First Contact

Chapter 807: Ultimis Diebus Hominum

No matter what any species has devised regarding Terran Descent Humanity to break their will to fight, it has always failed.

They did not understand one simple fact: Anything they could devise was probably done to humans by humans before they invented iron weapons. - Weeps Under a Dead Sky, Mantid Philosopher, 372 PG

They did what? - Countless enemy commanders facing Terrans

My men withstood three charges by a Treana'ad Infantry Horde. Just three. That was three more than any other division I have ever heard of.

My hands shake when a truck goes by that rumbles the ground. - Thu'unknmo'o, Lanaktallan Unified Military Council Officer, veteran of the Big C3.

The star was dead. Beyond dead. Everything available to fuse had been fused and all that was left was electron-degenerate matter that had cooled to around 300 Kelvin. There were a few scorched balls of rock slowly orbiting it, none of which had anything of interest. The asteroid belt was gone, the Oort Cloud had slowly covered all but the closest orbit as there was no longer any light pressure to offset the gravity. Each of the four planetoids moved through a 'tunnel' of cleared matter even as their gravity brought in more dust and gasses to fill the tunnel behind them.

The only way the system could be detected is through its gravitational effects, even then it was something that required dedicated systems.

An interesting thing, possibly the only interesting thing, about the system was that the system itself was older than the galaxy it was part of. It was a cast-off from a galaxy that even the light from its stars was gone.

It sat silent for millions, billions of years, before it was swept up by the Milky Way galaxy as part of the Cygnus-Orion Galactic Arm Spur.

It was still silent. Not even radio emissions, the thermal emissions too weak to penetrate the diffuse nebula that had formed with the loss of light pressure on the Oort Cloud.

There was the thudding of a bronze wolf's head against thick iron doors that vibrated the dust and gasses that filled the system. Once. Twice. Three times.

A portal of burning flame, an oval a hundred miles high, thirty miles wide, appeared, only a bare ten meters thick. Shadowy hands and arms reached out, pleadingly, from the flames.

A massive warship lunged from the burning fire, black chains trying to hold it back. The chains stretched, groaned, then shattered with the sound of overstressed steel, making the dead star itself shudder in sympathy.

The portal collapsed with the clanging of iron doors slamming closed.

The warship sat in the small clear area around the star, barely ten thousand miles from the surface of the dead star. It orbited halfway around the star, dead and silent, its hull black.

Its lines were fearsome, a silent promise of death and destruction. It was miles long, miles thick. A long jagged splinter of high tech and barbarity. Gun batteries that measured in the hundreds of guns were silent and dead, the scanners and detectors were offline.

Despite its silence the ship was not dead.

It was piloted by a terrible intellect. A cold intellect that only knew a few analogues for emotional states.

Hate.

Wrath.

Burning rage.

All tamped down by the cold chains of logic.

It had a single crew member. A captain of the terrible vessel that sat silently for long periods, only to emerge from its stupor to roar in rage before settling back down on the throne like captain's chair and resume its still silence.

The ship waited.

It had computed what would come next.

It new what would happen.

So it waited.

[The Universe Liked That]

-----

The two ships were massive. Brightly lit, their colors swirls of dark crimson and cream known as 'strawberry swirl', the ships were all gentle curves and pleasant sweeping hull lines. They were both troop ships, designed to carry tens of thousands for thousands of light years.

They were Treana'ad Troop Ships that had ferried millions of Treana'ad Warrior Caste to the front to be deployed, first for the Big C3, then for Operation Iron Piglet.

Their captains were trustworthy and from honorable lineages. The crew were highly skilled and brought honor to their matron lines.

They made the translation to hyperspace, heading back for Moo-Moo Paradise to pick up another set of Infantry Hordes to join the war.

It was routine. Something the captains and the crews had done countless times before. Not even the grief of hearing their nephews and nieces had been taken had deterred the captains from their duties. Not even the grief that poured from the news services and the correspondence deterred the crew from their duties.

The ships must sail.

Most of the crew went into hypersleep. It helped with the grief. The First Mate joined the crew as the Captain stood on the bridge, watching as the swirling colors of hyperspace as the ship's engines pushed it through the half-formed hyper-atomic plane.

One captain mused about how his soft nephew had loved videos of the swirling colors.

He sighed with sadness and lit a cigarette.

The other sat on a silent, dim bridge as his ship swept through the hyperatomic plane, watching a video for the thousandth time of his nephew laughing as he ran across a field.

It still hurt.

In the crew spaces the crew slept in hypersleep, dreaming slow dreams, the dream generator guiding them, using therapy protocols to ease the grief for those who had lost family members. The crew that were awake took solace in their duties.

A timer ran down and a test was performed.

[The Universe Liked That]

-----

The research program was extensive, involving dozens of worlds, thousands of researchers. All to replicate something that had been done before. To discover the mechanisms, adapt them, improve upon them.

The massive damage the project would inflict was of no matter.

It was the goal.

Twelve research stations linked their phasic crystal arrays, across hundreds of light years. Esoteric systems powered up. Ravening energy was tamed and guided.

The research project activated the test run.

In one dimension, portals opened up. Portals that were designed to remove the naturally occurring safeguards that prevented one dimension from leaking into the other. The other sides of the portals manifested on other dimensional planes, growing in size as the energy from the first dimension surged through the opposite side, finding the subatomic haze that made up that dimension and feeding upon it.

The portals got wider, hotter, and began to grow at a self-sustaining rate. What had been measured in mere meters were soon measured in light years, if distance had any true meaning in that screaming haze of unformed subatomic particles.

While not entirely self-sustaining, the portals on both sides reached energy equilibrium, the smaller portals in the first plane mere meters wide. The burning orbs of fire with the portals at the center measuring in tens of light years.

Half of the portals collapsed when the machinery was shut down for half of the portals.

They were not self-sustaining and they did not self-replicate.

Not a complete failure.

But a failure nonetheless.

The creatures performing the test kept nearly two dozen of the smaller portals open, which fed a conflageration tens of light years across in the more energetic dimension. The creatures intended on researching, finding out what the limits were, where equilibrium was reached, what the maximum distance the secondary portals would consume.

The next test would be to see if the portals on the first dimension could be forced to self-replicate in an uncontrollable cascade.

Fire from the first dimension moved through the portal, to burn the particles and energy of the second dimension as the researchers examined the data.

[The Universe Disliked That]

-----

"THERE THEY ARE! GET THEM! THEY DID IT! KILL THEM WITHOUT MERCY! KILL THEM AS THEY KILLED OUR SOFT CHILDREN! LET NONE SURVIVE! HURT THEM AS THEY HURT US! PURGE THEM FROM THIS UNIVERSE IN THE NAME OF THE MOO-MOOS AND OUR SOFT CHILDREN! THAT ONE! HE DID IT! GET HIM!"

[Concern]

-----

Neither Captain barely had time to react as the view of hyperspace suddenly changed. It went from swirling colors, lit by some internal glow, to burning fire.

Both were shocked. The mid-bands of hyperspace were on fire.

They managed to drop message torpedoes to go back the way the ships had come.

They slapped the emergency drop buttons to throw themselves back into realspace even as the ship's hull sensors reported that the ships were engulfed in Hellspace fire.

In any other situation it would have been the right reflex.

In the situation the two Captains found themselves in, anything they did was wrong, including doing nothing.

It wasn't the right reflex.

But it saved their ships and crews.

In a fashion.

Both ships went for the nearest weak point to drop from hyperspace as fast as possible.

They both found the same spot.

They did not slam together, they did not merge, they just both entered from the same angle (relatively), the same speed, both identical ships making a realspace crash translation.

Which took them through the Hellspace portal and into Hellspace itself.

Both ships had Hellspace shields.

To mitigate the effects of a nearby Hellspace emergence.

Neither ship was capable of withstanding being plunged into the burning screaming maelstrom of Hellspace itself.

Hellspace energy suffused every bolt, every strut. It traveled through the molecular circuitry with blasphemous signals. It screamed through the fuel lines, roared through the air ducts, bellowed through the piping. It ravened through the corridors, into the crew spaces, into the stations, washed over and soaked into the hypersleep pods.

Both Captains couldn't even scream as the Hellspace energies washed over them.

But both managed to finish the crash translation.

They survived.

In a fashion.

[The Universe Liked That]

-----

The ancient ship felt the slight surge of energy in two spots. Both of them were tiny pearls in the black velvet of space around the dead black dwarf star.

It roused itself to full wakefulness. The Captain raised his head from contemplation and stared with red glowing eyes at a screen that went live to show blackness.

The cold intellect that drove the ship lit the engines, activated the transponder buried in the hull, and waited.

The tiny pearls erupted into Hellspace breaches. Clawed black hands, more insectile than normal, reached out, grasping and pawing, not for succor, but to find something to grab and tear, to pull into the burning torment of Hellspace.

The two ships that erupted from the portals strained against the chains for a moment.

The blue light of their engines turned to a dark sooty red with dull amber cores.

The chains shattered.

The ships tumbled end over end relative to the black dwarf and the terrible ship.

The terrible ship, its lines mathematical representations of cruelty and malevolence, merely watched with passive sensors.

First one, then the other, activated station keeping thrusters, slowing their rotation on first one axis, then other, finally the third.

They orbited silently, a mere ten thousand kilometers from one another, for a long period.

The terrible ship pulsed its transponder.

The two ships responded. Their transponders activated.

Not with the codes they had broadcast before.

These codes were terrible, full of grief and rage. The spoiled milk of bitter grief, the bitterness of sweet cream turned rancid, the tastelessness of poor sprinkles and unflavored toppings.

Aboard the ships, the Captains, now acclimated to their new and horrible forms, both were satisfied that their crew, warped and altered, were at least conscious and coherent.

If one ignored the screams of unending rage that they uttered now and then, even in their sleep.

Each ship had undergone drastic, horrible, twisted changes. The dream generator had gone dark and ugly. The pheromone emitters blew ill winds through the corridors. Relaxation mists and smokes had wisps of hatred and rage eeking from pitted blackened bronze emitters. The hallways were larger but now all smooth curves with no angles. Not appearing biological, but more like tunnels carved by the maddened through a block of blasphemous alloys. Burning runes had replaced elegant script and the stench of hatred and grief had replaced the scents that accompanied the runes.

The Captains both looked at the transponder of the terrible ship, whose lines silently spoke of violence and carnage. They knew it was a warship just looking at it, just as it knew their ships were designed to transport something terrible.

The Captains spoke formally. Ancient Treana'ad battle clicks.

The terrible ship responded in kind.

Data flowed between the three ships in that dark space.

As one, they lit their engines, tearing open portals to Hellspace.

Together they lunged forward, into the breaches.

The breaches collapsed with the sound of rusted iron doors clanging shut.

The dead system was silent again.

[The Universe Liked That]

-----

For the Atrekna and their servitors, what had come through the portals of the Ignition Project was worse than a nightmare.

You could wake up from a nightmare.

The massive insects, the smallest three point five meters tall, rampaged through the crystalline fortress, seemingly immune to all but the heaviest anti-tank weapons. Their minds were nothing but rage and wrath. Grief hammered into hatred. The emotions poured from them like radiation from a meltdown, so raw and fierce that it burned and singed the flesh of the Atrekna who were exposed to it even as they tried to flee.

The largest, fifteen meters tall and nothing but armor, chains, barbs, and lightning, directed the five meter tall ones, always attacking the Atrekna.

They did not sleep.

They did not pause to eat or drink.

They swarmed over any attempt to stop them, crushing them beneath flame wreathed foodpads, rending them with clawed hands, sawing them apart with clattering chain wrapped bladearms, their jaws ripping away chunks of screaming flesh.

Several servitors realized that the massive black insects, covered in lightning and greasy red fire, would ignore them to attack the Great Masters as if only the purple blood of the Masters could quench their hunger and thirst of their rage.

More and more servitors threw down their guns and ran.

The Atrekna discovered they could not hide.

Even those who attempted to hide by slipping into part of a second, to move themselves slightly out of synch with time, found long fingered hands or clattering bladearms reaching into those broken off portions of seconds to grab them.

And yank them back into realtime.

And tear them apart.

The screams and howls of the insects ravaged through the Elder Brain phasic network. Images of dead immature lemurs assaulted the Overminds, wrapped in unending grief and rage.

Thousands of the chain bedecked insects poured from the portals before the Queen of Grief allowed the portals to collapse. Thousand of the insects poured over the landscape.

Burning.

Breaking.

Destroying.

Screaming.

It wasn't aimless violence, or savagery without any type of strategy or design.

It became quickly apparent that there was a goal behind their actions.

The complete extermination of any Atrekna on the planet.

The Atrekna realized quickly that everything had gone wrong. One of the massive insects, a hole blown clear through its thorax by a weapon normally used on heavy tanks, had collapsed in a heap. Purple lightning snarled down from the sky, wreathing the insect. The lightning stayed on the corpse, snarling around it, rippling and crackling.

With a scream of rage the massive insect stood up, throwing its gas mask clad face to the sky, and scrabbled at the burning clouds with its bladearms before lunging forward at the Atrekna who had managed to stop it for all of ten seconds.

Twice, Atrekna tried to escape through stringspace, only to have a bladearm transfix them or sharp ended fingers reach into them.

The first one, the Atrekna landed in four parts, the ends cauterized and smoking.

The second came through as if it had been forced through a fine mesh and a third of it had been left behind.

The servitors fled.

When they realized that technology allowed the insect people to find them, they threw technology away. When they realized that civilized trappings attracted the insect people, they hid in caves and bushes.

The sun began to brighten.

The Atrekna found themselves pelted with rude stones when they approached groups of servitors.

One group of three Atrekna found a handful of female servitors picking berries. They moved toward her eagerly, planning on taking control of them, forcing the females to lead the Atrekna to their people. The Atrekna would arm them and use them to fight the insects.

YOU BELONG TO US! they whispered.

The females screamed.

A huge insect, four legs, two arms, two bladearms, made of black armor that had heavy chains affixed to the chitin with thick rusted steel spikes, with barbes interwoven with the links, with barbed blades at the end, burst from the underbrush.

Its eyes glowed red.

The Atrekna screamed as the three females turned back to picking berries.

Not my monkey, not my circus, was a close analogue to their thoughts.

The sun brightened slightly.

The last Atrekna fortress fell to the weapons and rage of the insect people.

The sun was an yellowish-orange.

The last Atrekna was pulled apart.

The sun was an orangish-yellow.

The last Elder Brain was ripped to shreds.

The stars came back.

The last thing the last Atrekna on the planet heard was "For Bobby."

The insect people traveled to where the Queen of Grief stood in the middle of the protocontinent, her face uplifted to the stars. They lifted their voices in a slow, sad dirge even as some of them screamed in rage.

[Concern]

-----

The terrible ship emerged first with a nearly silent hiss, an oiled blade being pulled from a silken sheathe.

Before the Atrekna ships knew what was happening, the massive guns of the terrible ship had opened fire. The rounds crossed light minutes in mere fractions of a second, hitting the equivalent of a fleet at anchor. Torpedoes sped into the gas giants and detonated, the entire gas giant shuddering as what was nearly a nova-spark detonated.

The terrible ship had no fear of the Atrekna vessels or the Dwellerspawn ships.

It swept everything from before it with esoteric weapons. It savaged the system, even as, on the planet, rage pounded everything into the dirt with flame wreathed footpads and gas mask muffled screams of rage echoed through the world.

The signal was sent and the other two ships exited hyperspace with a scream. They joined the terrible ship and moved to the planet, where the storm clouds were burning.

The two ships shed dropships, which themselves had been altered by their exposure to Hellspace. The dropships arced down to where voices were uplifted in song.

Dropship by dropship the troop transports were loaded.

The servitors neither knew nor cared that the last of the insect people had left.

The best berries were ripe.

Inside the terrible ship the Queen of Grief was escorted through the silent and dark passages that had been reconfigured to allow her to move comfortably. She was escorted by six of her Royal Guard, whose pistols were still in crossdraw holsters.

When she came to the bridge she entered and stopped.

A single Terran, clad in the heavy plates of the Imperium of Wrath sat in the command chair. Crimson warsteel oozed from his mouth as he stared at the Queen of Grief.

A hologram appeared. A bloody skull wrapped in barbed wire with rusted spikes driven into the eye sockets. The skull turned and faced the Queen of Grief.

There was silence for a long moment.

The Terran spoke.

"Welcome," was all he said.

The hologram spoke.

"I shall escort your troopships back to battle," the skull stated.

The Queen of Grief noted that the Terran was slightly slumped, slightly angled, in his chair. His eyes were devoid of anything but the red glow of Terran enragement.

She understood him.

They were siblings.

"I am the Queen of Grief," she said. "How should I address you?"

"John," the Terran rumbled.

The skull was silent and the Queen of Grief saw the Hellspace portals open for the two troopships and the terrible ship.

"I..." the voice paused as the ship entered Hellspace.

"Am Marduk."

[The Universe Liked That]