Bug Hunts by Mark Latham

Author:Mark Latham
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472810731
Publisher: Osprey Publishing Ltd
Published: 2015-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

Queen-Beasts are massive, tunnelling creatures. There are several of these beasts to be found in any one hive complex, each directing a horde of smaller creatures with an almost psionic control method.

Combating the Threat

Engaging Hive-Beasts at close range is incredibly hazardous. Their crab-like Soldier-Beasts are large and powerful, and incredibly aggressive, especially when defending their hives. Air support, and particularly the use of personal dropsuits, is made difficult by the swarms of Worker-Beasts, which flock together in huge numbers during battle. If there is no option but to get in close, marines are prescribed the use of sealed environment armor, while specialists are usually equipped with exo-suits, which have proven the physical equal of the larger bugs. At range, railguns are the weapon of choice – of all bug species encountered so far, Hive-Beast Soldiers have the thickest exo-skeletons – almost like heavy shells. Railguns offer superior armor penetration and range – though they are often in short supply.

The use of “nestbuster” smart nukes has had limited success on several Hive-Beast infestations, but given the sheer size of the larger nests they do not always possess the range to take down the hive’s Queen-Beast. The only sure-fire way of scattering a hive is by destroying this Queen and any juveniles, which almost always means sending a patrol deep into a hive to take down the creature at close quarters. This method presents many dangers. Firstly, the risk of infection is high, as deposits of worm-infested goo drop from every surface inside the hives. Once an environment suit is compromised and a marine is infected, he has only minutes before he falls under the control of the Hive-Beasts. Secondly, fighting Soldier-Beasts at close quarters is incredibly dangerous, even with the use of anti-chitin shotgun rounds and flamethrowers. Thirdly, within the nests, every vibration is amplified, and the bugs seem particularly sensitive to intruders, much like Earth spiders and their webs. Finally, the Queen-Beast herself, as well as being surrounded by vicious workers and voracious larvae, is capable of activating remote psionic control of individual marines or even small groups, turning fireteams against each other even without the aid of her “brainworm” spore.

Only six “Queen-hunts” have ever been attempted, and only one of those was successful. When the Queen-Beast was destroyed and her larvae put to the torch, all of the other bugs from the hive began to wander aimlessly, in a confused state, and were easily defeated. Two recent innovations, however, have made the prospect of Queen-hunts less of a suicide mission and more of a tactical possibility. Firstly, a pheromone spray applied to the marines’ fatigues masks their presence to the bugs’ heightened scent receptors, meaning that the Hive-Beasts must actually see the marines in order to detect them, and can thus be picked off piecemeal before organizing a stiff resistance. Secondly, some headway has been made into the development of neural-dampener drugs. Unlike other combat drugs, these are designed specifically to block those neural receptors that the Queen-Beasts try to exploit, making it much harder to “possess” an injected marine.

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