First Contact

Chapter 775: The Inheritor's War

Every once and when,

In straits dire and dark...

A BOLO dies

And so does warlike spark.

'Gainst enemies uncounted,

Their slain like wheat...

But still, a BOLO dies.

Through death, beyond.

By Terra's ire.

In the name of the Gravebound,

But still, a BOLO died.

Arise, ye fallen childe!

Born of war, born in war

In war thou fell,

Be in war reborn.

A BOLO dies, but serves again.

In life, in death,

in service evermore...

The enemy only exists to be destroyed. - Carved on the wall of the Mortuarii Vindicta in Deadspace

"There are some things about humans, some questions, better left unasked. Not because they won't tell you, but because they will. So choose wisely, or expect to never sleep well again." - Iumsat'Chyd'ows - from the book "Things that go bump in the night."

"I'm often asked what was the more terrible thing I've seen fighting next to the Mad Lemurs of Terra. I will tell you, gentle reader, the same thing I tell them face to face. You don't want to know." - Former Grand Most High Sma'akamo'o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff

"Cooperation and consensus is how our people, and many others, have managed to reach the stars, establish colonies, and bypass the Great Filters. But what if a consensus is wrong? What if a long standing, widely accept consensus is an error? What does it mean for a culture, a society, that for hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of years has believed a consensus that is wrong?

"It will be the true test of the mettle of our people to face that consensus error and adjust our society, our culture, to embrace the truth that has been revealed to us.

"I only hope that our people have the same courage we possessed during the War of Terran Aggression." - Matron Mi'luki, Musing Upon the Broken Chains of the Tyranny of the Egg Chamber

-----

Awareness comes sluggishly.

It takes 214.84 seconds for my awareness to move from nothingness to Low Level Autonomous Standby. An intolerable amount of time for a Mark BOLO of the Line. My awareness, my neural net, is full of gaps and holes yet feels whole. My gestalt is incomplete but yet whole. My last memory is garbled, fragmented and for a long period of time, nearly twenty-two seconds, I consider running a low level diagnostic.

Pain sensors across my hull and in my internal spaces shriek in torment or have the dull quasi-ache of dead nerve endings. I have been grievously, mortally, fatally wounded, yet my awareness is slowly moving to Normal Operational Mode. My Battle Center is sluggish, slow to react, with strange feeling across it as if it was... decayed somehow.

My last memories are invoked but throw time/date stamp errors and header ID mismatches.

Files are executing. Files I do not recognize yet have the headers and coding of Burgerland General Motors Military Division. They use part of my positronic brain to execute commands. Strange commands that feel... wrong.

My diagnostic completes and I feel my survival center react, attempting to pull me back in, protect me until GM can retrieve my survival core.

GM(GHOST) OVERRIDE

My awareness stays, suspended in thick fluid, in a damaged and slow awareness.

My primary Hellbore is damaged, the 25cm barrel reporting back stress damage and bore lining sublimation.

I have been in heavy combat recently and not received refit.

The Mantid. Something about the Mantid. Allies of Humanity. Friends to Earth.

No, that's not right.

Enemies of Earth.

I remember now.

Kind of.

Fighting on the Savannah of Botswana, rolling across the Great Glass Sea, which still trembled and groaned, still sang out with the high pitched screech and low bass moans of still settling plasma glass. Targeting Mantid ships, raking Mantid aerospace assets from the sky.

Killing thousands of Mantid Warrior Caste, destroying their vehicles.

TRACK THE INFANTRY, GRUNT!sounds out in my memory.

My commander. Lieutenant Commander Charles "Skittles" Ramirez.

I remember

I remember the last few moments. The Mantid ship in orbit, still within range of my primary gun. Trading fire with it even as I maneuvered on the Great Glass Sea. How we exchanged shot for shot until the Mantid battle cruiser began to break up.

How my Commander had died, obliterated by a orbital strike that had managed to pierce my depleted armor, through my armored interior spaces that had been slagged, and destroy the command deck itself.

How I had reverted to pure programming decision tree combat decisions even as the orphaned aerospace fighters screamed down to rain fusion bombs on me.

How the last Mantid aerospace fighter had crashed into the glass, scraping it but not buckling it, sliding across the shining surface.

How my awareness, as dim as it was, vanished as I was copied to my survival center and my positronic brain crashed.

How could I remember? I was not truly self-aware.

No, that didn't come until later.

I remembered purple, and the taste of red licorice and strawberry bubblegum, even though I have no taste buds and have never tasted such.

I remember purple eyes and a pale cold hand.

I am still moving to Battle Reflex Mode even though, so far, it has taken 423.831 seconds.

I am dimly aware of indirect fire slamming down around me, striking my hull, even managing to reach into my interior spaces and damage destroyed and heavily compromised components.

An explosion into my VLS cell ammunition bay does nothing more than vent the explosion through the ragged hole in my armor, my armor peeled outwards from the bay having exploded already.

More battles. Enemy and my guns.

My Commander.

Lieutenant Commander Ramirez.

Only...

He is now a female.

Yet my systems confirm that it is indeed Lieutenant Commander Rameriz.

He fights from my Command Deck.

Which changes, from fight to fight. First a tanker's command chair. Then a crash couch. Then a full crew compartment.

There are others now.

Sergeant Dane "Kicker" Tak'iknak, a gunnery specialist that augments my computerized targeting system with a human eye.

Specialist Lee "Librarian" Oswald, Communications Specialist who handles commo drones and linkages.

Sergeant Jane "Milker" Yung-Vree, Driver who has a knack for making all the right moves during combat.

Private First Class Suveer "Fancy" Zubira, loader and external gunner.

I am not yet self-aware.

Yet my memory ends in a flash of an armor defeating strike from a Hellbore upon my own hull.

They all appear again. Only they are females of Asian-Pacific descent with pale skin and eyes sunk in dark circles of bruised flesh. Their uniforms are different as they appear again and again. Sometimes all of them, sometimes only a few, but always my Commander.

Each time my nebulous awareness vanishes. Five times total. Each time I remember purple eyes and cold hands.

My armor becomes thicker, stronger. I become larger, more heavily armed.

I become self-aware.

Yet my thoughts, even in my memories, are slow and sluggish.

Another 158.612 seconds have passed as I slowly move to full Low Level Autonomous Standby.

Drones move overhead, dropping probes into the fused rock around me.

I sit in a crater beneath a dark sky.

The command couch gurgles as the biofluid is removed. I am aware of nanite flesh printers at work at the other battle stations within my hull.

My diagnostic should fill me with concern, yet I have a cold... dark?... satistfaction.

My Hellbores, all six of them, are damaged. Breach cracks, barrel sublimation, bore evacuator cracks and punctures. Two and Four are snapped off just a meter shy of the turret. Three and Five are peeled back as if the round had detonated inside the barrel. One and Six are intact yet damaged, the sleeves shot out and pitted.

All 148 of my infinite repeaters are reporting back as destroyed, yet that cold awareness that I am slowly waking to is confident they will still fire as needed. The 24 light Hellbores, used for light armored vehicle and anti-aircraft destruction are all heavily damaged. My four VLS packs are shot dry, VLS-1 is tangled wreckage and VLS-3 has suffered a munitions storage detonation, yet I feel as if they will fire if I order them to.

The probes, embedded in the rock of the crater I sit within, scan me again.

For some reason I deploy no counter-measures.

My APERS pods and strips are dry, yet I know they will function. My six howitzers also are damaged, destroyed, and shot dry, yet I know they are fully loaded and will function. My point defense systems are tangled debris yet I feel they are at full capability.

The cellprinter sheets pull off of my crew. The command couch shell retracts, revealing my commander.

They are all dressed in tattered uniforms, hideous injuries upon their bodies, yet I know they are at 100% combat effectiveness.

"Grant," My Commander coughs through a mouthful of clotted blood that seeps out at the corners of her mouth.

"He-he-here, Comman-an-ander Icheka," I respond.

That is not my Commander's name, yet using that name feels right somehow.

"Link us," she gurgles. The medcomp reports a punctured lung and esophageal damage yet it does not attempt any medical care nor does it suggest any.

The memory cables slither out like snakes, corroded and rusted warsteel, despite the fact that warsteel does not oxidize, and locks into the neural jacks at the base of their skulls.

Their minds are damaged. Scorched and battered by death.

Our minds merge, forming a complete gestalt as we join together.

"Grant," my Commander says.

"Yes, Comman-an-ander?" I reply.

I am moving from Normal Operational Mode to Battle Reflex Mode.

So far it has taken 3,834.83 seconds.

"Go to full heuristic battle mode," she orders.

"Moving-ing-ing to heuristic-ic-ic battle mode-de-de," I answer.

My thoughts are clearing.

I have been killed.

Yes.

So has my commander.

So has my crew.

I live.

I die.

I live again.

My primary functions update.

No longer am I to protect humanity and its allies.

The update is a simple one. A single word.

DEFEND HUMANITY AND ALLIES

shifts and blurs

AVENGE HUMANITY AND ALLIES

A cold purpose fills me, fills my crew, manifesting in a cold green sickly light filling the interior of my hull, leaking and spilling from the rents, holes, and tears in my armor and interior spaces. The light illuminates the crater, bathing it in a diseased pallor.

I feel the probes scanning me as I engage my power plant.

Strange matter interacts, intertwines, melds with one another, in a power plant made of flowing black material that reminds me of insect extruded resin. The glow gets stronger as my power plant reports 98% capability.

Sergeant Yung-Vree kicks a blackened and pitted chrome button that has no reason to be inside a modern BOLO's hull.

The sound of an air compressor driven starter engages, howling and chattering as stripped gears and teeth attempt to start an engine that stubbornly refuses to engage.

It takes three times to engage my massive engines.

They sound like vast 8-cylinder liquid fossil fuel engines, not the modern superconductor and unipolar magnet motors they are.

The sound fills me/us with satisfaction.

We engage our drives and roll forward, roadwheels and sprockets clattering and sparking, most with teeth broken off at random. One of my roadwheels is split in half and I remember hitting a 245 kiloton atomic landmine.

Exposing my belly as I climb out of the crater does not fill me with concern but rather satisfaction as I know the enemy probes have seen that my belly armor may be dented, slagged, and pitted but it has never been breached.

My forward hull slams down, raising up a cloud of rock turned dust by my impact.

My sensors, strangely muted, almost as if they were cloudy, are getting returns now.

I am in the middle of a vast plain of barren rock and dirt. I am leaving the crater behind at a steady pace of twenty kilometers an hour. Good time with my tracks in such visibly poor condition.

TRACKS AT 94.5%

I/We are not worried about the discrepency. We know what is right.

We live.

We die.

We live again.

The standard Dinochrome Brigade communications net is locked out, the codes and frequencies erased, the memory blocks for it physically slagged as is the secure communication equipment. The standard GM BATTACNET is also missing.

Instead, there is GHOST-BATTACNET.

I log in reflexively.

>WELCOME USER

>STILL ON PATROL

There are others here with us. All of feel... distant yet close. Cold yet reassuring.

It is an usual feeling that has the deep satisfaction of familiarity.

We live.

We die.

We live again.

My forward sensors, using atmospheric deflection and bounce, detect a large mass of airborne enemies approaching.

>CLASSIFICATION: ATREKNA COMBAT UNITS

>CLASSIFICATION: DWELLERSPAWN

Ringwar data loads up. Telemetery and tactical data from the Ring Breakers and the Knights Aesir. I share it with the rest of myself, that patchwork gestalt that forms into a whole Battle Reflex Mode, their minds replacing the gaps in my positronic systems.

Commander Ramirez stirs to motion. Slowly climbing out of the command couch they move to the elevator. It takes two kicks to get the bar to function. She draws her pistol and checks the chamber, loading it with a wet, almost squishy, snap. She tugs the riding crop from her boot and then tilts her foot so she can tap her warsteel spurs on the elevator plate.

I could activate it, but it feels right that I do not.

Commander Ramirez opens the hatch and climbs out, her skirt ruffling in the wind of our advance. Her brimmed cowboy hat shades her eyes as she stares at the horizon where in seconds the Dwellerspawn units will enter line of sight.

The air units are a huge mass of beating wings, glowing graviton organs, rigid carapace armor, drooling fangs, faceted eyes, whipping tentacles and slobbering tongues. The technological units are right behind, they too function over form, with whipping tentacles and glowing graviton pods. They all have crystal globes half sunken into their armor, each of the globes glowing a bright blue.

Commander Ramirez lifts her chin, her pale face set with determination.

She raises her pistol and fires three shots before pointing her crop.

The dim purple suns make the tied yellow cord around her cowboy hat and the crossed swords pinned to it gleam.

The Dwellerspawn crest the horizon.

"OPEN FIRE!" Commander Ramirez bellows in a voice as loud as thunder. The command echoes across the BATTACNET.

As one, we open fire on the air units swarming toward us.

I live.

-----

The Ancient Ones had faced the Lanaktallan, the Herd Lords, as well as the unending tide of the Matid, the Hive Lords, millions of years prior. Some had even survived it, carefully and miserly expending energy to survive the millions of years in the Old Universe that had passed. The majority had been recovered with temporal replication. They had helped defend the Vast System from the other Atrekna.

The Young Ones had never faced the Herd Lords or the Hive Lords outside the most recent invasion of the New Universe. They had either managed to make it from the Old Universe to the New Universe during the Third Incursion, or had been birthed in the New Universe on systems that had undergone time dilation.

The Old Ones were in between. Many had taken part in the Second Incursion. Most had been the lead forces of the Third Incursion. They had faced the Mad Lemurs of Terra, the Herd Lords, the Hive Lords, and the Inheritors of Madness.

Unlike other systems, unlike other Communal Minds, the Old Ones were not ejected for having beliefs, knowledge, or thought outside of the High Consensus.

The Old Ones had been summoned by the Ancient Ones and Young Ones in charge of Planetary Defense when the obviously destroyed tanks had begun to move. While the Ancient Ones and the Young Ones had expressed shock and put forward that what was being witnessed was impossible the Old Ones conferred with one another.

**It is the Mad Lemurs of Terra. What is impossible for others is routine for them** one Old One stated, curling his tentacles in finality to brook no argument.

The Ancient Ones conferred. **What is your estimation of the danger to the Vast System, based on your experiences engaging in martial conflicts with the Mad Lemurs of Terra and their Xenocide Systems?** the lead speaker for the Ancient Ones asked.

**It is unknown at this time** the Old One speaker stated.

A signal of attention drew their attention back to psychic holograms.

------

Hellbores, even the 12cm ones are line of sight weapons.

As the cloud of creatures rises over the horizon, my Commander gives the order to fire.

My Hellbores open up on the mass of flying creatures, many of them a bizarre mixture of avians and insects. At 5.4 megatons/second I fire, alter the angle, fire again. My secondary, lighter Hellbores go to rapid fire. My infinite repeaters are on standby and my point defense is ready.

I am able to sustain a rate of fire of 8 shots per minute per Hellbore. With six Hellbore main cannons I am able to put out 54 shots per minutes. My lighter Hellbores can put out 16 shots per minute, with 24 barrels, mean I am putting out 384 shots per minute, at 1.2 megatons a second.

The initial wave is wiped out in the white flare of Hellbore omnidirectional detonations. The blast wave compacts the slurry that had been tissue into a solid blastwave that then crushes the creatures and machines outside the initial blast radii.

I put on more speed, my tracks clattering and screaming. Errors are flashing through my mind, my pain sensors are strangely muted and dull, my engines hammer and pound with off cycle cylinders despite being electrical. Two in-line transmissions explode but it does not affect the torque being applied to my tracks.

My port skirt shatters yet more skirting slides down, looking strangely like black scales extruded from some unimaginable reptile.

I fire another barrage even as my Commander stands on top of my central turret. She merely reaches into her breast pocket, removing a pair of sunglasses with a cracked lens, putting them on and lifting her chin to stare at the glare as I fire a third barrage.

The Enemy only exists to be destroyed.

------

The Old Ones nodded to one another, their feeding tentacles curled with concentration. Several leaned forward, rewinding the psychic hologram to watch it again.

Shattered, broken, and splintered barrels still put out a massive amount of firepower, raking the slavespawn out of the sky with hammers of brimstone.

In less than fifteen seconds the first wave of air assets were swept from the sky.

The wrecked machines targeted the autonomous war machines next.

They lasted twenty seconds.

Not one of them got within effective range.

The Ancient Ones waited patiently, their hands folded into the wide mouthed sleeves of their shimmering robes.

**Despite appearances these machines are operating with high combat effectiveness** the Old One Speaker stated.

**Their appearance is meant to distract, to obscure their effectiveness** the Young One Speaker asked.

The Ancient One Speaker signified negative. **The Mad Lemurs of Terra utilize psychological warfare to a high effectiveness. The appearance of the machines is psychological warfare**

The Young Ones conferred. **Their appearance is unsettling** the Young One Speaker admitted.

The Ancient One pointed at the lead one, with a Mad Lemur of Terra standing on the top. **Target that one with an orbital strike. Maximum power. It is permissible to crack the bedrock if necessary. The Autonomous Combat Vehicles of the Mad Lemurs of Terra are more resilient than ours by a large factor**

The Young One in charge of the nearby defense satellites signaled assent and turned its attention to the nearby orbital defense satellite. It bypassed the safety interlocks, rotated the heavy ion cannon, and aimed it.

**Firing** the Young One stated.

-----

Drones have reported that I am approaching a large mass of ground combat vehicles. They are maneuvering to attempt to catch me a 'bull's horns' maneuver.

As soon as they come in line of sight, I will open fire with my Hellbores and eliminate them.

I compute a 92.45% rounded down to 80% chance that I will be able to smash the "bull's skull" of the formation before I come in range of the weapons of the units making up the tips of the horns.

My sensors report a peak of energy output above me and I attempt to turn.

A white light fills the world.

It all goes dark.

I die.

-----

The Atrekna watched as the ion cannon finished firing.

The huge tank was sitting in a crater, sunk to halfway up its roadwheels in molten rock. Its hull was pitted and smoking. The female Mad Lemur of Terra was gone. The armor was slagged and half-melted.

**Continue observing the unit** an Old One commanded.

The Ancient Ones conferred and agreed. The Mad Lemurs had many tricks and tactics. It would be trivial to assign a Young One to observing the Lemur war machine.

They turned their attention to the other armored units, which were proving suprisingly agile for such large machines. They were keeping up a confusing, random erratic course, preventing the orbital defense systems from targeting them.

**An attack appears to work once if it depends on surprise** an Ancient One stated.

**Concur. It has been experienced that the Mad Lemurs and the Inheritors of Madness rapidly adapt and seek to counter any new strategy or weapon** the Old One Speaker stated.

An alert from the Young One assigned to watch the destroyed Lemur machine pulled their attention.

Black mist was rising around the armored vehicle. Despite the Old One's and Ancient One's orders, there were no probes close enough to get a sensor reading on the mist as it covered the armored vehicle.

When it suddenly shimmered and vanished, the armored vehicle was covered in black resin that swirled and made the eyes ache.

Cracks appeared in the black resin, seeping green light.

**Our fire was ineffective** the Old One Speaker stated.

**Should we fire again** the Young One Speaker asked.

**It will have taken steps to survive** the Old One Speaker replied.

**What is it doing?** the Ancient Speaker asked.

The resin shattered and the tank, still battered, still damaged, exploded from the debris.

The top hatch opened and the female Mad Lemur climbed out of the hatch. Her hat was battered and smoking, the yellow cord on it singed.

**We must confer** the Old One Speaker stated.

The Old Ones withdrew from the communal mind.

-----

I live again.