The Crunching
Although the combat logs from the FRPS Ogden describe our battle with a deep-space world-worm while nearing Skaoi IV[1], this was not the worm's last encounter with the Ashbery mission crew. Once exploratory expeditions rounded the planetary horizon and the FRPS Carroll shifted to relay mode to keep the crew in contact with the Ogden, the world-worm reappeared—evidently it had been hiding from the better-armed Ogden in the planet's shadow, an impressive feat considering its size. Despite Foreign Defense Mode activating, the relevant details of the battle were not logged; hence this report.
When the worm attacked, researchers were interacting with local sentients. This afforded a unique opportunity to witness The Crunching. Judging from the collected reports, the advent of a world-worm and its subsequent chewing on the planet is an cataclysmic event, inspiring mass panic as inhabitants race to escape the Crunching via ladders to the orbital biomes below. When the biomes fill, those remaining descend into violence, taking advantage of the temporary dissolution of law and order[2].
The day was saved, as always, by the extraordinary heroics of "Maverick" Sinclair, who emerged from the interior piloting the Skaoian airship Nundernall. Putting the best efforts of the PorOrCorps to shame, he began blaring his theme song on the Nundernall's broadcast speakers and drove off the world-worm in an epic confrontation. Apparently, he had lept into a hole to the interior almost immediately upon disembarking, and landed on the airship where it had been orbiting the black hole, dormant. The Skaoians had built several such airships, since Skaoi IV lies on a deep-space world-worm migration route[3], and disguised them among the orbital biomes to keep them safe from opportunistic worm attacks. Maverick said that the worms that come by this sector are newly hatched and that the fully-grown ones are much larger[4]. I shudder and play an omninous "dun dun dun" at the thought of such a behemoth gliding silently through the star-dark ocean of space.
Battleships and biomes aren't the only responses the sentients of Skaoi IV have to Crunchings. Multiple excavations have revealed vast networks of cables underneath the surface of the planet, which serves to keep the outer layer together in the face of world-worm biting. More obliquely, the central mission of Scatmanism is to cover the entire surface of the planet in ratbird droppings, in the hope that this will make it unappetizing to teething world-worms.
Tyne Dyer, Esq., Director of Occasional Music
[1] As well as, if I may make a commendation, the easygoing tactical genius with which Engine Operator Scott repelled it.
[2] I imagine that it does not help that many Skaoian civilizations have people living on the satellite biomes even in peaceful times, affording little extra room in emergencies.
[3] Incidentally, this is why scholars thought for centuries that there was no intelligent life in the Skaoi system. As the joke went, even if there were life, it would have to be pretty stupid to live there.
[4] While I have the utmost respect for Sinclair's research and personal achievements, I do feel that it was a bit rude of him to pull up to us in the Nundernall, tell us all of this through the window, and then fly off without rescuing us from our orbit.