"Open the door! Open the door! There are bugs outside!"
"Help, there are bugs!"
In the streets, the people who had been marching a moment before now fled in a frenzy.
Some rushed to the nearest shelter.
But these shelters' doors had long since been shut.
On them was shown: capacity reached; please go to a nearby shelter.
However the people outside begged and pounded, this door would not open.
"Aaah!"
In the streets, people had already begun to be hurt by the hive-race.
"No… don't… don't come any closer." A young man with a white cloth tied round his head, a slogan written on it,
looked at the bug monster before him, like a mantis, a full three meters tall and more.
In its mouth was stuffed half a body.
It was the corpse of the friend who had marched with him.
A few minutes before, they had been throwing Molotov cocktails and singing together.
Now he had become the hive-race's meal.
At this moment this young man wanted to flee, but both his legs were shaking.
He watched the mantis monster about to swing down its scythe.
This young man shut his eyes in despair.
How he wished all this were a dream.
How he wished he had done as he was told before; he reckoned he would be in a shelter by now.
But he had no chance left to regret it.
When he opened his eyes again, he already saw the other half of his own body; he had been cut in two at the waist.
From this moment on, no one anywhere on Dragon Star questioned the Fierce Dragon Kingdom's credibility about the hive-race invasion again.
For these bugs now appeared right before their eyes.
In some shelters with network access,
many people gathered in front of the televisions, watching the reports from the city outside.
"This is a Nancy Empire war correspondent. We're now in the Nancy Empire's capital. We can see that many things like meteorites have appeared in the sky. But these things are in fact the hive-race. Their shapes vary, but they have very obvious bug features. Some are like mantises, some like cockroaches, some like spiders. But they're hundreds or thousands of times bigger than ordinary bugs. We can see that the capital's defense systems have opened full fire and are destroying those 'meteorites' in the sky. But many bugs are still landing in the streets. Next, our soldiers will go out to clear the bugs from the streets. Citizens in the shelters, please rest assured. Through the efforts of the Fierce Dragon Kingdom, the Dragon Star Alliance and our Nancy Empire, we will surely destroy these hive-race swarms invading our homes, and very soon you'll be able to return to the surface."
On the screen,
the Nancy Empire's army could already be seen entering the city:
tanks, and infantry.
The tanks aimed at those huge bug creatures and fired.
Where the shells hit these big bugs, they blew them to pieces at once.
When bugs charged, the soldiers too would destroy them one by one with machine guns, flamethrowers and other weapons.
Seeing that human weapons still worked on these bugs,
the people in the shelters all felt hope rise.
At least these bugs were not invincible.
But very soon
a huge "burning ship" appeared in the sky.
Looking closely, it was plainly a Hive Mothership like those in the literary works.
This Hive Mothership's surface had been under relentless bombardment, but it still plunged into Dragon Star's low orbit and dove toward the ground.
After this Hive Mothership smashed hard into the ground, great numbers of hive-race combat units poured out of its broken body.
Fortunately, where this Hive Mothership fell was not in any city but out in the wilds.
Otherwise it would have posed a devastating threat to the city.
The Fierce Dragon Kingdom: Command.
"The crash site of one Hive Mothership is confirmed. Orders have been given to the nearest combat units!" Marshal Chu Xuan marked a position on the map before her.
The threat of a Hive Mothership was enormous.
Inside a Hive Mothership there might be many bug-eggs not yet hatched.
So the Hive Mothership had to be destroyed in the shortest time.
This was a plan they had drawn up before the disaster came.
And as chance would have it,
not far from this Hive Mothership was a stretch of sea.
On the sea was a Fierce Dragon carrier battle group.
A flight of fighters and bombers took off at once.
At the same time countless missiles were launched, all aimed at that crashed Hive Mothership.
At the same time,
the several cities around this Hive Mothership sounded alarms of a higher grade.
The soldiers garrisoning these cities all went into their defensive works, ready to meet the bug-tide to come.
The earth began to shake.
This was a city on the Nancy Empire's border.
The city had walls.
On the walls were antiaircraft guns and machine-gun turrets.
A commander, binoculars in hand, gazed at the distant forest.
He had seen with his own eyes that the Hive Mothership had fallen in that direction; the city he garrisoned was the city nearest that Hive Mothership.
And they had received instructions too:
their city was very likely to be the first city hit by a wave of hive-race attack.
"Keep your wits about you twelve times over, all of you. It's only a bunch of bugs a bit bigger than usual. Look at the weapons in our hands. So long as we shoot straight and shoot plenty, we can wipe out these bugs easily too!" the commander roared loudly,
lifting the spirits of the soldiers who were somewhat scared and nervous.
Just at this moment,
the trees of the forest beyond began falling in swaths.
A dark, dense mass of bugs appeared in their view.
These bugs swept toward them like a black tide, and among them several huge figures could be seen.
Those were the T1 Little Thunder-Beasts they had already had intelligence on!
"Fire!" The commander gave the order to fire at once.
On the walls, every kind of weapon opened full fire at this moment:
bullets, rocket artillery, flame, grenades, bombs, shells.
Every kind of weapon was let loose on them.
Many of the bugs charging at the front were blown to mush.
But there were simply too many of these bugs, and they drew closer and closer to the walls.
In ten-odd minutes these bugs had crawled to the foot of the walls and began swarming up them,
spraying corrosive fluid on the walls.
Those huge Little Thunder-Beasts, like little hills, rammed the walls.
Feeling the walls shake as if the earth were quaking,
the soldiers garrisoning here all felt a kind of despair.
Was this the despair of fighting the hive-race?
They had thought they had seen many works of this kind and played games of this kind.
But only when they truly faced it did they know the terror of a sea of bugs.
Just at this moment,
bomber after bomber flew overhead and dropped gasoline incendiary bombs on the ground,
setting the area outside the walls ablaze into a sea of fire.
Many fighters dove down and strafed the bugs clinging at the foot of the walls.
After this round of support, the pressure on the walls was greatly eased.
But those garrisoned here knew this kind of support was only brief.
"Remember our mission. Behind us are our homes and our families. If this place falls, our city will be invaded by these damned bugs, and our families will be torn apart by them! Remember: we live or die with this line!" The commander swept the bugs below with a machine gun.
"Live or die!" the other soldiers roared too.
On the other battlefields, the same thing was happening one after another.
Six hours into the hive-race invasion.
The Fierce Dragon Kingdom: Command.
"So far, of three hundred T1 Hive Motherships, we've destroyed a hundred fifty. Of our three moon fortresses,[1] No. 1 has lost contact; No. 2 and No. 3 are still in contact, but things aren't looking good there either. The second line of defense we built has been over 50% destroyed. On the ground, bugs falling to the surface have appeared on all four continents. Over a hundred twenty-three cities have been affected. Our stock of space nukes is down to under 30%, and long-range missiles to under 40%…" A staff officer reported these figures one by one.
Chu Xuan, as supreme commander, was under great pressure in her mind at this moment.
In a mere six hours of fighting,
the great part of their stock of top weapons had been used up.
If it went on, they could only fight with the most basic weapons.
"Whatever happens, first destroy all those Hive Motherships! So long as those Hive Motherships are still there, they can keep producing hive-race combat units without end. A hundred fifty left… Pass on my orders. At any cost, within the next eighteen hours, every Hive Mothership must be destroyed!" Marshal Chu Xuan said decisively.
"Yes!"
Behind Marshal Chu Xuan was the Fierce Dragon King Zhao Chen, who had not spoken all along.
He watched the situation on these battlefields in silence.
He knew very well what Marshal Chu Xuan's last order meant.
Having lost weapons like missiles and nukes,
if they still wanted to destroy those Hive Motherships, the only way left
was suicide attack!
This too was part of the Bug-Bug Plan.
In underground hangars all over the world, some high-speed fighters had long been stored; these fighters had all been modified,
with no weapon at all but a single high-explosive bomb.
Their only mission in taking off was to rush at the target,
making themselves the last shell fired at the enemy.
This step was one Zhao Chen did not want to see.
But it was also their only way to protect this planet.
Zhao Chen looked at the map of Dragon Star, on which the places where fighting had broken out were already marked one by one.
Even on the Fierce Dragon Kingdom's own soil, hive-race combat units had fallen here.
But because the residents here had long since been evacuated to the underground shelters, there was almost no news of civilian casualties.
In the city streets, the well-trained Fierce Dragon Army destroyed those hive-race combat units one by one.
An underground shelter in the Fierce Dragon capital.
Princess Polly held a crowd of her younger brothers and sisters.
"Don't be scared, don't be scared. We're all here. Everyone's very safe."
A younger sister said timidly, "Big sister, will those bugs come here and eat us?"
Princess Polly looked at her sister with a reassuring smile and said, "Don't worry. Above us, the Fierce Dragon soldier brothers and sisters are fighting. They'll wipe out all those bad bugs. We'll be back on the surface very soon."
Though Princess Polly said so herself, in truth she was worried and afraid inside too.
To look after her younger brothers and sisters, she had in fact been the last to walk into the shelter.
She had even seen with her own eyes a great ball of flesh fall in the street; that was the "meteorite."
This great ball of flesh came apart, and the bugs inside could be seen.
Though the shelter's door had shut in time, and the sound of gunfire had broken out outside,
the ugly, savage look of those bugs was still in her head now.
"Hello. These are your meal boxes. When you've finished eating, please put the meal boxes together in the iron bin outside. Thank you." A staff member came out pushing a meal cart and handed out the heated meal boxes according to the numbers before her.
Princess Polly took the meal boxes and shared them out to the children.
They had already been here over six hours.
This was their first meal here.
She had long since heard that every shelter stored a great deal of food, fresh food and long-keeping compressed biscuits too,
enough for the people in a shelter to live on for a year.
"You're all hungry, aren't you? Eat first. After you eat, everyone get to sleep early. Maybe after a good sleep, nothing bad will be left at all," Princess Polly said with a smile.
The children obediently took the meal boxes.
Inside were steaming rice and three dishes and a soup.
It had to be said, this first meal was very good.
Perhaps this too was to calm the feelings of the people sheltering here.
Though they had known long before that the hive-race crisis would come, and had prepared themselves in mind,
being prepared in mind was one thing, and the thing truly happening was another.
Many people now were frightened and at a loss, looking worried.
And at a time like this, a delicious meal set before them
was surely the best way to calm their feelings.
Time passed little by little.
The lights in the shelter gradually dimmed.
Though the sun could not be seen here,
the shelter's lighting followed the time outside.
So by now it was probably night outside too.
Some children had already fallen asleep on the beds laid out for them.
Princess Polly tucked the children in one by one.
She leaned in the corner; only now could the smile on her face ease a little and let her hidden weariness show.
She now began to worry about her relatives still up above; because they held posts in the Fierce Dragon Kingdom, they had to step forward at a time like this.
So they would not evacuate into the shelters.
At this moment Princess Polly could only pray silently for these brothers and sisters of hers,
and for her Royal Father, Royal Mother and the aunties far away in Sea-Anemone Town,
hoping they too were all safe and nothing had happened to them,
and hoping too that this disaster would pass soon.