First Contact

Chapter 824: Ultimis Diebus Hominum

"Addiction. Is that why the Lemurs of Terra are the way they are. Why they just won't give in. Life is an addiction to them. Just one more smoke, just one more bowl of ice cream, just one more sight to see, just one more mountain to climb, just one more ocean to sail, just one more rush... Just one more enemy to kill, to take with them. The Malevolent Universes ultimate tool, that would always want just one more than it had, and do anything, to anyone, to get it. To get that next fix, to get that next hit, even more than that need for the next sash reward of a Lanaktallan, or the next flavour of ice cream surprise of Trea, or to solve an equation for a Green Mantid.

"Every one, every Terran I ever met was addicted in some way to something, something they felt a desperate need for.

"Woe betide should you get between a Terran and its needs." - Former Grand Most High Sma'akamo'o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff

"Legend had it that the knowledge of good and evil was given to the Humans by a serpent lurking in an otherwise perfect garden. The serpent supposedly tricked the Humans to get them kicked out of the garden.

"In truth, I suspect they threatened to turn the serpent into a belt if he didn't spill what he knew. And used what they learned to escape the walls. --- Myt'hosmoo, Lanaktallan story teller.

"So you want a scary story, squirmlings? All right. Here's one that will haunt you for the rest of your days.

"Terran Descent Humanity went extinct.

"The Earthlings are still out there.

"Goodnight, squirmlings." - Leebawan Ghost Story.

The Atrekna had scouted the system several times. Good amount of resources, three gas giants that would work to serve as slavespawn breeding facilities, asteroid belts for resources to build autonomous war machines, and a world that would be perfect to seed with servitors. There were four servitor species that could survive on that world. Two more planets would be excellent manufacturing worlds.

The Atrekna had come to realize that they would have to field a massive military force to even have a chance at surviving the Inheritor onslaught.

A new plan was devised.

Well, an old plan, an old way of making war, was dusted off and prepared to be used on the Inheritors of Madness.

It was simple.

The resources and manufacturing would be harvested only, no temporal replication. Restoration only in the case of rare materials. Servitors would be temporally replicated a single time only, to seed the servitors world. Only servitors from the four species that could survive on the planet would be replicated. Then, a heavy population increase program would be put in effect.

Several of the moons around the innermost gas giant would be dedicated to research, sunk even further into time dilation inside the stellar system, which was under time dilation.

The goal would be: Offset the Inheritor's advantages in weaponry, armor, military tactics, and aggressiveness.

The servitor species would be bred, on a planet sunk even further, for aggression, hardiness, fast reflexes, strength, infinitive, and obedience.

They sunk the system and the stellar mass.

[The Universe Will Remember That]

They sunk five moons around the gas giant.

[The Universe Disliked That]

They sunk the inhabited planet.

[The Universe Disliked That]

They sunk one of the gas giants to quickly create slavespawn.

[The Universe Didn't Like That One Bit]

They sunk another gas giant so that the system could produce autonomous war machines at a faster rate, armed and armored with the discovering and scientific advancements that would be sure to be developed on the research moons.

[The Universe is Tired of Your Shit]

The Atrekna began devising ways to ensure that the servitors they were breeding could go toe to toe with the Inheritors. Tougher. Stronger. Smarter. More obedient. They began researching new weaponry, no longer relying just on phasic energy and plasma. New armor was developed that would allow the servitors, slavespawn, and other tools of the Atrekna to survive in the fact of the Inheritors of Madness. The autonomous war machines were given new and better programming, new molecular circuitry, armed and armored better, with more powerful engines and inertial compensators. The slavespawn were tougher, meaner, able to survive where before they would have been slaughtered.

The Atrekna began building up the military forces needed to stop the Inheritor offensive, take back the territory lost to the Inheritors, and start on taming this universe.

The Atrekna studied the battles their brethren had fought against the Inheritors. Studied Inheritor tactics, their weapons, the species.

The Atrekna discovered a pattern no other Atrekna had noticed.

The Inheritors immediately moved to use temporal weaponry to deny the Atrekna the ability to temporally replicate or restore anything within the system.

That accounted for the Atrekna's seeming inability to replace their losses and resource consumption.

This resulted in the Atrekna going back to the drawing board and starting all over with how to prosecute a war across thousands of stellar systems.

It became quickly obvious to the Atrekna that they would have to engage in battle without relying on temporal replication. That meant entirely new schools of thought on logistics, supply, reinforcement, and troops levels.

It only took them fifteen thousand years, local time, to come up with logistics theory three teenage girls on a picnic trip to the back yard would have realized.

But, in their defense, they did all agree that there was a pattern there.

The Atrekna were sure that this research system would be the one that won the war.

There was brief thought of contacting other research systems, sharing the data like the research systems engaged in the project to scorch the hyperatomic planes.

It was decided against.

Mostly so that the Atrekna of the system could claim all the credit for winning the war.

Armies were gathered, equipped, and trained. Vehicles were constructed, crewed, and readied.

Autonomous war machines were tasked with ferrying the armies and their gear, then setting up logistical systems within the stellar system and on the planets, to allow the armies to fight.

The autonomous war machines were finished and were almost ready to move to the inhabited planet to be loaded. It had been decided by the Atrekna that they would follow the example of the ancient Hive Queens and put a full Conclave inside each AWM, to guide and control the AWM and the servitors and the slavespawn.

The Atrekna's plans were almost complete. They were already imagining their victories over the Inheritors of madness.

They were close to going forth and defeating the Inheritors of Madness.

But, like any porn star could tell you, close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, atomic weapons, and money shots.

The first hint that anything was going wrong was a small white pinprick, only a few meters wide, the occurred exactly 45 degrees inclination from the stellar equator.

It was easy to spot, since it was high enough energy that it was visible against the dull crimson of the sunken formerly yellow star.

The Atrekna were in the middle of discussing the nature of it, having dispatched AWMs and slavespawn to investigate, even some Atrekna Quorums heading for it. when everything changed.

The small white pinprick unfolded into miles of gauzy whitish energy, looking almost like slightly crinkled wings or dry crinkled leaves on decorative flowers. It held for a bare handful of seconds, then swirled again. The pattern remained crinkly, like space had suddenly unfolded into one of the old origami flowers. It glimmered and sparkled even as shattered fragments of another stellar system could be seen.

What came out first was a massive warship.

Dull gray, the color of unpolished iron. The ship was blocky, heavy looking. The forward section on a 'neck', a long body, a connected after section. Four side sections connected by heavy angled sections. It was broadcasting around seventy-five signals.

One of them was phasic. Atrekna battle code that had been in use for hundreds of millions, billions, of years.

A battle code that had never been broken, so it never could be.

The dull gray ship, which slid out and coasted for a few seconds, moving thousands of miles away from the crinkled space, lit its engines as it broadcast Atrekna battle code.

It was just a few words over and over, and the Atrekna of the system realized it was the ship's designation.

The Stilled Song of the Broodcarriers moved into the system.

More ships slid out from the crinkled space.

You Hear Us Knocking and We Will Come In was next, bigger even than the first. Like the first, it was dull, iron gray, lit up completely so that the hull was clearly visible.

We Are No Longer Accepting Calls From Your Service Area came next.

The Terrible Silence of the Ducklings followed.

What Fear Tastes Like stately entered the system.

The Last Puffy moved into space.

The Sword of the Gold Mantid's Grief entered the system.

The Ship of Theseus was next.

Every Atrekna who could see it felt a chill down their backs for some reason when the largest ship slid from the warped and crinkled space.

Shadow of Heat Death moved from the crinkled space.

The first ships through were already firing, and the Atrekna were shocked.

There was no HEAVY METAL IS HERE! or anything else.

The ships came through and within minutes were firing heavy guns at the planets. Launching torpedoes that vanished. Breaking into three discreet groups.

The Atrekna aimed their considerable power.

YOU BELONG TO US! the Atrekna roared.

Silence was the only answer.

THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE! the autonomous war machines screamed out.

Only silence from the gray ships.

YOU SHALL BE DEVOURED was screeched by the massive spacebourne slavespawn.

Still no response, as if the gray ships had not heard the signals.

Only their transponders gave out any signal.

Atrekna working on deciphering the rest of the signals from the transponder realized something.

Every species that the Atrekna knew of in the ranks of the Inheritors of Madness were represented by the transponder's signal. Every language.

Even over a dozen servitor species.

The Atrekna were shocked when the initial three shots fired impacted.

On the sole world inhabited by servitors, Atrekna, and ground based slavespawn.

The first, moving at .985C, slammed into the atmosphere of the planet, flouresced into plasma, and drove deep into the polar continental plates before detonating with the harsh snap of antimatter.

Gigatons of dirt and rock, magma and lava, were flung up and away from the shot, much of it already at escape velocity. The third shot had been aimed at the middle of the planet, at the equatorial belt.

It hit with such force that the nickle-iron core was knocked off center by nearly five hundred miles. A massive section of the continental plate on the other side exploded outwards, gigatons moving fast enough that it broke free of the planet and reached the high orbits.

The firestorm and debris swept over the planet.

The Atrekna watching from space stations and habitats could only stare in shock.

The two moons suffered the next hits.

One to each pole only a bare handful of seconds before the third shot hit the equator.

The smaller moon broke up.

That wasn't how the Inheritors made war.

Where was the landings? Where was the fight to secure the orbitals? Where were the strange and exotic weaponry? Where were the legions of ground troops.

The shots fired at the autonomous war machines and the slavespawn weren't the vaunted C+ cannons, instead they were near-C-velocity cannons.

The autonomous war machines started taking fire. The weapons detonated over a thousand miles from the autonomous war machine fleet. The Atrekna were confused. That was outside the range of any type of explosive they could think of.

Except...

Artificially generated singularities spun up, the gravitational force reaching out across thousands of miles, pulling the autonomous war machines and the slavepsawn into the singularities. Ripping them apart, so that they spiraled down into the singularities, turning into white light as they crossed the boundary to discover that the singularities were unstable antimatter.

The Atrekna watched in horror as the autonomous war machines and slavespawn were ripped apart.

Still the strange gray ships made no broadcasts, no transmissions.

They just moved forward, firing their weapons.

Five ships reached orbit around the planet, opposite of where the debris that had been the smaller moon was falling to the planet.

The Atrekna could see ships, drop pods, and huge combat robots dropping from those ships. The ships, drop pods, and robots vanished into the fiery hellstorm that had covered the planet and was even boiling the surface of the oceans.

The glare of atomics and antimatter weaponry began to show through the clouds.

More than a few of the Atrekna watching wondered what exactly had survived to kill.

The Atrekna in the stations that were slightly out of phase found themselves suddenly under fire by munitions that seemed to know right where they were and how to reach them.

They were blotted out.

The gas giants suddenly shrunk, visibly.

Then exploded in flames, the compression and gravity igniting the gasses so that the gas giants turned into brief suns that would soon go out.

Still, nothing but silence.

Some of the Atrekna made it obvious to the others that nothing that was happening was new. It had all been seen before by the Inheritors fighting first the Lanaktallan then the Atrekna.

Those Atrekna counseled the others to take notes, to watch carefully, that in observation the Atrekna could deduce a way to counter the attacks.

Other points of view sullenly came around to that consensus.

Then the Oort Cloud exploded into burning fusion and fission driven fire, completely surrounding the stellar system in burning plasma.

The Atrekna realized that it might be time to panic as they realized they were completely surrounded by fire. Temporal shifting was prevented by some kind of disturbance inside the burning gas giants and the stellar mass. Reaching jumpspace, hyperspace, or Hellspace was somehow blocked.

The Atrekna found that if they fought, they died. If they tried to run, they died. If they did nothing, they died. They tried surrendering but they just died when the strange gray ships just opened fire.

Silently.

The stellar mass started brightening as the last of the Atrekna fought desperately to survive.

The ten years that passed were a nightmare for the Atrekna.

The servitors and slavespawn were all dead in the first two years.

There was nowhere for the Atrekna to hide, no matter how hard they tried.

Finally the Oort Cloud went out.

The stellar mass turned yellow.

The stars returned.

There was nobody left to witness the gray ships as they moved to a point in the stellar system. The origami flower opened.

One by one the ships slid into the flower and vanished.

The last one was the Podling Who No Longer Dances.

They came in silence.

They left in silence.

They left behind a silent system.

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

That's it. That's the whole video.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

Where did you get that? It's horrible.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE SYSTEMS

Beacon flashing old Treana'ad emergency codes into jumpspace.

We picked it up. Beacon and hardware design is from the War of Terran Aggression, but it was manufactured recently. Only thing in the memory was that video.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

PUBVIAN DOMINION

Those names.

Brrr.

We still don't know who these guys are beyond Earthlings?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

No.

But they obviously pay attention to the outside world. Look at the names. Look at the fact they even were using Atrekna phasic transponder code.

They want everyone to know the names of those ships.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Why don't they use battlescreens?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

I mean, yeah, not one of them took a single hit.

But why no battlescreens?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

We don't know.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CONFEDMILINT

Because that armor can bounce a C+ shell.

And no, we don't know what it's made of.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

THE GREAT LANAKTALLAN GREAT GESTALT OF GREAT THINKING, GREAT IDEAS, AND GREAT PEOPLE! WE'RE GREEEEEEEAT!

Oh come on.

Anyway, these were what your diplomat was warning us about, wasn't it?

When Dreams of Something More warned us that the Earthlings were coming.

That was what she was

as well as it is perfectly safe to go for a walk in light precipitation if the temperature is within safe limits and the wind is not too high. Going for a walk with friends or family members in light precipitation at parks on just on pedestrian paths in urban areas is good for your mental health and your physical well being

talking about when she warned us, wasn't it?

Oops, sorry.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

Yeah, that happens.

Anyway, yes, that was what Dreams was warning you about.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS

Why don't they talk to anyone?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

They communicate, now and then, but always one way.

Early on, they broadcast one thing.

The Time for Talking Is Over was pretty much the names of all their ships.

And no, we have no idea why.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

I've got the weirdest feeling that we really really don't want to know what's up with these guys.

There's just something about them that gives me the willies.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

You and me both, sweetie.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---