First Contact

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The people of Ymetr'k (Labeled NC407 on Confederate Star Charts) had reacted to their sun flickering and the whisper of "You Belong to Us!" like any sensible beings that had almost no military defense.

With utter panic.

The star was visibly dimming, the gas extraction plants around the four gas giants had finished screaming as the biological weapons had boarded the plants and slaughtered the crews. The spacecraft that could and wanted to flee had fled, a handful had done suicide attacks (with limited success), and the people on the ground did everything from start digging holes with shovels to run in circles screaming to run out into the forest to huddle in their homes, parking garages, and sub-basements.

The planetary defense and system defense was almost non-existent. After all, they were deep in the Core Worlds. A cosmopolitan system full of near-civilized, neo-sapient, and Lanaktallan, with plenty for all (who had the right jobs), and very little in the way of factories or industry with food mostly shipped in from other worlds.

The system navigational organization watched in horror as dozens of the massive biological things exited some kind of superluminal flight and into the system, just at the resonance zone. Each of the massive biological creatures vomited up scores, hundreds, thousands of drones of various sizes. After the massive organisms had vomited up their drones nearly thirty massive crystalline structures appeared, wavering like an optical illusion for a moment before solidifying.

You belong to us was whispered to the entire system as the sun went black for an eternally long heartbeat.

The shipyards, refineries, and extraction facilities were the first to go down. Giant creatures wrapped long tentacles around the structures, pulling in tight. Boring tongues and teeth ripped into the station.

And the creatures vomited up horrors that rampaged through the halls, uncaring of their own casualties, killing and eating as they went.

As the massive biomechanical ships and the crystalline globe ships drifted inward, an arrogant movement that almost looked as if they were sliding through space, most of the population resigned themselves to the coming horror.

The population of the planet dropped by 15% before the biomechanical ships came within ten light seconds of the two settled planets as people gave into the horror and took the lives of themselves. The Tri-Vee had to run public service announcements begging people not to enter into suicide pacts, not to wipe out their families before taking their lives, and finally, on the sixth day, as the biomechanical and crystalline host ships began final manuevers to intercept the two planets, which were on opposite sides of the stellar mass, the public service announcements on how to properly take a life were run.

Some managed to find the menus for body armor and weapons in the control menus for the fabulous Confederate food and material nanoforges. Some found other things.

One enterprising, if disparing, Lanaktallan matron had delved deep into the menus, looking for something, anything, that would save her family and her servants.

She wasn't sure what it meant. There wasn't any translation for the language available (although it looked to her eyes like it was Terranese) but there was an outline of a biped wearing armor and a helmet and holding a weapon at a forty-five degree angle across their body.

She punched in the codes and the nanoforge spit out a baseball and instructed her to take it somewhere with stone, water, and (if possible) wood.

She closed her eyes and made a few wishes, instructed her loyal manservant, a particularly loyal and capable Telkan male, to continue looking into the menus to see if anything could be found to create a fortify a shelter and allow anyone willing to protect the estate to be armed and armored.

The Matron was pleased that her personal manservant had invited all of his family members and friends to her manor to help defend it. She was worried it was hopeless, that everyone would die, but she disliked the idea of just sitting in her parlor and drinking tea while she waited for painful and agonizing death to befall her and her loyal servants.

For a moment, as she boarded her private hoverlimo, she wondered how her three sons were doing. Two had joined the Unified Military Forces and now fought next to the Mad Lemurs, another was part of the Executor Corps and had embarked on a mission to TerraSol before the Great Herd attacked that system.

Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd drove herself out to a good place to toss the little baseball sized globe.

-----

The massive bioweapon constructs were drawing closer to the planets, now closer than 10 light minutes. Huge fan-like fins were extending from the sides of the multi-shelled behemoths, cilia were visible beneath the huge feet of the snail-like shells. The trilobite hard shells at the front of the great creatures undulated as huge legs scrabbled at bare space with graviton feet.

The last five beings on the system astrogation control station saluted one another with the last bottles of fizzybrew in one hand and pistols in the other, all facing one another in chairs. The took deep drinks and placed the barrel of the pistol against the temple of the being on the right.

"I love you all," a Lanaktallan mare, who had once been the Overseer of the station, said softly. "One more drink, I can't bear to leave you all yet."

They lifted their bottles again and raised the pistols.

You belong to us whispered through the shielding.

Behind one of the controllers a sparkle appeared on the long range scanner.

"NEVER FEAR, MAX IS HERE!" roared out as the massive transport dropped out of hyperspace, bleeding off the energy of a high speed crash translation into the warning roar usually only used by Space Force.

All five of the workers jumped, turning and looking at the screen in time to see the ship suddenly surrounded by graviton ripples before it seemed to vanish in a streak.

"What... what was that?" the former station Overseer, now the Chief Logistics Officer asked softly, her tendrils curling nervously.

"I don't know," the Shavashan said, leaning toward the console.

The ship streaked into existence again, closer to the nearest habitatal world.

"NEVER FEAR, MAX IS HERE!" roared out as the ship bled off nearly astronomical amounts of energy from the crash translation. Again, multiple ripples appeared in an arc in front of the vessel.

It streaked and vanished again.

"It cannot be an instrumentation failure," the Tukna'rn in charge of the system scanners said. "I oversaw the calibrations myself."

The former Overseer just nodded.

"Unknown station, this is Happy Trader," came over the comlink. "Are you still reading?"

The Overseer reached out and touched an icon.

On the screen appeared an impossibility.

They were all dead.

The Terran Xenocide Event had wiped them out.

But yet, a Terran, clad in a battered and worn armored vac-suit, sat in a command cradle. His face was unreadable to the Overseer, containing the typical lemur anger. It had its face shield up but the Overseers could see the light of holograms on the lemur's skin as well as the dull burning red in the lemur's eyes.

"We read you," she said.

"Do you need assistance?" the lemur asked.

She nodded. "Yes, please."

"May I come in?" the lemur asked, as if it wasn't already in the system.

"Yes?" she replied, looking at the last of her bridge crew. They all looked at each other and shrugged.

What could one lemur do?

"Any friendly ships in the system?" the lemur asked.

The Overseer shook her head. "No. All ships have either fled or been destroyed," she sighed. "I fear that you can do little good. We are the only manned orbital platform remaining, all others have been seized by the Atrekna or are abandoned."

"I will do what I can," the lemur said. It's face somehow got harder, became more determined. "It may not be much, but I'll do what I can."

The signal cut out as the lemur reached up and slapped its faceplate closed.

The five looked at one another.

"Do you think the lemur will make a difference, Most High?" a Shavashan asked, using the Lanaktallan Matron's old rank. It made the Shavashan feel slightly better, almost like everything would be all right.

She gave a sad, wistful smile. "Either way, we should sit and watch and set aside our plan until the station is boarded." She reached out with all four hands, taking one of their hands each. "I would so very much like to sit with all of you while we wait."

The other four nodded. Together they turned their chairs to the screen and watched as the ship vanished in a streak, only to reappear with the roar of "NEVER FEAR, MAX IS HERE!"

"Perhaps, just perhaps, the lemur will make a difference," the Lanaktallan matron said, squeezing their hands affectionately.

-----

Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd stared at what had been built in a mere few hours. The sun was high in the sky, even though the sun was slowly turning more orange than yellow, the breeze was pleasant coming from the forest, and she could hear the crash of the waves on the shore.

She had tossed the little round orb on the ground. A iris had opened in it, with a dull red glow, and what looked like mercury had flowed out into a small pool that rapidly grew. Robots had slowly stood up out of the pool, to run toward the forest, to run toward the ocean, to start moving around. Some started building small tubes, others began building boxes. From the boxes came bigger robots, which built conveyor belts, pipes, and other boxes. She saw raw wood and sawdust and bark and leaves being brought in, along with other vegetation. Pipes brought in seawater. Conveyors brought in sand and rock from the beach.

More buildings had been built, bigger robots, faster robots, all scampered around on legs, trundled along on treads, and flitted back and forth on hover-systems.

All building.

Now, she was staring at something she had no idea what to think of.

Frowning, Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd reached into her satchel and got out her communicator. The lines were still spotty and it took three times before her manservant picked up.

"Nektrix, the butler Shakras, he was a Confederate soldier on one of those stellar systems where time went by too fast, was he not?" she asked, watching as another vehicle slowly was assembled by the systems that were being fed parts on fast conveyors.

"Yes, milady. He was wounded in combat and retired back to help care for his mother, who is one of your wine stewards," her Telkan manservant said.

"If you would, please bring him to me. Take one of the fast hovercars to where my limo is," she said. She frowned as what looked like an armored vehicle started being built. "I need his counsel."

"Of course, milday," Nektrix said, keeping his face perfectly impassive.

Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd had a tendency to end up embroiled in wild schemes and part of him cringed at the thought of what she might be up to.

"You may want to hurry," Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd said.

"Might I inquire as to why?" Nektrix asked.

Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd shaded her forward eyes, staring at what was moving out of a building in perfect unified movements, wearing helmets, uniforms, and carrying weapons.

"Because I don't speak Terran."

-----

"He fights like he can win," the Shavashan astrogation specialist said, watching the screen.

It turned out that the rippling arcs in front of the lemur's ship were heavy cannon shells that somehow moved faster than light and struck deeply into the biological monstrosities. Two of the great shelled creatures were dead, floating in space, surrounded by frozen chunks of ichor and other fluids. Another was shifting, trying to take cover behind one of the unwounded ones.

The shells bypassed the unwounded one and struck deeply into the kilometers long nautilus shelled creature. Shards of shell exploded outwards, with gouts of fluid that froze almost instantly, and a fan of shredded tissue.

The lemur's ship had already vanished in a streak, reappearing only seconds later to fire again, shift position, and steak into nothingness.

"Perhaps it is not victory, but the attempt?" The Puntimat traffic controller suggested, cracking open another nacrobrew that he had taken from a vending machine that the pistol had proven wonderful for opening with only a few trigger pulls.

"He is a Mad Lemur of Lost TerraSol," the Overseer said. "He fights because he can and because we need assistance," her voice was still soft and sad. She reached out and squeezed everyone's hands again. "It is a pleasure to watch this with all of you."

"And with you, Most High," the Vuknaraan tariff inspector said, squeezing back.

On the screen the lemur ship fired hundreds of missiles and vanished again.

-----

Naktrix had served Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd for nearly twenty years, but he had to admit, the last six or seven had been the most stressful. Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd was curious to an almost insane degree, often getting into trouble she was almost oblivious about.

Naktrix knew that if it wasn't for her youngest son, Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd would have gone to a prison planet or would have been executed since the discovery of the Mad Lemurs of Terra.

The Puntimat Shakras, who had returned from the wars against the Atrekna nearly fifteen years older than he should have been, with a cybernetic arm and a cybernetic eye, was sitting next to him, looking out the window. He had been born in service to Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd, but the Matron had encouraged his desire to sign up for the Confederate military even as the Council fought a war against them.

Anyone else would have went to jail, Naktrix mused.

He dropped the hovercar out of the clouds, only five kilometers from where the lojak said that Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd's limousine was located.

Shakras went rigid and reached for the steering yoke, pulling his hand back only a bare second before he would have grabbed it and yanked.

Below were buildings, armored vehicles, strikers, and things Naktrix couldn't identify, all drawn up in even rows. There were lines of beings clustered so perfectly and so tightly they looked like large rectangular blocks.

"What did she do?" Shakras said, his voice full of quiet fear tinged with exasperation.

"Whatever she has done, she will somehow fall face first into victory or accomplishment, like always," Naktrix said.

He landed next to the limo, wincing as the sound of grinders howled. He looked over to see the edges of striker hull plating being edged and smoothed before being attached to the striker and welded into place.

"This isn't Confederate standard equipment," Shakras mused, looking at it. He shook his head. "It doesn't look right. It's warsteel, but the lines are all wrong. I've never seen a striker that looked like that," he said. He pointed at the striker, now finished, being moved into a large covered area. There was a loud hissing noise and when the striker emerged, it had been painted a strange pattern of greens, browns, and black.

Naktrix checked his implant.

"Her ladyship is this way," he said. He gave a wryful chuckle. "It's never boring in her service."

"I was less stressed as an infantryman in First Calvary Division," Shakras laughed.

Around the building and ducking under a conveyor, the found Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd standing and staring at the gathered up ranks in front of her. A biped in a uniform stood in front of her, back rigid, legs and arms straight, a helmet on their head, and a rifle on a sling.

"Wait, those really are Terrans," Shakras said. He squinted. "Waaaait, something does look right."

The two saw the Terran look at them and then at Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd. As they got there, the Terran was babbling something incomprehensible.

"Not Terran like I recognize. Not Confederate Standard either," Shakras mumbled to Naktrix.

"Oh, there you two are," Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd beamed. She waved at the Terran in front of her. "She has been trying to explain things to me, but I keep telling her, I don't speak lemur."

Shakras stopped suddenly as he got a good look at the Terran.

The sun was behind the other Terrans, making them all menacing shadows with glowing red eyes, making it impossible to get a good look at them.

NEVER FEAR, MAX IS HERE! rang out, like it had the last two hours, but nobody flinched.

Shakras was staring at the lemur in front of Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd.

Short, for a lemur. Female. Wide eyes. Large, expressive mouth. Long legs and arms slightly out of proportion. Blonde hair almost hidden by the helmet. Green, brown, and black camouflage paint on their face.

He felt his stomachs drop.

"Clones," he said softly. "But... but how... the cloning banks slag down if you try to clone a Terran."

The Terran female babbled at Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd as the two servants came up.

"I think I might be able to help," Shakras said. He loaded up a translation program and passed it to Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd and Naktrix. "Try Treana'ad. They're one of the Terran's oldest allies that still has their own language. The Rigellians use Confederate Standard."

"Oh, excellent. I knew you would have the answer, Shakras. You have always been a clever young thing," Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd smiled.

She turned to the Terran.

"Now can you understand me?" Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd asked.

The lemur's face brightened and she smiled, showing even white teeth. "Aye."

"We are under attack by Atrekna. Can you help us?" Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd asked.

The lemur smiled even wider. "Aye."

Naktrix shaded his eyes and saw another row of tanks drive to the back of the huge block of them, shutting off their engines and the Terrans getting out to stand in front of them.

Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd turned to her servants. "The lemurs are going to help us!"

Shakras felt his stomachs clench as he stared at them. He moved forward slightly. "What unit is this?" he asked.

Her smile got wider.

"Iron Sparkle Chalice System Planetary Defense," she said.

Shakras did a quick check. It took nearly thirty seconds for his implant to reply.

When it did, his blood ran cold.

Iron Sparkle Chalice Systems - Planet Cracked - Non-Restorable - Post Third Republic of Beings Era - Pre-Confederacy

"Oh, milady, what did you do?" Naktrix asked.

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