*INCOMMING TRANSMISSION FROM COMMANDING OFFICER, MERRICK QUAID, IMPERIAL OCCUPATION AND RESEARCH TEAM, YAVIN 4*
My Lord, allow me to once again thank Your Majesty for allowing me to undertake this expedition. The lifeforms on this planet never cease to amaze me! The specimens we bring back to Coruscant will be an incredible boon to the military research projects Your Majesty has so wisely decided to undertake. The subject of this transmission is a rather remarkable insectoid creature. How those incompetent Rebels managed to stay on this hostile world for any length of time without being utterly wiped out by the local fauna is beyond me. We have reasoned that the recent cowardly ambush by those terrorists have caused a gravitational shift in this system that long-dormant creatures have begun to stir again.
Primitive scribblings on rocks and cave walls, discovered by our excavation teams, have hinted towards some large, flying insect. Our best translators roughly decipher that the ancient Massassai called them “Flying Spit-Stings”. An accurate description, if inelegant.
We thought the scribblings little more than imaginative tales of a primitive people, until we captured one alive! Granted, it took 2 different fire teams to put it down and we lost 1 man in the attack, but Sergeant Cutter's heroic sacrifice ensures that future armour technologies will save his brothers from similar fates.
The “Flying Spit-Stings” are about 1 meter long, and one-third of that thick. With the exception of their cloudy-green exoskeleton (which bears remarkable resemblance in both appearance and composition to naturally-found, mineral Jade), they look quite similar to common wasps and hornets found on any number of worlds. This unique shell gives it frightening resilience against our blaster fire. I'm anxious to learn what it would take to duplicate its effect on the armour of Your Majesty's own soldiers. This will take time, of course.
The head region holds 6 compound eyes and two remarkable antennae. After the head, a thin, tubular middle section with two pairs of translucent wings. At the end, a rather large, bulbous, avian egg-shaped abdomen.
On the end of the abdomen, as one might expect from such a creature, is a half-meter long stinger. I am ashamed to admit to Your Majesty that when we first encountered the creature, we had no idea that it was even equipped with such a natural weapon. The stinger itself is clear as crystal glass, and hard as diamond, but literally, only molecules-thick. We didn't even see it until Sergeant Cutter collapsed on the ground after its initial attack. The medic had time to remove the Sergeant's helmet and saw ink-black foam coming from his mouth before noticing the transparent stinger sticking out of chest. The thing was so thin that there wasn't even any blood on the Sergeant's chestplate. It wasn't until the stinger was removed that the wound even bled.
Fortunately, it appears the stinger is a one-off weapon and detaches from the Spit-Stinger after use. Our boys in the lab surmise that one could simply knock the stinger off with a vibrosword or the butt of a rifle and disable the creature's primary attack.
Now, at least we understand how the creature earned the first and third portions of its Massassai name, but we're not so sure about the “spit” at this time.
I have directed the men to keep the creature alive for now. I want to know whether or not the stinger will regrow and in how much time. Honestly, you don't have to be a biological genius to come to the conclusion that the “spit” has something to do with the creature's toxic nature. All the same, it is a mystery that I have the utmost confidence in that we will discover in time.
Oh, one last thing before I end this transmission My Lord: I'm not sure what to make of it yet, or even if it bears mentioning. But the guardsman Your Majesty deployed with us on this mission, the quiet one with the black armor who responds to the designations “Guardsman” and “X-03”, he was with us when we assailed the creature. I saw him take a knee and place his gauntlet against his helmet, as if stricken, briefly, by some incapacitating migraine. He muttered something about the creature's terrible shrieks, but I swear to Your Majesty that the rest of us heard no such shrieking. I did not press Your guardsman, nor did he allow our medic to examine him during the fight. Whatever it was, it was a fleeting enough thing, because X-03 recovered himself at the battle's end. He's not quite been the same since the encounter, as if something else is now occupying his mind, rather than Your Majesty's primary objective here.
*TRANSMISSION ENDS*