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Hearth Star: Bug Hunt

By Psion

A Hearth Star Story

All Rights Reserved

The Hearth Star, a massive planet-sized space ship controlled by lupine pirates. The barbaric Wuff savages, lords of the Hearth Star, were the cruel lords of this vessel but they were hardly its only inhabitants nor was their rule absolute. Other groups inhabited the lower levels of the ship, the most numerous being the human rebels but they were hardly the only ones. Various warriors and soldiers of the Galactic Republic and its protectorates were gradually sneaking their way aboard the Hearth Star such as Lt. Jerky and his three Star Corps troopers.

The four portly Republic marines dressed in olive green polymer power armor sat down in the base cafeteria after another patrol. Part of a joint expedition with several officers from the Intergalactic Police Agency, the four of them had settled into a part of the Star they could convert into a functional outpost without too much effort. Meaty rodent-like Verm, trapped from the bowels of the ship, were being served roasted over an atomic grill. Over bites of well-cooked meat, the four space marines shared stories about their previous postings with each other and their friends. While comfortable, there wasn't much to do during their off-hours except eat Verm and talk. Finally the conversation turned to one assignment that Lt. Jerky always remembered well, how Donut, Vodka, and himself had all met on the planet of Verda-4 roughly three years ago.

Verda-4, a lush arboreal world populated by Kultivar Traktor farms and agricultural research facilities, Jerky remembered it almost like he just visited it yesterday. He had just finished basic Corps training and received his STOUT treatment when Verda-4 had come under attack by a horde of the ravenous insects known as Jelli-Bugs. "Jelly Bugs" were a constant threat to the Galactic Republic, large bulbous creatures roughly the size of a hover trike and most easily recognized by their massive gelatinous abdomens. Insatiably ravenous, swarms of jelly bugs gorged themselves on any available plant biomass and produced a sweet, high-caloric jelly that the bug would later feast upon during the resulting famine that would occur due to aggressive over consumption. Violent in their single-minded pursuit of edible biomass and strongly suspected of being rapacious omnivores, the Jelly Bugs were a frequent foe for the Star Corps. One that Jerky would get his first taste of combat against.

Fresh from training and STOUT augmentation, Jerky was handed one of the Corps iconic Big Fracking Rifles and loaded onto the troop transport Hell's A-Coming with a dozen other privates before the ship set off to the farming colony of Verda-4. Crammed in a small barracks with a handful of fellow recruits guzzling beer and talking up their abilities, the ballooning elephant male acclimated himself to his bulging muscles and expanding waistline. While already a bit chubby to begin with, the incredible overabundance of food meant that no one in the Galactic Republic was really "thin," the way his gut was practically exploding outward was disorienting at first. Gradually he was getting used to his new strength and mass as his abdomen finished ballooning out into a considerable keg belly. Still, it was hard to not to stop and gawk when he saw how his bunkmates were handling the demands STOUT had put on their bodies...

Private Donut was a brash, loud-mouthed female the same species as Jerky. Joined for the Star Corps because of a love for big guns and loud explosions. Long black hair tied back in a short ponytail, dark brown eyes glowing with a degree of smugness. Donut seemed to genuinely enjoy the genetic augmentations injected into her body, occasionally slipping off to quietly flex in front of the lavatory mirrors. Arms bulged with beefy muscle as her body weight settled into a thick, chunky hourglass with abundant breasts and huge, meaty hips. Jerky could see that one becoming a heavy gunner, brandishing the heaviest weapons the Corps issued. If only he could figure out whether to be intimidated or excited by that...

Elsewhere in the living quarters, a Bov recruit laid quietly in her bunk. The white and red bovine female had been having a minor case of augmentation sickness, the cow-like Bov occasionally had trouble adjusting to STOUT augmentation due to the species having three stomachs. Jerky had to fight to recall her name for a second, Crem he thought it was.

Other than three upset stomachs, Crem's augmentation seemed to be finishing up fine. A hearty pear shaped figure had ballooned out over her enhanced muscles, adding more mass to her breasts, a thick paunch insulating her abdomen, and a plump rump. A very sweet, lovely redheaded female with a caring personality, Jerky found he and most of the other males immediately took a liking to her. Whether or not that personality would hinder her in the Star Corps remained to be seen.

And then there was Bakin, a Porceen sow that mentally was the exact opposite of Crem. Gruff, sarcastic, it was a wonder her attitude didn't get her drummed out of the service before she even finished basic. The toothy, big-bellied, porcine female with a pinkish skin and platinum blond locks bragged about having a knack for combat medicine, likely to be shipped to advanced training after this deployment. Of course, whether or not that was true also remained to be seen.

And that was the four of them, Privates Jerky, Crem, Donut, and Bakin; fresh out of training and on their way to their first taste of real combat. One week spent in transit, a week occupied by so many weapon checks, training drills, and equipment maintenance that it was practically no time at all, before they finished jumping to the Verda system with an hour before they were in orbit around Verda-4. Squads were assembled in the launch bay, leaders assigned to each one, before each team was loaded into a drop pod and shot down to the planet's surface. Jerky held his breath nervously as he joined up with Bakin, Donut, and Crem to form Theta squad under the command of Sgt. Shoutee, Jerky's first combat drop ever. The mission appeared simple, cordon the nest and eliminate it. Easy, straightforward, and should be over quickly. Assumptions Jerky would later learn to never make about a mission but at the time, he had no reason to suspect anything would go wrong as his squad was dropped into the mission area. Five portly troopers wobbled and shook as the hull of their pod turned red with reentry heat, the planet's surface growing larger and larger below them in the pod's view port. For a brief instant, Jerky thought about all the ways the landing could have somehow gone wrong. Shot out of the sky by enemy fire, thrown off course by the whims of fate, there were any number of things that were always happening to the heroic troopers in the serials watched by every child in the Republic. Yet none of them were happening right now. Instead the drop pod continued on its course unhindered, slamming into cropland with the force of a large explosion. Soil and carefully planted produce was thrown up in a plume of dirt and shredded foliage as the pod quickly cooled and opened up to deposit the five fatfur Republic marines on the surface on Verde-4.

Pvt. Jerky looked at the verdant agricultural planet around him as his eyes adjusted to the bright light of the alien sun shining overhead. The impact had created a circular clearing in the middle of a grain field. Exotic cereal grasses towered over the squad as they lumbered out into the clearing. The air was deathly still and silent, not a sound could be heard except for the noise of large insects and the chewing of plant biomass somewhere way too close. The five armored heavyweights loaded and raised their rifles in the direction of the noise growing ever closer. Fingers caressed the inside of the trigger guard of their BFRs as the five troopers readied their weapons and waited for targets.

Like water from a ruptured dam, the large bulbous insects flooded through the dense brown foliage right in front of the five troopers. Somewhere to his left, Jerky heard Crem scream as Donut and Bakin whooped with excitement. On reflex he fired his BFR in the direction of a clump of swarming Jelly Bugs, the others firing at roughly the same time. Big Fracking Rifles roared with a satisfying burst of automatic fire, sending meaty gyro-jet rounds downrange to make bugs burst with a satisfying explosion of jelly. Blood red compound eyes turned towards their wounded compatriots as the mindless insects were distracted by the free meal that their injured companions presented. The resulting feeding frenzy was unnerving and didn't cut down the enemy's numbers anywhere nearly enough. Not even five minutes on his first alien planet and Pvt. Jerky was already part of a position that was about to be overrun.

"This is Theta squad! We've encountered hostiles at our LZ and are about to be overrun. Repeat, this is Theta squad, we need assistance!" Sgt. Shoutee bellowed over the radio as the five continued to fire into the encroaching horde of insects

"Theta this is Lambda, fall back to our position. We're north of your location."

The order to fallback given, the squad attempted to escape as a single unit. At that moment though, the Jelly Bugs surged forward. Jerky lagged behind the others to provide covering fire, sending the rest of his first magazine into the swarming mass of ravenous bugs. The bugs delayed for a few seconds thanks to the second feeding frenzy, Jerky turned then disappeared after the others into the tall grass. Only after bounding through the grain fields for several minutes did he realize he lost the others. That last push from the bugs must have sent the squad all running off in different directions. Grumbling softly to himself, Jerky continued to walk on towards the sight of a communications array peeking off in the distance, barely visible over the tall grains otherwise obscuring his vision. Even as fresh from training as he was, he recognized that the sooner he got back out into the open ground, the better his chances of this not becoming his last mission for the Corps...

The short trek through the grain fields was tense but uneventful and soon the plant life parted to reveal the array of black communications dishes and the small compound of prefabricated buildings surrounding it. Equipment sheds and barns for the housing of the Kultivars' iconic Traktors made this facility's function obvious. The structures all stood with a foreboding silence, the vehicle service complex was abandoned or at least appeared to be. Checking the magazine in his service rifle to make sure he had a full one loaded up as he walked on through with a slow gait. Still hoping to find the rest of his squad, he took a chance and called out their names. That's when he discovered things weren't quite as abandoned as they first appeared.

As the Jelly Bug dropped down in front of him from the second floor of a nearby barn with an earth-shaking thud, Jerky tried to raise his rifle and fire. Mandibles clicked ominously as the "herbivore" lunged and tried to bite through the elephant's sturdy armor, knocking Jerky's rifle harmlessly to the ground. Drawing his Omni-Fork and stabbing it back furiously, the rotund space marine opened his mouth to commit himself to a simple Corps tactic for dealing with alien beasts, bite back. As his augmented teeth cracked the insectoid's surprisingly thin chitin exoskeleton around its head, his wounded prey flailed about in confusion. Jerky ate on, his throat and stomach bulging as the injured jelly bug slid deeper and deeper into his gullet. The taste and texture were abhorrent at first, crunchy and just plain foul. But then the elephant got to the jelly abdomen and suddenly it was like eating candy. The bug disappeared in one long slurp and the trooper felt his stomach bulge like an elastic beer keg before sagging down to his knees. A few seconds later the struggling stopped and Jerky was able to recover his rifle as the space bug surrendered to a slow, STOUT-enhanced digestion. Giving his gut a satisfied pat, the elephant trooper braced his BFR back against his shoulder and resumed searching for his squad. They had to be around here somewhere, no one ever died on their first mission in the Corps did they?

Crem was the first squadmate Jerky found, hiding in the plantation compound's living quarters to catch her breath and trying to steady her fraying nerves after she discovered what was left of the farm laborers after the bugs had trapped them in the workers' barracks. Judging from the chewed strewn bits of chitin and Crem's grossly bloated abdomen, Jerky guessed that there were a few bugs hiding in here as well before they were introduced to the much better hiding place that were the Bov cow's three augmented stomachs. Crem meanwhile sat on an empty bunk and stared blankly into space as Jerky navigated his own swollen gut into the room and lowered his rifle.

"Crem? Crem... are you alright?" The elephant-like being asked softly as he gently tapped the other trooper on the shoulder.

"I ate them... there were two bugs in here that ambushed me while I was looking for the rest of you and I didn't realize that I forgot to reload my rifle after the fight at the LZ until that second. So I used my stomachs as a weapon and ate them instead and they ate the farm workers. Does that mean I ate the workers as well?" She asked in desperate confusion, looking up at her squadmate.

Jerky was silent for a moment, it was a good question. However this was not even remotely a good time for a lengthy philosophical discussion. "What about the Republic citizens that haven't been turned to bug jelly yet? We can't be sentimental about the dead, not while the people still alive are counting on us." He answered decisively and was silently unable to believe that he managed to come up with that piece of poetic rubbish on the spot.

Yet it worked well enough that Crem stood back up and checked to make sure there was a round chambered into her BFR. "You're right Jerky, let's go find the others and finish this." She answered with a nod and a determined smile behind her crimson visor.

Leaving the abandoned farm compound and continuing to head north to Lambda's position, following a service road carved out of the thick blood-red dirt, the two Republic troopers eventually reunited with Bakin and Donut at the edge of Lambda's encampment. The edge of the impact crater from Lambda's drop pod had been built up and turned into a crude earthworks wall as the other squad of troopers leveled out their landing area to make a rudimentary camp. Donut had spent the time walking from their landing area to Lambda's shooting pretty much everything insect-like that moved until she ran out of ammunition. Bakin meanwhile had located a trio of survivors from the area, including a Kultivar male that apparently was very handy with a scoped hunting rifle. Vodka, as his name turned out to be, had been part of a Traktor crew that was stranded when the lumbering farm machine had broken down and had used his skills as a sharpshooter to defend his coworkers until Bakin came along and was able to escort them to safely. Surprisingly martial for a species of ursine gardeners that normally were content to tend their crops, Jerky had to admit he was impressed. No one seemed to know whether or not Sgt. Shoutee had made it though...

Jerky was also not somehow not surprised to discover Theta squad was not the only squad that was forced to retreat or was overrun. Attracted by the noise and more heavily concentrated along that particular stretch of farmland then originally suspected, the bugs pushed against two other landing areas south of Theta's position. Jerky's squad was the only one that made it to safety. With the cordon disrupted, field command was forced to quickly move onto the next phase, orbital bombardment of the nest followed by a ground operation to mop up any bugs that survived the barrage from orbit.

As the nest exploded in a violent display of blinding light and roaring thunder off in the distance, Theta and Lambda entrenched themselves and deployed a sonic lure designed to attract the bugs to their position. Now that they were ready and most of the Jelly Bugs were dead, all that was left was to draw the surviving insects to the Star Corps firebase and finish the job. The resulting battle took the better part of a day to finish, the sun had set and risen again on this alien planet by the time the last bug was turned to breakfast jelly....

Back on the Hearth Star, Lt. Jerky looked at the rest of his squad as he finished telling the story. Those that were there with him nodded as they remembered the sequence of events happening like it was yesterday. PFC Chunky, who only joined Jerky's squad shortly before they were given the mission to infiltrate the Hearth Star, had yet to fight the Jelly Bugs in any significant capacity outside of the skirmish at the abandoned settlement of Blackman's Junction but had battled with them enough to know that there was a fair bit of truth in how Jerky described the waves of insects clamoring for edible biomass. Cayanne and her fellow IPA officers had been listening with polite interest as the four IPA female sat in the common room with the Corps troopers to pass the time. Finally the yellow-hued equine police officer nodded her head with a slight smile.

"Good story." She began. "I'll tell you about the time the girls and I investigated a snack food factory operated by the Gorgonzola mafia but first, what happened to Pvt. Crem and Pvt. Bakin?"

Jerky laughed. "I believe it's Lt. Bakin now. She was transferred into the Corps medical program, now serves as a Corpsman. Still has the same brash attitude from what I hear, patients probably heal as fast they do under her care just so they can get out of it quicker. As for Crem..." He smiled softly as he thought of that Bov female again. "Mess Sergeant Crem is now a member of the Mess Chefs, part of the F-336 MoS shared with those Galley Services twits over in Space Fleet. The battle for Verde-4 mentally left her a bit shaken but last I heard she has become quite the stalwart trooper, real 'I will protect the innocent' sort of soldier and can cook a meal out of anything. I'm sure she'd be biting to get a slot on the second wave of Star Corps sent to the Hearth Star if she knew what was here. She and Claire would probably be the best of friends after only five minutes."

Cayenne nodded empathetically and motioned for the others to remain seated as she began to regal them with a tale of greed, corruption, and junk food...