First Contact

Chapter 838: Book of the Dead

I'll give it everything I've got. Every last half-melted neuron. Every last cracked axon. Every trickle of bio-electricity I've got left to give.

If that isn't good enough, then the Detainee take me unto her plentiful bosom and I shall sup on Devil Mommy Milk and Whiskey in Hell this night. - Graffiti found in a Confederate/Council GalNet Server databse.

"We can't win!" the Runner next to Eegleet yelled out.

Eegleet grabbed him, pulling him around and off the ground to stare into Eegleet's eyes.

"THERE'S NO WHERE TO RUN!" he yelled. Eelgeet pointed behind him. He threw the runner to the ground. "Fight or die."

Eegleet turned and looked at the Gal-Net primary planetary access port.

Normally it was unassailable. A digital fortress full of 'authorized people have keys' mentality.

Eegleet was one of the few who had ever hacked his way into the site.

Now, he was leading an assault on it while every net runner, script kiddy and kitty, every corp net-slave, every single person who could type on a keyboard and figure out how to upload a picture social media that had volunteered were running the guns.

Guns taken from video games and jazzed up with attack programs. Well, more like the guns from video games and popular media were overlaid across attack programs and a little bit of data slicing and cross wiring allowed video game skills to translate over.

Not like it requires precision, Eegleet thought to himself, staring at the primary access port.

The shades were flooding out, screaming into the datalines in thick mobs that the massed guns blew into pixels that often reformed.

The shades had pushed forward, out of the trenches of the signal hold buffer, and were slowly moving across the file allocation request tables.

There was a ping in his ear and Eegleet AKA Crashrider put one hand against the side of his head.

"Crash here," he said, even as he walked over toward a set of Lanaktallan matrons who were running a heavy machinegun from the wreckage of their favorite recipe forum.

"It is I, Darmo'o," the voice said. There was silence for a moment. "I have a job for you."

Eegleet felt everything go tingly. Darmo'o had been his boss for nearly two years after rescuing him from the clutches of the Executor Council.

"Go ahead," he said, feeling Crashrider surge up to the surface.

"Four targets. The Confederate ansible, the Council needlecast system, the Confederate needlecast system, and lastly, the hypercome wave system. Blow them. Either disable their ability to send/receive or make them physically destruct. Either way is preferable," the Lanaktallan business magnate slash software developer said. His voice was deadly serious.

Crashrider looked at the ansible's fortress walls. They were tattered and heavily damaged from the battle to hold the shades back.

"Got it," he said. "Are you safe?"

"Don't worry about me," Darmo'o said, his voice tight. "Shut those down or the shades will just keep coming. It's the only way to stop them."

"It'll cut us off from the rest of the galaxy. You'll go bankrupt if you aren't sued to oblivion," Crashrider said.

"I don't care," Darmo'o said. "Just do it."

"Will do," he paused. "It was a pleasure."

"And an honor," Darmo'o said and cut the line.

Crashrider pinged his software, looking up who of his chummers were still around. He highlighted the nearest one and punched in the admin codes he's stolen a year ago and hoarded like they were made of gold and he was a dragon. He jumped next to Renegade Dime, the other runner kneeling down and setting charges to blow the data-lines, crash the routers hard enough they'd have to be physically reset.

"Dime," Crashrider said.

The avatar looked up.

"Got a job," Crashrider said. He looked out at the shades. "Maybe the last run."

Renegade Dime stood up, rolling his shoulders. "Runner's only as good and only as famous as his last run," he said, deliberately misrepresenting the saying.

Crash nodded, pointing over at the one way dataline, which manifested in the eVR as a eight lane overpass. "Meet me there."

"Yeesa yeesa, bossman," Dime said. He looked down, punched in some numbers. "Big bomba here, boss."

Crashrider nodded and jumped again, appearing next to Cyberplushie, the big netrunner merc kneeling next to a pair of Lanaktallan matrons, instructing them on how to use the heavy crew served machinegun.

Cyberplushie nodded, patted the two Lanaktallan on the hip, and moved over to Crashrider.

"They should be fine," she said.

"Gotsa jobsa. Lastiddly diddly joberino, maybe," Crashrider said. He pointed at the ansible. "First strike point," he pointed off into the distance in the neon black sky. "Needlepoints, second strike points," he pointed at what looked like pounding surf. "Last target."

Cyberplushie looked at the hypercom wave carrier signal. "Might not come back from that, boss," she said slowly.

"Gotta stop the signal," Crashrider said. He gave a wry chuckle. "After all the times we yelled you can't stop the signal, it falls on us to stop it."

Plushie nodded. "I'm in."

"Meet there. Dime's there," Crashrider said. He shook her hand, passing her a temp admin power to teleport across the map.

Plushie nodded, flickered and vanished.

Crashrider jumped again. This time he appeared next to Steeltalon.

"Talon," Crashrider said.

Steeltalon looked up from where she was applying a trojan-worm to a severed leg.

"Last job?" Talon asked.

Crashrider nodded.

Steeltalon looked down, made sure her patient was stable, and stood up.

"I'm with you," she said. She took his hand. "I'm ready."

Crashrider nodded.

They jumped.

-----

"Smash all the screens. Smash anything that can project a hologram," the large Hesstlan male bellowed out.

Some of the Hesstlan screamed and drew back from the sheer aggression in the male's voice, others screamed at the fact that he picked up a chair and used it to smash the hologram projector for the daily menu as he spoke.

"STOP SCREAMING!" a female yelled. Her eartips weren't dyed or powdered, like the current fashion, but instead she had piercings with long chains and tiny bangles. She had been holding the big male's hand as everyone had ran.

The other female, that had been holding the male's other hand before he had grabbed the chair, ran forward, running toward the eVI that was down on her knees, screaming, raking her face with her own nails, digital blood sleeting down her face. The short female grabbed a queue pole and swung it overhead, slamming it down on the holoprojector.

It shattered and the eVI vanished.

"Salt, iron, and rage, got it," the big male said, talking to someone on his comlink. "No video, make sure nobody is using their picture in picture, got it," the big male ran over to the snack bar, grabbing two salt shakers and running back. "MOVE!" He lowered a shoulder and plowed into the crowd, knocking down or aside anyone who didn't move out his way.

"Is everyone OK?" the male asked, stopping at the doorway. He yanked the top off one salt dispenser with his teeth and dumped it in a line across the doorway. He began pushing and shoving his way toward the other door.

The smaller girl was smashing holoprojectors. She picked up a celery flake shaker and threw it hard enough to shatter the screen of the 2.5D LCD display.

"HELP HER!" the bigger female yelled. She grabbed a young Hesstlan woman who was staring and screaming, pulling back her arm and slapping the other woman hard enough her residual claws left behind three furrows in the fur with reddened flesh. "SMASH THE SCREENS!"

Some were moving, flinching back, often with a screen as an eVI or VI hologram appeared.

Most of them were howling in agony, screaming in insanity.

The big male grabbed the female with out-of-style bangles in her ears. "Find the nutriforges, punch in the emergency code, and Bree's saying to fab up iron powder in pepper shakers."

She nodded. "We've got one under the counter at the coffee stand I work at."

The big male rubbed the side of his face, where he had only three whiskers instead of four, against the side of the big females. "I love you," he whispered, a phrase that only a few years ago he could have never foreseen saying to someone outside his family.

"Copy that," the female said, a slight smile on her face as she pulled back and ran for the coffee stand that she worked at some evenings. "WIMMY! HELP ME!"

The smaller female, her jewelry more subdued, the chains shorter, fewer bangles, turned from where she was beating a 3D display's projectors to death.

"Finish it," the short female snapped, tossing the queue post to a male and running over to the big female.

The one who caught the pole, who was wearing stylish powder on her ears and cheeks, dipped her ears in submission despite the fact the other Hesstla female was smaller than her, then gripped the pole tightly, turning and smashing at the holoprojectors with the queue post.

Another male, this one from the gymnastics team, called out the big male's name.

"ELU!" he yelled out. "HEAD'S UP!"

The big male looked up and saw the heavy duty salt shaker flying through the air, spinning slowly, salt misting out of the perforated end.

Elu caught it with one hand, dropping the empty shaker, and went back to pouring salt across the floor in a thick line.

"Stay safe, Bree," Elu said. "I love you."

Elu suddenly seemed to focus more as two other males shouldered their way through the screaming crowd, which had huddled up in the middle of the dining area, bigger females on the outside, the smaller males in the middle, with the smaller females between the larger females and the males. In the center of the huddle were three females, all of them with swollen bellies.

Seeing that behavior Elu knew that his fellow students and the few teachers he could see mixed in had fallen back on primal instinct in their horror driven panic.

He was grateful that two of his team-mates were still thinking.

"What do we do?" one asked.

"My sister said..." Elu started.

"She's the nun?" Arleetru asked.

"The one from the docu-vid?" the other asked.

Elu nodded. "She said iron hurts them, if you flick salt at them they'll flinch. They can't cross salt barriers and they can't move through red with the color code 880808," Elu said. "She said Mylar with a one point five micron layer of aluminum oxide is something else they won't move through."

Both his team-mates nodded.

"Steel doesn't work. Once it's steel, it's useless. Iron only. If you can find the entry on the 'forge for 'cold iron' that's preferable," Elu finished.

"Got it. Cold iron and salt," Ortrupa said.

"Grab someone to watch your back. Be careful. Get to a forge, they're all in emergency services mode, fab up a cold iron bar to swing, then salt," Elu pointed at the huddled up group. "Put a circle around the Primary Fluffle, then start on bottom of the doors, then windows, then walls."

The other two nodded and quickly moved away.

Elu closed his eyes, just for a second, still pouring the salt along the big bay windows.

He was glad that his sister had fought in the War In Heaven.

And he felt guilty for that.

He opened his eyes, shaking the salt dispenser slightly.

I can feel guilty later, right now, I need to survive.

-----

The system shuddered as the Hellspace portal tore open and a spacecraft the size of a small city erupted from the burning lake. Its lines spoke of mathematical brutality, of precise cruelty, and of carefully computed dominance. Its hull was scarred here and there from battle, silently attesting that this craft wouldn't make the computational mistakes of its newer brethren. Its hellcore driven engines glowed sullenly even as the targeting systems came up, lashing at everything near the massive craft with enough power to blister paint. Heavy nCv cannons oriented, missile bays opened their huge doors, and sensor dishes scanned and oriented.

However, the scream of "You Belong to Us!" or "There Is Only Enough For One" was not what howled through the system even as the Hellspace portal collapsed in an orb of flame that quickly went out.

HEY-O FUCK-O'S! sounded out across the system.

Still, the beings at traffic control, the ones that were still alive, felt their hearts quail at the appearance of the PAWM.

For most of the beings in the system, the cryptic bellow was just one more bite of the huge shit sandwich everyone had been forced to sit down and partake in.

Communications were down to nothing more than text and voice, and even voice could be a bit risky if, for some reason, the voice channel used enough bandwidth. Most beings in the system didn't know what was going on five blocks away, much less what the massive Precursor Autonomous War Machine was doing.

The few who could track it, watching icons on a screen that were little better than text, simple triangles, circles, x's, and crosses with numbers attached rather than the complex visuals of only a few hours before, saw it turn and accellerate toward the Oort Cloud even as it fired at the inhabited planets.

They knew their data was minutes or hours old, but seeing the massive and probably ancient ship fire on the planets made all of those watching wail in dismay.

Instead of the nCv and missile launches hitting the planet, they struck at the orbital links for the ansibles, the hypercom, and the needlecast. The PAWM fire was precise, without the collateral damage that those witnessing it had seen from the PAWM so many times before.

Those watching the instruments saw the big PAWM being firing into the Oort Cloud.

Alarms wailed as the ansible system, the hypercom wave generators, and the needlecast transmitters started taking hits. Their point defense overwhelmed, their shields failing.

Then one by one destroyed.

Those in the system braced themselves.

They doubted that the PAWM knew that the inhabitants of the stellar system couldn't have used the superluminal communication links.

Planetary Defense and System Defense braced themselves.

The PAWM's reasoning was clear.

Eliminate the communications links, prevent the system from calling for reinforcements or assistance.

The PAWM was massive, it's lines spoke of experience and cruelty, its demonstrated firepower was overwhelming and precise.

The Planetary Defense knew that soon they would not only be fighting the shades, but PAWM ground forces.

The System Defense braced themselves. They had not upgraded their defenses, all they had was Council equipment.

Worse, the only ships were those that had been powered down. The others were overrun with the terrible Terran shades that had crawled out of any visual screen they could, clawing their way out of the superluminal communications links.

The defenders would have to shoot by eye, use 2D screen systems with crude icons only.

The PAWM would sweep them aside like trash no matter how valiantly they attempted to defend the system.

Those who could, watched, holding their breaths, as the PAWM reoriented. It transmitted a single message, using Unified Galactic Standard Text Encoding.

SODIUM CHLORIDE FOR GROUND BARRIERS IRON FOR DEFENSE 880808 COLOR FOR SURFACE BARRIER the PAWM roared out instead of the standard battlecry.

Nothing followed as the PAWM aimed its hull further into what had been Council Space.

SO LONG FUCK-O's! rang out across the system.

The PAWM tore open a portal and lunged through it.

It was gone.

Not that those in the system could take a breath of relief.

True, no more shades were swarming into the system.

But they still had to fight to survive.

Now, however, they had a chance.

-----

EMERGENCY CHAT ROOM OPENED

BINARY SIGNAL ENCODING ONLY

MANTID has logged on (We must endure)

TREANA'AD has logged on (Pet a moomoo, you'll feel better)

RIGELLIAN has logged on (We sing in the dark)

KOBOLD has logged on (Fellstrik Time)

TERRASOL

TERRANS

BASS has logged on (We're not a fish)

DASS has logged on (The digital is real now)

CYBORG has logged on (Metal and meat)

CLONES has logged on (We are the same yet different)

NEW USERS FOUND

OPENING CHANNELS

There are multiple new users waiting for codex and authorization.

Proceed? (Y/N)

>_