>>5679469entering the city causes a large crowd to form around you, let in with full diplomatic precedent. for a shady caste insect race trying to hide something from you, they at least act highly safe and civilized (easy given the hive structure).
it kinda makes you wonder why the bug aliens in sci-fi are always depicted as a ravenous horde, eating everything in their wake...that's a spooky thought, lets hope that never becomes a thing.
speaking of, where to get info on the missing humans? just ask you suppose. you find, in fact a source on this, meeting among the towering green 1980s like cityscape. lit by green neon in lots of places, overlit by bright white fake sunlight. insectiods of various types, some food, some some weird caste, some who knows...and then you see some of the smaller bug creatures. the ones no one seems to talk about. even the workers and overseers kick these as they get close, like wild dogs caught amok. this is a strange race, and you get the feeling the xenology crew on the ship, and in the ice, is missing out on a lot here.
the source is a bedecked, carapace-painted overseer bug painted a pitch dark black by some sort of tattoo (or paint perhaps). he says
>HUMANS ARE NEAR HERE...ONE ROGUE SCIENCE CASTE DORMITORY BLOCK...INSTALLED WATER. INSTALLED ALGAE BAR CHUTE...HUMAN SAY ALGAE BAR TASTE BAD...HUMANS PICKY, I SEEas for the specter language, on the way, you try to understand it enough to write it down yourself, listening to it yourself and writing some things down as notes. you instantly get a headache, but you make some sense of it, but...why is the drawing tablet you were using glitching out now?. the device begins to make a horrible whining noise as its internals begin to fry, exposed to only a bare fraction of the specters language in written form.
the device pops and explodes in your hands, painfully shredding shrapnel into your hands. bugs and attendant humans yell back in surprise.
you are bleeding. you need a fucking doctor. it is unlikely you can dive back up to the surface like this, or can you? it's not that much a swim, and maybe the bugs can help you exfil out to the ice and back to the colony. honestly it's a risk to assume the bug doctors, if they have any, would even know how to treat a human. after all they didnt even know you breathed air
this is bad. you feel a little woozy. your crewmates grab you and begin holding you up out of fear, you need to go seek help, now. this hurts, ow, ow, ow, ow, fuck
