First Contact

Chapter 751: The Inheritor's War

There's a misconception many have about the Confederate armed forces. So often we hear that Terran Decent Humanity makes up 80% of the military and mistakenly assume that humans are in fact, 80% of the Confederacy's fighting capacity.

Give the rest of the Confederacy a year to prepare though, and the Treana'ad and Mantid warrior casts will each outnumber the Terran forces nearly 5-1, with each being able to fight just as hard as that one Terran. After that year, after reserve forces have been trained, clones baked, DSs spun up, the rest of the Confed species will far outnumber the Terrans.

The truth is, the "backbone" of the Confed military is simply the people who sate their boredom with endless training and pointless border conflicts.

Most see the open shots of the confederate military, think that no nation could possibly support more, and assume that it stops there.

When the Inheritors of Madness truly move to war, there isn't a higher dimensional band that isn't affected. Everything from hellspace to jumpspace quakes from the sheer mass of the billions of ships moving through it, and when the dropships do arrive planetside, you could be forgiven for assuming the planet gained a new moon.

The Iron Piglet Offensive is when the Atrekna finally learned of this misconception. It is unfortunate for them that they learned of it so late. - Digital Sentience Historian montyman185, post Second Precursor War

Everyone assumes that Terrans are the only shock troops available to the Confederacy. Not true. They're just good at it. Really good.

But if you think that a Terran frontal assault is terrifying or a Treana'ad Horde Charge is hair raising, has never seen the Confederacy's shock troops working together.

Wars have been won in less than a hundred hours with the complete destruction of a planet's ability to wage war by the Confederate military because Treana'ad, Mantid, Rigellian, Kobold, and Terran all fight side by side, strengthening each other's weaknesses. - Military Theorists Gu'unfy'r, Post Big-C3

"I am not sure why the universe is so malevolent, but I am almost positive the Mad Lemurs had something to do with it." - Thinker Despise_all, Cult of the Defiled One

The entire system was nothing but hellborne fury. C+ cannons, close range graser and PPC hit, missile swarms measured in the hundreds of thousands of pods, close range autocannons, bioplasma, biologically focused solar beams, everything that could mangle another ship or creature was shrieking through space in the system.

On one side were autonomous war machines measured in the hundreds or thousands of miles across or long, biomechanical ships with bodies measuring two or three hundred miles long, and crystalline craft measured in miles long. Surrounding them were their support craft and parasite craft, some as small as a few dozen meters and others a hundred miles long.

On the other side were smaller ships that packed no less firepower. From the massive baroque superdreadnauts measuring three hundred miles long, with gun barrels who's caliber was measured in meters to the sleek forms of the smaller, more modern ships that could still get in range and slug it out with the autonomous war machines.

By a gas giant, barely inside the resonance zone, a massive eight tentacled cephalopod who's head measured six hundred miles long and whose tentacles were long enough to reach the surface of a gas giant from its orbit.

"Uh, what did I miss?" sounded on the speakers of the Hamaroosan battleship Harvester of Sorrow as the huge city-sized eyes of the cephalopod looked around in confusion.

"Sandy! Get out of here!" Captain Delminta yelled, as if sheer voice volume would let her voice carry.

"Delminta? What happened? Where did your little ship go?" the girl's voice was confused. "Is that one of those old Imperium ships like on the holovids?"

A barrage of nCv shells made the Harvester of Sorrow's shield flare, but they held, as Captain Delminta turned to her navigation officer. "Get her astrogation coordinates, get her out of here!"

The navigation officer nodded, getting to work.

The Atrekna of the fleet defending the system felt relief they had managed to drag the massive slavespawn forward. They gathered their strength together, reached out, and reminded the slavespawn of its proper place.

You Belong to Us

The cephalopod's skin seemed to ripple and it went from iridescent to a dark bluish-purple as the psychic power of the Conclave lashed at it, ordering it to submit, slashing at her intellect fortress, attempting to rip into her will and replace it with their own.

The Atrekna touched the mind of the vast creature.

DON'T TOUCH ME THERE! screamed out from the cephalopod.

On the Harvester of Sorrow the psychic shields screamed as the generators took 145% load as the enraged shriek of a teenage girl lashed out. The tentacles slowly curled protectively, pulling from the depths of the gas giant.

"Sandy, it's Delminta, can you hear me?" the Hamaroosa Captain asked.

"I can hear you. What's happening? What are those grody things? Ewww... they're gross," the teenage girl's voice said over the speaker. "GET OUT OF MY BRAIN!"

Again the psychic shielding wailed, but the Psychic Warfare Officer had rotated up additional psychic shielding generators and the load peaked at 105% this time.

DON'T TOUCH ME! GET YOUR SLIMY THOUGHTS OFF ME! roared through the system.

The psychic shielding peaked at 165% and several generators blew out. The Psychic Warfare Officer frantically ordered double the current amount fabbed up and put in place as quickly as possible.

Delminta could taste blood in her mouth even though she knew it wasn't her own. She could feel rage and anger pounding at her temples.

"Imperium astrogation data loaded," the navigator called out. "I think I can transmit hyperspace jump coordinates to her."

"Sandy, get out of here, this is a major fleet engagement now," Delminta called out.

The Harvester of Sorrow shuddered as missiles vainly tried to rip through its layered shields. The lights flickered for a second, brightening and dimming as the ship's systems dumped the energy from the X-ray lasers into the system.

"You can't help! Not with this much firepower!" Delminta said. "We're sending you jump coordinates. I promise you, on my honor, that we'll meet up when this fight is over."

GET OUT OF MY BRAIN! rang out across the system.

The taste of hot copper and old pennies got thicker in Delminta's mouth.

There was a slight squealing noise over the channel.

"Bioweapons coming in fast, it looks like they're going for Sandy," one of the scanning operators called out.

"Um, OK. Be careful, little sugar glider," Sandy said. "Oof, I'm hungry."

"Sandy, go!" Delminta said.

For a second it looked like the cephalopod inverted, there was a sparkle, and she was gone.

Delminta turned her attention back to the bridge.

"Wipe these disgusting things from the universe!" she snarled.

The Atrekna fumed at the massive spawn escaping even as many of them struggled to recover from the scream of rage that attempting to dominate the spawn had incurred.

A few, very few, who had fought the Mad Lemurs of Terra and survived recognized that scream, as impossible as it seemed. They'd tasted it when they'd learned not to try to use their phasic power to shut down one of the Mad Lemurs, could taste it now in the raving gibbering howling psychic emanations from the baroque ships, and wondered how a slavespawn became infected with the Lemur Madness.

A good chunk of the Atrekna were too busy fighting for their lives to wonder about such esoteric things as a giant cephalopod snacking on a gas giant.

The crystalline fortress ships were under heavy attack and nearly three quarters had been boarded. The boarding ships rammed into the crystalline ships, fake prows crumpling away, the burning hot wave of plasma melting hyperalloys and shattering crystals. Once the ships were lodged in firmly they began turning, the engines pushing them deeper.

Then the sally ports opened and lemurs in heavy armor swarmed into the ships.

Feline-lemur hybrids wielding plasma fire and cutting bars and heavy caliber submachine guns ran amuck inside the fortresses, screeching incomprehensible war cries as they slaughtered their way toward the center.

Massive lemurs clad in armor, some of them fused to the armor, maneuvered methodically through the crystalline vessels, slaughtering as they advanced.

In both cases the armor was thick enough that phasically enhanced crystals shattered without so much as scuffing the armor. Bioplasma shots did almost nothing. Phasically enhanced folded protein spikes shattered on the armor.

But the worst part were the minds.

They were full of madness, death, and unspeakable agony. Death after death after death replayed over and over inside each mind, sometimes wiping away the personality that should have driven the mind, leaving nothing but an insane core of constantly reliving memories in a wrath filled shell.

The Atrekna found their phasic powers worse than useless as every attempt to dominate the lemur's minds got back the equivalent of a kick to the teeth and a wordless silent psychic scream of "DON'T TOUCH ME!"

A few times, when the Mad Lemurs reached the Central Command Conclave, a member would reveal itself to be an adherent of the Cult of the Defiled One as they suddenly turned into tightly interwoven vibrating strings before vanishing.

The lemurs didn't care about anything like that.

They were there for the killing part.

The Atrekna kept reeling back, their servitor races and slavespawn hammered apart by the massed Terran Confederate Navy's firepower, the Atrekna flagships boarded and turned into slaughterhouses by the lemurs, the planetary resources flattened by massive mechs and orbital strikes.

Desperately they reached for something, anything, to turn it around.

And found nothing as every Conclave and Convention they reached out to responded with the same "HELP ME!" reply.

To the Atrekna in the system it was unthinkable. Virtually every world, every system, held by the Atrekna or being assaulted by the Atrekna was under massive, overwhelming attack by the Inheritors of Madness.

One Atrekna suggested that now was the time to counter-attack, to go past the Scorched Worlds and attack the Inheritors directly.

The other Atrekna looked at the burning autonomous war machines, the dead and dying slavespawn, and the fleeing servitors, all they had left of the buildup for the Second Spoked Offensive.

**how do you suggest we do such a thing** one asked patiently.

There was silence.

**shall we just jump in our ships and fly shrieking at the Inheritor home systems** another asked.

**amazingly that sounds like an amazing plan that cannot help but succeed amazingly perhaps you would like to amazingly demonstrate how amazingly easy it is to amazingly defeat the Inheritors amazingly** a third put in.

**the Inheritor homeworlds and critical systems have to be undefended they have to have sent all of their combat forces into this attack** another stated.

**you state with with confidence** one asked.

**absolutely**

**the same confidence you had in the First Spoked Offensive**

again, silence

**then is flight the only option** one asked **abandon this system to the Inheritors and hope the other systems can somehow find victory**

One of the Ancient Ones moved forward. **we consolidate our strength** it stated. **we shift to other systems under attack and add what remains of our forces to their defending forces in hopes of stopping the Inheritor attack**

**we Atrekna spread out too far too thin and the Inheritors have taken advantage of that weakness to assault in overwhelming force** another Ancient One stated. **we have seen this before**

**when** an Old One asked.

**during the war against the Hive Lord and the Herd Lords** another Ancient One stated, folding its arms into the sleeves of its robe. **it is a tactic of desperation a last vain attempt to stave off our inevitable victory**

The Young Ones and many of the Ancient Ones seemed to take solace in the statement.

The massive system command ship shuddered slightly. Not much, but enough for those Young Ones and Old Ones relegated to standing on the floor could feel it through the deck plating.

**in the latter days of the war the Hive Lords attempted the same thing** an Ancient One stated, floating forward. **I was present when the Hive Lords made such an attack as their leadership caste fled beyond the Scorched Worlds**

An Old One drifted up from the floor. **was this before or after all three of you lost control of the autonomous war machines due to the Prime Miscalculation**

Silence reigned for a long moment.

**that matters not** the Ancient One stated. **soon afterwards the Herd Lords fled into the Hive Lord territory and scorched the hyperatomic plane to cover their retreat**

**thereby causing you to lose the war and be exiled back to the old universe** another Old One stated, drifting forward. **tell us oh ancient ones how you reigned victorious over the Hive Lords and the Herd Lords**

The Ancient One all rippled their feeding tentacles aggressively, hovering forward slightly.

**we are the ones who prosecuted the original war and acquired a wealth of resources from this universe to ours** an Ancient One with rings around one tentacle broadcast.

The Old Ones drifted forward. **you lost your war and now you are on the brink of losing this war by slavishly following your old strategies and tactics convinced that the Hive Lords and the Herd Lords are who are orchestrating this war**

The Ancient Ones snarled.

**who would lead us then** they asked **you**

The Old Ones communed for a moment.

Another vibration, this one stronger, was felt by the Young Ones and the Old Ones standing on the floor.

**we do not face the Hive Lords or the Herd Lords as you knew them** one Old One stated. **the Confederacy of Madness absorbed them into itself they are but a part of the whole**

**bah the Hive Lords and the Herd Lords still rule over their species your premise is flawed that either species would give up control of their destinies to an organization who has suffered a mortal wound with the loss of the Mad Lemurs of Terra** an Ancient One scoffed.

This time the vibration was followed with a shuddering groaning noise that made the air dance.

**find out what that is** one of the Ancient Ones ordered a Young One, unwilling to disengaged from the disagreement, the affront to the superiority of the Ancient Ones's wisdom and guidance.

The Young One disconnected from the discussion and inserted its thoughts into the communal mind aboard the flagship.

Feline-Lemur hybrids rushed forward, firing their stubby projectile weapons with one hand as they screamed and yowled. The torches on their backs were lit with pink and white flames, nonsensical banners snapped and fluttered from their sheer speed of their advance, and the thick plating of the pink and white power armor shrugged any weapon brought to bear against them.

The Young One jerked out of the communal mind.

**we have been boarded by lemurs** it exclaimed. **we must flee immediately**

**the lemurs are nothing to be scared of** the Ancient Ones proclaimed. **simply shut down their higher thought processes**

The majority of the Old Ones turned away, disconnecting from the discussion, and hovered toward the exits.

**this conclave has not been dissolved** several Ancient Ones stated. **return to the communal mind**

**the lemurs have canceled the conclave** one Old One sneered, stopping at the exit portal. **if you wish you can stay and argue with one of them yourself**

**they will be ejected by the slavespawn aboard this vessel and the gathered Young Ones** another Ancient One stated. **return to the conclave now or face the penalty**

The Old Ones ignored the Ancient Ones, drifting out of the chamber.

**let them leave they are worthless petty beneath notice and their thoughts are as weak as their powers** an Ancient One stated. It turned to the remaining Ancient Ones and Young Ones, its tentacles trembling with conviction. **we shall marshal our forces and push the lemurs out of the system**

The gathered Atrekna nodded and murmured on side channels to one another. The Young Ones felt confident in the wisdom of the Ancient Ones and the other Ancient Ones knew what was right, after all, they had been the ones to make the decision.

The Atrekna gathered close together, sharing estimations on how to push the Inheritor ships out of the system, making plans for what to do afterwards, absolutely convinced of their superiority and the eventual vindication of their decisions.

It came as a complete shock when a large section of the wall blew inward, shrapnel ripping through the Atrekna who were not bothering with personal protective shielding. On the heels of the explosive force and the shrapnel came a wave of psychic energy.

Composed of pure maddened rage.

Shadows with glowing red eyes, dimly lit by pink and white flames behind them, turning them into bulky silhouettes, filled the hole in the wall. The Atrekna shielded their sensitive eyes as the survivors turned to face the hole.

A crude drawing of a feline head began to burn on the chests of the armored figures standing in the doorway.

"DOKI DOKI DOKI!" came the feral screams.

The Atrekna stared in shock as over a dozen of the female feline-lemur hybrids charged into the room, shooting submachine guns and triggering flamethrowers as they advanced.

Atrekna were burned where they stood or floated. The mass reactive antimatter core rounds shattered Atrekna into bloody rags of flesh. The sheer rage rolling off of them, the sheer madness, made many of the Atrekna scream and grab their heads, blood oozing out of their three eye sockets.

The THWOOP of psychic attacks sounded out but the vaunted and powerful psychic attack of the Atrekna did nothing more than blow hair back, cause banners to flutter, or cause the torches to roar up higher, the fire burning hotter.

And make the Neko-Marines screech back with rage and hatred.

Mark-I Cutting Bars came into play as the Neko-Marines slammed into the Atrekna on the ground, or that had floated downward, stunned by the attack. Engines roared, chains clattered, and shrieks of enraged joy completely blotted out the Atrekna's dying screams.

The Old Ones that had left, that were boarding a fast escape craft, looked at one another as the sounds of the Conclave dying echoed through the communal mind of the command flagship.

**the lemurs have dissolved the conclave it appears** one stated, wiggling its facial tentacles with amusement.

-----

Captain Delminta watched as the Atrekna fleets began making least time courses for one another, desperately trying to regroup.

The entire time the guns of the Martial Order of Terra and the Hamaroosan fleet pounded them.

The battle wasn't won.

But Delminta could see the fires of victory or defeat from here.

-----

Four light years away a massive cephalopod stately moved into orbit around a small gas giant. It extended long tentacles down into the atmosphere.

--delicious delicious hydrocarbons-- the cephalopod whispered to itself. --I hope the sugar glider kitties are all right--