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During the final stages of the Proxima War, the Allied forces suffered greater losses than at any other time during the conflict. In space there had been room for manoeuvre but on the surface of Proxima II, the last enemy stronghold, this was not the case. In the bitter, localized ground fighting which characterized this stage of the war our forces had to contend with a number of defensive weapons previously unknown, one of the most fearsome being the Tarantula.

Virtually undetectable in their screened silos, these sinister scarlet painted craft would wait until overrun by our advancing ground forces before blowing off their camouflages covers and erupting from beneath the surface with the shriek of jetstream They were heavily armoured and carried the most frightening and indiscriminate weapon of the War. Housed in each of the legs were multiple sub- atomic particle oscillators (SAPO) able to project an omni-directional field which disrupted the relationships between atomic components.

All matter within an effective range of 5-600 metres was instantly and entirely dispersed, leaving a circle of boiling gases, and occasionally particle collision would set off a chain of nuclear reactions which not only devastated a wider area but destroyed the Tarantula as well.

It was a crude but effective instrument of war which prolonged and almost reversed the course of events, but It had a fundamental weakness in that the enormous power consumption of the oscillators would completely drain the reserves leaving the craft immobile and virtually defenceless.

Hideous losses in men and equipment were sustained before our Forward Tactical Research Units' succeeded in finding a counter to the Tarantula's threat. They devised a method of projecting electronic 'ghost' images simulating attacking ground forces which would trigger the Tarantula's receptors. Once the craft had ejected from Its lair and was trying to identify its target it was vulnerable and could be dealt with by conventional medium-range weapons.

As the War drew to a close, the Tarantula appeared in a variety of forms, although the basic construction remained unchanged. Whereas the early model was fully armoured and carried a crew, later models became progressively less sophisticated and eventually were constructed as little more than an unarmoured frame containing the control module, propulsion units and the oscillators.

These models were unmanned and were guided by automatic systems activated either externally or independently through the machines' own sensors. Many casualties were reported for some time after hostilities were over as a result of the accidental triggering of forgotten machines.