First Contact

Chapter 745: The Inheritor's War

There is Only Enough For One

Surrender and Be Destroyed

You Belong to Me

EAT A BAG OF DICKS!

--Battlecries of the Second Precursor War

The flare had been detected three months ago. The particle flare was detectable in real time, that moved at multiple thousands of the speed of light. It signaled that the Atrekna were 'sinking' a stellar system to hide it, to adjust the sun to a red giant, to either exterminate or enslave the population of the system. The gas giants would be used to produce Dwellerspawn and Autonomous War Machines. The habitable planets would be xenoformed for the Atrekna and their servitor species.

The Terran Confederate Space Force and Military Services added the system to the target list. Nearly six hundred capital ships and their attendant vessels were slated to take back the system, or defend it in the chance that the flare had been detected before the system was actually sunk down.

The apparent paradox of keeping a system from being sunken down after the particle flare had been detected already didn't seem to raise its head. Scientists were at a loss to explain why there was no temporal paradox for preventing the system from being sunken despite the system having been detected at being sunken down.

There was reason but not one that the scientists could detect.

[The Universe Liked That]

XXXIV Corps AKA The Dirty Thirty-Four, part of 17th Army, was tasked with the defense or liberation of the system. It had a population of thirty eight billion sentients, one native xenospecies, a single habitable planet, and a fairly active yellow stellar mass.

The fleet, Task Force Loha Shair, cleared their guns for action before they even dropped out of hyperspace. The troops were in their drop cradles, vehicles, and mechs.

The Task Force Admiral had made that decision based on the fact that they couldn't be sure, even with advance surveillance probes, exactly what they would be dropping into.

The probes came back showing everything normal in the system.

Task Force Loha Shair dropped out of the hyperspace with the roar of "HEAVY METAL IS HERE!" coming in deep into the system, only a scant handful of light minutes from the various planetary masses.

It had been a risk worth taking to divide up the task force in order to seize control of the orbital bodies.

A risk the Admiral had mitigated by ordering guns clear.

The Task Force streaked into existence, dropping into realspace.

And found itself in the middle of the enemy despite the drones reporting the system clear less than sixty seconds prior.

Large Dwellerspawn and AWM units were already making for the gas giants and the three uninhabited solid planets. Dwellerspawn and AWM units were closing on the inhabited plan.

Before the Atrekna forces could react to the appearance of the Confederate Task Force, the order was bellowed out from hundreds of battle bridges.

"TARGET ALL GUNS ON THE ENEMY AND FIRE AT WILL!"

One second the Atrekna and their forces were liesurely moving to take possession of the hypermassive gas giant and its smaller brethren, the rocky planetoids, and the inhabited planet.

The next space shuddered with the roar of "HEAVY METAL IS HERE!" as the hated Inheritors dropped into realspace only a few light minutes from the Atrekna forces.

The Atrekna had brought long massive ships that harbored already grown and attuned Overbrains, forming the communal mind, the Atrekna Overmind that let all of the Atrekna share one another's thoughts in order to coordinate their actions.

The single word rang across the Atrekna Overmind.

**AMBUSH**

The slavespawn were still reacting, still processing the sudden change. The sluggish speed of neural tissue channels measured in the tens of kilometers meant that the larger slavespawn creatures were not even aware of the arrival of the Inheritors of Madness beyond their shells, carapaces, and some tissues vibrating with "HEAVY METAL IS HERE!" as the Inheritors streaked into reality.

The AWM reacted faster. They spun up their battlescreens, their internal integrity screens, and began charging their weapons. They went to combat awareness and began processing the data, rotating up additional computing lobes and laying down more thinking wire mesh processors.

Confederate 'subs' dove into the subspace foam, running deep and silent as they maneuvered away from their dive point. Shoals of jamming buoys were deployed. Missile pods were launched. Aerospace parasite fighters were grav-launched from dozens of carriers.

The C+ and C++ cannons started firing.

In some cases the distance between the Atrekna forces and the Confederate forces was less than a hundred miles.

In those cases, even the point defense weaponry on the Confederate vessels got into the action. Pods and fighters had to be launched on the opposite side from the nearby enemy vessels so the rapid hyperaccelleration system didn't just splatter the pod or the fighter against the enemy ship.

The massive battleship "GWRARK MWRARK", which roughly translated as "Look at all these big guns!" and was nicknamed "Ark-Ark" by its crew, actually slammed into a Dwellerspawn the size of a large island mass. The hyperspace bleedoff shredded tissue, neutronium shell, and the battleship itself collided with tissue, pitting warsteel hull against neutronium shell and biomechanical tissue with velocity times mass equals momentum.

Warsteel won, but barely.

The Ark-Ark was crumpled, its keel buckled. A fan of cascading energy particles was spreading out from the engines, all of them dead or flaring uncontrollably.

But its guns still fired as it slid out of the cloud of frozen vaporized tissue, its battlescreens flickering, lightning bolts clawing over its hull, and its engines dead. Inside, DCC crews fought to rescue comrades trapped inside buckled compartments, struggled to put out fires, and worked to keep the engines and battlescreens up even as the casualties streamed into the med-bay.

The fact that doctrine had been followed so the atmosphere had been pumped out and everyone was in their shipboard armored vacsuits saved countless lives.

Massive troop transports slid into orbit around the inhabited planet even as the Atrekna ships began hammering down through the atmosphere or disgorging their landing forces. Fighters swarmed over the Atrekna ships, ran intercept missions on the Atrekna landing craft and creatures, and harried the Atrekna forces.

The entire system was one big close range knife fight.

On the ground the population was panicking even as the ones with their wits about them all streamed toward the shelters.

The whisper of "You Belong to Us!" had driven a significant portion of the population mad. Fighting was heavy in the streets as mobs attacked one another, some defending themselves and the shelter entrances, others screaming with rage as their brains were shattered by the Atrekna psychic scream.

The troop transports went to rapid fire on the drop pods, warning the contents that in many cases they would be slamming down into the middle of enemy troops. Warplans were loaded and locked.

Everyone knew that with the Atrekna themselves present, communications and network availability would be spotty at best, completely gone at worst.

Inside one of the Saturn Class Drop Pods were five warmeks. Each was a Davion Class Warmek in the assault class. Three Storm Reavers, a Denwen, and a Perses. Ninety metric short tons of warsteel mark five laminated armor, a broad array of weapons, thickly layered defensive systems, all driven by a powerful fusion engine and myomer muscles. Nothing but sheer unstoppable Confederate Armed Services attitude piloted by one of the most highly trained specialists in the galaxy.

The ship launched nearly six hundred Saturn Class Drop Pods, then broke for high orbit, the creation engines aboard the ship reconfiguring the drop pod launcher for kinetic orbital strikes and loading the drop pod lockers with kinetic kill munitions.

In one of the Storm Reavers, which packed four snub-nosed PPC's, two 15-pack long range missile launchers and four 6-pack launchers as well as a handful of pulse lasers and a quad rotary autocannon, was Private Second Class Ret.lek and four green mantid engineers.

His warmek wasn't customized, unlike the Denwen and Perses. The most customization it had was a larger than life sized nude portrait of the Detainee done in full color with some glowing sections.

It was Ret.lek's first combat drop.

He had to admit, it was more frightening than waiting to ambush another gang or a LawSec patrol. The drop pod was massive, able to carry five hundred tons of Davion Class Warmek, with a huge main ion thruster surrounded by an even dozen repulsors. No chutes, no anti-grav, just straight G-force thrust.

The whole pod was shaking and actually creaking as it thundered down through the atmosphere, fired by the Baby Got Back troopship's grav drivers.

Ret.lik clamped his teeth on the plastic mouthguard his lance leader had advised him to put in, held tight to the two disconnected control sticks, and pressed his feet hard against the unresponsive pedals.

**you ok champ** came across his vision.

His greenie 204.

"Scared shitless," he managed to slur past the mouthguard, his speech muffled.

**youll be fine** 772 added.

**dont fill shorts** 930 put in.

*Hardy har har," Ret.lek grunted.

Ret.lek watched the altimeter spin down.

"Ten seconds, Sigma Lance," Lance Commander Norgulk said across the wire link.

Ret.lik triggered his affirmative icon and doublechecked his harness.

A roaring filled the world and his stomachs felt like they were going to drop out his asshole for a few seconds.

Then the pod hit with a heavy crash. The door blew off, the explosive bolts flinging it nearly a hundred meters away as it disintegrated into big chunks of shrapnel.

All around him was scorched meat and shrieking Dwellerspawn.

"GUNS FREE!" Lance Commander Norgulk snapped out.

NETWORK CONNECTION UNAVAILABLE appeared in Ret.lek's vision even as his weapons went live. His nanoforges were at optimum heat and slush as he raked the still surviving, half-baked Dwellerspawn with his guns and stepped out of the drop pod. He raked them with the autocannons and held back the heavy snub nose PPC's, unwilling to run his heat into the amber too quickly.

All five of the warmeks took three steps from the pod, laying down heavy firepower, for all intents and purposes standing back to back.

"Sigma-Four, air assets, up high, two-o-clock," Norgulk called out, his voice crackling and hissing from the jamming. The pollen count was already up and getting thicker.

"Roger," Ret.lek said, looking around. Two of his SRM and one of his LRM racks were loaded with SAM-AA missiles.

The flight of twelve enemy AWM aerospace fighters stood out plainly, their signatures burning through the jamming. Ret.lek hovered the reticle over the fighters. It kept bobbing amber and yellow, then he held it for a full second and the reticle went red and he could hear a steady tone.

"FOX-THREE AWAY FIFTEEN!" Ret.lek said, feeling his close cropped fur try to stand up at the same time as he slapped the button for the starboard side LRM15 pack. The covers snapped to the side and the grav drivers slammed the missiles out, the surface to air missiles already doing MACH-2 within five feet of the launcher.

Ret.lek didn't bother paying attention to the missiles, they were entirely warboi guided and his attention was on an AWM trying to push through the wreckage. It was big, covered in spikes, and what looked like fluttering rags on the spikes.

Ret.lek knew it was the stripped skin of civilians unlucky enough to encounter it.

The rapid fire rotary autocannon roared as he hosed it with fire, the heavy warsteel jacketed slugs slamming into its facial armor. Shards of armor exploded away from the AWM and its advance stopped dead as the heavy 30mm slugs pounded into it.

The missiles managed to hit five of the aerospace fighters hard enough that they exploded in midair. Three more dropped from the sky trailing smoke.

The rest continued on their mission.

Not that Ret.lek knew. He was busy directing fire into the facial armor of the AWM.

"FOX-ONE AWAY-SIX!" Sigma-Three called out.

Ret.lek let off the trigger even as he fired off a burst of chaff to confuse the AWM.

The six-pack SRM slammed into the shattered facial armor of the AWM and exploded inside. Something further back exploded with a flare of greenish white and the AWM's power readings dropped to zero.

"Skirmish wing," Norgulk ordered, his voice full of static. "Infantry hasn't made planetfall yet. Orbital problems."

Ret.lek got his big warmek in motion, moving to the port side of the V, in the back. Norgulk was in the lead, his big Perses hundred ton mek stomping through the smoking wreckage.

"Objective is a Hydra class AWM that made landfall about twelve klicks off. Looks like its pumping out auxiliary combat units," Norgulk said. "Verify targets, we might have friendlies scattered around."

Ret.lek nodded. He swallowed and reached over for a bottle of water. It had been less than six minutes since they landed and he was already feeling like he was dying of thirst.

He did realize one thing as the lance marched forward.

The holo-dramas never mentioned how badly you had to pee when the combat was over.

------

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

How's Iron Piglet looking?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Pretty well. The Treana'ad Infantry Hordes are giving the Atrekna fits. There's a been a few task forces that jumped straight into the enemy, a couple hundred that arrived before the Atrekna and are setting up ambushes, around a hundred that ran face first into overwhelming Atrekna resistance. The rest looks like standard system assaults.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Daxin's warsteel balls, I love this part.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

I'm still worried.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

PUBVIAN DOMINION

The loss of the Terrans?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

Yeah.

Speaking of Terrans, any word on The Bag?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Still can't get anything off of it. The white matter doesn't seem to be decaying, and that's part of the problem. It's heavily chronotron charged, which is just making things worse.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

How's their time dialiation? I know it was sixty to one in their favor like all the other bags, but what does it look like now?

I mean, it's been years. They haven't had centuries go by, have they?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

As near as we can tell, it's shifted the other way.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

How bad?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Looks like maybe two hundred to one, our favor, maybe even worse.

Which might explain why the white matter isn't decaying as fast as it should.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

So, for every two hundred years out here, one year passes for TerraSol?

That would explain why they can't log in to the system.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Bingo.

And we're not sure what to do about it.

Hell, there might not be anything we can do about it.

That archeoreversion evolutionary attack was like nothing we've ever seen.

Frankly, I'm surprised they haven't tried it again.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

LANAKTALLAN FREE GRAZING FIELD NOW WITH BUNNIES

They can't.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

...

...

...

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Gonna let us in the secret, big guy?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

LANAKTALLAN FREE GRAZING FIELD NOW WITH BUNNIES

For one, you have the 'worst possible outcome' problem.

But beyond that, our examination of time manipulation and the Terran theories as well as our own research over the last hundred and twenty million years shows that the Atrekna may have seriously set themselves back with that action.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

How?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

LANAKTALLAN FREE GRAZING FIELD NOW WITH BUNNIES

Any event which has massive implications on a galactic scale causes a chronotron explosion. Each chronotron erupts into a shower of thousands or millions of fully charged chronotrons, as if the chronotrons had reached the end of their particle life only more energetic.

These explosions cause what we call a Great Temporal Lockpoint. This means that reaching past that point requires more and more energy, which requires even more energy for any future efforts. Essentially, a Great Temporal Lockpoint makes it so the energy requirements increase at a logarithmic rate instead of geometrical rate.

Basically, once there is a Great Temporal Lockpoint, you can't reach past it any more to cause effects. Even temporal replication becomes a case of severely diminishing returns.

With this in mind, we sent fast hyperspace research ships with temporal lenses outside the Galactic Arm Spur and into deep space to get a look at the chronotron flare of the archeoreversion attack upon Terran Descent Humanity.

Temporal lensing examination of the galactic arm spur from a few thousand light years outside the arm itself has allowed us to pinpoint when the Atrekna's original archeoreversion attack happened.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

How big was the flare of chronotrons?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

LANAKTALLAN FREE GRAZING FIELD NOW WITH BUNNIES

That's the Milky Way Galaxy.

Just for scale.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

All right.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

LANAKTALLAN FREE GRAZING FIELD NOW WITH MORE BUNNIES! MORE BUNNIES!

ALL>SCREAM

That's what the chronotron eruption looked like.

Any questions?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

...

...

...

PUBVIAN DOMINION

I think we get it.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

LANAKTALLAN FREE GRAZING FIELD NOW WITH EVEN MORE BUNNIES AND A KITTY OR TWO

Good.

It's roughly to scale.

Even if a bit understated.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

That was understated?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

Daxin looked up from where he was kicked back in a comfortable chair with a beer in one hand and FIDO sitting next to him. He was watching reruns of the "Deep Space Salvage" reality show from just before the Glassing.

It was funny how often he'd suddenly remember the entire episode only a few minutes in, right down to where he had been when he'd watched it.

The current episode, which was a crew of deep space salvage specialists trying to identify a wreck they'd found about thirty light years outside of the Third Republic's borders, was one he had watched back on Tycho Base while he was waiting to ship out to the fighting going on out in the Genejack Systems.

But Pete walking in, cursing and waving his arms, had interrupted his Tri-Vee watching and trip down memory lane.

"What's wrong now?" Daxin asked, muting the Tri-Vee.

"The system isn't paying attention to me in some places," Peter said. He walked up and grabbed one of the beers from the self-chilling carrier. He cracked it open and took a long drink. "Sam woke up some systems that don't pay any attention to anyone else, just do their jobs."

"The Extinction Life Event System?" Daxin asked.

Peter nodded and threw himself into the chair. "Menhit got access for a little bit but now the system is ignoring everyone again. To top it off, it looks like it's about to do a mass collection again."

"Again?" Daxin said. He looked around. "Who the Chrysler LeBaron is left?"

Peter stared at Daxin for a long moment, his eyes a cold amber. "The LARP worlds. The anarcho-primitism worlds. Anything with a population of over two hundred is being marked."

"And you can't stop it?"

Peter shook his head. "And I can't stop it."

"And it's code, backed up and super-redundant, probably one of the more heavier redundancy systems in the whole system, so there's nothing to shut down, shoot, or control-alt-delete stop," Daxin guessed.

"Right," Pete said.

"You talk to Dhruv? He's overly clever," Daxin suggested.

Pete shrugged. "I tried. He's trying to figure out how to help, but the timer is running and there's nothing we can do to stop it. With Earth being in The Bag, the system thinks TerraSol was destroyed along with the Ellie dancing naked on the table and rubbing her big sweaty ass in our faces."

"What about Sam? Have you found him yet? Maybe he can help," Daxin set his empty back in the carrier and grabbed another.

"No, I haven't found him. I think Herod actually killed him," Pete said. He gave a frustrated sigh. "Even then, the kid was just a hacker. A highly talented hacker."

"Who might be able to get into Ellie's bedroom and get her to call off the party."

Pete nodded. He finished off his beer and stood up. "I'm gonna get back to work."

"Tell me if you need anything," Daxin said.

"I will," Pete replied.

Daxin waited till Pete left before unpausing the TV show and turning off mute. He reached down and scratched FIDO's petting nerve.

"So glad we're not involved in complicated stuff like that," Daxin rumbled.

**FIDO like old show**

"Me too, boy, me too."

-----

The fox, the frog, and the man stood at the edge of the stone bridge. The fox leaned over the edge, staring down into the fog shrouded depths of the massive canyon carved from gray rock. He could see birds and other creatures floating through the miss, faintly hear the roar of great beasts, and the sounds of a river rushing across rock.

"Do you know where we are?" the man asked, somewhat nervously. He rubbed his leg where his injuries made his code ache.

"No, is it not wondrous?" the frog asked, pointing at the huge statues of stern looking Terrans. "Look, your forebearers. They must have been great persons of great reknown."

The man nodded slowly. "I can almost remember them," the man said slowly. He pointed at a statue of a tall, thin Terran female wearing a horizontally striped dress, spectacles, and strapped shoes. Her hair was long, past her shoulder blades, and slightly wavy. She stood with one hand on a stack of paper binders almost as tall as she was.

"She is my mother, in some ways, I think. Perhaps my grand mother?" the man said softly. "Her visage is familiar to me as my own."

"She looks kind and wise," the frog said.

The fox nodded. "A great person of great deeds," he said. He pointed at the bridge. "Shall we cross? See what sights there are to behold?"

"I would like that," the frog said.

The man nodded and glanced behind him at the wreckage of the glass mountain and the burning silhouette of the fortresses of Dour Gaol Dour. "I would like to keep moving."

The frog held out his hands. "Let us continue on our journey, friends."

The man took one hand, the fox the other, and they held hands as they crossed the great stone port I/O bridge and left behind the dark and terrible lands of the Kar-Knell of Souls.