Hive Queen Quest 60.2

Time for Diplomacy

>"This speaker is somewhat excited, it has never been through a waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrpppppppppppppppppppppp bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeffffffffffffffffffooooooooooooooore. Why is everyone staring?"

All the while it's still moving its hands and eyes around like it normally would, just really slowly, and the humans all realize that the entire time it's been there it's been glancing at literally every one of them several times per second.

We can't communicate with them in a practical fashion while they're in warp, however I believe the ambassadorial speaker has a q-brain so he shouldn't be spewing too much shit while he's there.

Your forces skim the planets orbit as they decelerate, firing a salvo as they pass and loop around that shears into the enemy fleet from the side. You see a Scavenger ship catch a slug and spin, its hull warping and fragmenting as it rips itself apart from the impact. Another shatters in half, sending bits of hull in every direction. As your fleet spins as they pass, accelerating hard to give the formation a sweeping curve towards the planet, your ships fire again, the linear particle beams reaching out the astronomically short distance of a half-light second to flay the hull from several damaged ships, and your formation begins to enter the melee, falling into a range close enough for real time communication. You detect comm lasers pinging your ships warily from outdated looking vessels amid the conflict.

A damage report comes to you from the lasers, along with data you already know informing you they had been expecting an allied alien force to assist. The picket force has suffered casualties, nearly a third of their fleet either destroyed or rendered inoperable, but they have made sure the enemy has paid for every vessel. Scavenger ships dot the battlespace, wrecks covered in weapon impact marks and torn to pieces from unrelenting fire. A faint static hints at atomic weapon detonations, and beams of light from the surface below tear at the descending troop transports, burning them down like moths in a flame. Shuttles fall from the orbiting ships and transports, shedding from their bellies like fleas as they scatter to the planet below. You already detect the chaos of combat beginning to spread on the surface.

>Have your corvettes move in and deploy ground forces under the cover of your larger ships
>Focus on assisting the picket forces in orbit
>Focus on targeting and destroying the landing ships
>Other

He just sold them two tons of our nutrient paste.

>Focus on targeting and destroying the landing ships

Or he could be spouting all of the shit while he is there.

However if it ends up becoming like that would make me all the more happy.

>>Have your corvettes move in and deploy ground forces under the cover of your larger ships

>Focus on assisting the picket forces in orbit
GAS THE SQUIDS
NUKE THE WHALES
STAB THE MONKEYS
TRUST NOTHING
THE VOID IS WATCHING

>>Have your corvettes move in and deploy ground forces under the cover of your larger ships

>we regain control of the speaker as it finishes speaking
>"-and human birth is disgusting! All blood and stretching and screaming and weak fleshy babies with single hearts and terminal stupidity! So weird! And-"

>>Have your corvettes move in and deploy ground forces under the cover of your larger ships

>>Focus on targeting and destroying the landing ships
Let's see how good we are with bombardment.

FORMOTHER

>>Have your corvettes move in and deploy ground forces under the cover of your larger ships
This time we give full assistance, that and I want to our children to get stuck in in a ground war.

...

Agreed. Our warrior drones have only ever entered ground combat against OQ and Lyle.

Time for some old fashioned zerg rushing

>Focus on targeting and destroying the landing ships

EXTERMINATE!

>Have your corvettes move in and deploy ground forces under the cover of your larger ships

Ah yeah, time to see our upgraded ground drones in action. It's been a while.

>Have your corvettes move in and deploy ground forces under the cover of your larger ships.

>Other
Full assist, ground and orbital warfare

I just want to see the scavs vs warrior drones matchup, and to show the Commonwealth a few of our Goliaths.

What about the battle in Nowhere?

>>Have your corvettes move in and deploy ground forces under the cover of your larger ships
sounds like a lot of transports are making it down unscathed

>>Have your corvettes move in and deploy ground forces under the cover of your larger ships

And the Smith.

I think we're too late to stop a lot of the transports. We need to get ahead of them.

Let's go with
>Have your corvettes move in and deploy ground forces under the cover of your larger ships

we were the clean-up crew, along with Theseus's hunter-killer drones.
I just really want to see our children fighting once more.

>>Have your corvettes move in and deploy ground forces under the cover of your larger ships

YES YES YES

>>Have your corvettes move in and deploy ground forces under the cover of your larger ships

HAHA TIME FOR PLASMA ASSAULT CANNONS AND TITANS

And the Scavs on the Builders superstructure

Let's show the commonwealth how truly lucky they are that we approached them on friendly terms and wish to ally with them.

I am honestly curious about how our tank bugs go against the Scavs.

>Have your corvettes move in and deploy ground forces under the cover of your larger ships

Your corvettes begin to shed their own shuttles as they quickly fall to the surface, their hulls glowing with heat as they smash through the atmosphere. As your shuttles break the clouds their sensors begin to study the landscape below, a bleak world, covered in factories and boxy looking habitation facilities covered in atmospheric filters. The air is nearly breathable, but just slightly too little oxygen, and the air is just below freezing. Your own drones find it somewhat exhaustive, but their respiratory systems are far more efficient. You will have no issue here.

Landing pods fall from the sky along with shuttles and larger dropships flying above. You pick out a number in your way and your shuttles begin to drop your flying drones. They swoop to intercept, screaming through the sky with a chittering whaling as their weapons open up and rip into the Scavenger landing craft. Other shuttles begin to touch down, their holds opening and spilling drones forth like a geyser of chitin.

>Have your drones secure a defensive perimeter and assist the human defenders
>Have your drones find and kill all Scavengers and scavenger-like things on the planet
>Other

...

>Have your drones secure a defensive perimeter and assist the human defenders

>Have your drones secure a defensive perimeter and assist the human defenders

>>Have your drones find and kill all Scavengers and scavenger-like things on the planet
The most important thing is that no scavs escape back to orbit with samples to study.

Any advancements they make will cost everyone a lot more later.

>Have your drones secure a defensive perimeter and assist the human defenders
>Have your drones find and kill all Scavengers and scavenger-like things on the planet
Pretty sure we can do both, put fast killy drones on scav hunting duty while heavy slow drones help defend humans.

>Have your drones find and kill all Scavengers and scavenger-like things on the planet.

If we give them time, they will steal everything, even the kitchen sink. They are worse than vikings.

>>Have your drones find and kill all Scavengers and scavenger-like things on the planet

>Have your drones secure a defensive perimeter and assist the human defenders
>Both if possible?

>>Have your drones secure a defensive perimeter and assist the human defenders

>>Have your drones secure a defensive perimeter and assist the human defenders

>Have your drones secure a defensive perimeter and assist the human defenders

We are trying to score brownie points for being good allies after all...

>>Have your drones find and kill all Scavengers and scavenger-like things on the planet

Gotta minimize damage the best way we know how, kill them all.

>Have your drones secure a defensive perimeter and assist the human defenders

Please roll 1d100, best of 3.

>Vikings
>Bad

Rolled 49 (1d100)

GO MY CHILDREN

Rolled 99 (1d100)

Rolled 43 (1d100)

We are primarily trying to stop the Scavs from improving themselves, that's just a side bonus.

>Have your drones find and kill all Scavengers and scavenger-like things on the planet
>Other
Capture more officers for Intel and chimera subjects.

Rolled 29 (1d100)

For Big Momma!

Rolled 12 (1d100)

FOR MOTHER

Eh, human reinforcements will arrive in about a hour or two, they just have to hold on until then.

Let's give them the chance to be heroes defending their homes.

>>Have your drones secure a defensive perimeter and assist the human defenders

HHHHHAHAHAHAHA

GOOD FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE ALWAYS GOOD

YES YES YES

I love how every single time we meet the scavs we just fuck them up immensely. Time to make the Commonwealth impressed with our ground forces as well as our space fleets.

It's the same with bitchy queen.

You also believe pirates were like in Treasure Island don't you?

Go back to read your Olaf comics.

They deserve it

I get that we're focusing primarily on the ground, but that doesn't mean our fleet up in space is just standing by idly, right?

This still isn't making up for that 1 earlier against BQ spore plot

Forgetting the crit-fail yesterday already I see.

That was cleanup detail. Our drones being oblivious after-battle is irrelevant.

we Imperial fists now

I wont lie,

I want to see how BQ spore creep works and also want to see and study how the fight goes between BQ and union ground forces

Nah, it's actually great. More plot hooks.

Yeah, this is more the Union seeing how fucked they are without us. Really, it was one of the better situations (at least from the Red Queen's perspective) to fail to perceive our enemy.

I still can't believe that space Tokyo of all Union worlds was the one that got dusted. Seeing BQ's spores sweep through it's streets is going to be insane.

We HAVE to send our Kaiju down to fight there (assuming things really do get out of control)

So how does the betting pool look lie?

Spore causes zombie rabies?

Spore just creates relay and basic drones?

Our giant bettles are still a tad short to be called Kaijus.

Spores infect and turn hosts into explosive spore bombs which continue the cycle, along with planting aggressive hive creep that devours everything in its path.

I just realized that this is a bad idea are drones are still armed with acid glands were gonna be melting are human friends left and right down there

uh
no

I'm thinking body horror style amalgamation of all flesh and biomatter into giant masses of spores.

So "The Last of Us" style

Thats cool

Dude we stopped using acid a long time ago

Dead Space?

Our drones have thus far been good about not spewing friendlies with acid, and the actual explosiveness of a burst of acid is a semi-conscious decision I think. So we shouldn't have too much trouble with it.

Your airborne drones begin to sweep the landscape, filling the sky as they scan for the human defenders. Wasps descend like a dark cloud onto the district, spreading out as they begin to take fire, sweeping in on the Scavenger positions. A squad holds their position in a small building, firing from mashed windows at another concrete and metal structure a hundred meters away. A strafer drone flies past, rupturing the ceiling and one of the walls as it releases several concussive grenades and its seekers begin to flutter through the sky, falling in a spiral into the newly opened holes as they home in on the traces of Scavenger genetic signatures, tracing their ever present pheromone trails. They flutter through the building, over debris and shattered walls, and the first pops, swelling with reactive chemicals as it flops itself to the back of the first Scavenger it finds, and it detonates. The windows flair with fire and dust, and others flair after it. The scavs turn quickly at the small seekers, the instinctive munitions flutter like animals, innocent in their intention but devastating in their effect, and several are gunned down as they race to their targets.

You see a squad of humans taking cover in the nearby building, and others ducked into several ditches in a snow covered field nearby. They get up, watching in obvious confusion as a Scavenger dives from the second story window of a building, rattling its back in panic as two seekers dive after it. It impacts with a crunchy thud on the frosted ground, and the two seekers detonate, creating an avalanche of concrete as a corner of the building crumbles away. The humans begin to advance, sprinting up the debris ramp to the building's second level.

cont.

youtube.com/watch?v=pNfPPu4Mrj8

fucking terrifying

WE HUNT. FOR MOTHER!

such adorable children

I didn't know we upgraded our wasps with seekers podd but I'm glad we did

Those aren't wasps.

yay

The scavengers blast away several more of the seekers as your wasps glide in over the building, landing on the shattered rooftop with a cluster of thuds, and they rush inside. You see several pack alphas commanding their respective squads in unison, one ordering another out the window as it trails several more seekers. It dives out as the small leathery balls of wings flutter out behind it, detonating shortly after.

You hear gunfire below as the humans begin to clear the building, your wasps rushing in as the scavengers attempt to react, diving at one of the alphas with blades unsheathed. The surrounding scavenger troops open fire, boiling away your wasps as they detonate their acid over the alien leader. It rattles its back spines in agony as they slowly break off, its face rapidly corroding as its implants sink into the dissipating goo of its flesh. More wasps fly in from the window, decapitating two scavengers as they pass. The two lash out in confusion, reaching for their bleeding necks. One trips, falling out of the window, while the other is quickly filled with a spray of chitinous slugs and drops to the ground.

cont.

Your strafer drone, and aerodynamic light bomber intended primarily for air support of infantry. It is equipped with thumpers and seeker pods.

Our children are brutal as fuck.