First Contact

Chapter 797: The Inheritor's War

"It's not enough to know you won or lost. You need to understand how you won, why you won, and how you can win again. How you lost, why you lost, and how to prevent yourself from losing again.

"The best armies aren't those who win every engagement hands down, its those who are capable of learning lessons from every skirmish, every firefight, every battle, every operation, every war. It's those who are just as capable of learning the lessons defeat offers as they do resting on victories.

"The Confederacy has lost battles, has been defeated, but has never been beaten.

"The Atrekna had always won every battle by temporal manipulation. They rewound the battles so that their troops were fresh, their supplies returned, and their strength undiluted.

"Eventually they went from examining their losses and changing their methods to achieve victory to just repeating the same battle over and over, replicating forces, in order to eventually grind their enemies beneath the boots of their servitors and the claws of the Dwellerspawn.

"But that meant they did not learn why they lost. Did not learn why they won.

"They just repeated the same full frontal attack over and over.

"A situation that did not work when facing the Confederate military's ability to refit and resupply constantly, in the face of the enemy, without logistics lines.

"Which meant they had to realize they had to learn. Then they had to develop methods to learn.

"They started to.

"But in the end, it was too late on over ten thousand battlefields.

"There were surprises to the Confederate military on a few planets. New tactics, new applications of their strengths.

"But never more than once before they returned to the same thing over and over.

"Which showed, someone was capable of learning, adapting, and changing strategy and tactics.

"But the majority of the Atrekna were not, and quickly moved to seize the battlefield from the ones who could.

"It can only be estimated that it was the status quo seeking to seize the victories of the non-lateral thinkers, for personal glory or whatever strange esoteric reasonings the Atrekna had.

"Which is why, ultimately, Operation Iron Piglet crushed their war making ability." - General NoDra'ak, Commander, 7th Army.

General Twargark, XXXIV Corps, Commanding, walked into the room, looking around her.

High ranking staff officers were sitting in the seats in front of the dais. Some were present only in hologram, others were present in the flesh. There was a dearth of aides, only two per staff officer. On the left of the podium (The General had entered from the right) were lower officers, many of them looking exhausted or the with the strange, almost indescribable look of someone who had Ridden the Hasslehoff recently.

General Twargark reached the podium and dispensed with all of the gonad polishing and muff buffing by picking up the clicker and thumbing the switch.

The screen went live to show the battle lines ninety-four hours prior.

"After nearly four months of combat against the Atrekna held areas of this planet, the order of battle had shaken out pretty well. We were familiar with their tactics and able to block advances made by the Atrekna forces," she started without any preamble. "It was determined to be more preferable to slowansteady the theater rather than ballroomblitz it. The majority of the decision making process regarding that had to do with the fact there was still 2.2 billion non-combatants on the planet."

She hit the clicker and the image zoomed in on a small section of the battlefield only covered a single division of Confederate troops and the four Atrekna divisions facing them. It included the layered T-Shift Zones.

"This is Sector-17 Delta, one hundred fifteen hours ago. As you can see, the Atrekna had very few assets in the area prepared for immediate combat as the majority of the Atrekna combat offensives were over six hundred kilometers away," she said. She clicked it again, moving to the next slide.

"Initial recon scans showed some strange movement," she stated. "In hindsight, we know what they were doing, but at the time it was more a curiosity, still, the local MilInt CO put a three man team on it," she clicked and it zoomed in closer.

"Standard Atrekna artillery munition logistics move in a high amount of munitions, move them to the next T-Zone, then replicate the same munitions. They then move the first set to a third TZ, replicate more," the General said. "It looked like the same, except for this."

The slide changed to a video of little drones spraying a stripe on the rounds. Then another area where the drone was spraying a second stripe in a different color.

"MilInt has determined that a simple difference in paint stripes prevents the temporal flattening of munition effectiveness by up to 32%. What this Atrekna is doing is replicating the same artillery shells after superficially altering them, making them an entirely new munition that has been only replicated once," General Twargark said. "This Atrekna staged his munitions in six different locations and then loaded up four artillery units, including multiple-rocket-launch-system units now armed with hypersonic rounds."

She then detailed how the enemy had used the Confederacy's temporal stabilizers against them by making it so that the rockets and artillery rounds didn't fully materialize until inside the Confederate lines.

"As you all know, point defense depends on detection, allowing the computers to run parabolic arcs and back-track flight in order to effectively intercept the rounds," she said. "This time, the systems had less than a second to react. While Confederate systems put up a much better fight than you might expect, a full 19% of the Atrekna's first volley got through. They had targeted power generation, armories, fuel dumps, power armor storage, vehicles, and detection and scanning arrays."

She clicked again. "This meant the followup artillery was more effective as the point defense was degraded."

She faced the group. "It was at this time we realized this was not a diversion, but a full blown assault, as two armor divisions and six servitor divisions immediately moved at flank speed to intercept and assault the entire sector."

She shook her head and tapped one claw on the podium.

"Normally we see a massive Dwellerspawn influx to act as cannon fodder, but not this time," General Twargark stated.

She kept going through the battle, then stopped at one point.

"It was at this point that the Atrekna utilized something they normally avoid and that we assumed, wrongfully, that they did not have room for in their battlefield doctrine," she stated.

An atomic blast went off, right over a set of units that had been hit by surprise and had their shelters destroyed by sustained artillery and rocket barrage.

"A tactical atomic weapon in the 135 kiloton range. Over thirty percent of the troops that had survived thus far, with artillery and rocket attack destroying shelters and hardened buildings, were killed outright at this time," she said. She shook her head. "Needless to say, we prioritized temporal disruptors to keep the Atrekna from replaying that blast repeatedly."

She then moved on to the Atrekna pushing back the Hesstlan armored units through steady reinforcements.

"It is at this time something fairly subtle comes into notice," the General said. She opened up another window and ran a comparison of Atrekna armored unit attacks. "Notice how on the left the Atrekna armored units operate a whole. On the right there is some independent operations.

"This video on the right also shows that the servitor reaction times are faster and the armored units are able to react to the fluid nature of combat more smoothly," she said.

"We have long known that the Atrekna themselves are a command and control unit, each individual able to control thousands of servitors and Dwellerspawn," she stated. "Our experiences fighting the Mantid as well as other hive or communal mind species has shown us how command and control units work.

"However, in this instance, there was no top down control. Control appears to be at a unit level," she paused the video. "A marked deviation. Additionally, it showed something Confederate Intelligence has suspected but been unable to prove.

"Atrekna servitor military training is basic in skills and application, but still is a solid foundation that is overcome by the command and control units," she said.

She continued on, describing how one regiment was forced to shift, leaving a hole in the lines with only a small detail of rear guard.

"The Atrekna had begun to retreat, having suffered nearly thirty percent casualties in armored units, although we had seen, for the first time, servitor troops abandoning mission kill units or destroyed units and joining the infantry units," she stated.

"Then, this happened," she stated.

The armor and infantry units were replicated in the TZ's. More units, obviously held in position to keep Confederate forces from making a sudden ballroomblitz advance against a unit under movement, started moving into the gap.

"We have long noticed that when a unit is temporally replicated it immediately suffers coordination and effectiveness degradation. MilInt and ConfedInt believe that when the unit is replicated, the Aterkna Leadership command and control units do not distinguish Troop 1A from Troop 1B even though A has been in combat for a length of time and can be up to a thousand miles away from B with completely different sensory inputs and may even be engaged in combat while B is fresh with no memories of combat. This degrades control," she said. "You can see it immediately as the Atrekna troops, while still top down control, start suffering reflex delays and slight confusion in the ranks," she stated.

She continued on, finishing up with how striking the orbital interdiction cannons had allowed the navy to move in and take the high orbitals.

"From there it was less than seventy hours until Atrekna forces were no longer combat effective and the assault on Pink Crystal Palace occurred," she stated.

Finally, she finished.

"We will take a twenty minute break, and when we return, we will, together, go over each section of the battle, determining how the newest strategy can be combated more effectively if it shows up on another theater," she stated.

The gathered officers nodded.

-----

The Young One leaned back from the crystal displaying the phasic hologram of the battle. It reached in its pocket and withdrew a Terran fizzybrew and cracked it open to the tune of "BINGO bingo BINgo COOOOOLAAAA!"

"Once they had misunderstood how I had accomplished victory they moved to physically seize me as well as take control of the units engaged in combat," the Young One stated.

The other Atrekna all nodded, some snapping their fingers in approval, one making a quick flurry of approving notes with a flute.

"I then withdrew through the Space of Interwoven Reality to return here," the Young One said. "Two rivals accompanied me. One survived the trials, the other did not."

The one sitting across from the Young One nodded slowly, petting the robotic feline in its lap thoughtfully.

"My theory was correct," the Young One stated. "A unit that has suffered casualties should be withdrawn and temporal replication used to replace the missing individuals only in order to prevent temporal replication confusion due to quantum paradox resolve mechanics."

"You had shown them the path to victory, yet they threw away your lessons and, ultimately, threw away yet another planet," the one petting the feline stated. It reached up to the table and tapped the surface with its remaining fingers on a maimed hand. "As the one we call The Last Elder has pointed out, our people still fight as if we are facing the Grazing Ones of the Herd Lords or the unending numbers of the Hive Queens."

Again, there was the snapping of fingers.

"We have attempted to open their third eye," Dalvanak stated. He pointed at the Young One. "Sees Through Liquid has attempted to show them the path to victory, or at least the path to survival, but they have refused to see."

Hissing sounds of disapproval and a quick flurry of disapproving notes.

"They threw away victory in that battle, possibly the planet, by repeating the battles as if they were fighting the Grazing Ones or the Hive Queens, instead of listening to the wisdom of Sees Through Liquid," the maimed one stated. "Which means that they will lose all of the gains they have made in the last year."

Slight hisses of disapproval.

"We must now, discuss something else," the maimed one said.

The Young One, Sees Through Liquid, stood up, bowing slightly, and moved over to join the others, dropping the empty fizzybew can into the waste container and opening another one.

"The Inheritors of Madness have not made any attempt, as far as we can tell, to stop the plot of burn the hyperatomic planes," Dalvanak said. "Either our message was not received or they are unable to discern where the mechanisms to carry out the plan are located," Dalvanak paused for a moment, still stroking the robotic cat.

"Which leaves it up to us."

-----

Pelfar-8726c71 was curled up in the fetal position, his eyes closed, floating silently in the middle of nothingness.

small

still

silent

survive

evade

resist

escape

There was the gurgle of water around him and he faintly heard people calling his name, calling out his call sign "Yrler" but he ignored them.

He was beyond their reach. He was beyond whatever they chose to do to his body.

Pain, deprivation, suffering, none of it could reach him where he was.

small

still

silent

He stayed curled up, floating in nothingness, his eyes closed, his ears flat.

He was beyond the enemy's reach.

Survive

Evade

Resist

Escape

-----

He was 515 and he laid on the rock sunning himself in a world of warm breezes, gently sunshine, and most importantly, without big birds.

He listened to 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 515.

And he was warm and smart and clever and brave

smart greenie clever greenie brave greenie

-----

The hypercom call went through with a ping and the screen cleared.

"Honored Elder Cousin, it is with great pleasure I," the gold began.

Cordexen muted the call.

Unmoving, Cordexen stared at the gold mantid with the disfigured eyelids for a long moment.

A skilled healer that we would have thrown in the larval pits, the massive Mantid Warrior thought to himself. Thereby depriving the empire of one who could soothe the minds of those who had seen to much rather than feed them into the larval pits as well.

There was silence of a long moment as Cordexen stood, petting the Corey the Turkey, who was giving soft snores as it was held safe in the massive insect warrior's arms.

Finally, Cordexen moved.

He reached forward slowly with the bladearm and pressed the transmit key. The datacube locked into the media port began to glow.

Cordexen terminated the visual and audio sections of the call, leaving the data channel open.

He stood there for a long moment, petting Corey the Turkey, standing in the warm purple light from the star that burned brightly in the violet sky.

Finally, he turned and went back into the frontroom.

A black warrior servitor held up a pouch of liquid refreshment with a straw poking out.

Cordexen expressed pleasure as he sat down in between the group of servitors. He used his bladearms to put his shawl around his shoulders and unpaused the video.

The K'Nank the Moo Moo Tender Power Hour resumed with the adventures of Charlie the Moo Moo.

-----

Pelfar was floating, slowly rotating, his mind empty and still.

small

still

silent

There was a clinking sound, so out of place yet so familiar it got his slight uninterested attention.

A female lemur spoke.

"Task Force Vecna SAR to Yrler," the female lemur said. "This is Task Force Vecna SAR to Yrler."

It stirred something inside of him.

"You can't reply, but I know you can hear me," the female lemur said. There was a pause. "I'm here to guide you out, Yrler. Ping when you are ready. Task Force Vecna SAR out."

Pelfar/Yrler slowly rotated.

He opened one eye, cocked one ear, then reached out with one hand.

And fired a SAR flare.