Slender Stalkers

## Tactical Information

* **Slice and Dice**: The Slender-Stalker is a nightmare come to life on the battlefield, moving at incredible speeds and bearing claws and jaws easily capable of tearing through infantry, and even battlesuits and light vehicles, and furthermore being undetectable to the naked eye. As an infiltrator, the Slender-stalker is truly a being of utter terror. And what's worse is that they can swim.

* **Adoption service**: The Slender-Stalker's most dreaded ability, other than its capacity as an infiltrator, is its reproduction method. Slender-stalker young can be implanted via oviposter into the corpses of fresh victims, and the egg rapidly hatches into a young Slender-Stalker that devours its host and given just a little time, will mature into a pair of new slender-stalkers.

* **Slender-splatter**: Slender-Stalkers are gracile creatures and are easily cut down by anti-personnel fire if they are spotted, in addition; while capable of damaging tanks to a small degree, they can be simply ran over by vehicles that find them overly bothersome.

* **Broodmother**: The most dangerous and deadly of Slender-Stalkers mature into a new form, the Broodmother, which stands twice as tall as the standard slender-stalker and is considerably more massive and heavily built. Broodmothers are superior to slenderstalkers across the board, being hardier, striking harder, and even moving a little faster and worst of all; produce four slender stalkers per corpse.

## Unit History

*"It's like this, when you shoot and kill one of those things, you look behind you see seven more of them..."*

- Last words of a Blue Chinese Nationalist unfortunate enough to face a Slender-stalker in combat.
The wastes of Tibet were nobody's idea of a "fun" deployment. Radiation sickness was a constant concern and anything from mutated animal life to red chinese bandits or green chinese strike forces could find you there. Still, the Tibetan people were simply overjoyed to be both free of the dark shadow of the three Chinas and under the protection of India, and General Devadas Kadakia found himself growing fond of his post here. There was a healthy gulf between them and the Chinese battle lines, and the lines of reinforcement were remarkably short. He felt safe at the very least, more than he could say for reservists who got stuck with penetrating deep into China where safety was anything but guaranteed. At least here the oppressive radiation and dust storms weren't that bad; one could even grow some food, mostly potatoes, peas, and yaks to provide milk; and if attacked there was mountainous terrain to confound the encroachment of Red or Green Chinese forces.

He remembered a number of attacks striking at his base, all quite furious, but none quite capable of properly making inroads into his mountain fiefdom. Fiefdom, yes that was the right word. Here he essentially ruled as a Petty King. He at least liked to think that he was a fair king. He had even requisitioned some support from International Incorporated to provide some extra defenses for these people beyond the admittedly fairly meager offerings of the frontier corps' field defenses. Turrets, Artillery positions, bunkers, walls, even SAM sites that had proven their worth against many attempted Green Chinese air raids, along with some Blue Chinese soldiers he dragged back to Tibet. And yet...the SAM sites had been reporting ghosts on their Radar numerous times. Ghosts confirmed by the other radar stations at that.

It was most curious to be sure. He sent some shortbows to investigate, finding nothing but a few corpses of Green Chinese scouts that had were identifiable only by a few scraps of cloth on their partially eaten skeletons, obviously clawed and bitten apart by some rabidly hungry creature; though curiously the rib cages, when not eaten; always seemed to be burst apart by something from the inside. When he sent ground troops to investigate, they confirmed as much in much greater detail. But when they returned, they also spoke of little details like hearing something scamper behind them and seeing little shimmers here and there, always hanging at the peripheries of their vision.

He thought nothing of it, but then his sergeants reported that one of the firing ranges had gone silent after some gunfire, and when investigated they found those same corpses stripped of flesh with skeletons partially eaten, uniforms barely clinging to their bodies while their ribcages were split apart by something coming from inside. Some rounds were fired, and minute amounts of strange blood could be found. But if there were any corpses, they had cleaned up amazingly well, taking so much care as to hide their own footprints. He initially wanted to write it off as some ungodly new creation by the green Chinese; but then he remembered the Chinese corpses a day ago. Why would they be in a similarly dismembered state?

He pondered these questions for a while, drinking a cup of tea offered to him by a grateful Tibetan, looking at the reports on his desk and thinking to himself. Then he heard something scraping on the ground. He signalled to his guards to follow him as he poked his head out of his command center, he saw nothing for a moment but his instinct refused to quiet down, refused to let him accept that all was well. He put his finger to his lips and looked back at his guards; all noise stopping as he heard a faint clicking noise. He narrowed his eyes, trying to make something out in the dark until he heard the wet sound of something cutting into flesh.

"Sound the alarm, we're under attack." He whispered to one of his soldiers who nodded and radioed in the message, prompting a siren to be sounded in the base; bringing everyone up into a reverie. Then he heard screaming and sudden gunfire; a region this dangerous against an enemy that could teleport requiring all soldiers to have at least a sidearm at close hand even while asleep, then the most unearthly wail he had ever heard as he could make out sihlouettes in a tent with each gunshot. Blood splattered on the sides of the tent as he tried to see what was going on. "FIRE INTO BARRACKS C!" He shouted over the noise as pandemonium erupted.

Tearing free from the tent were a number of shapes that ran so quickly that he could barely get a glimpse at them before they dashed out of sight, startled screams being heard as whatever it was made bloody work out of his soldiers. Gritting his teeth and roaring with the sort of rage that a commander who considered his soldiers to be like his children could muster. "Get the troops to consolidate! We can't stay divided, we'll be killed like hens!"

Another scream was heard followed by a terrible ghastly shriek unlike anything on earth. His eye flicked over and he briefly caught a glimpse of a terrible shape; long sickle claws digging into a man's cranium while narrower serrated claws flensed meat off of young bones. He fired, once...twice. Not enough, it was already gone. He mourned Singh's life in the brief time he could before panicked shouts warned him of danger in the dynamo. His heart sank as he heard the terrible sound of defences powering down and the lights going out; leaving them bereft in the darkness.

Then he heard it, terrible, awful chittering and clicking. A monkey shrieked in fear as he got to see one of them up close; a monster that scuttled its hindmost legs with a head like some terrible prehistoric fish with four terrible arms reaching for him while two smaller arms hugged closer to its chest with more human like hands. Thumb claws like sickles clacked together in its killing hands with deadly intent and cutting claws dripped with blood while a barbed tongue lashed out and hateful, beady eyes analysed him. He had only enough time to dodge to the left when he finally noticed the barbed tail of the creature lashing out at him. The protests of ruptured metal told him that his jeep was totalled, and the report of his gun told him he once again missed the vile thing.

However, as the sounds of weapons fire began to die down, he reached his hand out to touch another's hand and sighed with relief. "Come on, we need to retreat to higher grou-" His words died in his throat as he saw that the limb he was grabbing at had been pulled clean off by another one of the creatures whose jaws with bony shears were scarfing down meat in a terrible scarlet feast. Words failed him, his monkey ran beneath the car and hid while the monster made eye contact with him. He raised his pistol, the gun shaking in his hands as he squeezed out a shot.

The monster ducked down and scampered away. And he breathed a sigh of relief as he called to his monkey, only to hear the sound of bone crunching behind him. He looked and saw his beloved pet crushed to death in the maw of what had to be some manner of alpha among the creatures; twice as tall as any of the others. How could something so big sneak up on him? He had no time to figure out before its claw flashed forward and punched into his chest to lift him towards its head. Glossy black compound eyes studied him as life left him; mandibles to the sides of its shears tested his neck; opening bloody wounds until at last its tongue tore into his throat and injected something into him before dropping his limp body to the ground.

It would be roughly an hour later before the first peacekeepers could respond to the scene, and all they found was carnage. But a dying man was there to warn them to turn back, to run and tell anyone they could to not come here. He begged them to go, but they were bound by their oaths to help him. A foolish move, as two lamprey like heads tore out of a dying man's chest cavity to let out shrill birth cries while blood spattered the floor. Other bodies in barracks C followed suit; tearing apart in crimson fountains to give life anew to a terrible brood and a nightmare spawning soon surrounded the peacekeepers.

To this day, nobody ever knew why the 393rd Mountain Brigade went silent, or why the 77th recon company never reported back.