Roughnecks - The Starship Troopers Chronicles - The Tophet Campaign

Product Description In "The Tophet Campaign," young journalist Higgins, fearless war hero Rico, and courageous female Trooper Flores land with their fellow soldiers on a desert planet. They meet a group of humanoid Skinnies who make them feel strangely at home--until gigantic killer bugs appear. Lieutenant Razak accepts help from a newly designed Trooper robot, who quickly saves the team from an intense ambush of massive crawlers. But the Skinnies have more than one surprise in store for the Troopers, proving again that the universe-wide bug war is far from over. 96 minutes. Amazon.com The Roughnecks take a breather from combat (or so they think) to scout the desert planet Tophet for a possible base, and meet a race of tall, lizardlike, apparently friendly aliens they dub "skinnies." But nothing is as it seems in this intergalactic war, not even the double-crossing skinnies, who have laid a deadly trap for the humans. The truth behind their collaboration hides an even more disturbing twist in the bug infestation of the universe. Dry, desolate, and full of wide-open spaces, "The Tophet Campaign" is a sci-fi take on a World War II platoon drama in the African desert. It lacks the visual spectacle of other adventures but makes up for it with heavy artillery (including an experimental cyborg soldier loaded with firepower) and more complicated character dynamics. The eerie mental breakdown of telepath Jenkins gives the Roughnecks their first casualty of the war. --Sean Axmaker