>>5665941informing the bugs the raiders are real, and not phantoms, or godlike UFOs, is a bit of a hard task to pull through on, saturated as they are for so long with the belief they were no aliens out there. it transpires in fact, that before this point the planet and its space travel never went anywhere generally becuase they just *vanished*.
there are several planets in this system, and only some, in which the bugs have a ship, or a station, or a failed colony, and it was (nearly) always the specters pulling some weird shit under the noses of the boomer aliens under radio silence and apparent total fucking internal anarchy.
it's let slipped by the Queens staff, that, not only were you getting boomer alien messages, the bugs were too. it's hinted at best she was skeptical and/or unable to act.
decoding the raider message is schizophrenic as hell. it translates out vaguely to
>fishes gone. want trade strangerthe tech who ends up deciphering it faints into a seizure with a nosebleed. and has not woken up yet. that's a bit spooky. a later problem, though
the away team, is already packed when you ask for it. as in scientists in fucking scuba gear are actively getting on a shuttle when you ask. apparently the eggheads REALLY want to get the fuck off this ship and actually explore an alien planet. and that stopover at the outpost was so short, wasn't it, they say. it's going to be harder dragging them off that iceball then ordering them down there. in fact you might not, ever succeed on that one, if they can slip away once you aren't looking for five minutes. the last you probably saw of them was stealing said shuttle and breaking hangar bay orders to fly down (and somehow not breaking any critical machinery in the process). darn, that's a problem, at least you have some spares
the away crew is not only real, it is already AWOL and flying down there presently.
the royal ship, eventually, appears out of a point you cannot locate on the planet itself, skulking slowly out of the blizzards below like a wraith.
it is fucking massive.
it is shimmering light green material like jewels or scales, on the outside. it is geometry, stacked in ways that make your remaining eggheads cream their shorts via sheer mathematical precision. it is covered in glassy clear domes atop it, sharpened and triangular and other weird shapes blending into the tapestry of the whole. it is carrying multiple nukes, a small armament warehouse full of missiles, and dakka to split the gods. it is armored so thickly in places it could take a lance hit from your ship (at least one, not more). its three nuclear hearts beat with clockwork precision and not a bolt out of place. its crew numbers hundreds and thousands, many of them packed in and visibly flowing on sensors as in how the workers are want to do. literal tides of flesh and chitin flowing back and forth through its maintenance corridors.
it is a ship where when it walks, wars happen.
your ride is here.
