tracks, and three of them get stuck to the holes and traps, forcing the Main Battle Tanks to halt their advance and tow the smaller vehicles free.

This however costs time, and as the arduous task of getting the whole armored force across the traps is complete, the vehicles start climbing the hill, determined to reach their objective.


Specialist Romar stopped as he spotted the tentacle like thing sneaking up on the group. He signaled a halt, pulling his monomolecular combat blade he slashes the tentacle in half. He did not however want to stay and see how the creature /plant would answer to the attack. He quickly tried to think how it had detected the squad. The six troopers would be very difficult to spot in the visual spectrum, and they would be radiating incredibly little of any EM emissions that would betray them. However, they were still making sound, even if barely audible, and they would be generating ground vibration. He picked up a small canister shaped object from his tactical vest, quickly configuring the settings to his liking.

As he dropped it to the ground, the sensor decoy commenced vibrating strongly, while screaming sound like a wail began to emanate from it at low frequencies. Romar couldnt know if the decoy would spoof the plant/creature. Signaling the squad to proceed, he didnt really wish to stay and test his luck.

Only an instant after Specialist Romar had avoided the previous hazard, Corporal Foch's helmet displayed an alarm, a proximity alarm to be exact. He turned his head to look above, the direction where the system was telling him the threat was. As he saw the giant spider that had been dropping towards him, for an instant he froze in sheer terror. The next instant, two decades of honed combat instincts took over. He aimed his silenced 10mm carbine at the creature and opened fire in full auto while dodging to the left. Specialists O'Neill and Paulson saw Foch's action, and the target he was shooting at. They took aim and fired as well. A trio of heavily muffled series of gunshots came to being, nearly a hundred rounds going out in less than two seconds.

Theao: Here is how I might imagine it.

The knife fight is close and deadly:

1) The first fighter successfully spins at the waist drives a knife into the Ankhegs eye into its brain with one hand and and turns the knife blade in the other hand outward cutting off the ankhegs mouth mandible. The ankheg is finished.

2) The 2nd knife fighter strikes an ankheg between its armored plates, the knife gets stuck between the plates and is pulled from his hand. The ankheg rears back. He throws two knives into its underbelly. Then the ankheg spits acid at him.

3) The third fighter is trying to move in quick. The ankheg strikes forward, she slashes the knife upward removing several feelers and leaving a deep cut in its lower jaw. She cuts with other knife removing several appendages. The ankheg pitches forward unconscious and bleeding. It is falling directly at her from above.

4) The fourth ankheg is toe to toe with the deathworlder. They are both striking at the same time. The deathworlder is faster, it cuts several appendates off as the ankheg tries to repeatedly bite the deathworlder. The dealthworlder burries several throwing daggers in the ankheg. Then the deathworlder cuts off its two main antennae. The ankheg in one last lunge gets its mandibles around something of the deathworlder.*

* This can be anything, its foot, its hand, its fingers, its head, its torso. A piece of the body.

OOC: I try to let the player decide the results as much as possible. Real fencing matches are decided very quickly whether it is broadsword, epee, or saber.

A general rule amongst those born to a deathworld was that you aided your comrades. With his bug rendered quickly deceased, he looked over at his comrades. Seeing one in danger of squishification, he lunged while at the same time drawing a micro-grenade. Rolling with his comrade the Anhkeg found itself taking the grenade in its belly.


The acid was met by clothing which was quickly shed as it dissolved, thought a number of acid burns were quickly becoming evident. Diving into a what looked like a forward roll mixed with an attempt at a gold medal floor routine, he appeared directly in front of the bug. Grabbing the stolen blade, he swung his feet out so his entire weight was on the blade, and with both the sharpness and weight, it would slice thought carapace like a knife throught butter.


The final insect had both the fortune and misfortune to ensnare the leg of its opponent. The fortune for it could deal a serious injury, the misfortune as it brought its head well within range of its foe's weapons. With a blow capable of crushing a ram's skull, the deathworlder smashed his fist, and blade down into the head of the ankheg.

ooc: I know, I fence. However I've never heard of a broadsword being used for fencing. The three blades are the foil, saber and epee. A broadsword is designed for smashing throught armour, not piercing or slashing as are fencing weapons.

Theao:

1) The microgrenade goes off killing the ankheg, rolling out of the way with his companion.

2) The second person grabs the blade pulling down, ripping a hole in the side of the ankheg, it falls sideways twitching then stops moving.

3) The knife and fist don't quite kill the ankheg, they knock it out cold however. It closes to the bone, not quite severing the leg, then opens its jaws wide unconscious.

OOC: Forgive me, SCA-- The Society for Creative Anachronism fencing-- this can be a rather odd hobby, is based on mensur or schlager blade fencing, they like to call it broadsword fencing. You can still learn rapier fencing, and there are still traditional schools of fencing. Some of the historical recreationists will probably know where to learn this stuff. This is a treatise on some of the older forms. I tried it for a few months, but it wasn't quite to my liking.

http://www.musketeer.org/manuals/diGrassi/contents.htm

With the insects down, or out as was the case for most, medical work was quickly preformed on the injured as they made the way back to the ship. While some were aiding the walking wounded, most were involved in bringing the unconsious bug back for examinations and testing.

ooc: Ah, you meant the SCA, makes sense now.

Theao: The big bug paces its cage, clawing at the ground. It waves its antennae.

Ar watches the centiscorpions. The workers smooth out the walls spraying them with a kind of regurgitated paste making them very neat. The warriors wander around the cage spraying marker pheromones to show their territory.

Meanwhiles the escaped plant/animal hybrids are trying to sneak out of the ship-- the two deathflowers, the screamer, and the small tentacle tree. They aren't attacking anyone, just shuffling around in the corners and waiting for doors to open so they can crawl out. They are fairly easy to spot and not very fast moving.

Clairmont:

As you climb to the top of the hill, you see a column of bugs moving to meet you. All of the smaller bugs have died in the death grove, the warriors and the fire ants. Coming up the hill are a variety of very large bugs

There are ten huge armored bugs charging up the hill These are the same size as the smaller plasma bugs, a good 15 meters of armored bug. They are surprsingly fast with a huge number of legs.. They are going to attempt to overturn tanks or armored vehicles and tear them open. http://www.playsintraffic.com/images/ohmu.jpg *

There are eight tanker bugs, they are also heavily armored with large spines growing from their backs. They start spraying a high pressure stream of a burning napalm like fluids. Theses are also huge. Each is a good ten meters long. One of your men destroyed one in a tunnel near the command bunker.

Following them are a good 3 dozen wasp like ripplers. They are fast moving, they open their mouths wide and starting spitting a steady stream of acidic barbs strong enought to melt plastic and steel at the infantry fighting vehicles.

The dozen remaining firefries head directly at three large metal towers attached to a shield generator. They are hit by flaring lightning, six of them pop and explode. There are men standing behind the shield generator. Three of them are firing at the ripplers with machineguns from the watchtowers in the prison camps.*

The earth is rumbling you can feel the sharp tremors of tunneling worms.

* The towers look like the bug zappers in Starship Troopers 2.
* This is a picture of the Ohmu from Nausicaa Valley of the Winds. I thought it might fit in this setting.



The small team moves closer to the bug hill. They can hear bark clicking a good distance behind them then it stops. They skirt past what is a recognizable wolf spider den and avoid several poisonous skin contact bushes. They are on the way to the huge hill. As they come closer to the hill. They notice the area around the hill has been cleared of regular vegetation.

There are fields of screamers, death flowers, and small round plants. In the distance in the middle of the field you can see an overseer bug, a hovering giant hopper with two massive lumps near its head. It is clicking at a man in a sack cloth robe with a large spiny purple growth on his neck. There are three warrior bugs with the overseer bug. Several humans who are naked except for loincloths are digging in the ground planting things. They all have the purple growth on their throats. The man in the sack cloth robe goes over to one of the people and grabs her pushing her towards one of the warrior bugs. The lady appearing cowed follows the warrior bug into a hole in the middle of the field.

Viorla:

As you are crushing the remaining fire ants, you notice a big hole next to one of the beams. The hole is interesting, it looks like there were once steel reinforced beams at the edge of the hole. These are melted. The tunnel looks perfectly smooth almost like it is coated with a thin layer of plastic. It is very dark. You can feel heated air coming from the tunnel. It smells slightly sulfurous as well.

Every so often the Anhkeg would get some vegetative and animal-esq material inserted into its cell to give it something to do other than pace.

Save for some areas which had been designed to serve as windows so crew could observe prisoners and discourage escapes, the scorps would find they could cover wide amounts of thier enclosure with thier goo.

While the plants got air of a kind they were use to as well as periodic sprays of nutrative mist and water, the doors to the cages they occupied were left untouched as plants didn't need much care, even mobile ones.

Theao:

Ar notices that many of the plants are of the insect eating kind, the venus fly traps, the tentacle trees, and the pitcher plants. They seem to be of a different genus than normal a hybrid of plant and animal. They are hungry for animal or insect protein. You also notice that some of their slightly radioactive, the death flowers and the screamer seem to leach heavy metals from the soil into their stems removing zinc, lead, uranium and salts into them.
There are of course numerous normal plants as well.

The ankheg starts arranging the plant material into a big nest which it sits in occassionally, waiting for prey to be placed in the cage so it can pounce on it.

As the large bugs approached the Armored column that had now reached the top of the hill, the tanks took quick action. Infantry debarked from the IFV's while the ACS leaped off from them. Having dropped off their occupants, the IFV's joined the tanks. They began to seek any cover that would allow them to reach hull-down positions, providing the enemy with the least amount of target profile while maintaining the capability to fire.

The Infantry and the ACS did the same, seeking whatever cover they could find while heavy weapons teams set up, rifle squads took out whatever anti-vehicle weaponry while command personnel shouted orders over the commandnet.

Even before the Infantry and the ACS got ready, the Tanks and IFV's were already opening fire. 180mm Linear Accelerator Guns and Autocannons barked in rapid succession, Computerized Fire Control systems creating perfect firing solutions on the approaching enemy. Man and machine alike worked together in perfect cohesion.

The Tanks had switched over to using HESH rounds. Although the tungsten APFSDS rounds had more raw penetration power, the Fire Control Systems had deduced the HESH rounds to be more effective against the bugs. On impact, the heavy shells would spread a disk of C11 compound explosive on the surface of the target. The delayed-action fuse would then detonate this disk of high-explosive. The result on armor usually was that the shockwave would propagate through armor layers, causing flakes of metal to spall off the armor's interior surface. On living beings, the result usually with lesser caliber HESH rounds was more messy.

The IFV's were forced to fall back mainly on their autocannons, having no rounds onboard for the automortars that would have much in the way of armor-piercing capabilities. They did however carry four ATGM's a piece, equipped with plasma warheads for piercing armor. It was an expensive way to kill bugs however, but the IFV crews used what they had.

Meanwhile the Infantry and ACS were starting to give their own contribution to the defense. The IFV's had each carried a six man team even before picking up the survivors of Lieutenant Foxworth's rifle platoon. Now, heavily re-enforced, the Infantry squads opened fire. In some cases with Light ATGM's, and in a few cases with heavier, two-man team carried Heavy ATGM's.

The ACS found that their mainstay rifles would be of little use against these massive bugs. Since most of their number carried only those rifles, they now began aiming at any weak spots in the bugs they could find while the three Hypervelocity Missile Launcher toting troopers went to action.


The six man team had come as close as they dared, laying low in the foliage, they observed the bug encampment with interest. The squad leader keyed an uplink into operation, sending the datastreams from the helmets of the six troopers back to orbit to the Command Pinnace where the computers and human analysts could digest the information.

They would remain as long as they could, but would immediately fall back to the pickup point if it seemed that the bugs were on to them. They werent in the regular Armed Forces anymore, all of them wanted to live to cash in their paychecks.


Major Cosforth watched the real-time feed from the reconnaissance team with interest. Obviously, they had found something the bugs would consider important. And whatever was important to them, would be of interest to Cosforth and most certainly to the Commonalitarianism authorities present in the system.

He keyed the datafeed to an outgoing link, directing it to the Commonalitarianism Command Carrier while simultaneously opening an adjacent comm link as the data was streamed to the Command Carrier.

"This is Cosforth. I figured you would want to see this. Any information on what is going on in this bug encampment and of what importance it is to the buggers? My boys down on the ground probably hope that there is a bonus for getting this information."

The forward charging bugs keep coming, their armor is a biopolymer coating over at least a foot of heavy bioceramic, much denser than even the hoppers. The autocannon rounds ricochet off the big charging front line bugs. What stops three of them are several direct hits to the eyes with the plasma warheads and atgms.

It looks like the 180 MM linear accelerator cannons have punched about halfway to three quarters of the way through the shells with their chargers. Some of the linear accelerator cannon shells have left furrows and not dug very deep, the armor is both sloped and slightly rounded, it caused a few of them to slide off before exploding. There are score marks from the heat of the plasma warheads, in places the ceramic is glowing hot. There is a slight smell of burning meat.

One of the seven remaining front line armored bugs lands on top of the front row tank, it weighs as much as three bull elephants, 18,000 kg and is doing a good 60 kph, its mouth contains many hooked mandibles designed to scoop food into it, underneath it are hundreds of sharp tearing legs coated with bioceramic, and a very large number of tentacles which it uses to seek out any people on or around the tank seeking to crush them, or lift them in the air smashing them into the tank. The six others are in point blank range, their tentacles are coming out.

Four of the tanker bugs explode in gouts of flame. Their armor is not heavy being of an older generation. Two of the remaining four spit high pressure streams of a sticky napalm like fluid at the front row of tanks and two spit streams at the infantry fighting vehicles.

The four living firefries are busy destroying the shield generator at this point. The pillars have gone silent and the civilians have retreated into the cave.

The rippler bugs are shifting and dodging the autocannon fire, spitting their acidic darts in a steady machine gun like stream from a decent distance away, many of the darts do not hit because of the distance, but it becomes harder to hit them. The fight with them lasts until they have run out of acidic darts to spit at the IFVs and troops. 18 of them are dead before they retreat.

You can hear rumbling in the ground below the front line of tanks.

________________________________________________________________

Your men watch the scene unfolding in front of them. You take close up pictures of the overseer bugs and the slaves. It is clear the man in the robes is a collborator, he is doing most of the ordering. The people in loin cloths have simple tools to work in the fields, trowels, shovels, seeds, plants, and baskets. The purple growths if you focus closely on them make clicking, chirping sounds and let out small puffs of steam.

You relay the information to Ralk and his team. After only a few seconds Ralk comes back with some grave news, the overseer bug appears to be a cross between a brain bug and a hopper, the bugs now have field commanders of some type which they didn't have before. Not only that, but they can communicate with human beings something which they could only do with psi in the last war. The Commonalitarianism does not have any way to directly communicate with the bugs yet, they are working on it with Ar, another team of mercenaries.

At the end of the last war bugs interrogated humans with psionics, now it appears they are capable of enslaving human beings, there were some examples of human beings used as livestock. We are not sure what is happening. We will provide a bonus of $2 million real time credit chips for the information, we would also like to capture an overseer bug, it might answer a lot of questions, as well as get one of the humans with the purple growths.

Then you see something stranger. A small group of green warrior bugs returns from the woods with a human wrapped in webbing, there are four dugs with them, they look like a dog shaped bug with extra legs. It is disconcerting. Ralk tells you that there were attempts in the last war to use mammalian dna by the bugs, the dug may be an example of this. A live dug would be very useful.

Noting the very faint, and difficult to interpret yearnings of the pseudo-plants, Ar informed the people involved with the various moniter and care duties to ensure that rat analogs creatures were occasionally released into the plant cages.

The anhkeg eventually got its meal in the form of a critter that was suspiciously rabbit like, for all its lack of rabbit mannerisms.

Theao: The rats don't last long, the plants exude a sweet smell like honey which draws the rats in. They are consumed quickly.

The ankheg plays with the rabbit chasing it into a corner then eats it.

"Crap. I'd pay the heavens for a SheVa gun now." Sergeant Cady cursed as he sent another round downrange, blowing a part off one of the massive bugs, which just kept coming.

"You and me both Sergeant. Change fire plan, alternating SABOT and HESH."
Lieutenant Dessaix said. The HESH rounds alone just werent having the effect they needed to knock out this bug armored charge.

Cady tapped in the changed fire plan to the fire control computer. The autoloader would now first load an arrow of tungsten wrapped in a plastic sheath that would fall off as the round left the barrel. The APFSDS rounds were the ultimate armor piercer's. Right after the SABOT would leave the barrel, the autoloader would load a HESH right after it. In roughly 3 seconds, the gun could fire an APFSDS and a HESH in a row, with the HESH targeted to the same spot as the armor piercing tungsten arrow that had preceded it. This would hopefully blow a hole to the armor of the armored bugs, leaving the HESH round to punch through that hole and detonate inside.

The burning napalm-like substance was a minor nuisance to the armor of the IFV's and Tanks, however it did make targeting more difficult as the external sensors were covered in the stuff and began to heat up. Targeting efficiency fell.

Arrow-6 had time to fire a single double shot of APFSDS and HESH before an alarm began to scream, the strong unusual vibrations beneath the tanks having been determined by the Defense System Central Computer to be a threat.

"All Arrow units! Back up to secondary positions!" Dessaix bellowed over the Commandnet.

The armored vehicles threw their transmission's into reverse, backing further up the hill from their primary fighting positions to the secondary positions they had selected. Only moments after Dessaix had screamed her order, a massive bug from her worst nightmares landed on top of Arrow-8 which was still backing up. The crew of the MBT triggered their CIWS systems, but the lasers and metal storm seemed to have little to no effect on the huge creature.

Behind the tanks, the infantry and ACS were pulling back to their secondary positions. Five unlucky troopers were only a bit too late. Two of them were scooped right into the hooked tentacles of the creature on top of Arrow-8, screaming in pain as the creature hauled them away. Another trooper had one of the hooked tentacles slash one arm cleanly off, but managed to survive due to quick reactions of his squad and the medic. Two more riflemen died, burning from the napalm and penetrated by the acidic rapid fire from the rippler bugs.



"They want us to do what?!" Corporal Ibanez sub-vocalized to her squadmates. Major Cosforth had just forwarded Ralk's words that capturing one of the dog-like bugs and the Overseer would be worth quite a bit. The problem was, that for only six troops with relatively light weaponry, it would be near impossible with the number of bugs present near the dug's and the Overseer.

"You heard Ibanez. We're going to give it a shot, however we'll have Super-Six Four ready to pick us up in eighty-seconds if it looks like a fubar. I want Romar, and you to assemble the fifties, while the rest of us go and plant some explosives around this bug hill to try and create a distraction. Some sensor jammer's might also be useful, either to distract or to immobilize the bugs." Staff Sergeant Hernandez said. He didnt really believe it could be done, but he would try nonetheless.

"That's your plan?!" Ibanez replied in near disgust. It wasnt even a plan, it was a gobble-up in her view.

"Yeah, when the explosives go off, and if the bug's go and investigate them, we'll move. Romar and ýou will support us, sniping off any bugs that might be covering the overseer and immobilize one of the dug's. Foch's will deploy the sensor jammer grenades with delayed fusing around the hill, and when we charge he will be lobbing a few of them on the necks of the Overseer and whatever bugs are left there. Any questions?"

"Yeah, what happens when it all hits the fan?" Specialist Romar asked.

"Then Super-Six Four will wape the area around the hill and pick us up if we're still alive." Hernandez replied.

"Any more questions? Ok, let's go and do it."

The team dispersed, still moving extremely quietly and stealthily. Despite the heat of the discussion that had been going only moments ago, not a whisper of it could have been heard by anyone other than the team thanks to the sub-dermal transceiver's which allowed the team to sub-vocalize everything they wanted to say.

Four more of the huge bugs are torn to pieces, the tungsten sabot rounds blow holes through the already damaged armor. They stop letting out high piercing whistles and clicks thrashing on the ground. One of them is the giant bug on top of the damaged tank. It starts thrashing around trying to rip the tank to pieces in its death throws.

There are three living giant bugs, they have made it to the tanks--

In two instances, the 180mm guns go off near point blank, sending both a HESH and a sabot round into the bugs less than 2 meters from the tanks, the bugs are much faster than expected going between 60-80 KPH. Also two of the plasma ATGMs go off at close to the same distance. There is a backwash of HESH and plasma as the bugs try to ram into tanks headfirst and knock them over.

The third bug manages to ram into a tank from the side trying to roll it over, it made a circular motion on the hill. Its tentacles are out trying to grab any open hatch or person it can get.

The tanker bugs attempt to escape, two of are destroyed by tank fire and two disappear into holes in the ground further down the hill.

The backing up of the infantry fighting vehicles is fortunate, what look like four worms come out of the ground, these are huge and off white, they open their maws, fast moving jungle spiders and blister bugs pour out of the open jaws. The jungle spiders attempt to spit a gewpy webbing as they rush forward, the blister bugs are about six foot high, they are very long legged bugs, they try to get up and close and vomit acid over the troops and IFVs.

Clairmont:
While you are planting the explosives, five dugs pick up the scent of the explosives, they are barking and clicking with three green warrior bugs coming directly at the area where you are currently located. The dugs are sweeping their heads back and forth, sniffing at the air. The field is wide enough that you have a good distance between you and the dugs about 300 meters. The wind is blowing from your back toward the center of the field and the air is slightly moist. The dugs are not moving fast.

The overseer bug starts clicking she has a dozen warrior bugs surround her, she follows after the dugs cautiously, leaving a 10 meter gap between the first group. Most of the warrior bugs are green with large thoraxes.

Again, a message is sent to Sharp's vessel with a request for a 'prison' transfer for some of the bugs, including the anhkeg but not the florals or centiescorps.

Ralk takes the command line. He sends down a transport with a set of special cages for the bugs and some of the plants. It looks like a clear plastic cube floating inside a force field. You can see into the cube from all directions. It is like a bubble inside a bubble. The bugs are loaded onto the transport.

Theao: Biting the hand that feeds you...

Some of the larger plants are quite hungry, they are following around the edges of the cages pressing their flowers and tentacles against the glass whenever a crew member passes.

Eventually the death flower attempts to wait behind several other plants until the rats are let into the cage for the plant/animal hybrids to feed on. As soon as the cage is opened it attempts to spit seeds at the person who is letting the rats into the cage. Little puffs of purplish fog come from the death flower as five three inch long needle like seeds shoot out of the death flower coated with a paralytic venom. These will take root in the person slowly if they successfully hit them.

The florals 'excessive' hunger was picked up by those crew who monitered the various creatures that hadn't been sent up the line and plant life. This time, with the pseudo-rats were some of the pseudo-rabbits that had feed the anhkeg.

The plant's lack of an efficiant method of sight ensured its attempts to bite the hands that fed it were futile. As all the cages were designed with a remote access triple air-lock and the goal of keeping innovative and dangerous criminals in, the set-up made it next to impossible to both escape or serve as a threat when food, water or other matter was brought to the subjects.

The spines clinked harmlessly against the middle door as the inner gate opened to release the plants meal.

The death flowers seem a bit happier, they fire seeds into the rabbits paralyzing them, the other deathflowers move the rabbits to round piles of dirt, roots from the seeds pass into the ground through the rabbits and small death flowers start growing.

The death flowers also seem to be tending the other flowers a bit, removing excess dead leaves, and other minor things. They are herding the tentacle trees with their motile roots to form a kind of circle around the death flowers.

The "Ya Te Veos" or tentacle trees catch some of the rabbits eating them. They grow a little bit bigger.

They have moved several small trees to the center of the circle. The trees have big oval pods growing at the ends of the branches.

Theao: Ar sees many examples of clusters of the trees with giant pods with limbs when examining the map. They seem to form groves that are widely separated. There is one such grove about three miles from the ship. The central tree is 200 meters tall. Examining the topographic maps, she notices that there are examples of truly giant central trees about 4-6 kilometers high. These are sending seeds through the upper atmosphere into space.

As the bug above Arrow-8 began trashing in its death throes, the tank rocked. Its claws clanged heavily against the multi-layered, incredibly thick armor but ultimately failed to penetrate the main plating. The primary anti-air fire control radar however was not as sturdy and came apart, as did both of the Main Battle Tanks Metal Storm pods.

Lieutenant Dessaix thanked the maker that the HESH rounds had a minimum arming distance, the problem was that they were now punching through the bugs and exploding once they were already out, doing less damage. But in the same time reducing the damage the tanks took from their own ammunition. However the ATGM blast-waves were still annoying, even though the MBT's were proof against anything else but a direct hit to the side or rear armor from them.

All the tanks had their hatches firmly closed and the crew of Arrow-4 was safe from the attempts of the bug that had rammed them. The crew of the tank had already threw their vehicle to full reverse, managing to stay upright thanks to the immense mass and width of the armored vehicle. Attempting to pull back from the bug that had charged them, they were already lining up their main gun for a second shot with SABOT.


As the tanks attempted to start properly backing away, the IFV's had already managed to reach their secondary fighting positions and were firing at full auto with both mortars and autocannons at the worms that had appeared from the ground and the swarms of smaller bugs that had appeared from their maws. The Infantry and ACS behind them had set up behind whatever cover they could find and were adding their efforts to the fray, the HVM launchers of the ACS firing at the bugs still alive and attacking the tanks while those with lighter weapons concentrated on the smaller bugs that the huge worms had brought forth.



As the troopers who had been planting the explosives noticed the few bugs approaching, they quickly left the explosives and primed them, ready to go off upon receiving a signal on the correct frequency followed by the correct code. They backed away to safe distance and hit the dirt, aiming their rifles at the bugs approaching the explosives and ready to set them off.

Staff Sergeant Hernandez was streaming the data from her TacHelmet to the rest of the squad, who quickly switched fighting positions with the snipers now ready to open fire on the bugs covering the overseer and two of the runners ready to make a smash and grab on the overseer.

As the lead group of bugs came close enough to the explosives, Hernandez sent the signal to the detonators to set them off. A staccato ripple of booms shattered the air, as first the C11 charges went off and only microseconds after the Anti-Personnel mines detonated, sending hundreds of heavy metal balls towards the lead group of bugs at supersonic velocities. Nearly simultaneously the snipers opened fire with the heavy semi-automatic .50 caliber rifles they had unpacked and assembled. Each had been loaded with depleted uranium rounds, not environmentally friendly but effective at killing, they were solely targeting the bugs covering the overseer.

To yet make things more chaotic to the bugs, Corporal Foch activated the two sensor jammers he had had time to place. They began a deafening scream at low frequencies, while emitting confusing EM signals and generally attempting to make a large part of the spectrum of emissions detectable by living beings a dizzying mess.

A message was sent to Sharp that it might be his best interest to drop a few meteors on the various groves as it seemed they were launching pods of unknown purpose and use into space. The message however requested they hold off on destroying them until after they were investigated.

There is one giant living bug left after all the rounds. The one attacking from the side manages to climb atop the tank while it is backing up. It is basically sitting on top of the tank. Its tentacles are searching for something to tear apart on the tank. It tries to claw at the tank tracks, and rip open anything it can.

The other two which had charged smash into the tanks and die from the rounds. They will have continued momentum however and end up pushing the tanks hard with a mass of 16,000 kilograms going at 60 kph.

Firing the mortars and automatic weapons at the huge worms blows big chunks out of them. The worms however do not stay behind, they burrow back into the ground. One is left blown open from mortar fire and HVM fire.

The jungle spiders are surprisingly agile and fast, capable of jumping short distances, about half are chewed up by the automatic weapons fire, but it is hard to hit them without focused aiming, most still get a chance to spit large gobs of webbing at the troops attempting to tangle them up. They are moving into close combat distance.

The blister bugs have light armor, the rockets blow them to bits, but it takes a few shots from the soldiers weapons to bring them down. They vomit a super strong acid capable of melting steel when they get close to the troops or IFVs.

It would have been close combat with blister bugs and jungle spiders if you hadn't backed up.
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The explosives tear apart the first group of dugs and bugs completely. The fifty caliber uranium rounds are effective but the bugs are huge, a good 3 meters tall, so it takes a few well placed rounds to bring them down. With the cross fire, eight of the bugs go down. The sonic and em scrambler disorients the overseer bug, it starts making a zigzag pattern on the ground. Following the overseer are the four attendant warrior bugs who also seem a bit disoriented.

The scramblers are attracting the bug patrols of dugs and warrior bugs. You can see them in the distance moving towards your position. Also several of the flowers start screaming it is quite loud, about as loud as a police siren. There are five purple death flowers planted not far from the screamers.* They turn towards your position opening their flowers.
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* It seems that the bugs are taking the native wildlife and genetically modifying it so it is more dangerous than its natural variants. These deathflowers are bigger and are a vivid shade of purple and black unlike their more natural counterparts.

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A shuttle is sent out to capture one of the seeds. It is very hard on the outside, embedded in the inner shell are a variety of insect eggs, plant seeds, and bits of ooze and slime, they are in a kind of biological preservative fluid. It is an interesting mix of different species eggs and seeds. The seeds accelerate as they leave the planet very slowly and pick up speed.

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As the last living huge bug began to tear at the tank with all its might, something that military men and women called "Golden BB" occurred, one of its tentacles managed to jam and subsequently break forward-right track of Arrow-3, with painful consequences to the creature. The track sprung loose, leaving the drive wheels rolling without managing to gain much in the way of traction. Luckily, the Templar's had four track housings, so losing one individual track would not mobility kill such a vehicle. However, it did reduce their mobility quite a bit. The creature also managed to break the primary sighting mount of the tank's gunner, forcing him to use the backup with lesser capabilities.

First Lieutenant Dessaix's tank bucked hard as the two dead bugs slammed hard into it. While the impacts would not penetrate the armor even in the best of circumstances, they did manage to jam the rear left track housing gimbal, a problem that would be time-consuming to fix on the field and would reduce the tank's mobility in the rough terrain forest.

Even as the tank's struggled with the bug armored assault, the worms that had brought forth the bug "infantry" so to speak, vanished back to the ground. The infantry and ACS had managed to assemble in their secondary fighting positions, but in some cases sticky webbing caught troops. When the ACS became trapped in these webs, they simply cut themselves free with their monomolecular combat blades, the light infantry required more doing to get free.

The jungle spiders were troublesome, their quick movements made targeting for the light infantry trickier as their TacHelmet attached ballistic computers attempted to compute aiming solutions. The ACS fared better, their aim was adjusted automatically by their targeting computers. But the horde of bugs still closed.

Two IFV's had been hit by the super strong acid from the blister bugs. A single hit failed to do much damage, but the sheer amount of the incoming fire had managed to render mobility and firepower damage to both of the armored vehicles.



Staff Sergeant Hernandez noted some of the bugs coming towards their position as the jammers seemed to attract them. Swift, but stealthy change of position helped and soon the team was in position to make a quick run for the overseer when the moment was right. Hernandez signaled Ibanez to get ready. The sniper switched clips to stun ammunition. With far lower muzzle velocity and kinetic impact, the rounds would only kill at extreme close distance and even then only if the creature or human had a low body mass. The rounds would upon impact release an electric shock, and an expertly crafted nannite/chemical paralyzation agent. Having loaded the stun rounds, Ibanez took aim and fired at the overseer.

As the recon team prepared to grab the overseer, Assault Shuttle callsign Super-64 was screaming down from the heavens to their positions. Ready for a quick combat dustoff once it hit the zone where the team was. Its gunners were in positions and prepared to pour fire at any bugs that would jeopardize the extraction. The shuttle was still high in the skies, coming down from the stratosphere, but would be in position in matter of minutes.

The jungle spiders are in close, any troopers that are still webbed, they attempt to hop off with into the jungle. The other ones they attempt to bite with their poisonous jaws.

The blister bugs concentrate on spraying the infantry fighting vehicles, only attacking those troopers that are very close to them.

The overseer bug takes several hits falling to the ground. It is not moving. There are still four bugs wandering around not far from the overseer. These bugs are disoriented.

The five tall purplish black death flowers start spitting modified seeds, these are a good three inches long coated with a strong paralytic venom. The screamers are screaming much louder. The flowers can detect bioelectricity, electricity, electromagnetisim and the metal content in the suits, especially heavy metals. The flowers sense the humans as a kind of multishaded energy and heat pattern-- a big glowing aura.

The clicking barking sound is getting a lot closer, a purple worm starts crawling out of the hole in the ground where the slaves came out of. It is a good distance away.

You can hear a droning sound further off in the woods.
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Clairmont: The big bug on top of the tanks tentacles get stuck inbetween the sprockets turning the treads as well as being shocked, the bug twitches as the shock causes its insides to smoke and burn, it is dead. The tentacles look like flattened film spewing out of a broken projector. They are thoroughly mashed.

Theao: It is heavily raining outside. The sky is overcast and dark. The rain is coming down in buckets. Many of the insects in the cages are attempting to hide burrowing into the ground. All of the centiscorps retreat into their burrows. The area around the ship is turning into a thick mud. Smell can smell the presence of mold or slime not far from the ship. It seems the rain is causing some things to change outside. The air is becoming very damp as well. It is still very hot outside.

With the fact that the beach was becoming a quagmire, the Bitch lifted off. It was time to conduct further investigations from another local anyways. The crew had gathered useful data and while not complete, would suffice. Maps were consulted for a clear plateau or messa that would serve as the next base of operations, while a number of high quality sensors and probes were left to moniter the situation along the sea coast.

Theao: You search for a while then see a large plateau about 20 miles west of New Spartacus Mountain. It is not completely clear. However, it is very large, so there are clear patches. There is a river running through the center of the plateau which leads to a waterfall. There is some open ground with rocky terrain, mostly it is covered with what looks like a tall grass with a brownish red color, some smaller trees, and strange looking purplish cact like planti and a few death groves scattered over a very wide area. It is open to the wind and rain.

After surveying more closely, you can see a very clear flat area which you could land a ship at.

The river has thicker clumps of vegetation around it. The mountainsides which slope down from the plateau are covered with the jungle like vegetation of Muse.

There does not appear to be a whole lot of desert land on Muse, just very small patches near the ocean and mountains.

Theao: The plant cages are growing far better than expected, in fact new plant species which you didn't collect start growing inside the cages, a red viney kudzu like plant begins covering the floor and crawling up the walls, big fast breeding beetles about a foot long are crawling through the undergrowth, ferns starts covering the ground, and what looks bug eating pitcher plants are growing around the base of the trees.

The situation began to look dangerous, far too dangerous to Lieutenant Dessaix's taste. Although the bug armored assault had been dealt with, what remained of the swarm of smaller bugs was practically on top of the infantry now and the ACS was swatting them down with their combat blades while firing whenever possible without dangering the friendly troops.

The tanks were now coming to support the infantry. Those MBT's that had their CIWS systems intact had engaged them and point-defense lasers scythed at the jungle spiders that were trying to overwhelm the infantry.

Lieutenant Keeler dropped down from his leap, coming down in a combat stance while swinging the combat blade in his right arm. The monomolecular blade caught the jungle spider that had approached to within three feet of one of the riflemen. While the blade struck, Keeler brought his railgun to bear and fired at the bug's upper torso. They couldnt take this much longer. Both the infantry and ACS were firing at the bugs from point blank range and in some instances the fighting had turned into outright melee.


Corporal Foch screamed as one of the seeds caught him in the leg, the paralyzing agent released by it fighting against his BDU's built-in medical systems that attempted to negate its effects. He missed a step in his sprint, falling down heavily.

Staff Sergeant Hernandez cursed and grabbed the Corporal in a fireman's carry, while the rest of the squad were sprinting towards the now immobilized overseer and keeping an eye on the disoriented bugs for any threat they might yet pose. As they closed with the overseer, Ibanez took out composite binders, slapping them on the overseer to immobilize it even after the effects of the stun rounds wore off. Simultaneously, Specialist Romar was looking for a dug that would be more or less intact, alive if possible and immobilized in the best case.

A shrill scream filled the air as Super 64 came down fast from the skies. Hitting the field not far from the squad, its landing skids throwing up columns of dirt while the landing ramp came down and the crew inside motioned for the team to get aboard fast.

Clairmont: About thirty five people run out of cave to help the infantry. They seem very desperate. They are armed with a crazy mix of weaponry, whatever they could salvage from the prison farms before escaping.

Some of them have bug killing weapons, semiautomatic .10 gauge shotguns with drum magazines and high explosive shells and 40 MM grenade launchers designed to kill the local wildlife, with them are a number of people with nonlethal volt rifles set to the maximum setting, following them are men in riot armor with shields and stun pikes modified to have a much higher charge. The men with the pikes form a line and the men with guns stand next to them firing their rifles. Behind them are people throwing a mix of riot control grenades, flash bangs, tear gas, a few homemade fragment grenades, and barrier foam grenades. The people with the grenades have a mix of hand weapons and are mostly in orange jump suits.

A lot of the bugs have died but not all of them. The people from the cave provide a distraction confusing the buggers. About half split off from fighting the infantry running towards the cave mouth.

Clairmont: There is a dug not far from your men it is dead and missing two legs. Two of the woozy warrior bugs affected by the noise and em stagger off and two of them make exaggerated snapping motions with their jaws at the machine gunners, it is like they are staggering drunk from the noise.

There are dugs and warrior bugs coming in from the trees a lot of them. They start staggering towards you. The giant purple worm is not far from you, it is closing, the worm splits into three segments each 20 foot long, it is almost in striking distance to you, the noise does not seem to bother it.

You can hear droning from the trees. You look up and see ripper bugs. Five of the ripper bugs start firing acidic darts at the Super 64. You can also see bees not far behind them.

Clairmont: As the bugs close with the people from the cave, you see a man in a heavy jacket, near the entrance press a detonator. Five improvised fertilizer bombs explode in the path of the charging bugs. Also two pairs of two men come out, each carrying what looks like a simple steel rocket tube firing it into the path of the bugs. The bugs are closing with the people blocking the cave entrance. The bugs keep coming. You watch as the men with shields block the spider goop and a few of them burn from acid. A couple of the men manage to electrocute the spiders with the stun pikes.

All of the bugs have died around your men. The lasers scythed a fast clean path through both the spiders and the blister bugs.

OOC: The people with the shotguns, are firing this. It is a slightly heavier round with a stronger explosive.
http://www.defensereview.com/1_31_2004/FRAG%2012.pdf

General: All players. Ralk has several more ships in orbit with him, they appear to be from a carrier group of some type. There are six more ships in orbit. They all look like heavily armored, shielded cylinders carved out of nickel iron asteroids. There is also a repair ship fixing the super destroyer. The three legion ships are still in orbit as well.

The infantry had grouped up to fireteams with ACS support. Hunkering down in improvised foxholes, they were firing at the bugs as they tried to close. The Grim Reapers had set up their own base of fire, locking down their arm mounted flechette cannons. The weapons were practically useless at any kind of medium to long range, but at short distances the weapons were immensely destructive. Firing clouds of razor sharp hyper-velocity flechettes at a high-rate of fire, they could decimate infantry at short range.

Unfortunately, due to the closeness of the bug assault to the friendly troops, the Reapers could not utilize their flechette cannons to their full potential. However, as the surviving Civvies emerged from the caves to lend their hand in the defense, the bugs tried to attack them, presenting themselves as a target for the Reapers.

"Well, this is damn awkward, saved by those who we were coming to save." Lieutenant Foxworth muttered under his breath.



"Go go go!" Staff Sergeant Hernandez screamed as the squad made their best speed towards the waiting assault shuttle. Ibanez and Romar were carrying the immobilized Overseer and and the dead dug.

The crew of Super 64 were providing cover for the squad. Turret-mounted tri-barreled railguns firing at the bugs that were trying to close with the team. Sergeant Hernandez cursed loudly as he carried Corporal Foch. As they reached the Assault Shuttle, the crew of the craft helped haul the Overseer and the dead dug aboard. As the squad had barely gotten onboard the assault shuttle, the pilot pushed the throttle forward hard and the air-breathing turbines began to take the craft away from the heated landing zone.

Clairmont: The civvies manage to kill a number of the bugs, sixteen of them die in the initial rush at the cave mouth, mostly the men with the stun pikes who are fending off the bugs so the other people can fire. There are bugs spread all over the ground from the explosion leaving a mess on the ground. The grim reapers tear apart the bugs who are charging the civvies leaving a nasty battleground. After a while the guns go silent. There is not a single living bug left on the ground.

Your men get to the Super 64. The worms are very close behind. The tribarrels rip apart two of the worms. One of the worms makes a last lunge at the closing door, it has a 6 foot wide maw of foot long glistening crystalline teeth. The tribarrels also kill any closing warrior bugs who are still staggering from the noise.

You are rising into a cloud of ripper bugs, they are spitting acidic darts at the super 64 while your railguns are ripping them apart. Then one of the railguns gets hit with two one foot long exploding bees. You push the throttle forward accelerating the Super 64 away. Several more bees bang into the sides of the super 64 exploding shaking the plane. You are away.

You find out that most of the civvies in back of the cave were not armed. There simply were not enough weapons in the lockers to go around. They had explosives in the cave mouth in case the front group failed so they coud seal themselve in and a few reserve weapons but that was it. About 15% of them were armed. The people in the caves basically had knives, clubs, and a few molotov cocktails. There are about 300 survivors in the caves.

The story you hear is that the buggers attacked, but they did not attack the outlying farms, concentrating on the larger pharmaceutical farms and the main city. This gave the people in the smaller farms time to boobytrap the farms and escape.

It was rough going, not everyone could fit into the prison hover transports, so they had to fend off the local wildlfe until they reached a safer position. They had an idea that the smaller farms were not safe. One of the prisoners shows you two foot long cat size chameleon bugs in a cage. We found these after the attack.

Two of the guards had found a ravine which led up to the top of the mountain and a cave earlier which avoided the death groves. They had to kill the cave spiders who resided in the cave. The hover trucks managed to make two trips back to the farms to salvage what they could before the bugs came.

They tell you that there is another settlement, called Tree Home which is illegal in the swamps. Nothing had been done about it yet. The Ming Registered Syndicate which runs the prisons had requested the Commonalitarianism government to have it "rooted out". They might still exist.

The civvies leader is one of the prisoners, a privateer and pirate, a wanted man on a number of worlds, Mikhail Orlov from New Kiev. He led the escape. He is talking to the warden , a tall heavyset woman Jamaica Rainbow.

The vessel landed and the process began anew in the new environment, surveying the landscaping and looking for new flora and fauna.

Any oxygen that was produced by the plants was slowly siphoned off, the temperature and the artificial sun-light being turned down, which was intended to put the plants into a state of sleep, of sorts for further examinations.

Theao: You begin surveying the landscape. There is a tall prairie like grass about two feet high, also there is a vinelike kudzu style plant which grows everywhere. There are big purplish cacti coated with long thorns when you send the robots to look at the cacti, they get stuck, they are wrapped in a thorny vine about about an inch to two inches thick, that covers and wraps around them. The robots can see husks of insects in the vines. There are reddish broadleaved trees about twenty foot high. These are covered with what looks like fur. Underneath the fiber fur are small flying insects. These cover the robots when they get close to the trees with beetles making it hard to see much.

While you are surveying, you find a pattern on the ground of what look like tiled stones, they are stacked up in different places and fused together. It looks like a mandala or sand painting.

As you let the air out, you notice small worms about four inches long and two inches wide have bored holes in some of the cages, they have black dagger like teeth and emit a powerful acid which helps them gnaw through the steel inbetween the cages. Some of them have gotten into the insect cages, and eaten one of the giant beetles laying more eggs. The beetle cage is crawling with them. They become lethargic with less oxygen.

The worms are slowing down and the plants are starting to wilt a bit. The plants have definitely slowed down. You watch as the plants enter a hibernation like state.

Letting the oxygen out doesn't seem to affect the central tree with the pods. In fact, extremophile bacteria which do not need oxygen, and live off minerals in the soil, start growing at the base of the tree, letting out small amounts of oxygen and carbon dioxide.

General All Players: All of the civilians at New Spartacus Mountain have been evacuated. Three of the Asteroid Legion Ships land and begin disembarking troops to fortify the existing troops.

The fabbers at New Spartacus have turned out several new weapons for the powered armor troops there, they appear to have new rifles, upgraded power armor with shields, sabers, rocket launchers, multi-charge mines, and a variety of other weapons. They also appear to be refitting some of the vehicles as well.

Theao: You end up waiting almost until nightfall before all the creatures slow down. The tree still does not seem to be affected. The extremophile bacteria have spread out around the base of the tree, now what looks like small shoots are growing up out of the soil.

Theao: By morning patches of what looks like blue algae are growing on any open water. The algae is splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. Most of the hydrogen is being sequestered into small plants about half an inch round at this point which float up to the ceiling. You can see what looks like patches of the algae on the big tree as well. It looks like the tree is performing some kind of ecosynthesis or conditioning the area for life, a terraforming function.

You manage to get to a few of the plant/animal hybrids, the deathflowers, screamers, and the tentacle trees have pockets near the roots which can store seeds, eggs, and other small items. There are a variety of seeds and eggs in them. You also find some creatures eggs simply stick to the plants when they were laid, or seeds were laying atop leafs or on bark. They came in because they were attached to the plants or insects.

Theao: Glowing green plants start pushing up from the soil, these are small only about two inches tall, but they give off a faint phosphorescent light. They appear to be a combination of plant and slime.

The oxygen level is rising, you think in two or three days the plants might come out of their hibernation.

General All Players: The asteroid legions land two ships near the mountain where the survivors of the pharmaceutical farm are. They also land a couple of transports to pick up the civilians and carry them back to orbit.

Theao: You uncover a very large mosaic it is a good 300 meters across. It consists of smooth square stones very close together coated with a biopolymer similar to the one which the centiscorpions used to coat the insides of their homes. It is mostly covered with dirt, moss, and some small patches of grass, but it doesn't take much to clean it off. In the center of the mosaic is a giant pod tree, surrounding it is a giant red worm biting its tale forming a circle, the worm has hundreds of eyes and tentacles growing out of it. In a ring around the outer edge are thirteen different worms, you think this corresponds with passage of time for Muse to go around the sun. Outside of the circle are huge menhir or standing stones, these have stylized worms and insects etched into them. It looks like they were etched using digestive acid. Some of the menhir have fallen over, a few have even cracked.

Two messages were sent up the pipe again, one to the collection agency and the other 'ordering' Sharp to get his but over to investigate the mosaic.

The collection group would find themselves with a number of additional plants, and a few bugs to study and some further data on some of the bug species.

Theao: Ralk informs you that Sharp has been relieved of command, pending health issues. He says he will be coming down with his personal command team.

He lands in an asteroid legion ship. Shortly after he lands, a scout service ship jumps in system and deploys its crew. The humans and canids which leave the ship look strange, they have been modified to explore strange worlds.

Preliminary data on the mosaic as it is uncovered is that it is older than human kind a forerunner artifact, and has not been touched for over 30,000 years. Whatever civilization which built it is most likely readily visble.

Upon closer examination, the pictures of the purple worms, spiny worms, and white worms are very similar to the ones which forces have encountered either in the attacks or the takeover of New Shimizu megapyramid.

The menhir after close examination reveal an astronomical pattern pointing to a dead star system called Negev II, a place where there is a Commonalitarianism military base, and three dead worlds, three massive asteroid rings, and a star that is a barely burning cinder.

Theao: Your collection teams find two sets of symbiotes. The first is the purple porcupine bush, that has a sleep contact poison that looks like a large round quilled porcupine. The sleeping creature gets infested by mites that live in the bush making them ill.

The second symbiote is the purple water cactus-- which has a tasty sweet fruit, and hollow cavities with very pure water inside. Viney plants which suck the fluids out of insects wait near the cactus hoping to catch insects seeking moisture or something to eat. They are big. Six of the thorny masses of vines try to snag some of your collectors and drain them of their fluids.

There are also some large black beetles watching the ship. At night, they make a continuous loud clicking noise all night long.

The plants collected from Muse will push aside most of the normal terrestrial species on many planets. They would be a virile alien pest if introduced on earth like worlds. They are very resistant to chemical and biological eradication, and will adjust within two to three generations to the most powerful chemical and biological treatment. Both the plants and insects have a very high metabolic rate, regenerate limbs quickly, but tend to have shorter lifespans.

However, you notice certain plants, fungi, and some insects have regenerative properties, anti-agapic qualities, immune boosting functions, and unusual qualities which would make them very valuable as pharmaceuticals. It also may explain why the plants and insects don't die off so quickly.

At last they were reaching there destination. There sensors told them there was life down on the planet. The Karo'k were hungry and they had spent a lot of time in space.


occ. They are coming in holed out asteroids so you might not be able to detect them.

Karo'k: At the asteroids passed through the outer oort cloud undetected, rocks among other rocks, then through the asteroid fields, where some asteroid miners saw some strange looking asteroids floating off course through space. Most wrote it off as an astronomical anomaly. Then multiple hollowed out asteroids started spinning inward towards Muse. The small ones which always fell would not be stopped or noticed on such a huge body.

The bigger asteroids were not hard to spot coming close to a planet. A few were even coming in too fast to stop them from landing.

A simple hail and scan was sent at the bigger asteroids, there was something strange inside the asteroids, "Identify yourself, you are in Commonii space, halt."

Mike, Ralk's second, ordered shields raised and primed the weapons. Boarding pods were being readied. Starfury fighters would fly in to cover the boarding pods.

OOC: The asteroids would not be noticed until they got close to a planet, the smaller ones would get through easily. The boarding pods are going to try something crazy boarding a few of the Karo'k asteroids while they are landing...
This is a link to the breaching pod which is slightly modified it includes shaped charges in addition to the lasers to try and get inside. http://www.b5tech.com/earthalliance/earthallianceshipsandvessels/earthfighters/breachingpod.html

First Lieutenant Dessaix observed the bloody carnage left behind by the bug assault that had been repelled with a cost. She followed the Civvies back to the cave and listened to their story. They were in pretty haphazard shape. Little in the way of real weapons, or experienced soldiers. All in all it was something of a miracle they had been able to survive to this point.

She listened intently as they explained about the chameleon bugs they had found and the secret illegal settlement that might still be standing. Definitely an objective the ground force would need to check out as soon as possible. But at the moment the priority was on extracting the civilians back to orbit as soon as possible.

She sought out the leader of the survivors and spoke.
"We can get all of you out of here and back to orbit in a single flight. I recommend you pack up all your things you want to take, but keep it light. We need to keep the evac operation short."

Each Assault Shuttle had capacity for a heavy company of 180 men and their equipment. Super 62 and 63 could carry all of the civilians to orbit.


Super 64 rattled as the bugs made all the attempts they could to prevent it from escaping. Armor took damage, sensors were blown off, weapons rendered inoperable, but the shuttles were designed to survive extreme conditions in modern battlefields. It continued climbing to orbit at a steady pace and soon left the confines of the planets atmosphere.

As it began heading for the Switchblade, Staff Sergeant Hernandez reported to Major Cosforth that the retrieval operation had succeeded. The overseer was alive and they had a somewhat intact dug as a sample. The Major listened intently and took it all in and commended the squad for the exemplary work. After that, he sent the signal to the Ramrod platforms to drop three kinetics to the bug encampment.

Cosforth informed the Commonalitarianism command in system that they had a live overseer and a dug sample and forwarded the data they had gathered from the bug base camp.

Clairmont: Orlov listens very carefully, he goes and talks to the warden for a minute. There is a general request to pack one bag and leave everything else behind. People shove the few possessions they have into their single prison rucksack. Guards get the same treatment one rucksack per person. There is not a huge amount left over. Most of it is excess food and basic essentials like water, flashlights, tables and similar things. Everyone seems to be desperately happy that they have been saved. You learn many people died on the way to the mountain. They are ready before the shuttles land. It takes a good twenty minutes for them to pack, not long.

You learn that part of citizenship in the Commonalitarianism is six months training in basic military exercises, then one year of conscription service in any of a number of different organizations, military, police, fire, colony building, anything slightly dangerous.

Orlov is offered a full pardon in return for a two year stint in the Asteroid Legions Foreign Volunteers Dvision. Anyone who completed their service from the guards is drafted and sent back down to New Spartacus Mountain.

You are informed that Commander Ralk is currently on the ground with another Commander from the Black Cat, discussing some ruins they have found. There is a just uncovered alien mosaic on a plateau 20 miles north of New Spartacus Mountain.

There is a specialist team from the exploratory scout service, who will take the bug. They are odd looking some are too thin, some too heavily muscular, and some are modified deep spacers in exoskeleton suits. They warn you to keep the overseer sedated and not let it wake up under any conditions. Even tied up it could be dangerous. They are very interested in the footage from the bug camp. They will have to take some time to analyze it.

Scientist Leary offers $5 million real time credits for the Overseer and another $1 million real time credits for the dug. She says, "This is what was made available by the Office of Economic and Special Warfare." The value of the credit has actually gone up to $1.20 per credit compared to the standard dollar.

When the three orbital weapons hit, they penetrate deep into the earth. The explosions are barely visible. The top of the dome collapses slowly inward. The bugs are swarming around the dome randomly at this point.

A Karo'k Warrior head class walked though the field of stasis pods soon they could start again. He walked to the command bridge.
" The ssssship has powered up some sort of sssshield commander"
"Ssssset up the defense sssssystem, destroy them if they try to prevent us from landing"
occ. send your pod in but try not to attack me please. Plus my creatures are giant lizards about 7 feet tall with massive claws that they can retract and stick out of there wrists they are fleeing there planet and setting up a new base here. There science is manly biological so if you try to shoot though there shields WAHM straight through.

The troops observed mostly in silence as the civilians and the leftovers from the prison encampments packed their things and prepared to leave this hellhole. They entertained some of the curious ones by answering some questions but without compromising Operational Security. As the civilians closed on being ready to leave, Lieutenant Dessaix opened up an encrypted channel to orbit and called for assault shuttles Super 62 and 63 for retrieval.

Soon enough, the two massive trans-atmospheric craft were descending down towards the location of the civilians. Loaded to bear with close air support weaponry for ground targets and gunners ready, they were prepared to lay down heavy supressing fire if the bugs attempted to make another try at the survivors.

"Dont worry people, the retrieval is on the way. Get ready to board at the mouth of the cave. This will be quick." Lieutenant Foxworth said to the civilians as Dessaix told him the assault shuttles were on the way.


The crew of the Switchblade handed over the dug and the overseer to the specialist team. The overseer had been pumped full of nanite inhibitor agents and more traditional chemical sedatives in order to keep the creature in check. In addition, its arms and legs had been heavily bound with composite restrictors.

Major Cosforth had come back aboard the ship to watch the transfer take place. He handed over a disc containing the recorded visual and sensor data the recon team had gathered from the bug camp and accepted the bonus they had been promised for this extra task.

Clairmont: The bugs start sniping at the camp using a mix of quick sorties by ripper bugs and 100mm thorn cannons under cover of foliage. Also long five foot chitinous spines start falling into the camp in bunches of 10-15 at a time, they are coming from the upper canopy of trees a good half mile away. As the passengers start loading three holes in the hole ground open up and swarms of one foot explosive bees start flying into the camp.

There are also small packs of click beetles and giant wolf spiders which have climbed up through the burnt out area. They attempt to quickly overwhelm any person who is alone and drag them off. The local wildlife has taken an interest in the camp. Giant bloodflies and carrion creatures are going after the dead bug bodies as well as any dead human left out. You also see several large jelly like slimey things eating the big tank bugs.

The scout services lay the overseer bug on a medical scanning table. They wait a bit then inject it with some sedatives as well as a kind of lightly glowing green fluid. They take scans of its insides down to the molecular level making a 3 dimensional model of the overseer. It appears to have one main brain and two smaller brains in its back, attached by a kind of slimy plant like neural rope. The brains are utterly strange, they aren't human, canid, nudibranch, or bug but a kind of patchwork of all four. Somehow, the bugs have made a combined brain. The team is a little surprised at finding complex slug like brain cells. Slugs or worms aren't supposed to be intelligent.

There are even two small organs in the brain which aren't part of the physiological record. They think this thing could function as a field commander. The bug is designed to have a high metabolism and take in a lot of oxygen, and seems to have a lot of extra neural material.

The dug is an example of a successful chimera, a mixing of mammalian and insect dna to create a new combined creature. It is the first successful example of bugs creating a new creature using mammalian dna. It is essentially a large chitin plated dog, with a much larger jaw, many more teeth, and exaggerated very sensitive ears, nose, tongue, and antennae. The bones are also denser, and the muscles are somewhat insect like making it very strong. It does not appear to lay eggs, and is male.

The videos demonstrate that the bugs are able to communicate with humans. Close up shots of the thorny purple growths on the humans necks shows one of their functions is to communicate with humans picking up the gain on the video shows the growths making clicking sounds and letting out small puffs of what looks like mist. This is not something which the bugs were able to do before, relying on psionics by the brainbugs to speak to humans.

The humans are being treated like worker caste bugs doing things which require fine manipulation which most of the insects do not have. They are planting, pruning, and using simple tools. None of the tools look sophisticated, all are very simple. The cloth which the human slaves use looks recently made from natural fibers.

The meteors gathered in speed, they were heading straight for the New Spartacus Mountain.

Musselbergh: Both the surviving super destroyer and the carrier have a full complement of boarding pods. Each asteroid by now has eight boarding pods grappled to it. Each pod contains eighteen power armored troops. The pods use faceted cutting lasers to burn through the outer hull of the asteroids as well as shaped charges if it is necessary to tunnel very deep. A boarding tube attaches to any holes they have cut or blown in the asteroids. They are attempting to capture not destroy the asteroid ships. There is going to be a broadcast message through loudspeakers at maximum from the incoming troops, lay down your arms, identify yourselves and state your intentions, you are in Commonii space.

As the asteroids accelerate down towards New Spartacus Mountain, Sargent Smithers orders part of the shield grids to be raised, they have ships with unknown intentions coming in. They leave a large area open where several asteroid ships could land and set up a defensive perimeter around the opening.

OCC Its not very thick its only about 3 miles thick. The Karo'k have no idea your on there ship. As there is only about 400 awake on all astroids. 2 larger ones which contain all the science medical labs so on. And the smaller ones carrying supplies, they number about 15 in all. They don't have many weapons that can shoot in space. When you get in expect large fields of satis pods and labs plus some farms.

The karo'ks leader looked down in disgust the planet was crawling withe insects and apes.
"This is not as we expected."He declared to his 2nd
"Do you want me to cancel the order commander?"
" Where else can we land we have not enough fuel" he sighed "Land and follow plan Zackoracks"

The Commonii troops on the asteroids find it very to drill through the asteroids. They make a simple request. Send over the drillheads from a cluster of armor busting missiles designed to penetrate armored asteroids and deep fortifications. They send back the drop pods to pick up more troops.

A group of small shuttles land from the missile platforms and they emplace the drillheads, which start to drill through the outer shell of the asteroids. Two large holes form on each asteroid, big enough for the troops to get through. They follow behind the drillheads making sure they have enough energy to continue drilling and don't break.

It takes a while, but one or two finally break into one of the farming asteroids and a medical asteroid. The others are close behind.

"Wait cancel that we have intruders! We need to get down on that planet fast we can !"Roared the commander of the Karo'k " Wake the warriors! Find out where they will tunnel through greet them I want a welcoming party not a killing party sssend along a few warriors just incase though. Well what are you waiting for get to it runt!"
"Yyyes ssir!"
A junior science officer ran up to the commander.
"Sssir the bugs on that planet show intelligence and as for the apes their science is well above our own!"
"Now were in trouble land at the best strategic location in the mountains.

Ralk was met by a woman who looked to be bigger than the standard sterotype for a hulking European barbarian. Picking him up one handedly, she brought him into the ship despite any protests to the handling he may have made. After getting set down in front of the same woman who he'd met aboard the command vessel.

"So Ralk, what've you been doing to Sharpie to get himself stuck in the meds?" She asked and then continued before he could answer. "It seems we have something for one of your research teams to look at."

Snapping her fingers had the effect that the room dimmed slightly as a small holo-display appeared containing the mosaic.

********************

The symbiotic carnivorous plants get to learn what well honed metal tasted like rather than the flesh of the crew of the Bitch. The specimines were collected, the medicinal, parasitic, symbiotic and insectoid, examined and either kept if deemed useful such as the symbiotic and medicinal or sent up to be investigated, dissected and studied.

Ralk looks at the mosaic, "We have no record of anything like this. But, we've also found that the Muse Foundation which supported previous expeditions into the wilderness has been lying to us. Most of the information the Commonii government has is wrong. It breaks our exploratory charter of not allowing settlement on worlds where there are clear signs of intelligent life. It appears that this planet was settled a long time ago."

Ralk hands her, a folder with a two sets of very high resolution images. One is from an exploratory probe, showing giant pod trees on another world, "This is from Achilles, a planet 20 light years from here." The second set of images is rather striking. There are shots of a world covered with a yellow mist, there are pools of blue phosphorescent goo, broken alien war machines litter the landscape, tall stumps of alien trees stick out of the landscape. "This is where the menhirs are apparently pointing towards. We took photos from space and analyzed the layout of the menhir. It is a dead system called Negev II."

There are several powerful explosions near the swamp. What looks like a cross between a firefry and a plasma bug is flying near the swamp. The explosion looks like a lightning charged plasma bomb. The bugs are attacking the swamp camp in force. They are coming at the place with everything you have seen, flying charged plasma bugs, firefries, rippers, hoppers from the air, purple worms, spine worms, and death worms from the ground, and a variety of insects-- bug tanks, tanker bugs, small plasma bugs, warrior ants, jungle spiders, blister bugs, warrior bugs, giant centiscorpions, and dugs. There are also what look crawling tentacled horrors with a blackish green sheen following the worms.

The troops from New Spartacus Mountain are on the move attempting to breakout and support the swamp. They are forming columns wiith a mix of power armor, mini-tanks, and slammer tanks.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

The Commonii retaliate by using orbital beam weapons and gravitophotonic wave missiles on the remainder of the hive.
__________________________________________________________________________________________

Theao: As you approach the river splitting the plateau things become far more dangerous. Giant winged dragonflies fly in fast at a good 60-80 kph attempting to nab members of your collection teams and fly off with them. You also run into a gelatinous creature that when fired on absorbs the bullets into their sticky mass, and when you attack it with knives your crew gets stuck in the mass of the creatures. The creatures attempt to engulf your crew members so they can be digested. They are hard to see being almost completely clear and often coming directly out of watery pools near the river.

Mussleburgh:

You find a very large clear plateau and land on the opposite side of the river from Theao. Your 15 ships should fit here fairly well. You do a basic scan and realize even the wildlife outside can be dangerous.

The boarders do not expect you to land so quickly. Several of the pods burn off during reentry. Most of the boarding troops, however, make it to the tunnels. A few are crisped during reentry. They start coming out to meet your greeting parties.

They have a mix of both lethal and nonlethal armaments. Volt riflles which can be set on kill or stun, tangler grenades, flash grenades, sonic screamers and helmets with noise blockers. They do not attempt to fire at the first things they see.

They make the simple statement, you are in Commonii space state your business here. A few have translators. These will take awhile for the translation devices to work.

T-minus 5 minutes to impact!

"Everyone buckle down! Switch off all non-essentail systems.This is it this is it!" Bawled the commander over the whistle of computers "Give me a update on the parties now!"


A group of lizards sizes your men up. The tallest one 8.5 foot walks up to your group leader stares at him then screams a banshee wail the rest join in, the scream is so deafening you helmet air holes shut. The one staring at your leader stops screaming and offers your commander a type of fish.

occ: The screaming is their language.The fish is a gift and basically they are welcoming you and asking if this planet is yours. Also they use their scream as a defense they can shatter most metals with it.

occ this is my first ever RP tell me how I'm doing.

As the assault shuttles begin on their final approach, troops on the ground start finding and painting the bugs that are sniping at the camp from the woods surrounding the hill. In some cases they take effort to spot, but many of the troops had fought against the 4th Imperium, which fielded soldiers with adaptive camouflage suites that could make them almost invisible to the naked eye, they knew how to find targets that were trying to hide.

The painted targets lighted up on Super 62's WSO's (Weapon Systems Operator) screens who methodically selected each target and an appropriate munition from the racks of the assault shuttle while speaking to the intercom.

"Target one, arty. Target two, armor. Target three, arty. Target four, softy. Target five, light. Target six, softy." The man uttered in cold monotone and pickled the weapons selector.

Half a dozen munitions dropped off the racks and sped off towards the ground. A mix of cluster and solid high-explosive warheads good against armored targets, each of which had been pinpointed for a target painted by the ground troops. Beside Super 62, 63 was also releasing munitions from its racks. In moments, they were too low to continue releasing missiles. Commencing the evacuation of the civilians, Super 62 first set to ground while Super 63 remained airborne and provided close-air-support with its guns.

On the ground the troops and tanks had arrayed to defensive positions and were firing at both airborne and ground bugs that tried to approach the camp and jeopardize the extraction. They were determined to get the civilians off the ground.


Back in orbit, Cosforth had gotten the Intel he wanted about the bugs his team had captured and returned to the Pinnace which flew back to its surveillance position. The Major checked the status of the extraction operation and noted that the bugs were again making an attempt at the civilians. He would soon need to bring the ground troops back aboard the Switchblade for resupply and repairs for the vehicles.

Clairmont: Because of your experience you successfully target many of the 100 mm thorn cannons destroying them. They successfully let of a few rounds at the infantry fighting vehicles. A few slip back into the woods.

What the Super 62 sees when targeting the worms in the trees makes his blood run cold, several giant blue armored worms with huge spikes growing out of them. They are expelling the spikes in clusters from their bodies. The missiles blow chunks out of them killing a little over half of them before they retreat around the trees.

The ripper bugs and firefries try to hover and shoot at your men, but the cluster munitions get them, not so much the regular munitions, they are very fast, and can often outpace the men firing into the air with their zigzagging flight motions.

The clouds of one foot bees come in a swarm at your men on the ground. Some of them smash directly into the vehicles exploding, they are trying to get past the men into the area of the loading dock for the Super 63. It seems that something is goading them.

Initially the cluster munitions, and the rapid fire guns destroy a large amount of them causing them to further explode, but there are too many of them. They keep coming, some of them get past the fire of the vehicles and tanks into the area of the Super 63. They are buzzing angrily.

Most of the bees that get past the tanks and IFVS simply smash into the loading ships sides, a few explode killing some of the boarding passengers, but most of the passengers get on board on time for liftoff.

Some of the bees do nothing simply flying in circles.

Your Supers get into the air.

Mussleburgh: The helmet filters stop the level of noise, they are designed to deal with flash bangs. The yelling is more startling than anything else.

The yells set off a few tangler grenades carried by the men who find themselves stunned and wrapped in sticky webbing.

The lead commander bows and accepts the fish, he gives lizard man a loaf of bread, a piece of cooked meat, and some salt in return. He says, "Thank you. Muse is part of Commonii space." He speaks into a box with pictures. He points at a human and says man, then he points at a picture of a lizard man looking at the lizard. It is a translation device.

OOC: You are doing fine. Please let me know if you want to change or adjust anything. If something is not right for you, you can ignore it and ask me to change something.

occ It's fine lol. What about your other marines on the asteroids? I might be interested in joining you in the war if you make it worth my while.

The lead warrior speaks into the box and says
Second Wa'h in command of the fleet of the K'aroks: 'We come to set up a settlement here with your good will. There looks to be a war between you and the bugs. Why? What is Commonii space?'
This comes across as a whale of screams and movements of the body. The lizard who gave you the fish enjoys watching one of your men trying to cope with the wriggling fish, before holding the pice of meat at arms length and sniffs it.

A lizard comes up and sniffs your men in webbing before slicing it open with his claw, he then licks the webbing analyzing it before he eats it.

Mussleburgh: To Second Wa'h "I am Lieutenant Malthus, we are not sure why the buggers and the worms attacked us. We have been at war before with the buggers but not the worms. The worms and buggers did not attempt to communicate with us, just drive us away in a surprise attack. The last war with the buggers is because human settlers with unusual ideas* decided they wanted to settle on a bugger world."

"Commonii space is where we have explored and found suitable planets to colonize or use to collect trade goods. Muse has been partially settled for many years."

"Currently we can use all the help we can get securing an area of this world-- there are a number of pharmaceuticals-- anti-aging drugs, medicines which grow nowhere else."

The marine holding the fish taps it lightly with his power armored finger and it stops wriggling so much. He puts it in a bag.

The piece of meat is a cooked chicken.

The webbing tastes faintly like spider webbing, it is very strong, it also tastes like it could conduct electricity.

*multiple translation meanings-- religious zealots, political fanatics, etc.

"Have you bothered to investigate why the bugs have a megalith pointing to a dead world and appear to have been involved in another war on another planet?"



With the discovery of rather more active and larger florals and fauna, the sizes of the teams increased for both added protection and to gather more efficiantly. In addition the armour was increased from light-unpowered to, on average, medium powered as the problems were more necessary due to a lessing of information on local threats.

ooc: Apologies for the lateness of this reply. My computer's been acting funny recently and has had a tendency to crash at the most inopportune times.

Ralk, "We can provide you with some basic information on Negev II. We think that the worms may be in a dark age or a remnant population. Negev II is a dead world. We think it has been dead for over a million years. We are unable to land anything on the planet proper, there are a variety of antimaterial weapons both biological and nanite, grey goo, which destroy our ships fairly quickly. We can see a few examples of megastructures from orbit, but only as outlines because of the poisoned atmosphere. Nothing we send lasts for more than a few minutes in atmosphere. Outside of the atmosphere, there are asteroid field remains of three dead worlds, and a sun that is a cinder. The culture that built on that world is probably more advanced than we are, and long dead."

"There is some conjecture that this may be the worms original homeworld. We think that the Eve trees may continuously send out new seeds to other worlds with terraforming creatures and plants in them. The worms could possibly be part of the terraforming process, a caretaker species preparing the way for the dominant species which is long dead."

OOC: Grey goo or ecophage refers to this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo

...........warp..rift..detected.....co-ordinates..128/xv..453/ao..739/ge.....warp..skimmer..drives..detected.....translation..in..45..44..43........

Looking at the spacial co-ordinates a person can actually see the creation and destruction of a warp rift. It starts at first bearly noticable, a slight wavering of the stars behind the rift as if seen through a heat-haze, but very quickly it seems as if more stars are forming, pinpricks of light growing and then joining then shooting off in an arc of pure energy. Gravity around the rift fluctuates, pulling objects in, pushing them away, forming spots of high density gravity wells, forming mini black holes with a lifespan of a few micro-decs. Then, a particulary violent energy arc will flash off, hit the unstable gravity and rip a hole through the fabric of space and dimensions. Pure warp energy leaks through from the immaterium, looking as if of tendrills of gas of many bright colours, pinks, yellows, white. Looking closley, though extremly unadvisable, a person could see shapes. They could see what looks like people, faces, animals, places, thoughts, emotions, feelings all given shape in the Chaos that is the Warp, the ever flowing, changing dimension where daemons roam at will looking for a way out, where peoples emotions take form and life, where the power of all psykers is drawn and wherein lives the Chaos Gods, the living manifestation of all races carnal emotions, dark desires and evil thoughts and feelings.

.....Translation..in..22..21..20..19..18..........

Such a rift was forming now, three billion kilometers away from Muse. Such a rift is unavoidable during such a large ship movement but fortunitaly these rifts are small and short lived. Tau interstellar technology consists of a Warp Skimmer Drive, whereas the Imperium of Man forces a rift in reality large enough to fit in a Battleship and travel directly through the warp, the skimmer drive shifts the Tau ship halfway between the two dimensions to ride the outward currents of the warp, speeding the ship on though space. Though not as fast as actual warp travel, it is infinatly safer as one is not punching a hole through time and space and one is not leaving his ship open to attack from daemons the size of moons. Normally traveling in this manner has no bad after effects, but moving a fleet of such size in one place causes a gathering of warp energy into a single focal point, the point of re-translation into the materium, real-space. Such a gathering of warp energy will eventually reach breaking point and tear through into the materium, bringing with it the horrors of the warp.

.........translation..in..10..9..8..7........

A full ten ships, the remainder of the Third Kor'Vattra is coming to Muse. Five Castellan Class Heavy Escorts, Two Messenger Class Sensor Ships, Two Emmisary Class Cruisers and One Custodian Class Battle Ship, the most recent and advanced ship in the Vior'la Enclaves Fleet. Flagship of the Third Kor'Vattra and the Aun'O's personal ship.

........Translation..in..5..4..3..2..1.........Complete........

Now the Tau had truley come to Muse.

(O.O.C sorry for not posting for so long, had a hectic week. But now im back and im commiting to war!)

All players: The daystar has been radiating more strongly than usually, it heats the atmosphere slightly bringing the heat up to 105 in the shade, it also is emitting slightly more radiation. The radiation seems to make you feel more invigorated and full of life. It is raining in most places, and the air is a bit steamy.

Theao: As you approach the river it becomes much more dangerous, you spot tentacle beasts like you saw near the ocean, they are making roaring noises and swinging their eyestalks looking for prey, there are also large armored spiny urchins rolling along the beach and chewing on the vegetation.
Near the river several large armored bioelectric milipedes are waiting for prey to come close to the river so they can rush out and grab it. There are various plants growing near the river, large bushes with masses of thorns, some purple trees which stick out of the water, the purple trees sometimes move around a bit in the river.

Viorla: As you are approaching the planet Muse, you notice that there is a carrier group-- based over the planet at this point. It consists of a Command Fighter Carrier, one Augustus Class Heavy Destroyer, 2 Asteroid Class Particle Beam and Impeller Cannon Platforms, 2 Asteroid Class Heavy Missile Platforms, Right now there are five Asteroid Class Troop Transports in orbit, having dropped off their full complements at New Spartacus Mountains.

On the ground near New Spartacus Mountain you can see columns of power armored troops, infantry fighting vehicles, tracked half-mechs, and turbo fan hover tanks moving towards the swamps. Overflights of starfury fighter bombers are accompanying the troops.

They are moving to meet what looks like a large mass of buggers and worms which are closing in on the swamps.

OOC: I'd like to use future tech Genetically Engineered Anti-Material Weapons. These would be a mix of bacteria and slime molds. The slime molds would get into things fouling weapons and causing them to rust and not function well. It would take a while for the rusting to take effect, but the fouling would happen fairly quickly within hours. The bacteria would eat carbon products, plastic, paints, and similar materials causing pitting then eventual decomposition. Also some of there might be a couple of critters designed to rust metal or decompose plastic. They might spit out the slime molds on top of things, or release something like a cloud of gas. I could also use a kind of fungi spore that might eat plastic or metal. I am not sure. I would like some kind of feedback before I did this. It could be combined with other bioweapons... I already tried blister spores, but these could be easily filtered out by basic protection.

"Por'O, deploy the fleet"

"Yes Aun'O"

After a few minuets for the orders to filter though, the fleet started to move off to its assaigned positsions. One of the Messenger class cruisers moved off to study the Daystar with its highly advanced sensor suite. The five heavy escorts moved back to the translation point with the other messenger to gaurd against what horrors might try to force their way through the warp rift. The other three ships moved into high anchorage posisions above muse. The Kir'la moved to the Custodian and tethered to it on one of its gravitic hooks.

"Shas'O, gather your Cadre. Take a Manta and support the Commonalitarianism's forces advance into the swamp"

The Manta powered its way down through the atmosphere of Muse. With enough firepower to take on a Capitol ship and cripple it, the Manta is a perfect transport slash gunship slash missile platform. Armed with sixteen drone controlled long barreled burst cannons, ten seeker missiles, six long barreled ion cannons, two missile pods and two heavy railguns the Manta bring serious firepower to bear on the enemies of the Tau Empire. In its supporting role the Manta hovers just behind the friendly formation, following them to bear its weapons down on any threat to the formation.

As well as being heavily armed, the Manta is also a transport. Capable of holding an entire Hunter Cadre on its two transport decks. This Manta is carrying Shas'O Vaus and his cadre. On the lower deck sits two Hammerhead gunships, the main battle tank of the Tau forces, two Skyray missile platforms, O'vaus and his four bodygaurds all in XV8 Crisis Battlesuits and three XV88 Broadside Heavy Battlesuits. On the Upper deck sit waiting a full fifty Firewarriors, eager for battle.

The Manta cast a mighty shadow over the advancing Commonalitarianism forces as it took up its support station. With a wingspan of approximatly two hundred meters, the Manta cut a menacing figure hovering behind the forces on the ground.


( O.O.C I know the Manta sounds a bit OTT but im just taking all its stats out of the rulebook Imperial Armour three by Forgeworld. All my forces come from that book and the Tau Empire Codex by Games Workshop.

Heres pictures of the manta model - http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/40kmanta2.htm

Also the anti-material weapons sound pretty cool, i dont mind you using them on my forces. Should be fun to rp i think)

Viorla: The Daystar is an anomaly, it seems to exist both here and in hyperspace at the same time, it gives off lots of solar radiation, multicolored energy fields shimmer with many colors. There is some kind of organic matter at the center. The closer you come to the daystar the more vigorous the crew feels, everything seems emotionally amplified.

As the Manta follows the Commonalitarianism forces toward the swamp, there is an explosion like a volcano. The top of New Spartacus Mountain blows clean off spewing a plasma explosion skyward. Smoke is pouring from the hole where the New Spartacus base was. Chunks of rock are falling around the Commonalitarianism forces. Secondary explosions blow more chunks off the mountain as the shield generators and weapons of the base go up in flames.

There are two wings of ten starfury fighters on either side of the manta.

Then it begins. What looks like balloons begin popping around the commonii troops and in the surrounding area. They are floating everywhwere. There are tentacles hanging off the balloons. A reddish rust colored dust starts falling on the troops. This is is followed by what look like small flying worms, they are everywhere spitting a white goop all over the troops.

There is nowhere for the troops to go but forward.

After a few samples of the smaller creatures were collected, dissected and examined, robotic versions were again built like at the first site. These were sent out to learn about the various predators and threats that made up these jungles. In such a manner did the crew of the Black Cat learn about the urchines, milipedes, pseudo-gelatinous water creatures and the rest of the strangeness that made up the world of Muse.

Theao: Some of your robots are sent into the first layer of canopy above the jungle floor. They are moving off the plateau into the Eve trees. The view is absolutely stunning. There are twisting paths that run between the different giant trees comprised of vines, branches, and thatches of hanging moss. You can see the beginnings of light miles up from the jungle floor.

http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/8/89/Wroshyr_trees.jpg

OOC: I took this from the image of Kashyyk, the Wookiee Homeworld.

They had arrived.


The commander of the Karo'k's force gave the order for the dust to settle.
"All men to there stations prepare emergency procedures set up shields"

The 7.5 foot tall leader of the welcoming group ordered the lizard who had ate the webbing into an biological upgrade pod.Before escorting your men to the bridge.

The lizard who had ate the webbing stepped in to the pod, the door closed their was a dull green light almost instantly the nanobots began working on the new information in him when he went out he had a new web pod on his back ready to make ropes entangle enemies or act as a grapple.

The dust fell. From the air you could see thousands of lizards scurrying about setting up AA guns and other defenses there was a earth shaking bang as shields all over the landing site went up.

The Karo'k were here and they had come in force.


occ:tell me if you want me to change something I've said.

The pictures were taken and sent to various places that specialized in scenic landscapes, as afterall, while few people travelled to remote spots of beauty, many like to look at them and pay for the pictures or paintings.

Mussleburgh: The dust seems to have scattered everywhere, some of it settles before the shields are fully up. A thin coating of red bacteria grows over any open unshielded patches, very quickly, it has a slimy sticky texture, and oozes into cracks and crevices, starting to rust anything remotely metallic. The bacteria seem to feed on ferrous metal.

The crews of space marines follow the Karo'K to the command bridge. They are not overtly hostile, they are constantly alert however, watching and recording everything they see and beaming it back to the ships overhead. They run an analysis on the air to see if it is possible to open their helmets without problems.

Theao: The robots climb into the lower branches, they are immediately attacked by swarms of giant green two foot tree dwelling ants, who try to push them away from the trees and make them fall. They bring back a few of the ants with them after falling to the jungle floor, along with some very thick spongy moss, a very strong purple vine, and a few seeds from a small tree growing out of the eve tree.

A Karo'k engineer and his assistant walks up and scrapes some red bacteria off the shield generators.
"And you say this is effecting almost everything metal?"
"Yes,sir!"
"The only solution I can think of would be to let nanobots break the substance down. What do you think private?"
"That would be a good idea sir!"
"Check it with command then get it done"
The private talks through a com-link. Soon the entire area is being sprayed with nanobots.

"Send them in. I am ready"
The leader of the Karo'k was wearing full battle armor with ornate carved dragons on it. Your group enters slowly eyeing everything up, taking no chances.

"Welcome to the fleet! We would like to meet the leader of your tribe. Do you have any questions about us?"

Viorla
They bugs are coming at the Commonii troops with everything you have seen, flying charged plasma bugs, firefries, rippers, hoppers from the air, purple worms, spine worms, and death worms from the ground, and a variety of insects-- bug tanks, tanker bugs, small plasma bugs, warrior ants, jungle spiders, blister bugs, warrior bugs, giant centiscorpions, and dugs. There are also what look crawling tentacled horrors with a blackish green sheen following the worms.

The bugs open up with their version of long range artillery, a rain of long spines from the spine worms aimed at the Commonii troops, following this are arcs of hot balls of plasma from the small plasma bugs aimed at the hover tanks, this is followed by the chuffing of thorn artillery which has been upgraded-- the ammunition lets out a blast of bioelectricity as it hits some of the infantry fighting vehicles, the flying arc light bugs shoot what looks like a ball of electrically charged plasma at the incoming star fury fighters, four of them also fire what looks a one meter wide ball of electrically charged plasma at the manta.

Spread out in the air out of range are ripper bugs, fireflies, and explosive bees which are readying to enter air combat. You can see the ground rippling from the advancing worms.

A reddish powder starts falling from the air. It lands on many of the vehicles coating them as well as some of the starfuries.. It is both sticky and slimy. It oozes into cracks, and starts slowly eating metal everywhere. Some of it gets on the Manta.

The starfuries respond by firing their rotary maglev cannons, spraying thousands of rounds of saturating fire -- 25mm carbon tungsten balls into the airborn bugs. This is followed by the hover tanks opening up with high explosive plasma rounds. The infantry fighting vehicles use their coil mortars to fire a phosphorus type round into the columns of bugs. The power armored troops fire shoulder launched smart missiles into the incoming bugs, and the half mechs start spitting multi-shot electric mines in front of the oncoming bugger horde. Towards the back of the bug horde, several ortillery plumes strike from orbit leaving high plumes of dust.

The bugs keep coming, many of them are dead or burning, falling from the air, or ripped to pieces. The bugs in the air are falling to the ground under the curtain of saturating fire.

Several of the Commonii infantry fighting vehicles have stopped moving but are still intact from hits by the thorn artillery, three of the starfury fighters get hit by the arclight bugs and go down, a number of the spines have pinned power armored troops, and some of the tanks are blackened by hits from the plasma bugs. A thin sheen of red is coating most of the vehicles.
Musslebergh: Your engineers spray the red dust, some of the nanobots are working others are not. The red dust is spreading. After a quick analysis, it looks like the nanobots with metal content in them are getting eaten. It doesn’t appear to effect the ones with carbon or biomaterial in them.

Musslebergh:
Lieutenant Malthus hears, "Welcome to the fleet! We would like to meet the leader of your tribe. Do you have any questions about us?"

Malthus says, “Welcome to you leader of the Karo’k , I am lieutenant Malthus. We are honored to meet you. We are curious where you came from, and a little bit about your species history? Our leader, Commander Ralk is currently speaking with the Commander of the Black Cat.”

Several of the marines have taken off their helmets, it is an interesting mix of creatures. There are bipedal canids, humans, and even something that looks like a large mushroom with tentacles in power armor.

The ants are studied and then bots were built with them as the models and sent back out to explore as the mosses, seeds and vines were studied and analyzed for further information.

Theao: The robotic ants climb along the different routes through the trees. It seems that different creatures have different territories on each tree. The vines provide a way for smaller creatures to travel between the trees, the mosses can support up to a persons weight, and the big branches are wide enough for much larger creatures to travel between the different Eve trees.

There is a big spiderlike creature that often patrols the wide tree trunks looking for prey. It sets up sticky nets and it chases creatures into them. There is also a spiders which dangles sticky threads and fishes for your robotic ants when you send them into the trees. It even takes them apart methodically to line its nest.

You find a green lichen which glows at night as strong as a 40 watt bulb. It is often eerie in the trees at night. There are various creatures, plants, and lichen which use bioluminescence to see by. Some of them can blind other creatures like a flash bulb.

All the data was sent along the way to the command ship. Some of the robotic ants were sent to hunt down a couple spiders for study, using pseudo-pack like tactics to capture and drag the spiders back to the ship to be caged and dissected.

Theao: The robotic ants have no problem capturing one of the giant path spiders and bringing it down. However, as they climb further up into the trees to get the fisher spiders they run into some difficulties. The fishers have guard spiders, lets call them pitt jaw spiders, that grab onto the ants and don't let go thrashing them around, as well as guard slugs which stick onto the ants and emit a strong acid. Your robotic ants manage to retreat with a couple of pitt jaw spiders, and sticky slugs back to the ship.

You also think you see what look like humans with loincloths and purple growths on their neck as well as the jungle spiders which attacked Clairmont talking to the fisher spiders.

With the believed recorded imagery, a robotic pseudo-human with a loincloth and a growth modeled after what was captured on film was sent out to see if it perhaps would not be harrassed by the various critters on the planet.

Before the lone human can get properly harassed, a group of jungle spiders and ripper bugs spot it and carry it off into the trees assuming it is an escaped slave.

You see through the camera, the bugs are clicking, hissing, and clacking at your like you are supposed to understand them. The robot remains silent and they carry the robot into the trees where there are other humans.

The robot is tied up and left with some other humans who become very surprised.

The robo-man's speaker began speaking at a pre-arranged signal, the sight of humans, "Who are you and what do you do?"

An older human in his 50s speaks, "I am David, we are slaves to the buggers and the worms. We have hands and they don't. They give us simple tools to weave baskets, make bowls, make wallhangings, stools. Most of us that are here are craftsmen. If we do not work, we do not eat, if we strike them, we are taken to hard labor where most die. Work at your assigned task and say nothing. A speaking slave is a disobedient slave."

"How did you get captured?" The robot continued when the first to reply ceased to speak.

A canid speaks up named Rex, "When the spiders came into the New Shimizu pyramid, they sprayed many of us with very strong webbing and simply carried us off. We were not strong enough to resist. I was an arc welder so they figured that I could work with my hands. They did not try to kill us when they took the city.

They tried to capture as many sentients as possible. We were to be their hands. It was terrifying, they dragged us deep underground where they first had a giant buzzing bug probe our mind drawing out images of what we did.

They separated sentients who they thought were useful from those who they had found other purposes for. The canid speaks softly. We hear terrible rumors they are experimenting on humans and sentients, there are rumors of new humanoid shaped bugs, warped creatures mockeries of human soldiers.

They fitted us with collars so we could speak bug, it was painful, now we don't feel it anymore, but the collars are still there. We were taken to the worms after we were sorted where we were questioned. The worms promised those who would cooperate a new life. They told us it was impossible to lie to them.

There are collaborators, there are rumors that the worms may have gotten a ship from New Shimizu. Some humans are given privileges if they cooperate."

"Any knowladge of weaknesses, hives, places of tactical or stategic military interest? What projects have you been working on?" Came the request from the 'bot. With any luck these people would have valuable knowladge.

Rex speaks up, "Many of the bugs are afraid of fire, except for a special caste of bugs which generates plasma and electricity.
The lightning bugs, arc light bugs, and plasma bugs, generate heat, electricity and plasma. There are also smaller bugs which generate light. I observed that the bugs have heavy armor against bullets and things like that, but only the fire caste seems to be resistant to heat weapons."

David, "Most of the warrior bugs are not very bright, they keep fighting and don't surrender, they'll charge right into gunfire, I saw them run right into a minefield until there were piles of warrior bugs everywhere and they just climbed over the minefield. It was both grotesque and frightening. I believe the self preservation insect has been removed from many of the warrior insects. Sometimes I think the bugs are enslaved to the worms, I don't know why this is so, but they seem deferential and afraid. I think the worms are separate from the other bugs. The bugs do not deal with cluster bombs are area denial weapons very well."

Martha, Ohyes, "I think I heard of a brain bug hive where they do a lot of the planning, it is far north of the swamps, there is a big tiered amphitheater ruin near it. There are also rumors of a bug ship somewhere which has been abandoned. I have heard many strange things, apparently the bugs and worms think of us as uncivilized barbarians, they think we are programmed to destroy our environment so we have to look for new places to live. They view their race as superior because they don't despoil the worlds they live on. I have been listening closely to the bugs, they are angry because the Commonalitarianism built deep core taps through the planets surface to extract heat energy from the core for New Shimizu, the research stations, and the pharmaceutical farms. These taps went directly through the homes of the worms destroying large tracts of their hives. Most of the worms live deep underground and probably would have never come to the surface if this had not happened. The worms and bugs are very angry. I think certain kinds of sounds may bother them. We three are not primarily military. I think there is a military person here named James. The bugs have a hard time accepting humans are flexible, they separated us into castes with an idea that we were made to do specific things.”

Theao: In the night while the others are sleeping, a collaborator comes in a simple brown robe. He looks at the robot, then waves away the bugs. He leans forward and whispers in the robots ear, the bugs are susceptible to neural disruptors, neuroelectric weapons, and disruption weapons, pain beams scramble their nervous systems. These are illegal in the Commonalitarianism, they are considered torture weapons.
Then he speaks up, "I will speak to this one, he will understand." Several insects drag you away to small hollow in a tree. There are some minor human artifacts here, chairs, a table, some books, even a quilted bed, and a few minor odds and ends.

The robot was somewhat disquieted at the turn of events, or at least as much as a pre-programmed human-replica could be. Whilst awaiting further instructions it became a leaden dead-weight. Once it had received new instructions it turned to the person and spoke, "Where bug base be?"

Theao: The man in the brown robes tells you it is often hard to tell where the main base is. There is a worm tunnel network, much like a train tunnel network where they push people inside the maws of the big worms to transport them to different locations. They travel in the stinking warm darkness. The tunnels are smooth and the worms are truly gigantic. If you could locate the big tunnels, you would find the route to the main worm and bug bases. When the big mound near New Shimizu was destroyed, the processing center for humans was destroyed. We know their main base for the bug brains is to the far north underground near a ruin which looks like an amphitheater. We think the main egglaying base for the bugs is very deep underground. They do not let humans in it.

OOC: This was the Clairmont orbital strike.

All the data was taken and then sold to the overall command for a very hefty sum. With the datums necessary to end the struggle for the planet sold for a fortune and the fact that a large majority of useful and salient facts, figures and materials had been gathered, the Black Cat released all the test subjects, save for the centiscorps which had been 'petified' before departing the planet for parts unknown.

The 'bot meanwhile began dissolving as its function was at an end.

To turn the tide of the battle in the swamps, the Commonii drops troops with neural disruptors in the middle of the swamps. The effect is devastating, it turns the tide of the battle. What looks like volt guns start spewing an electric and electromagnetic beam designed to directly overload the nervous system of the enemy.

The effect is devastating, it carries directly into the hive empathy between the bugs transmitting pain and neural overload between clustered groups of bugs. When one is hit others are stunned, disoriented or dead twitching on the ground. Outlying bugs are shelled with bombers a modified ebomb designed to act on the same electric and bioelectric frequencies of the bugs nervous system. The balance is tipped in favor of the Commonalitarianism troops.

The starfuries effect with replacing the weapons mounts against airborn bugs clears the skies of large bug formations.

The troops on the ground once evenly matched press the advantage pouring firepower into the retreating insects and worms. The bugs are broken on the surface.

Preparations for "Brain Base Prime" as they call it are underway. New ground penetrating radar is calibrated to find deep tunnels and bring the fight to the enemy.

With the upgrades in weapons systems, and the knowledge gained from Theao, the bugs are slowly driven from the surface.

Camps with enslaved humans are found high up in the trees. They are not mistreated physically, it is more of a forced labor operation. They produce goods like baskets, weavings, furniture, gathered food, and similar items for the bugs in exchange they get food and shelter. Most of the operations are run by collaborating humans who receive extra goods and comforts for their cooperation. Many of the collaborators are killed as the camps are liberated. They are thrown from the trees into the swarming jungles below.

Some of the humans are dragged underground as the bug forces retreat. The collaborators tell you that the bugs might negotiate some of them apparently simply want the humans off the planet completely. They speak of atrocities committed by the humans. Psychologists claim they are merely identifying with their captors.

Then it is uncovered during raids on the Ming Commercial House, RFS, and the Cruon Commercial House RFS, footage of the building of the deep tunnels for the underground geothermal core taps, shows mercenary units supported by the Ming Commercial House going in and slaughtering a bug hive killing a queen insect and her brood. There is footage of the dissection of the queen and the capture of insects.

An asteroid in the vicinity of the Paradise systems is found and raided with experimental laboratories containing both bugs and worms in dismal conditions. Some of the captured bugs are telepathic and apparently have been sending back information on their treatment to the hives.

This footage is dated about a month before the attacks against the New Shimizu Megapyramid. The footage is shown uncut before the censors can get to it. It causes a scandal which will permanently cripple the Ming Commercial House. Cruon Commercial House somehow survives the storm. The Ming Commercial House is broken up and fed into other cooperatives, partnerships, and organizations.

The Commonalitarianism thinks they are preparing for a final assault on the bug strongholds when they receive a message, it is from a radio from a crashed starliner, another bug nation, the message is very simple.

"We have watched your war fought between the nation of Tap-Tap-Click-Click and your countrymen. It is the picture of savagery, we represent the first united planetary government of eggdom, or as you call it Muse. We wish this war to end. We have put aside the differences between the hives and have chosen a queen from the council of queens, we represent over a thousand hives. We are willing to negotiate. Check your borders, you will find we are ready to enforce the peace. We will spare neither the nation of Tap-Tap-Click-Click nor the Commonalitarianism and its allies if this continues. Meet us on the Isle of Hiss-Hiss-Click-Clack-Click."

Before the negotiations begin, the brains from the hive come out and surrender. The process of repatriating the humans is begun. The government of Eggdom is very thorough in forcing the humans return to the Commonalitarianism. They want none of them around.

From orbit it looks like there is a mass of insects that could be millions strong prepared to finish the job.

The isle of Tap-Tap-Click-Click is a barren rock with absolute nothing on it. It has been scoured completely clean. The bedrock of the island is made of a very dense dull grey rock as hard as low grade steel and resistant to most acids.

Negotiators meet and discuss a peace. The bugs suggest a large island where humans can stay to grow Stroonus. The island is far larger than the current territory they occupy. The bugs further offer exchange of knowledge in good faith. It is surrounded by a sea of death. They ask for no further activity on the mainland except for small negotiating teams and scientists.