First Contact

Chapter 731: The Inheritor's War

"I'll stare straight into your eyes while I pop this therm and we'll both crash through the Pearly Gates on the leading edge of nuclear fireball." - Unknown Major, Resource Wars, Terra, Pre-Glassing

"Perfection is a journey, not a goal, and military perfection is no different. The Terrans are on that journey in a blood fueled rocket car on a six lane highway to Hell. We have been content with our perceived perfection and the primates of Terra are now beating us to death with their bare hands." - Mantid Speaker Gives Purpose to the Swarm, First Human-Mantid War.

"The Wemtarran martial machine has no equal in the universe. That still holds true. The Terrans are not our equals. We are not their equals.

"Their martial prowess surpasses us in every way." - Come Hither Darkness, Wemtarran diplomat, to the Wemtarran Martial Council, third year of the Terran-Wemtarran War.

"Let not these primates, these lowly savages, think they can confine the burning light of the Varakson Empire! Our forces are without number, our weapons without peer, our might endless.

"The Varakson Empire is the fate of this Galactic Arm, not a motley collection of backwards idiots led by a hairless primate species!

"The Confederacy claims territory that belongs to the Varakson Empire, as does the Galactic Arm and eventually the Galaxy itself!

"Let this transmission inform all that the Varakson Empire is at war with the Confederacy and let the six planets we shall planet crack and the dead bodies of their so-called 'diplomatic team' that shall accompany this missive to their weak and pathetic star nation serve as a warning they cannot defeat us." - Varakson Empire war declaration, Confederate Historical Archives.

00:16:51:19.62

The creature looked like a long funnel shaped protozoa writ large. The flagella glowed softly with gravatic energy produced by glands at the base and channeled through thick fibrous nerve clusters. It was the size of a triple semi-tractor trailer rig, the tail nearly a half mile long, and it was part of hundreds of them approaching the gas giant. They had no emissions beyond faint phasic energy transmission as they not only received orders but transmitted back the data from their crude sensory organs.

It could sense the large craft in front of it.

It was a bulky, misshapen, and asymmetrical design, surrounded by a spider's web of gantries and scaffolding. Robots could be seen moving around, the light sparkle of fusion welders crackling here and there. It only a hundred kilometers above the bare wisps of the super-massive gas giant's atmosphere.

The drives were warm, ready for action, but with no output. None of the battlescreens were up, just a simple particle screen from the scaffolding.

The protozoa was only three hundred twelve thousand miles away.

It began to push phasic and gravitic energy into the organ's in its 'face' as it got closer. It was outside of effective range, but once the distance dropped to fifty thousand miles the protozoa would be able to fire a single intense ray of gamma energy wrapped in phasic energy that would greatly damage the ship.

Neither the protozoa in the lead nor all the following ones in the teardrop shaped cloud saw the stealthed missile launcher that checked its orders, loaded the warbois into area-denial weapons, and used compressed gas to 'squirt' the missiles out.

The missiles activated their stealth, moved away from the launcher over a period of six seconds.

The protozoa in the cloud had less than a second's warning when the sprint drives went off and the cloud of missiles sleeted down on them, detonating with whitish-blue snaps of antimatter that ravened out over the distances with submunitions.

The other missile launchers didn't bother with stealth, just opened up and launched a single slow-fire volley.

Thirty seconds later the protozoa were wiped away and the satellites scanned the region with arrays measured in the tens of kilometers.

No enemy detected.

-----

00:13:29:54.01

Max stared at the screen for a long moment, dressed in a pair of comfortable pajamas. The cartoon stars of Six Little Magic Green Shortstacks danced and capered on the sky blue cloth of his pajamas as he yawned and stretched, then checked the clock.

The Atrekna wouldn't reach the right range for thirteen hours. His repairs, refit, and upgrade were almost finished and he'd have ten hours extra.

Max unwrapped a Goody Yum-Yum bar and chewed on it slowly as he watched the cams.

He was finally getting telemetry from the two planets.

One had a military swarming everywhere. He looked it over and nodded to himself. The other was something to see.

Haven't seen an autonomous warfare system at work since the Mar-gite War, he thought to himself.

He glanced at the inside of the wrapper and snorted.

What did one wall say to the other? I'll meet you at the corner.

He dropped the wrapper in the disposal and moved back to the gym/fresher. A quick workout to get out the kinks of being in the command cradle for an extended period of time, then a shower so hot it was almost scalding, then back to the command deck.

He looked around and sighed.

I chose this life. The life of a junker, he thought, moving around and touching the consoles normally run by eVI's in a mechanical body. Now the eVI's were all overseeing the work in the Happy Trader. He could remember where he'd gotten each of the control consoles. Which ships he'd pulled them off of, what salvage hulk he'd pulled them from.

Mom and Dad were junkers, he thought to himself, sitting down and staring at the large viewscreen that showed the system status, the two planets, and the three Task Forces the Atrekna had broken into. I wanted nothing more than to be a junker just like them. With a big family aboard a huge stellar junk, sailing the inky seas of night looking for the glimmer of treasure to bring fortune to my family.

He stared at the larger group of Atrekna and their biological war machines, heading toward the planet with the more active military forces.

But things like you, like the thrice damned Mar-gite, just couldn't leave it. Couldn't just let us live our lives, he thought. He clenched his fist. We just wanted to try to make our lives better, try to make the lives of others better, salvaging wreckage and bringing back purpose to the destroyed.

Max turned from the monitor, staring at the command couch he'd pulled from the wreckage of a modern Confederate Space Force Naval vessel.

But you just couldn't do it, could you? Couldn't let appa and eomma and the rest of my gajok just live, could you? Max thought. He closed his eyes, balling his fists, pushing down his anger, breathing deep as he struggled for a long moment, his pulse hammering at his temples and the warm tingling burning flush running from the base of his skull and down his back, across his shoulders, down his arms.

You couldn't just leave me to sell junk, could you? Max thought. He inhaled deeply and let it out slow, then turned and looked at the screen.

Let what happens to you be upon your head, Max thought. He closed his eyes, inhaled, exhaled, then opened his eyes to stare at the Atrekna ships on the screen. Thou hast cast corrupted random number seeds into the whirlwind of code, stay thy weeping laments as the compiled results fall upon you and your works.

Max got up, stretched, and walked over to the small fridge. He opened it and stared for a long time.

"Hello, my old friend," he whispered quietly. "I've come to talk to you again," Max picked up a can of Countess Crey Battery Acid Berry Blast and cracked it open. He drained the can in one long swallow and dropped it into the disposal.

"Aretoo," Max touched his link.

**yeah, boss** the eVI answered, wearing a hazard frame and supervising the dumbasses.

"Start disconnecting the gantries and scaffolding. We need to get ready to go back in," Max said, heading to the back and opening a locker. Inside was his battered and worn armored vac-suit, cleaned and restocked.

**sure thing, boss** the eVI said. When Max clinked off Aretoo looked at the dumbasses, gave the electronic equivalent of a sigh, and started issuing out the commands step by step.

Done dressing in his vac-suit, Max sat down in the command cradle, which had adjusted to be a padded chair that looked like someone scooped out part of an egg to reveal comfortable seating.

He got comfortable, pulling out the belts and putting on the restraint harness manually instead of doing automatic. He used each movement to clear his head, to push away the anger and rage. When he was done, the egg swiveled, rotating so he was staring at the ceiling.

Let's start this, he thought.

-----

00:02:00:00.99

The system held its breath.

It knew, in the odd way that the inanimate and non-sentient sometimes knew, that something was going to happen.

It could feel its creator watching, the dark bubbling amusement filling it with horrible glee.

It giggled too, a few sunspots erupting here and there.

The Atrekna moved through it, feeling greasy and unclean, like a parasite that the body had become aware of.

[The Stellar System Disliked That]

Its creator urged it patience, let it know that the real amusement was about to take place.

The system held its breath.

-----

00:01:09:33.21

The Atrekna were satisfied with the repairs, with the progression of its plans.

True, attempts to strike at the lemur at the hypermassive gas giant had failed. The lemur had deployed shoals of attack platforms armed with extremely rapid firing extremely accurate and extremely destructive missiles that wiped away Atrekna forces

True, they had lost the majority of their forces. They still, however, had enough to take the two inhabited planets and subject the stellar mass to a Time Sink.

True, the majority of the slavespawn were gone. The chronotron bursts in the lemurs weapons had ensured that the dead slavespawn could not be replicated, reclaimed, or time-trawled forward. However, enough was left to seed the inhabited planets, the gas giants, and replicate them from there.

True, the lemur had disconnected from the repair gantries and scaffolding, but it sat, dormant, out by the hypermassive gas giant.

Just floating there.

Menacingly.

The problem created by the lemur was one that would solve itself. Sooner or later the lemur would make a mistake and the Atrekna would remove them from the universe.

It was as inevitable as the Atrekna's domination of this energetic young universe.

One hour left to go until they reached the deployment points.

The slavespawn were readied. Hard drop insertion shells were loaded. Pollen systems were readied and pressurized. Combat slavespawn were pumped full of sedative and put inside the unpowered reentry seed pods.

There were not enough slavespawn host ships to blanket the planet, each planet would only get three slavespawn masters, which would be three landing points.

The two mortally wounded ones were split between the two planets. The brain-dead one was tasked with the near-side one, secondary neural systems ordered to flush the genepools and spawning pods then crash down into the large ocean.

The Atrekna knew that the plan would work.

After all, hadn't they conceived it?

The Ancient Ones and the Young Ones felt confidence as they approached the stellar mass and the two inhabited planets.

The stellar system had crossed paths with two slavespawn Lifetubes and one Spawnring, meaning there was massive reinforcements only a few million years in the past.

Once the Time Sink had been accomplished, once the landing zones on the planets could be modified to act as Temporal Transfer Zones, the vast swarms of slavespawn on the Lifetube and Spawnrings could be brought forward.

The Atrekna knew they could not lose.

Their victory was inevitable as entropy.

[The Universe is Amused by That]

-----

00:00:29:14.93

Naktrix stared at the screen as the massive nautilus/trilobyte hybrid creature moved toward near-orbit. He looked at his mistress, frowning slightly.

Telkan Intelligence had urged him to remain at his post. Her ladyship was the maternal unit to five high profile Lanaktallan, all with positions high in the Lanaktallan's Unified Council system. She often seemed silly, slightly distracted, and given to fits of moodiness.

Still, he felt affection for her. At heart, and more importantly, in deed, she was a good person.

Now, she sat staring at her contemplation orb. Looking at pictures and videos of her children, her side and rear eyes closed, her forward eyes slightly unfocused. She was quietly singing along with a birthday song, almost as if she was unaware of it.

The fact that Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd had ordered a planet cracker deployed rather than allow the Atrekna to visit horrors upon the population still chilled him.

One of the lemurs came up, banging their fist against their opposite pectoral, their studded glove crashing against the hardshell plate the lemurs were now all wearing.

"A moment, dear," Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd said softly. She blinked several times, then turned off her contemplation orb. "Yes?"

The lemur babbled for a long moment.

"Final approach, you say?" Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd said. She pushed the fingertips of her four hands into two different steeples and made a humming noise.

The lemur babbled some more.

Naktrix frowned. Her ladyship wasn't using a translator.

"Time to begin the initial assaults, you say?" Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd asked.

"Aye!" the lemur said, smiling.

Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd leaned forward. "It is time, my dears, to show the Atrekna they are unwelcome here."

"Aye!" the lemur shouted. It turned and shouted.

The shouts carried outside and Naktrix heard it again, even over the sound of grav-engines and the clatter of tracks.

"FARM YARD! FARM YARD! ONE LIFE ONE PLOT!"

Oh, milady, what have you done?

-----

00:00:15:32.82

Commander Jane Marcus Prastini heard the warning beeps and checked the instruments.

The Atekna were making final manuevers, obviously having decided on a low orbit. One of the giant spawning creatures was slowing down, but the angle showed Jane that it would crash into the far side oceans in two hours.

You think you're going to out-create me, do you? Jane grinned.

She looked around. She was surrounded by hundred meter tall mechs, all bristling with weapons and crewed by short-life fast-bake clones.

Clones she had worked with time and time again as she had assaulted or held a planet.

She opened a channel and knew all of her loyal short-life clones could hear her.

"The Confederacy and the Clone Worlds Consortium once again call upon us to defend those which cannot defend themselves!" Jane called out. "We fight this fight with all our might!"

The clones all shouted back.

"VICTORY OR DEATH!"

She joined them for the remainder.

"EITHER IS FINE!"

-----

00:00:05:45.78

The station crew sat in their seats, buckled in. This time wearing heavily armored vac-suits. Devices on their chests blinked and hummed, all of them supposedly designed to keep the station crew in the here and now rather than allowing the enemy to attack them there and when.

The former overseer looked at all of them.

"No matter what happens, I am happy to have been with you," she said softly.

They all nodded back, replying with affectionate statements of their own, all them with tears on their faces the same as the matron.

The Tukna'rn looked at the screen.

"Here they come."

-----

Unknown to the combatants in the system their clock wasn't the only one counting down. Coincidence, wild unplanned chaotic circumstance, made it so their clock was synched to all the others that they didn't even know about.

00:00:00:00.00

General P'Kank pressed the red button on the console.

"Launch assault waves."

General NoDra'ak felt his ichor surge and shudder as the fleet made a crash translation with the roar of "HEAVY METAL IS HERE!"

The big Treana'd turned to his aides. "Let's get to work."

Mukstet gritted his teeth as his striker, held in the new orbital drop cradle, hammered into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, driven by unshielded fusion thrusters.

With a eye watering crack a massive bipedal war machine, looking blocky and unfinished, covered in gold runes with long prayer strips fluttering in the breeze.

"I AM HELD ALOFT BY THE SINGING OF BROODMOMMIES!" Kappa boomed.

The slavespawn shrieked in surprised rage.

The dual barrel autocannon opened up.

"GO GO GO GO!" Vuxten bellowed out, first out of the dropship, falling twenty meters to the ground to land with an explosion as the Icarus System bled all the kinetic energy into a ring around him.

"Get those tents set up!" SPC-6 Melinvae shouted, pointing at where the dropship's fusion motors had cleared away all the underbrush. "3-3-2 is already engaged, we'll have wounded in less than twenty minutes! MOVE MOVE MOVE!"

General A'armo'o clamped his teeth down on the plastic ammo casing he held in his jaws as his thumbs pressed the firing butterfly for the big quad-barrel TC's gun. The rounds slammed into a Precursor the size of a bus and in less than a second tore open the side and shucked out a minivan's worth the guts into superheated steam.

Behind him the tanks of the Atomic Hooves roared out of the drop cradles.

Ekret's tank showered sparks as Slippery dropped the side hoverfans down and used the skirts to help rotate the tank as it took the corner.

"SHOT OUT!" Ekret yelled, stomping the firing bar out of habit as he saw the rear section of the Ohm Class Dwellerspawn come into view. His tank was still wet from the dropcradle shock-gel but he was out and first in line into the city. Around him power armor troops moved forward in leaps, his infantry support already engaged with the Dwellerspawn.

Undrat moved forward, out of the drop pod, onto the steaming ground baked and burnt by the heavy fusion thruster that acted as a retrobrake. He spotted the enemy units, right where he had been told they would be, and clamped down his grip on the trigger.

[Madame Three-Eighteen Has Joined the Server]

Max saw the timer hit zero and slapped the button.

Temporal charges all over the system went off. Chrono-Flashbangs exploded, temporal resonance charges, chrono-inversion charges, and everything else he'd been able to find in the archives.

To the Atrekna, the system turned upside down and inside out for a split second before it was slammed down into one solid mass.

Lady Fa'ahmYa'ahrd watched on the holo-emitter as the silos opened up by blowing the camouflaged lids off and missiles streaked up, going first supersonic then hypersonic, all carrying warheads dedicated to the incoming ships.

Commander Jane watched as the orbital systems she'd put in place opened fire and the massive ground batteries she'd built all opened up on the Atrekna.

The Iron Piglet Counter-Offensive was on.

The Universe howled with blood maddened laughter.

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