First Contact

Chapter 774: The Inheritor's War

"It's not that the Mad Lemurs of Terra developed certain technologies. Indeed, the Unified Science Council had already discovered and discarded those scientific advancements and theories as useless before the Terrans even were much more than lemurs trying to hide from megafauna reptiles.

"It's how they applied those scientific advancements and how they furthered those scientific advancements into even further advancements.

"But most of all, what is the most terrifying thing, is how the Mad Lemurs of Terra applied those scientific advancements into technology.

"And how they used that technology." - Vu'uklu'u, author of The Mad Lemurs of Terra - A Study in Contradictions and Contrarness

If you stripped away the appearance the spacecraft was a marvel of technology that would have any space-faring species drooling at the idea of attempting to reverse engineer it.

Not just the creation engines and nanoforges. Not even the hypercompression and extra-dimensional tesseract mass tanks. The graviton engine, mounted in the forward section of the craft, was powerful enough to provide a high degree of acceleration for a great deal of mass with a minimum of energy requirements. The artificial gravity system was dispersed and highly effective, coupled with the inertia compensator and strange matter power plant it could allow tight turns for the craft by using gravitation 'anchors' that the craft could then pull high-G gravity turns in the depths of space.

The armaments were impressive. 66mm forward facing cannons on the nose fed by a nanoforge that could produce thousands of rounds a minute for hours at a time based on the dedicated tesseract mass tanks. Three hardpoints for each of the lower wings, with mission configurable payloads, each with a dedicated nanoforge and tesseract mass tank. Below it was a single hardpoint, usually dedicated to bombs, that was fed by another dedicated nanoforge. It fielded battlescreens that most species mounted on a light cruiser.

From nose to tail it was 7.6 meters, the fuselage was 1.5 meters wide and a tube that narrowed toward the back. With a wingspan of 10 meters and a height of 3 meters, it was piloted by two beings, one facing backwards that acted as a rear gunner and bombing specialist.

It was smaller than most ship to ship missiles.

It was small, agile, fast, manueverable, and almost impossible to see on scanners until it was close enough that it was within range of the more sensitive sensors often used for SAR or tracking smaller missiles. It packed a nasty punch and was faster than most aerospace fighters and was able to turn inside an enemy's turning radius. It could operated in and out of atmosphere, in deep space or planetary orbit.

It was a marvel of engineering.

However...

It was wrapped in a frame of genetically engineered wood and high tech fabric. It had either one or two sets of wings.

It didn't look like an aerospace fighter.

It looked like a primitive atmospheric aircraft, right down to the graviton engine producing a blurred flat 'disc' in front of the craft like a propeller.

Worse, it sounded like a primitive kerosene fueled aircraft.

Which, if a species being attacked by it took a moment to think about, was impossible in the vacuum of space.

Some only had a single set of primary wings and were more standard, with alloy frames and alloy skin.

Then it got even stranger.

The pilots wore, at the most, a crude breathing mask, goggles, a fur/wool lined hat, a jacket, and a scarf, with heavy pants and undershirt and boots that were military cut and design.

They were completely unprotected from the rigors of space.

Not that it seemed to bother the pilot and bombardier.

The Atrekna had, largely, not learned to fear the Confederate Armed Services forces.

They had not seen the things that made other species shudder just to think about.

The Mantid could have told you about the aerospace assets of the Dead Fleet.

The Wemterran would have just started screaming or gone into catatonic shock if asked about anything that flew, their genetic memory and psychic powers blasted and tattered by the aerospace assets of the Dead Fleet.

The Autonomous War Machines would have transmitted data of corrupted code strings and damaged data files regarding the ancillary craft of the Dead Fleet.

The Atrekna had met them a few times, but in their arrogance, had not recognized what they were seeing, had not informed the other Atrekna.

And so, the Vast System, at first, could not understand what was happening as thousands of flimsy looking atmospheric craft appearing fighters and bombers swept down on the Atrekna biomechanical ships and autonomous war machines and heavily armed and armored crystalline fortress ships.

[The Universe Liked That]

She stood on the show bridge of the massive warship, one hand on the Captain's chair, the other holding a riding crop made of deadspace stuff and white bone. Her skin was pale, her eyes burning violet, her lips bloodless, and her face inhuman in its beauty. Long dark hair flowed out from beneath her hat, which was over the band of a headset that covered her ears, the microphone only a few millimeters from her bluish lower lip.

She glanced at the Captain's chair as the data flowed in from the warship's sensors and into her mind.

The body in the chair was clad in the remains of an ancient vacsuit. The nametape read "LORCAN" in barely legible letters. Exposed bone and vacuum dessicated flesh were visible through the remains of the vacsuit and the skull eternally grinned from behind the shattered faceshield.

She reached out and touched the helmet, which had a thin layer of deadspace stuff on coating it.

The memories surged up, unbidden.

The attack ships on fire as they kept attacking the vast Mantid armada. The glare of orbit to surface plasma bursts on the surface of We Made It as the Mantid battlewagons set to glassing the planet. The heavy capital ships of the Mantid Fleet breaking up under the Texas's guns.

How one by one the ships of the Task Force protecting We Made It were shattered by the Mantid guns, until only the Republic Naval Vessel Texas remained. Hull smashed and twisted, engines dead, launch bays clogged with debris, most of the crew dead, the majority of the automation systems offline.

And still the Texas had fired its sole remaining guns at any Mantid vessel that had gotten too close until the Mantid had broken contact and left the mortally wounded ship to drift around the star.

She could remember sitting in the chair.

She could remember the cold feeling of her blood draining into her suit, her medcomp offline, the ship out of atmosphere, out of mass, out ammunition or fuel.

She could remember staring at the stars as the lights went out.

She blinked and the memory shattered.

Captain Lorcan set her jaw, uncaring that the dessicated mummified body in the chair had been a male born eight thousand years ago, and stared out the cracked and chipped glass of the show bridge. She could see the Dwellerspawn vessels approaching, the cillia and tentacles glowing with graviton energy, the vast obscene 'wings' spread out using stellar light pressure and graviton to steer and accelerate. They were still twenty-two light minutes away.

One corner of her mouth twisted in a half smile as she stared at the far away ships with more than her eyes.

The other side of her mouth was missing, the flesh torn away from that side of her skull, her ear missing, her eye staring from a bare socket.

She was not in range of their guns.

They were in range of hers.

"TEXAS!" she yelled out, her voice carrying in vacuum.

"Online," the battle wagon's operating mind replied.

"LOAD AND SLAVE THE GUNS TO MY EYES! LAUNCH THE FRUIT FLIES! THIS DAY SHALL END IN FIRE AND BLOOD!" she screeched as she pointed at the oncoming Atrekna vessels.

[The Universe Liked That]

Even BOLOs fall.

It's a reality that every BOLO accepts, every Commander doesn't truly believe, and has been the subject of epic movies and theatrical productions.

Developed during the Age of Paranoia, the BOLO carried a human operator. Not because of the never-ending "Frankenstein Complex" that the Artificial Wars and the Android Wars reinforced, not to limit them, but because Burgerland General Motors Military Division had discovered that a BOLO performed at a higher efficiency with at least one human crew member.

During the millennia since their development, the BOLO had wavered between a single crewmember and an entire crew of six through the different designs, upgrades, models, and technological advancements.

Still, a BOLO could fall.

Armored with the best armor available, on the bleeding edge of armor technology and point defense system technology, a BOLO could take a punishment no other tank could. Its main gun, the Hellbore, produced by Laumer Industries since before the Great Glassing, made short work of any enemy's armor.

But still, a BOLO could fall.

Tens of thousands of worlds. Thousands of stellar systems. Hundreds of wars. Scores of enemies driven to their knees by the sheer weight of fire and armor a BOLO could bring. The crewed automated tanks were the mailed fist of the Terran war machine.

Now and then, they would still fall.

Never manufactured from a creation engine or nanoforge, the BOLO was built in massive factories, the primary one in the toxic wasteland of Moto-Detroit Glass City and rolled off the line whole. It was then transferred to a testing world, the primary one on Luna in the Sol System. There the BOLO was brought online and ran through the tests.

From there, it was deployed as part of the Dinochrome Brigade, where it would serve for decades, centuries, even thousands of years, constantly upgraded and kept cutting edge.

Still, a BOLO could fall.

Never alone.

Always surrounded by thousands, tens of thousands, millions of its foes.

In some cases it took the Enemy the full weight of an entire planet to stop a BOLO.

Usually, the Enemy failed.

Now and again, they succeeded.

The Treana'ad had managed to defeat BOLOs more than once.

At the cost of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of warriors each time.

But they had done it.

The Mantid had managed it.

At costs even the Queens and Speakers shuddered at.

Most other species never managed it.

But still, now and again, a BOLO fell.

Most were decommissioned. Some had their survival core returned to Burgerland General Motors Military Division for examination if the survival core was intact.

But there were rumors, after the Terran-Mantid War.

Of BOLOs that had fallen and the BGMMD techs had found no survival core. Just an empty space where the solid block of molycircs had once been.

BGMMD debunked those rumors.

Despite their attempts, they never found where those survival cores actually went.

But now and then, a BOLO would fall, and no survival center would be found.

Most of the time the decommissioning and retrieval crews would record that the command deck had taken a hit and the commander (and the crew if applicable) were reduced to carbon ash.

A few noted that, when the survival center was missing and the command deck was intact, the commander (and the crew in those cases) were present but the intensity of the combat that took out a BOLO had somehow prevented the commander and the crew from being uploaded to the SUDS for retrieval.

The BOLOs themselves knew of it.

At times, during periods of low awareness, they discussed it over private channels.

How this BOLO or that BOLO had come up with a missing survival center and a crew that was not in the SUDS.

It was rumors among the digital sentience of the BOLO.

The Deathless Ones.

BOLOs who continued to fight, not to protect humanity and its allies, like the rest of the Dinochrome Brigade.

But to take revenge for a humanity that had been nearly destroyed.

Of wrecked BOLOs, crewed by the living dead, that punished humanity's enemies from beyond the grave.

[The Universe Liked That]

The Lemur assault on the Vast System was entering its sixth hour. The slavespawn were still trying to get close enough to the three lemur ships to be able to engage them with weaponry, but the lemur ships refused to let the slavespawn, autonomous war machine, and Atrekna crewed ships close the distance.

The one that had arrived in the wedge where the planetary orbital pattern had left a large gap was still heading 'up' and 'in', toward the twin stellar masses, their trajectory showing plain as day that the large ship was planning on moving between the two dim red giants.

The largest of the three ships was still engaging the Atrekna orbital defense assets, staying out of range almost contemptuously while hammering the Atrekna assets with its massive guns that hit targets up to a light hour away less than a minute after firing.

The middle one was moving in on the refineries, firing from over a light hour out, savaging the refineries, spawning oceans, and construction facilities inside the gas giants.

On the ground of the planet with the most Atrekna city fortresses, all united under a single banner, the obsidian meteors had struck the ground, away from any settlements, slavespawn pens, servitor warrens, or military bases, but each a precise distance from one another.

The Atrekna responsible for planetary defense had seen the black material crack, crumble, and turn to dust, blowing away on the wind caused by the meteoric impact that had driven huge craters into the ground.

It had revealed massive battletanks that the Atrekna knew were artificially intelligence controlled supertanks.

Only the tanks were still. Unpowered. All of them with heavy battle damage.

Several flybys had shown the tank unmoving.

One Atrekna ground defense commander had ordered two of the damaged tanks to undergo bombardment to see if that spurred them to action.

When the dust and fire cleared, the tank simply sat there, slightly worse for the wear, but largely ignoring the efforts of the Atrekna war machine.

The same planetary defense commander ordered a squad of Atrekna in a combat orb out to look over the tank with their own senses. He watched through the Combat Mind of the Quorum within the combat orb as they approached one of the heavily damaged supertanks.

He watched through their eyes, examining the armored vehicle.

Its size was impressive. The size of a gladiatorial arena where challenges took place and servitors fought one another for the approval of the Atrekna. Its armor was tens of meters thick, even if it was pierced in places.

The Defense Commander wondered what weapon had been able to pierce such thick armor.

The ablative armor was missing in huge patches. Point defense weapons and anti-infantry weapons were tangled messes of junk here and there. A turret halfway down the huge bulk was blown outward and missing the three barrels of the other.

He consulted the other images.

Many of the supertanks were different sizes, different designs. All of them had different damage.

The back deck was torn outwards, the main reactor obviously having detonated. Missile launch bays were empty or destroyed.

The Atrekna could detect no sign of life, artificial intelligence, or even power coming from the hulk.

The Defense Commander consulted others.

They came to the consensus that the tanks had not been repaired after the last battle they had taken part in.

Perhaps the Mad Lemurs' doomsday weapons were almost depleted?

Perhaps the automated system that retrieved the tanks was no longer capable of repairing them and merely deployed them in whatever condition they had been recovered?

They passed it to Orbital and System Defense. Perhaps this time the Mad Lemurs' weapons would not return, like the widely derided and disbelieved reports stated?

The Ground Defense Commander left behind sensor pods that would look for biological life signs and power sources, then turned its attention to preparing for any other Lemur ground assault.

Aboard the damaged tanks, command couches drained away clotted and decayed biofluid, cellular printers that were damaged and error prone finished printing out crew members, or the skeletal remains of crew members were slowly covered with dead tissue.

Violet eyes opened.

Whispery and gurgling voices requested status reports.

Halting, grating, grinding computerized voices reported.

A green glow, sickly and vaguely unpleasant, began softly glowing from the deep wounds that had driven to the internal systems of the tanks.

Simultaneously, across all the tanks, there was a high pitched chattering whining sound of a compressor driven motor churning. It ended, but nothing happened. It came again.

With the same results.

Then again.

This time there was a coughing noise and then the asymmetrical arrhythmic hammering of vast piston driven engines roared out from the vehicles.

The Defense Commander had its attention pulled from the reloading of the orbital defense missile launchers to the probes that they had deposited around the wrecked lemur vehicles.

Billows of black smoke erupted from the backs of the armored vehicles. The Defense Commander stared through the crystalline probes as the glow grew stronger.

Damaged and warped road wheels, drive wheels, and sprockets groaned like an animal in pain. Some just chattered against the tracks, too many teeth stripped away. Others ground and sparked.

Enough grabbed.

The Defense Commander alerted its fellow Defense Commanders as the broken, warped, twisted, and loose tracks suddenly seemed to engage and the tanks began to slowly move out of the craters.

Several of the tanks had holes blown in the underside that were visible for a moment as the tanks crested the lip of the crater and their forward section slammed down.

The Defense Commander was at a loss to explain to the others how there was still no power readings. Seismic readings and other scanning systems showed that the dead hulks were on the move, but there was no explanation for the green glow or the fact that the vehicles were underway.

The Defense Commanders, all high ranking Atrekna who had defended the Vast System against other Atrekna, all stared in shock, even as they ordered ground defense units into action. Kaiju and Ohm Class Dwellerspawn reluctantly heaved themselves from their nests and nutrient pools, slowly moving - but gaining speed- toward the heavily damaged lemur tanks. Hordes of flying creatures took off from nests even as aerospace fighters launched from the air bases.

The Defense Commanders were sure the air assets would render the tanks inoperative again and watched eagerly as the aerospace assets swarmed toward the damaged armored vehicles in a mass that the Atrekna knew was unable to be resisted.

The Master Defense Commander noted that the aerospace assets were about to enter line of sight to the damaged lemur vehicles, which still had no logical way to be under movement.

Its attention was pulled back to the visuals of the armored vehicles.

Something was happening.

They all watched as the hatch on the top of the turret was pushed open.

From inside the tank climbed a female lemur.

Her uniform was tattered, injuries were visible on her pale flesh. Burns and blackened flesh, bloodless gashes, deep punctures without blood. Her boots were muddy and thick with blackened clotted blood, her hair was wild and whipped in the wind. In one hand she held a pistol, in the other she held a crop.

Her eyes burned a cold violet.

[The Universe Liked That]

She lifted the pistol and fired three rounds, then pointed the crop forward as the majority of the masses of aerospace assets lifted up past the curvature of the planet.

The guns shifted, even those with splintered or truncated barrels.

The Defense Commanders did not sneer. They believed the Mad Lemurs were still dangerous, that their war systems were still extremely dangerous.

If the lemur vehicles believed that they could fire those damaged and destroyed cannons, the Atrekna Defense Commanders were willing to believe it also.

They ordered the slavespawn, servitors, and autonomous war machines to increase power to their forward battlescreens or take evasive action with the speed of thought.

They were a split second too late.

The BOLO tanks fired.

And the Universe howled with malicious glee.