Scenarios

Bugs!

We know they're coming. I keep having to tell myself that. We're prepared to defend against an attack. But all our other colonies were prepared too, and that didn't do anything to help them. There's a no way to prepare specifically for them. Every one of their attacks is different.

Will they send a legion of battledroids? A squad of vampires? A pack of werewolves? Will they simply overrun us with their better numbers? Will they send animals? And if they do, what kind? Dragons? Big cats? Dinosaurs? Dogs? Demons? Will they siege us? Raid us? Bomb us? Kill us all? And all of those options are just examples of things they've done to us before. They could do something entirely new.

All our heads turn as we hear their ship overhead. A few of us even take potshots at the large drop ship, but our bullets are simply absorbed by the thick hull. It lowers below the tree line in the distance and soon the loud engine is cut off. We wait.

The night is dark and remarkably quiet. Everyone is too on edge to make conversation. At the edge of my hearing a strange rattling can be heard. I close my eyes and listen closer.

"Do you hear that?" Someone next to me asks. I open my eyes and look at her.

"You hear it too?" I check. She just nods and we both fall silent again. Over the rattling is a strange buzzing noise.

Suddenly one of our turrets next to me comes to life, scaring the life out of me. It's gun swivels upward and fires off a few shots. A moment later, whatever it was firing at falls down a mere foot from our barricade.

With a wet crunch, a massive bee smashes into the ground in front of me, splattering green blood all over me.

"What. The Hell. Is that?" The woman next to me exclaims. I'm to busy clearing my vision of bug blood to answer.

More turrets power up around us and begin firing upward. Soon the sky is lit up with gunfire. And it is chock full of more bees— bumbledrones— and giant dragonflies. I quickly turn my gun up at them and unload into them.

I see a plenty of them fall, and a few just pop outright, but there are so many, it doesn't seem to make a difference. As one, the entire swarm surges down at us. Screams echo through the compound as hundreds of massive stingers and pincers make minced meat out of our defenders.

A bumbledrone hierophant— a bigger and deadlier version of the typical bumbledrone— comes right at me. I bludgeon it to the ground with the butt of my gun and blow it to bits while it struggles to get up. I glance out at the direction the ship landed just in time to see four beady yellow eyes staring back at me.

I let out a surprised scream as a black rhinoceros beetle the size of a truck hooks it's intricate horns under our barricade and then lifts its head again, tossing the entire line back. A quick glance to my sides show that it didn't work alone. Four other crepuscular beetles all worked together to throw away the entire defensive line. The bumbledrones weren't the main force. They were a distraction!

"The barricade is gone! We got incoming hostile!" I cry as loud as I can, struggling to be heard over the mind rattling buzzing all around us. I turn my gun on the massive beetle in front of me, but it's stepped back to make way for other bugs.

A massive scorpion— a pulmonoscorpius— thrusts is huge stinger at me. With a grunt I hop to the side, narrowly avoiding a face full of poison. I turn my gun on the scorpion and blow off its tail. It lets out a pained screech and snips it's claws at me, but I quickly unload into its head. It falls weakly to the ground.

It seems the bumbledrones have retreated. Or maybe we killed them all. It's hard to tell. But we have bigger problems on our hands now. Our barricade is gone and we're being overrun by every giant insect imaginable. Megaspiders spew webbing at us, successfully entangling a few of us. Spelopedes— the normal verity as well as the larger cave kind— wrestle melee weapons away and begin using their dexterous tails to use them against us. Blackspiders— bigger and smarter versions of megaspiders— stalk the sidelines waiting for any stragglers to come close enough to devour. Mammoth worms lumber through us, throwing their weight around and using their huge tusks to knock us aside.

All of this and more, but we're holding our ground. As many bugs as there are, only the mammoth worms seem to take more than a little effort to shoot dead. That is until suddenly the ground around us erupts with arthropleura— giant centipedes with acidic blood that they can spit at will. They must've been just underneath us.

They let loose a strange gurgling sound and then, suddenly, fountains of acid are being thrown everywhere. I wait for the screams of people being burned, but they don't come. Instead, there's a number of pained yelps and the clatter of guns on the ground.

I quickly realize the problem as one of the centipedes splashed my gun with acid. The electric parts inside— it's a plasma weapon— crackle and pop and the outer casing melts away. I quickly drop the weapon before it can do any damage to me, but I quickly come to regret that decision.

The swarm surges forward with renewed vigor. The massive crepuscular beetles return and take up a similar job to the mammoth worms, knocking people around and bashing through barricades. Without our weapons, we're hopeless to defend.

Somewhere along the line, a retreat was called. It's a panic to make it to one of our ships and escape the horror. The entire base was overrun. What I saw in my section was happening on every side.

This battle was way too organized to simply be the insects' work. There must've been a higher mind involved. A bumbledrone queen, or cave beetle king, or perhaps even a proper sapient race like mantodeans or poleepkwa.

Whatever they are, they succeeded. The Neon Accord took another one of our bases. I'm one of the lucky few to make it to the shuttle and, not long after I arrive, it takes off. I get to watch from above as mammoth worms crash through buildings and smaller bugs begin looting.