Originally Posted by
Arandhi Sterrengsen, Ph.D., "Analysis of the Geeveed", Presentation to the Humanity Combine Special Committee on ExoBiological Threats, 06/2511
The Exoanisoptera, or, as popularized in recent pulp horrorholo "Invasion of the Giant Voracious Space Dragonflies from Space!!!", the GVD, or Geeveed, is a unique lifeform like nothing we have ever encountered before. In this article, I will attempt to consolidate what is known about the creature, what is supposition, and what is fantasy.
Description: The only adult specimen that has ever been observed was approximately 10 meters long including the tail, and 2 meters wide at the widest point in the body. The body was approximately 1.65 meters in height, and stood 2 meters above the ground when it landed. It was completely covered with what appeared to be a thick exoskeleton. 7 pairs of wings extended along the body and down the tail, with the longest of them reaching 3 meters beyond the body. It had two large compound eyes, each measuring .85 meters across.
History: The first known encounter with a 'Geeveed' was when one appeared in low orbit around the planet Chongatta. 'Appeared' is the best term, as there was no sign of it approaching the planet from a distance. It suddenly appeared on the scanning boards of 5 different satellites. Unfortunately, none of the satellites were equipped with visual surveillance cameras angled in the proper direction to capture its arrival, leaving us with collision avoidance sensor logs as the only records. Chronological analysis of the logs place it's arrival time to a window of no more than 1.5 minutes. The Geeveed remained motionless in orbit for 4.95 minutes, then began to descend over the continent of Rutland, using its wings to control its speed and direction of descent. It moved at an angle across the planet's surface, directly from where it had appeared to it's planetfall location in the Beanaugh river basin.
We do not have any direct holo or video of its landfall, only weather satellite imagery. Months of skilled enhancement of the images has given us a general idea of its immediate actions. It landed, or hovered close to the surface, and remained motionless, or mostly so. After 37.45 minutes it moved again and flew 20.73 km in a northeasterly direction, repeating its initial actions by landing and remaining motionless. After 27.6 minutes it took off again and flew 35.3 km to the north, then landed again.
It is at this time that an aircraft from the city of Risengi (located on the southern coast of Rutland, at the Beanaugh river mouth) arrived, having located it using surface radar, and providing us with our first visuals of the creature, as well as direct observation of its activities. According to the crew, the Geeveed (called 'the bug' in the audio logs) had apparently killed and was eating a Kinys antelope (an indigenous herbivore). The aircraft was able to stay in position for over 2 hours before needing to return for refueling. During that time, the Geeveed killed and ate 5 more antelope. It killed them by flying above them, then landing on their back and grasping it with its legs and biting at the back of the neck until it brought the animal down. It then scooped out the abdominal portions whole with its jaws before moving on to another prey animal and repeating the procedure. With night approaching, another aircraft was not dispatched to replace the first one when it left the scene.
The next morning the aircraft was dispatched, arriving just before local dawn, but was unable to locate it using radar or optical searches, and had to return to base after a few hours of fruitless searching. They did observe several more dead animals, including a large Polman croc. (Later analysis of the satellite imagery indicated that the Geeveed had moved north and west from its last spotted location, and had not resumed movement until later in the morning, after the search craft had passed it by.) Another search was made that afternoon, and the Geeveed was found and followed again, with the same behaviour being observed. This general pattern was repeated for 4 days, with the Geeveed occasionally moving large distances as soon as hunting began to be difficult in the current location.
On the fourth day, the first reports of small animal corpses with abdominal wounds began to come in from scattered remote areas. This prompted a lot of confusion, as the bodies were in areas not visited by the creature. Due to a lack of resources, there was very little response to these reports at the time, considering them either local animal activity, crank calls, or hysterical reports based on news reports of the creature. Reported sightings of bugs escalated and spread until it was obvious that there was something to them and search teams were dispatched. They quickly confirmed the existence of small bugs. The original Geeveed was nicknamed "Echidna", after the mother of all monsters in Greek legend. It was not until our analysis of the satellite imagery that the theory that she laid young upon first arriving was confirmed. Although the young could not, of course, be seen on the imagery, the locations Echidna stayed motionless in coincide with the centers of reported geeveed activity later.
4 days later Echidna vanished, disappearing from view while being filmed. She rose up to 50 meters above the ground, accelerated the speed of her wings, and then disappeared.
2 days later the first human casualty was reported, Haley Brigitte Wood, an infant sleeping in her crib. The next day the first confirmed geeveed kill was reported, by a local farmer with a hunting rifle. For the next week, there were sporadic reports of geeveed and human deaths. Examinations of these early bodies proved that they were vaguely similar to terrestrial insects, with a strong exoskeleton, segmented body, and breathing spirules. The connective tissue holding the internal organs in place was thicker and stronger than insects, and body motion appeared to provide more circulation and respiration than is possible for terrestrial insects, which explains how they were able to support a much larger body than is normally seen. Any damage capable of penetrating the exoskeleton tended to be strong enough to practically liquify the interal organs, so the results of these early examinations were not very conclusive or informative.
For the next 4 weeks, the conflict between the species escalated. Due to their speed and maneuverablity, shooting them was very difficult. As the geeveeds matured, their exoskeletons got thicker and more resistant to damage, even as they got larger and slower. After 4 weeks, their exoskeletons seemed to become completely invulnerable to hand arms fire, and human casualties skyrocketed.
Currently, the entire planet of Chongatta has been placed in a state of Planetary Emergency. Military forces have been dispatched for protection and peacekeeping, and most of the populace has been evacuated to less habitable portions of the planet or onto space- and seacraft. The population is having to be supplied by food shipments from neighboring planets. The death toll has risen to in excess of 250,000 out of the original 4 million on the planet, or 1/16th of the populace. There are an estimated 10,000 remaining Geeveed left on Chongatta, and they have done an estimated 7.9 trillion pounds worth of damage.
Speculations:
* Biology: The Geeveed exoskeleton is an unknown organic compound, exhibiting a high carbon crystal content. It seems to only get thicker and stronger with age and maturity, with no currently known upper limit, although we are assuming at this point that Echidna was a fully mature specimen. We do not know how strong or thick Echidna's exoskeleton was, as she vanished before the situation escalated. The breathing spirules appear to have an exoskeleton plug. We assume that this is what allows the Geeveed to venture into space, although we have not seen any of the immature Geeveed do so. It appears to operate as a pressurized lock - if the atmospheric pressure drops below a certain amount, pressure from the internal organs forces the plug closed, trapping the air and gasses inside and preventing a loss of pressurization. The Geeveed eyes appear to have specialized eye facets capable of detecting ambient humidity, temperature, even elevation. They appear to combine into a single visual feed that flags whether or not an area is a good place to find food.
* Intelligence: The Geeveed have not displayed any recognizable signs of higher intelligence yet, seemingly reacting in a purely animalistic and intuitive manner.
* Interplanetary Travel: The biggest mystery is how Echidna managed to appear and vanish from Chongatta. Many people from many disciplines are either in complete denial or undergoing nervous breakdowns trying to explain this. None of the immature Geeveed have been witnessed disappearing, but given how many of them there are, the amount of ground they are spread out over, and the fact that there are few active watchers, it is likely that even if some had gained the ability we would not have been able to see it. Nothing in any of the bodies we have examined have had any parts or organs that might even begin to explain this ability.
Suggestions:
* The Geeveed swarm appears to be tearing apart the Chongatta ecosystem. No large animal is ignored by them, and because there is almost always more than one Geeveed around, even if one fails in an attack, another one seems to swoop in and take advantage to finish the prey off.
* Sidearm munitions seem to no longer be effective against the Geeveed once they have passed a certain maturity level. Strong enough explosives should still kill them, but successfully targeting them is difficult given their maneuverability and speed. An area blast is still likely to succeed than aimed fire. As a last resort, nuclear devices should be guaranteed to kill all Geeveed in the blast radius, at the usual cost to the environment and bystanders.
* Any planet without satellite monitoring devices should have some installed immediately. Any Geeveed detected should be bombed immediately, before it has a chance to deposit any offspring. Young Geeveed should be killed before they grow large enough to become invulnerable.
* If a Geeveed could be captured, we could study it while alive to determine any weaknesses or vulnerabilities. Immediately obvious applications we might learn is the secret of their exoskeleton, with possible uses in armor plating and personal protection. And their "teleportation" ability would be invaluable to us all, perhaps even allowing instantaneous travel beteween star systems.
And now I can see that I need to tweak the colors, as the white elevation cells are much more visually dominant than the green, which is the supposed target.
