Editing Starship Troopers (section)

===The Xenos===
The Arachnids are arthropods with 8 legs and a social structure similar to ants or termites. They have a terrifying appearance. There are 4 castes: workers, warriors, brains, and queens. Workers are defenseless and incapable of fighting, and described more as biological machinery than sapient creatures. Warriors are very tough fighters and are psychologically incapable of surrendering. Brains are the leaders of the species, while queens are apparently just there for reproduction, though nobody knows for sure since nobody has actually seen one. Most of their civilization is in underground tunnels that go deep enough that no one knows how big they are. The bugs of the book are particularly notable for being one of the first hive mind insectoid species in ''all fiction'' that actually uses technology; they are shown to build starships, equip their warriors with advanced beam weapons, and use some kind of weapon that can destroy Earth cities over interstellar distances. The latter is admittedly never given any detail or description, but it's probably fair to assume it's a little more advanced than ''throwing a fucking rock''. They're also one of the only hive minds in fiction that actually has alliances with other species and takes prisoners.

The Bugs are not the only xenos in this setting; there is another species called the Skinnies who are very loosely described as humanoid, presumably generic gray aliens.  They start out allied with the Bugs, and then the Federation drops one platoon of [[SPESS MEHREENS]] armed with nukes on their planet to show them how grimdark things will get if they continue to be allied with the Bugs, and then the Skinnies stop being allied with the Bugs. FYI, this is the book's opener and doesn't stop getting better from there.