First Contact

Chapter 761: The Inheritor's War

The Great P'Thok and Beloved Matron Mi'Luki almost caused a civil war, their discoveries were so profoundly impactful on Treana'ad society. Our society had been unchanged for millions of years, no change was possible any longer as far as everyone could determine. We had resigned ourselves to our society, our culture, and hateful biology. Like other species, tens of thousands, millions of years was required for any movement in the homeostasis of our societies.

Then the Great P'Thok blew a hole in our culture and Beloved Matron Mi'Luki drove an ice cream truck through it. By the time we had settled down, by the time war was averted by the very things that changed our society, the Terran-Mantid Wars were over, the Republic, the Combine, even the Imperium had fallen. The Digital Omnimessiah had been assassinated and the Biological Apostles, the Immortals, had vanished.

In the time it took us to decide if Blueberry Cream Powersmoker Flavor should be legal for certain age groups of Matrons, the Fourth Republic had fallen and the Concordiant had risen to power.

Terran society always had a Great P'Thok, there were Beloved Matron Mi'Luki's everywhere.

For us, it was ice cream, birth control, and cigarettes.

For Terrans, it was simply being a Terran. - From: Reflections Upon Change, philosopher P'latret, 545 PG

The hospital room was quiet, just a low hum of electronics and the gentle whisper of the environmental system that kept the room at the optimum temperature for the patient's health and keeping down the spread of microorganisms through temperature regulation.

Normally two species did not share a room, but this room had a null-g hospital bed for a small green mantid tucked up next to a larger bed for a Hakanian. The Hakanian twisted and writhed, despite the anesthetic beam, moaning out loud and muttering fragments of speech. The green mantid would jerk, his three legs scrabbling, the regen cast where the missing leg had been clicking now and then, and data would stream down the computer screens.

On the other side of the viewing window, in the observation room, stood a gold mantid, a russet mantid, and a Rigellian female, one a psychic surgeon, one a medical surgeon, the other a Defense Services Intelligence Agency officer. Against the wall stood two women, short, thick bodied, black hair, in suits and apparently unarmed, their gunmetal gray eyes staring straight ahead.

Confederate Intelligence Agents.

The gold mantid opened a window in the smartglass and scrolled through the data.

"The dream blocker medication is working somewhat, but those aren't dreams, they're implanted memories," the gold mantid, one Finds Common Ground, said. She shook her head. "I'll tell you the truth, I'm somewhat concerned about what you're asking me to do."

The russet mantid, one Never Give You Up, nodded. "We need you to seal off the implanted memories so that we can at least ask how the patient came into possession of them."

On cue the maimed features of the Atrekna with the burning red eyes appeared on the dream monitor and the Hakanian gave a low moan of pain and terror.

"An Enraged Atrekna," the russet mantid said softly, shaking her head and tapping the tips of her cybernetically enhanced bladearms together. "There is a high probability that the injuries to his face and head and hand were incurred in combat against a Terran."

The Rigellian female nodded, rubbing the knuckles of one hand with the palm of another, trying to ease her anxiety at the sight of the Atrekna as the remaining feeding tentacles writhed slowly and obscenely and the eyes drew closer until they blottted out everything else.

"Has there been a record of Atrekna freeing any prisoners?" Finds asked.

"No," the Rigellian, one Tiffany Gawarkrawk, said quietly. "Nor has there ever been any sightings of an Atrekna like the one that delivered the patient to the SAR platoon."

Finds sighed deeply, reaching out and putting a hand against the smartglass wall and closing her eyes. Her antenna flicked back and forth for a moment then steadied. A low silvery purple nimbus surrounded her antenna.

"His mental defenses are sliced apart. Not with brute force, this was done by someone skilled. I'd say the red-eyed Atrekna is experienced at this," the gold one said. She suddenly shuddered and pulled back. "I can taste Red Eyes all over the thoughts.

She paused for a moment.

"It's Enraged. One taste of his phasic touch and you can feel it. Not as bad as a non-Enraged Terran, but you can still taste it," Finds said. She shook her head again. "Prepare a psychic surgery theater and alert a psychic surgery team."

She closed the data window.

"I'll try to see if he's still in there."

-----

small

silent

still

Yrler floated in a dark bubble. Images kept appearing, rubbing against the walls of the bubble. He ignored them even as another part of his brain screamed in terror, in agony, the screams translating into low moans through the medication.

He was in the fetal position, wrapped up, eyes closed, ears pressed against the side of his head, tail protecting his butt crack and genitals as it arced beneath him.

small

still

silent

"Does. It. Hurt?" the strange voice of the naked Atrekna, sounding like a badly recorded female lemur.

small

still

silent

Yrler didn't know what was happening to his body.

It didn't matter.

He was somewhere else now. Beyond his body. Beyond safe memories. Beyond everything to the point that nothing could truly reach him.

survive

escape

resist

evasion

He was within all three. He had survived his injuries so far, had survived those razor sharp fingers rooting through his memories, his thoughts, touching his soul.

He had escaped their touch, their punishments on his already battered body, their assaults upon his mind.

He couldn't feel his body any longer but that was good.

He had escaped beyond their reach.

He was past resisting. His memories were his own, but they were disconnected, no longer attached, protected by the fact that his brain no longer processed memories, no longer made neural function calls to his long term, mid-term, or even short term or immediate memory clusters.

He resisted by having escaped.

small

still

silent

He could evade them now. He was beyond them, outside their reach.

Free. Candy?

The memory whispered at him, a distorted female lemur voice, but it wafted past him like an ill wind and he paid it no mind.

He was the bubble on the night sea, the pollen in the night air.

small

silent

still

He knew he was screaming somewhere else. Knew he was writhing in pain.

But he had escaped the pain.

He floated in warm blackness, curled into the fetal position.

"Palgret? Palgret? Can you hear me?" reverberated through the darkness.

small

silent

still

Yrler felt himself slowly rotate. Heard the faint pleasant gurgle of bubbles in dark warm water.

"Palgret? I'm Doctor Finds the Common Ground. Can you hear me? You're in a Confederate Military Medical Center. Palgret?"

the enemy will attempt to trick you. reject their words even if it is just simply ignoring them. listen but let the words pass through you. do not reply do not engage until you see your opportunity

"Palgret? I'm Doctor Finds the Common Ground. I'm a psychic surgeon. I suspect you are in here. Please respond."

small

silent

still

resist

evade

survive

Yrler ignored it all, not even dignifying the enemy's attempt with a response, his mind blank, as he floated inside the bubble.

-----

"He's still in there," Finds said. "I can't find him, but he's in there."

"SERE training," the Rigellian said. She tapped the smartglass. "He's been trained in psychic warfare counter-measures. He won't respond unless you give the correct key phrases."

"You should give them to me so I can bring him out of it," Finds said.

Lieutenant Colonel Gawarkrawk shook her head. "Not yet. His brain, his thoughts, his mind was touched by a creature we know almost nothing about. It ripped apart his mind and implanted memories," she tapped the smartglass and brought up the image of the disfigured red-eyed Atrekna. "Old Red-Eyes here was enraged to boot. Think about that. He had an Atrekna, arguably more skilled than even your people, root around in his brain and the Atrekna was Enraged."

LTC Gawarkrawk shifted the screen slightly to show the green mantid. "You can try him."

-----

515 lay on the rock, sunning himself. Around him a holoprojector was playing his favorite song.

one and one is two two and two is four four and four is eight eight quacky duckies swim with four hopping frogs singing two songs in one pond warm blanket soft blanket red block is square blue triangle is blue green circle is funny

He was tiny. No bigger than a credit chip. His implants were the size of grains of sand, mostly nonfunctional, the nanotech systems growing slowly with him.

He could sense the spectral output of the star, taste the chemical composition of the particles on the wind, see the stresses the wind put on the stalks of purple grass beneath a violet sky.

"Five One Five! Are you in there?" the voice asked from far away.

spooky sounds are spooky but you are safe with broodmommy the song sang

"Five One Five, this is Finds the Common Ground, please respond."

515 just ignored it, closing his eyes, turning off his antenna.

warm greenie smart greenie clever greenie safe greenie

The song wound around him, moved through him, lifted him beyond.

He knew that part of his mind was screaming, shrieking out the equations carved into his mind by the burning razored edge of the red-eyed Atrekna's mind domination.

But he was beyond that.

smart greenie clever greenie one and one is two two and two is four four and four is eight

The song continued as he ignored the voice.

It was the enemy. An enemy trick.

The red eyed Atrekna and its bizarre friends would not break him. He would not comply. He would not answer.

He was 515.

And he was warm and smart and clever and brave

smart greenie clever greenie brave greenie

-----

"I can't reach him. He's so far down I'm not even sure he's conscious," Finds said.

LTC Gawarkrawk noted that the gold mantid looked exhausted.

"Those equations he keeps repeating, they're branded into his psyche with a blowtorch."

"Do we know what they are?" LTC Gawarkrawk asked, turning to one of her aides.

"Vaguely, yes. Precisely, no," the Kobold said.

"Give me a gist?" the Colonel asked.

The Kobold shrugged. "We believe a lot of it is data on the hyperatomic plane that we now know as Hellspace. There's a lot of technical data that the greenies just stare at in shock. Something about a hyperparticle energetic state non-linear accellerator or something like that," the Kobold gave a laugh. "I'm a trained jumpspace and hyperspace theory scientist and those equations make my eyes cross," he paused. "Another problem is, three quarters of the data is in the same language that the patient keeps mumbling."

"Which we still don't understand," LTC Gawarkrawk cursed, slamming a closed fist against the smartglass.

"It's being theorized that it might be ancient Lanaktallan. From the Precursor War," another intelligence specialist said, this one a Pubvian. "That's our best bet."

"Let me guess, the Unified Council might have had spaceships from back then, but nobody speaks that old language," LTC Gawarkrawk snarled. "Great. Something this important and it's a dead-end because nobody alive speaks Precursor War Lanaktallan. Nobody speaks the right language, including the advanced mathematics because of lost concepts."

There was silence for a moment.

One of the women against the wall cleared her throat and took a half-step forward.

Everyone turned and stared.

"That's not... necessarily true," the Agent said.

-----

Dreams of Something More watched as the massive Herd Stallion entered her quarters.

It was a glossy black biomechanical nightmare to many. Covered in sleek black armor, pistons and gears and pullies visible here and there, its feet wreathed in flame, it's six eyes burning purplish-red, it's feeding tendrils tipped with shining chrome.

To the Lanaktallan, it was strength, progress, imposing and impressive.

It reminded Dreams of the work of a few Terran artists.

The massive black Lanaktallan nodded gravely.

"You wished to hold audience with me, Madame Diplomat?" the huge black stallion asked, his voice cultured and smoothed, his Confederate Standard Interspecies Common Speech flawless.

"Yes," Dreams said. She made a motion and a starmap opened up. "You're familiar with the current state of the Atrekna War?"

The stallion nodded. "Operation Iron Piglet and all of its operational offensives seemed like an impossible insanity to me. The idea that the Confederacy already had all of that military might in Council Space or bordering it seemed impossible."

"No species has ever been prepared for our war machine, whether it was the Confederacy's or the governments preceding it," Dreams said, nodding.

"Everyone is a gangster until the crude directional mine carrying domestic cleaning robot comes around the corner," the Lanakallan Herd Stallion rumbled.

Dreams smiled and nodded. "An old saying, but applicable."

"There has been a development," Dreams said. "One that I believe you can help with."

The Herd Stallion's body language showed curiosity. "I am willing to assist if I can."

"Can you speak the ancient Lanaktallan tongue. Not Unified Standard Language, but the ancient tongue of your people from the Percursor War?" Dreams asked.

The Lanaktallan managed to display sorrow even though his face was a plated mask. "Alas, I can read it, but I cannot speak it. I am willing to try to listen to see if it is understandable to me."

Dreams nodded and reached out. "Be warned, there's psychic imprinting with the speech that we've been unable to parse."

"I am warned," the huge Lanaktallan stated.

The whisper was low, pain filled, as it wound through the artificially generated temperate rain forest that filled Dreams's quarters.

"It is a message of grave importance, that ignoring will bring doom and wide-spread death and destruction," the Lanaktallan stated, his eyes closed. " The phasic messaging is that the message must be attended to, attention to it is of great importance. The Atrekna are desperate and willing to attempt the unthinkable that will be vast and terrible in its destruction."

The message ended.

"The words, I understood a few. It mentioned the Atrekna several times, there were scientific phrases I did not understand, but I was able to glean the meaning behind the words," the Lanaktallan stated. It shuddered. "A great project, committed by my people, who faced extinction at the hands of the Autonomous War Machines of all three of the Great Triumviant."

"The PAWM," Dreams said*.* She suddenly sat up straight. "Oh, my Digital Omnimessiah and the Twelve Biological Apostles," she breathed. "It's about the creation of Hellspace!"

The Lanaktallan nodded. "I believe you are correct, Madame Diplomat. I had deduced the same thing," it shook its great head solemnly. "Sadly, there is nobody I know of that would understand the engineering from back then. Terms matter with advanced science, and I am not sure just how much we can glean from those whispers."

Dreams nodded. "Thank you, Honored One."

The Lanaktallan bowed slightly. "I but live to serve the Lanaktallan people."

"Now we just need to figure out how to find someone who can understand the language better and who knows engineering from back then," Dreams mused.

"I wish you good fortune on your search," the Herd Stallion said.

-----

The sun was warm, a light air current, stronger than a breeze but lighter than wind, floated in from the west, carrying the smell of grain, cattle, and water. The crops waved slowly, a long undulation reminiscent of an ocean. The sky was dotted with white puffy clouds, clear violet to the senses of the few sentient beings on the scattered farms and ranches.

On one such farm slash ranch a massive Mantid warrior caste sat in a rocker, leaning back against the swivel backrest, idly swinging his four legs lazily to make the chair rock back and forth. He had a floppy hat on, holes cut for his sensitive antenna, as well as a leather abdominal wrap, denim vest, and a buckskin satchel on a bead decorated strap.

In his lap sat a fat and pampered fowl, that was slowly being petted with bladearms sharp enough to slice through endosteel. It was making low gobbling noises of happiness as the huge mantid petted it.

Around him, relaxing on small bench-seats with adjustable back rests, were a half dozen green servitors. They were discussing, in their mathematical language, repairs done to one of the tractors.

The massive Mantid warrior, Cordexen by name, felt pride in the engineering servitors.

He enjoyed hearing their chatter.

It banished the loneliness he had suffered for eons.

A pinging from inside the house got his attention and he sighed as he set the snoring turkey down and stood up, the back of the rocking chair automatically swinging out of the way.

He entered his large house, tapping bladearms with a war servitor who was sitting on the couch with a half dozen other black carapace mantids, all watching the edutainment show "Uncle Mikey" on the Tri-Vee.

In the communications room the comlink was pinging steadily.

It was slightly surprising to see that it wasn't one of his neighbors or one of the Mantid with whom he had shared the terrible purgatory of the underground mining installation.

It was a call from Confederate Intelligence.

He had no fear as he reached for the accept button. Confederate Intelligence had held little interest for him. Cordexen was more afraid of the media channels and media stars who had wanted to interview him than of CI.

The screen wavered and cleared to show a gold mantid.

Cordexen blinked several times.

She was different than he was used to. Less spikes. Larger head. Longer antenna. Bigger eyes. The carapace angles and lines were different.

"I am Finds the Common Ground, a Confederate Armed Services Military Doctor, a psychic surgeon to be precise. May we speak, oh honored elder cousin?" the gold asked, the translator built into the wondrous comlink translating her speech from Confederate Standard (according to the subtitle) to proper Krikitak Imperial Vocalization.

Cordexen briefly considered shutting off the comlink. She was from another Hive, another bloodline, and the feeling of loss that welled up inside of him was almost stifling.

Instead, he just slowly nodded.

"You fought mainly against the Lanaktallan, correct?" the gold mantid asked, ignoring the breach of protocol in Cordexen not introducing himself.

Again, Cordexen just nodded.

"Can you understand the Lanaktallan spoken word?" Finds asked.

Cordexen could sense her anxiety, her almost despairing hope, even through the light year gap in the hypercom signal.

Again, he nodded.

"Would you be willing to translate?" the gold one asked. She blinked twice and Cordexen noted she had a few green freckles on her eyelids.

She would have been tossed into the larval pits for that imperfection by the Krikitak Empire.

Again, Cordexen nodded after standing perfectly still for nearly a minute.

"Another question, honored elder cousin, if I may?" the gold asked.

Cordexen held still for a long moment.

One of his prize turkeys waddled into the room and rubbed against his leg, making happy gobbling noises.

Cordexen bent down and lifted it up in his hands, petting it slowly with his bladearm.

Finally, he nodded.

"Do you know anyone who understands Lanaktallan engineering in its original language from your time?" the gold asked.

Cordexen swallowed bitter ichor and ash.

the rifles flashing as the green servitors worked furiously trying to shut off the rampaging lanaktallan autonomous war machine even as its weapons ripped and tore at the metropolis the scream of machines and mantid the roar of mechanical foes and his own weapons his engineer servitors working furiously spurred on by his own desperation as he and his war servitors pushed the lanaktallan killing machines back with sheer firepower

Cordexen opened his eyes.

"I apologize greatly for causing you such distress, honored elder cousin," the gold said. "It give me physical pain to know I am causing distress, but this is of such vital importance that I was granted permission to speak with you."

Cordexen nodded even as he gently petted the happy turkey.

"You do?" the gold sagged slightly with relief. She looked back up. "Honored elder cousin, the entire galactic arm, even beyond, is threatened by machinations of the Atrekna that were revealed by this data."

Cordexen said nothing, just stood there, facing the hologram, petting Corey the Turkey.

"Do you wish to know what it is about before you agree to allow me to transmit the data?" the gold asked.

Cordexen thought about it, looking to his left, where sunshine was streaming through a gap in the curtains, making a beautiful violet block on the wood.

Finally he turned back and nodded.

"A neural imprint copy of Lanaktallan scientists talking about burning the hyperatomic plane as well as a large amount of engineering data," the gold said. "There is additional speech we cannot identify. As you know, it has been over a hundred and twenty million years since those events."

Cordexen stared at the violet rectangle of light on the floor.

One of the engineer servitors came in and held up a stalk of wheat to Cordexen.

Cordexen bent down and took it, expressing thanks and pleasure, and stroked the servitor for a moment before it rushed off. He stood up slowly, putting the stalk in his mandibles and staring at the gold.

"Will you allow us to transmit the data to you?" the gold asked.

Cordexen nodded slowly. He stayed silent as the data packet was transferred.

Before the gold could say anything more, Cordexen went and shut off the call, leaving the data channel open.

He walked quietly out to the porch, sitting down and staring at his crops, at his cattle, and feeling sadness well up inside of him.

Bedamned all programmers, scientists, and engineers that were so filled with pride they doomed us all twice, Cordexen thought to himself, staring at the waving stalks. What you have wrought still ravages the universe even after the stars you saw in the sky have gone out.